Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

Of course I waited until the last day to save 50% on Skype's Unlimited Calling plan. It's been advertised everywhere at $14.95.

So imagine my surprise when I went to sign up, only to be informed that the cost was $17.50.

Now I expect that is the result of exchange rates, but there is no mention of that anywhere on the site. How difficult would it be to add a little note about that really?

When I signed in to the Skype website today I was informed that today was "Skype Gift Day" and I would get 10 free minutes of Skype calling. When I clicked on the link I was taken to a "this page could not be found" page.

When I returned to the home page I was again informed that it was Skype Gift Day, but I must have already received my gift.

I guess that's a greay way to save money on a marketing campaign. Don't actually deliver what you promise the customer.

I've been a bit quiet lately because I've been trying to get Bleezer to work with the new Blogger, but I think I'm almost there.

But I'll be heading to Boston for a few days to visit friends for my, and my goddaughter's, birthdays. Boston is home really, and I always experience an ethereal sense of calm when I can see Logan Airport and the city.

Daimnationprovides a bit of commentary on the slow demise of Ford.

When I was a kid there were basically only three car companies - GM, Ford, and Chrysler - and I grew up in a GM town. We drove cars from those companies.

Today I drive an Audi and my wife drives a Mazda. Though we do still own a Chrysler minivan and my son drives a GM - until we replace them probably with something from Japan.

American car companies don't seem to be as adept as other companies at building what the customer wants. But for me their biggest problem, and the reason for our switch to foreign cars, was the horrendous customer service provided by their dealerships. A general feeling that they weren't really concerned with me as a customer once the sale was completed. I have at least one horrible story to tell, as I'm sure many others do as well.

To me Ford is just an example of a company that forgot the need to keep customers satisfied.As a quick test, just name any Ford product you would want to own. An alternate test? Name any Ford product.

Canada's other political party, the NDP, has suddenly noticed ATM fees, even though they have been around since the ATMs themselves. And they claim that banks are gouging customers with these fees:

Charging people to use automatic teller machines from a bank other than their own in order to access their own cash is a rip-off that should be outlawed, New Democrat Leader Jack Layton said Thursday.

In what Canada's big banks dismissed as little more than a display of ignorant rhetoric, Layton said the $19-billion profits the financial institutions made last year should be enough to waive ATM convenience fees.

"We believe it's gouging when a person comes up and they want $40 or $60 of their cash and a bank is charging them $1.50 or $2, $2.50," Mr. Layton said during an election-style announcement on a Toronto street corner.

"That's a rate of payment which is very, very high — and unfair."

Unlike the American banking system consisting of thousands of banking institutions,there are only five or six Canadian banks. As far as I know, all of those banks charge service fees regardless of any balance in the account. And customer service is generally not that good. IN a recent attempt to move my US dollar account, not one bank could tell me what percentage they charge for a US to Canadian dollar exchange. It's about 2% by the way.

When I first moved to Canada I incurred $45 in service charges in one month. We immediately switched to a financial institution run by a supermarket chain. Even though they are run by one of the banks, they had no service changes. So clearly a bank can run without service charges.

So is this gouging? When I was a kid there were no service charges. Banks made money by using your money. Then they felt the need for higher profits, so they started charging for service. Then they started increasing those charges.

You pay to deposit money. You pay to withdraw it. You pay to talk to a teller. You pay for every bit of service you get. And really, with the interest rates so low, you'd be better off keeping your money in your mattress.

I'm a capitalist, so I believe that people have a right to make a profit. Yet I don't feel that the service the bank provides is worth what they charge, so I bank where there are no service fees. That's consumer choice. I also believe that it might be more acceptable to charge a fee based on the amount withdrawn, rather than a fixed fee.

Of course the standard response by the banks of rising infrastructure and operational costs is ridiculous as well. Over time in a properly run system, the cost of operating a network of ATMs should be decreasing.

Either way, I just find it odd that after years of fees this political party just noticed this.

While wireless coverage in Waterloo, Canada is a bit spotty, it seems that I can get a connection while sitting in a chair in my dentist's office, as I wait for the numbness to set in.

So why not blog, right?

So it seems that Rogers Wireless will be the exclusive provider for the iPhone in Canada.

It isn't really much of a stretch though, considering the fact that Rogers has the largest GSM network in Canada.

Via Gizmodo.

Andrew Anderson of Bound By Gravity would like to help out a seven year old Ottawa boy named Shane, who is battling Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

Andrew is a great blogger and a really nice guy, so I'll ask you all to take a few minutes from your happy, healthy lives and spend a couple of bucks to send Shane a card.

I've copied Andrew's entire post below.

A seven year old Ottawa boy, Shane, has a birthday wish: Shane would love to receive as many birthday cards as possible this year for his eighth.

The morning crew on KISS FM have been organizing birthday card drop-offs all over Ottawa and the surrounding area, however it would be so much cooler if he started receiving cards from the rest of the country too.

>

Here is Shane's story, from his site:

At almost 5 years old Shane was diagnosed with A.L.L. After 1 month into the treatment he was in early remission, meaning there were no cancer cells in his blood. Shane's family was very pleased with the early results, but his protocol called for 130 weeks of treatment. Then on July 6th, 2006 Shane relapsed after completing 108 of the 130 weeks. It was a shock to everyone including his doctors. Shane may have to undergo a bone marrow transplant down the road, but the good thing is that his brother Jacob is a match. Presently, there is no sign of cancer in Shane's system since relapsing.

I'd love it if any of you reading this could send Shane a birthday card. The address to send card to is:

SHANE
C/O KISS FM
2001 Thurston Dr.
Ottawa ON, K1G 6C9

Better yet, send a card, and then blog about Shane's birthday card quest. Let's spread the world and really give him a nice treat.

A bit of background from me: My younger brother, Douglas, battled the same cancer that Shane is fighting - Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia - many years ago. The amount of time Douglas spent in hospitals had to be wearing on him, and the fact that he was able to put a smile on his face even in the hardest of times was always an inspiration. Sadly Douglas lost his fight twenty-three days shy of his thirteenth birthday.

Andrea Learned lists seven principles from the "Mozilla School of Management" that will improve how you live and work:

1. It's the community, stupid
2. Just ask
3. Lead by following
4. Nurture renegades
5. Think hybrid
6. Think globally
7. Shut up

Her favorites, and mine, are principle #2 and #7. However, I think that they should be combined and stated this way:

Just ask, then shut up and listen.

Don't interrupt, and don't correct. Just listen to what your customers have to say. And then do something about it.

By the way, this isn't bad marriage advice either.

Principle #4 is a pretty good one too. Everybody says they nurture renegades, but game-changing ideas rarely come from Fortune 500 companies.

From Australia, ten reasons why you shouldn't get Windows Vista. The first? You don't actually need it:

1. You don't actually need it -- No, think about this. Vista doesn't do anything you can't already do with XP. About the only significant shift requiring Vista is DirextX10, but as no titles support it yet and, according to John Carmack (the godfather of modern gaming) there's no need to yet either.

I like Google. I really do. And I am a frequent user of all of their software. But sometimes they frustrate even me.

Lately the source of that frustration has been their switch to a new version of Blogger, with a wholesale API change as well. It also seems to have broken some of the old Blogger support as well, and I've been seeing issues for months.

As the author of Bleezer, an offline blog authoring tool, that has caused me personal grief, not to mention the problems experienced by my users. And the users of other blogging tools that also ceased to work correctly.

Now there is a Blogger API help group, and the Blogger folks are trying to be helpful, but some things just do not work as advertised from what I am experiencing.

So if you are experiencingproblems with Blogger and Bleezer, rest assured that I am working on them as quickly as I can.

Why is it whenever I read an article about net neutrality, as in this Washington Post article, I always see the following US Postal Service comparison:

Blocking premium pricing in the name of neutrality might have the unintended effect of blocking the premium services from which customers would benefit. No one would propose that the U.S. Postal Service be prohibited from offering Express Mail because a "fast lane" mail service is "undemocratic." Yet some current proposals would do exactly this for Internet services.

Well of course nobody would propose that.Unless of course the US Postal Service mentioned that to provide the Express Mail service they would have to stop delivering first class mail for a while, until all of the express mail was delivered.

So as long as there is high margin express mail, then your simple letter is going to be ignored, or take much longer to be delivered. Now why doesn't anyone point out that simple fact?

I know why. Because facts aren't important here.After all, the internet is just a series of tubes, right?

The other example I often see trotted out is a medical one, and what do you know, it is in the same article:

When traffic surges beyond the ability of the network to carry it, something is going to be delayed. When choosing what gets delayed, it makes sense to allow a network to favor traffic from, say, a patient's heart monitor over traffic delivering a music download.

Who could argue with saving a life? Just ignore the fact that virtually no medical information is actuallt sent over the net currently.

So why do I never see an example where California suddenly decides to make the 405 freeway into a toll road? After all, there are plenty of other freeways so that shouldn't be a problem, right?

Net neutrality is a level playing field, one that has allowed the internet to become the valuable to that it is.If net neutrality had not existed, we simply wouldn't be using the internet for anything today. It would not have evolved as a useful tool if it was only used by those who could afford to pay for it.

Don't think so? Just name any internet advance created by a Fortune 100 company. I'll wait.

I've held the title of Product Manager several times. Virtually ever product manager likes to tell you about the features of their product.

I don't.

That's because I don't think that customers give a damn about features. They care about how the product makes their lives better, or how it benefits them. Think of it this way - a 20 GB iPod (that's a feature)lets me listen to something like 5000 songs (that's a benefit). Flat panel TVs are a perfect example of this. Just show me anyone that can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p when they are looking at a TV. They look for a better picture.

Most product managers assume that a feature equals a benefit, though customers don't always see it that way. So it's always a good idea to think like a customer.

That's why it's embarrassing when a feature you think is great turns out to be meaningless for the customer.

It turns out that the biggest feature of Microsoft's Zune audio player - music sharing - doesn't work for all songs. In fact, it seems that only a bit more than half of your songs are shareable, and that is determined by the record companies, even if you paid for the songs.

Zune owners seem unfazed by this:

Some is better than none. As underwhelming as the 58% is, I need to remind myself... that figure is still 58% higher than would have been possible on any of today's iPods. This is a groundbreaking music sharing approach, and it will only get better from here.

But the fact is that the promised featuredoesn't provide the anticipated benefit. False comparison to an iPod, that never promised the feature anyway, means little.

The moral of the story? It you're hyping some feature, then make sure it means something to your customer. And definitely make sure it really does what you say it does. All the time. No weasel words.

I was just looking at a job description. It had the standard list of requirements, including this one:

Focus in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment

It occurs to me that we all should have that characteristic. After all, life is a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment. And we are all focused.

We start as children, working our way through school grade by grade, meeting deadline-driven expectations in order to proceed, all the while having our ability to imagine and dream beaten out of us.

Then we go to college so that we can prepare for the working world. Then we get a job. And then another. So that we can pay the bills, buy a house, start a family, grow old, and die.

We are all experts at focusing in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment. So why are there no job descriptions that read:

Able to dream and imagine things as they could be

A company called Somark Innovations has successfully tested RFID tattoos on cows, mice and rats:

The system developed by Somark uses an array of needles to quickly inject a pattern of dots into each animal, with the pattern changing for each injection. This pattern can then be read from over a meter away using a proprietary reader operating at high frequency.

This allows traditional branding of cattle, while minimizing pain and cosmetic damage.

Via Engadget.

Want to keep track of the hottest online videos this week? Vidmeter is the answer.

Vidmeter tracks the top videosacross all of the major online video sites and ranks them showing weekly movement up and down the charts. They even have RSS feeds for top videos for today and for all time.

Via Lifehacker.

No it isn't really about sex. It might be more aptly titled gender ID, but this BBC quiz determines whether your brain works more like a female or a male. I took the quiz and apparently I have a balanced male/female brain.

I came upon the quiz via a blog post by Andrea Learned asking if your brain makes it easy for you to market to women. I guess this means that I should be capable of empathizing with women to get my marketing message across.

At least I've never thought of using women in bikinis to market anything. Of course, I'm not sure that would actually help to sell more software to men or women, so perhaps that's a poor example.

I like Andrea's idea though. I've noticed that men and women tend to approach marketing very differently. Men tend to tell you why you need the product, while women generally try to understand what you need first, and then explain the product. Of course I am wildly generalizing here, but it seems to me that if you want to market to women it would be a good idea to understand what they actually need.

FindByClick.com will show you the nearby Starbucks locations (and Tim Hortons if you are in Canada) as a Google maps mashup.

Now if it just could recommend a location based on the current traffic patterns it would be perfect. :)

Tip of the hat to Google Maps Mania.

... you're having coffee at the coffee shop and one of the staff comes by and hands you a fresh tasty cappuccino. On the house because they are in training.

The perfect start to a great day.

It's no wonder email and electronic bill payment are so popular when the cost to mail an actual letter is rising so quickly.

We currently live in Canada and like clockwork every January the postage rates increase. While the cost for domestic mail typically increases only by one cent (now 52 cents per letter), the cost of postage to the United States rose 9% (from $0.85 to $0.93) and the international rate rose 16% (from $1.25 to $1.55).

In fact, since we moved here from Boston four years ago the rate to the US, where most of our mail goes, has risen 55% (from $0.60 to $0.93). Though the mail doesn't seem to get there any faster.

I'd hazard a guess that the real reason people don't sit down to write a letter anymore is the huge increase in postal rates, and the general inconvenience of the postal system. With email I can compose my thoughts and have them to you in seconds. And you can reply just as quickly and conveniently.

I wonder if there will ever be a time when Miss Emily Post considers it proper etiquette to send a thank you email?

Don Dodge says that Apple creates intuitive products because they control the whole experience from hardware to software to peripherals. But he also makes a few other comments that didn't ring true for me.

The Apple Mac has a small but loyal following of users. I never got into using Macs but the users I talk to always marvel at how everything works together. Yes but, everything has an Apple logo on it. You buy it from Apple, and pay a premium price for it.

I bought MacBook for $1500 (and I got a free Nano with it). I bought a similarly configured Sony Vaio for $1500. They do pretty much the same thing. So where is the premium price?

The iPod and iTunes work the same way...it is a closed, all inclusive experience. People love the iPod but they grumble about not being able to get music from other sources.

Who is grumbling? Ican rip any CD I want or get music from the web. Sure I can't get DRM'd music from other sources but why would I want to anyway. People ARE grumbling about DRM.

Apple builds closed proprietary devices. The larger marketplace wants open devices (computers, music players, phones) built on industry standards, or at least "de facto" standards. They want to be able to buy software, peripherals, and hardware upgrades from a variety of sources. This competition keeps prices low and drives innovation.

Really? Open devices? What is open about a music player, other than the fact that they may have a USB connection? And what is open about a phone? Even if it has Bluetooth, the likelihood is that it has been disabled in some way.

And what is open about computers? Does Apple not use the same USB or FireWire standard as everyone else? Do they have different Bluetooth?

The same devices that connect to my Sony Vaio also connect to my MacBook, and before that tehy connected to my PowerBook. And even when Windows can't see all of the devices on my network, the MacBook can.

Indeed PC users do have more choices when it comes to machines in terms of power and options, though I'm not sure about flexibility.But their success in the consumer space comes down to an incredible concern for the customer experience. That's also why their users are so loyal and dedicated.

By the way, at no point did I say Apple was better than the PC. They are just different. Though after twenty years of PCs, I do happen to prefer the Apple way.

Ok, I promise this will be the last post about the iPhone today.

TechCrunch notes the effect of the iPhone introduction on financial markets that were clearly expecting it:

In his 9 am keynote at MacWorld in San Francisco this morning, Jobs announced the new iPhone cell phone. From the description in appears to be a game changing device, and the public markets seem to agree. As of the time of this writing, Apple stock is up over 7% for the day. Competitor Research in Motion (Blackberry) is down over 6%, wiping $2 billion dollars in market cap off the table. Palm, maker of the Treo, is also down, nearly 6%.

For the introduction of the Apple iPhone:

We need to talk.

Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

The object of everyone's envy today is clearly the new iPhone. Engadget has the story.

For those TiVo users than aren't already using TiVoDecode Manager, TiVo has partnered with Roxio to introduce Toast Titanium 8, which provides pretty much the same thing.

Of course while PC users get TiVoToGo for free, Mac users will need to pay $100 to get the same features.

Seth Godin notes that Prudential is paying over $100,000,000 for the naming rights to the New Jersey Devils' new arena in Newark. He suggests that it is just an example of lazy marketing, and at first glance I would have agreed. After all, is Prudential going to sell anywhere near $100 million of new insurance as a result of having their name on an arena? Probably not.

It turns out though that Prudential, based in Newark, just wanted to do more for the home town:

Prudential CEO Arthur F. Ryan said the company wanted to be associated with a world-class arena and a team that has won three Stanley Cups since 1995. He said deepening Prudential's ties to its home city was more important than increasing recognition of an already well-known company.

"Very frankly, Prudential doesn't need that," Ryan said. "So we had to look a little bit deeper. Part of it, of course, started with Newark. We've been here 130 years."

Ryan also said he doesn't mind if the arena is referred to as "The Rock," after the company's symbol of the Rock of Gibraltar.

Ok, so everyone is talking about Microsoft Home Server, announced at CES. The Home Server will live in your closet and simplify your life:

As a small, headless box that lives on your network and in your closet, a Windows Home Server can quickly grow the pool of storage from which all of your shared files for each of your users lives. The backup engine in Windows Home Server also silently backs up the entirety of each machine connected to it every night.

But this line caught my attention:

And because the data is always online, using the built-in remote access abilities, you'll also be able to access your data from any machine on the planet.

Now I'm sure that Microsoft expects Home Server to be their entree into my home entertainment system, but I don't have a "data". I have movies, photos, and music. Like the majority of people, I watch a television, and not a PC. And I have TiVo. We also have both Playstation and XBox.

As far as my home network goes, we have multiple laptops but only one Windows PC, so Home Server really won't work for me at all.

What I need is a box that is capable of storing all of my music, my DVDs, and any other media I have centrally in my home so that I can select and watch or listen to anything I want in any room on any appropriate device.

If I own a copy of Pirates of the Caribbean and I want to watch it on my bedroom TV I should be to select it and watch it, rather than having to go find the DVD and put it in my DVD player. I shouldn't even need a DVD player. A simple TiVo-like menu should make it easy to access the content using the remote control - just like I do now.

It's probably pretty reasonable to state that 99% of people do not want a Home Server, any more than they want a home network. They just want to be able to easily get their music, movies, pictures or whatever - whenever and wherever they want. And they don't want to have to buy a bunch of PCs to be able to do that.

They'll buy a set-top box or TiVo or maybe an XBox, but it has to be simple to use. Make it as simple as when I click on the remote for my MacBook and most people will be pretty happy.

If you keep thinking of every problem as a PC problem, then you'll solve every problem with a PC solution.

Evelyn Rodriguez of Crossroads Dispatches, in a writing exercise, attempts to answer the question "What is your genius?" for herself. Her descriptive and detailed answer paints an interesting picture but I won't quote it - it is worth the read.

But it's more timely because as a new year starts it's always interesting to sit back an assess what you are doing and where you are at. So I'm going to sit back at attempt to answer the question myself.

It takes a lot of courage to do what Evelyn did in posting her answer in such detail. Perhaps when I have the answer I'll do the same.

Evelyn also includes several resources to help you along.

Hot on the heels of an Information Week review that suggests that Mac OS X might actually be better than Windows Vista, I noticed both Rob Hyndman and Smalltalk Tidbits sharing their similar views.

With the exception of one Dell laptop that my wife uses, my entire family has switched to Macs. Where I formerly spent several hours per month having to clean up problems on XP, I now spend zero time fixing problems with the Mac laptops. And even though PC users don't believe it, I can do everything with a Mac that the PC can do. And I can do it today - without waiting for Windows Vista.

Windows seems to constantly get in my way. Mac OS X just lets me work, even though I still use Microsoft Office on it. And I just don't have the support problems I used to have.

At this point there is nothing that could convince me to switch to Windows Vista. I already have everything I need.

I've worked pretty much every technology trade show there is. I've worked with companies with the largest booth at CES and Comdex, and I've worked with companies with the smallest booths too. And if you're a small company trying to get noticed, you can really get drowned in the noise.

As the New York Times notes, a small company can spend a lot of money just to attend a show like CES.And after blowing all that cash, they may not even be noticed.

I've had loud multimedia demos. I've had tasteful models as booth theater ushers. I've even had a surfboard in my booth back in the early days of the web. While it is always important to have a good product, at a show like CES it is often the glitzy stuff and the big, showy booths that attract attendees.

But it is a great place to meet people, and the best way to make use of the show is as an opportunity to meet potential customers and partners face to face.

Since the beginning of October I've lost about 20 pounds, mostly through exercise and changes in my diet. But my dog still weighs the same as she has for quite some time.

Fortunately though,pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is worried about our pets, and has just received approval for a weight loss drug for dogs:

Slentrol, made by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, is intended to significantly reduce the appetite and increase fat absorption in canines.

The FDA's head of veterinary medicine said the drug was a welcome addition to animal therapies because of an apparent increase in dog obesity in the US.

Though there are some potential side effects which actually sound worse than the obesity problem:

However, the prescription drug can also produce side effects, including loose stools, diarrhoea, vomiting, lethargy and loss of appetite.

Oddly, it seemingly hasn't occurred to anyone that a little exercise in the form of an occassional walk might be beneficial for both the dog and their owner.

Since I read about flying cars in Popular Mechanics as a kid, I've always wanted one. And now I can get one:

Norris, 66, asked one of his test pilots to demonstrate the AirScooter for 60 Minutes on a hilltop outside San Diego, Calif. It can fly for 2 hours at 55 mph, and go up to 10,000 feet above sea level.

Tip of the hat to Daimnation.

If you've ever suffered through voice mail hell, gethuman offers some tips for you.

Up until this morning I had a default email routing setup for my domain so that all mail that came to the domain was forwarded to one particular email address that I check regularly. I've been receiving a few "failed delivery" emails, responses from spam emails with a forged return address of my domain. Not a big problem I thought until I woke up this morning to about 2000 of them, rendering my inbox almost unusable.

So I've removed the default forwarding.

As I think about it though I realize just how much the problem of spam has grown in just a few months. Thousands of emails are seemingly being sent from my domain. Imagine how much spam well known domains must generate. I'd hate to calculate the likely billions of dollars of lost productivity caused by this ridiculous problem.

So folks, if you've received a spam email from my domain please accept my apology. Just keep in mind that it wasn't really me.

Update: Apparently my hosting provider is a bit slow on the uptae, as I just received 400 more such emails.

Bob Nardelli, CEO of Home Depot, got fired today. He showed a complete lack of concern for shareholders at the most recent annual meeting:

Nardelli did not allow shareholders to ask general questions, ending the meeting, which was broadcast on the Internet, after a mere 30 minutes. He also did not respond directly to any of those investors who were allowed to address him about the proposals.

"This is not the forum in which we would address your comment," Nardelli told one shareholder representative who asked him what he would do to make board members more independent. "We certainly receive your comment."

The value of Home Depot stock declined under his control. And customer service foundered:

Home Depot has delivered superb financial numbers in the past five years, with total sales growing an average of 12% per year and profits doubling. But the share price has dropped 24% during the biggest home improvement boom in history. And shoppers are getting grumpier. The University of Michigan's annual American Customer Satisfaction index shows Home Depot slipped to dead last among major U.S. retailers, 11 points behind Lowe's. Home Depot employees, who were encouraged to "make love to the customer" under co-founders Bernard Marcus and Arthur M. Blank now sometimes treat them like bad dates. "I don't want to say one bad apple spoils the bunch," says Curt D. Bridges, an electrical engineer from Decatur, Ga., who used to be a die-hard Home Depot fan. "But sometimes some [store clerks] almost blow you off."

Mr. Nardelli will receive severance of about $210 million, about seven times the $30 million Home Depot set aside last June for stores and employees that provide good customer service.

That's quite the reward for failure.

Tip of the hat to Seth Godin.

It's a brand new year, and apparently it is also the year for bloggers to attack Google.

Google admitted to adjusting their end of year zeitgeist list to make it a bit more interesting. They admitted it. But apparently that just isn't good enough. Elisa Camahort addresses this so elegantly:

Um, sure, what made anyone think it was supposed to mean something? It's a fun year-end list, folks. it's not particularly actionable. It's only 10 words/phrases, without even numbers attached to it. What on earth were you planning to do with this list that is now hampered by the discovery about how they've compiled it?

More than that: I happen to like their explanation of what they're trying to accomplish just fine. I happen to agree that seeing that "dictionary" "maps" and "ebay" were still among the top 10 search terms every year would be interesting to no one. And it certainly would not reflect the year's "zeitgeist."

This isjust a fun list. It really doesn't matter that much.

Then Don Dodge asksif Google's hypocrisy is evil:

Google's motto is "Do no evil". TechCrunch says Google is at a tipping point. The controversy is around Google promoting its own services in search result pages. The argument is that the way Google promotes its services may confuse users that they are actually clicking on a valid, relevant search result, when it is really a "tip" from Google linking to its own services.

The hypocrisy is that Google has criticized Microsoft many times for doing similar things, most recently with the release of Internet Explorer 7.0. Even in this case Google showed its hypocrisy, slamming Microsoft about Internet Explorer, while making Google search the default in Firefox, Opera, and Safari. For more details on this see "Google supports choice...except on Firefox and Opera". Google is rumored to be developing a browser. If they do, will Google be the default search vendor? Of course!

Hmm, let's think about this.Microsoft includes their browser with their operating system which is shipped on over 95% of all computers. Purchasers are not given a choice in the matter. On a new computer that browser by default will point to a Microsoft service. Yet if Google develops a browser, users will have to make a conscious decision to download that browser, as they do with Firefox or Opera. That isn't hyprocrisy, but merely the desire for a level playing field.

As for the whole "tip" controversy, I'd be pretty surprised if a tip could be confused with a search result. The font is smaller, and the only link is at the end of the text in a smaller font, as opposed to search results that start with a large font link. There is a substantial difference.

Google is after all a company that wants to turn a profit, albeit one with the slogan "Don't be evil." But really, I don't see anything that I would consider "evil". They provide an excellent service - one that I am not forced to use but do anyway. Yet for some reason a few people have decided that this is a personal affront to them.

Get over it folks. If you aren't happy with Google then either provide some positive suggestions to help them improve, or stop using their services.

And while I'm on the soapbox, the same goes for Microsoft. While I personally won't be using Vista, I do use a lot of Microsoft software, and in many cases they have made my life easier.

I'm sure the negative energy directed at these companies and others like them could be put to a lot better use. That's my new year's resolution anyway.And my best suggestion to both Google and Microsoft would be to listen a little more - maybe not always act - but listen. I'm going to do that too.