Google Suggest

How cool is this? Web apps just get more and more interactive. As you type, it suggests search terms, based on the most popular searches that other people are making.

Why am I getting all nostalgic for cc:Mail? ;-)

Time to short WebEx?

Oh dear. If I owned stock in WebEx, I'd be selling it on Monday.

Of the last three webinar experiences involving WebEx, all three had serious problems. Anecdotal evidence tells me I'm not alone, either.

We've got to stop meeting like this...

Unforeseen consequences of fighting spam

Link: Unforeseen consequences of fighting spam

The Law of Unintended Consequences is hard at work...

Assuming spam fighters continue to be successful, email spam will decline in the medium term. When that happens, inadvertent spamming will clearly stand out. Anti-spam "vigilantes" will be ready to pounce on any such unsolicited mail.

So, organizations should make doubly sure that their employees don’t spam, by...

Who's buying anti-spam?

Link: Who's buying anti-spam?

An increasing proportion of US anti-spam tool sales are "brownfield." That is to say, they're replacement sales—replacing products that are no longer doing their job adequately.

Spam is an arms race between spammers and anti-spam tool writers, which means...

• Some anti-spam vendors don't have the expertise to keep up—these vendors will either disappear or need to acquire another that has the Right Stuff.
• Others have good technology and smart people, but are are simply under-capitalized—these vendors are ripe for acquisition.

In one-to-three years' time...

Nitron Advisors Circle of Experts

I do a bunch of independent, part-time consulting gigs. To help me get them, I just joined the Nitron Advisors Circle of Experts...

The Circle of Experts is an exclusive global network of thought leaders who provide collaborative research and counsel to institutional investors. The Circle includes industry experts from the Fortune 500, leading universities, government, and nonprofits worldwide. We are now recruiting scientists, senior businesspeople, and other thought leaders, particularly in the healthcare, insurance, and chemical industries. Most consultations are on a one-to-one basis and typically take 30-90 minutes. The great majority of the Circle of Experts hold full-time positions with other employers.

Applicants must have several years experience and deep working knowledge of their industry. Previous experience with consulting is a plus, but not necessary. You determine at what hourly rate you are paid, based on your academic training, years of experience, and influence over purchasing decisions. Membership in The Circle is free and coinfidential, and all consultations are at your own discretion.

The benefits of joining include an unparalleled opportunity to earn extra income, build your personal brand, receive feedback from industry experts, and work on strategic, thought-provoking projects...all with absolutely no time commitments.

I'll let you know how I get on. You can apply to The Circle of Experts at this affiliated link.

TiVo/PVRs make you watch more TV, or watch more selectively?

Matt expostulated:

Then there is the part of me that thinks, Matt, if you get TiVo, you will spend all your leisure time watching TV and none of it ... improving myself.

That's not been my experience. I own a Pace Twin (it's a DVB-T/"Freeview" box) and I figure that I'm just more selective about what I watch. Before I had a PVR, I might plonk down at an odd moment, channel surf, and put up with watching something that I'm not really interested in. Now I have a PVR, if there's nothing good on when I want to watch, I know I have a bunch of unwatched stuff in the box.

The corollary (ooo get him) of this is that I don't rush to the TV when something I want to watch is on. Yeah, well that was true of VCRs too, except the quality was always hateful. The nice thing about the Pace box is that it records the actual MPEG streams, so the picture quality is just as good as off-air.

Hack yourself

Here's an interesting page I found linked from 43 Folders. I like his style; here's one of his own.

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 Email Client Has Landed

Link to mozilla.org
Must. Resist. Obvious. Pun.

More Blogger issues

Daryl has come up with a neat workaround for those having trouble with Blogger's archive pages.

Blogging is now part of my job

Yay. As part of my research analyst contract work with Ferris Research, I get to blog about stuff. It'll probably be mostly about spam ;-)