Yesterday, we took the family to a local fair to enjoy the sights, sounds, rides, and food that go along with it. My wife, Lisa, a vegetarian, took great interest in the fresh veggie wraps at one of the food stands. While we were there, Amanda Dumond, a reporter from the local paper, was doing [...]

It’s time to change my cell phone number. A year ago I migrated to a New Hampshire number and got 603-781-9445. Ever since, I’ve been getting wrong numbers, often to the tune of 3 or 4 daily. The problem is that parts of northern Massachusetts use area code 781 and, yep, there’s a 944 exchange [...]

The agent (again) confirmed that someone with a name not dissimilar to mine is on a watchlist, and that’s causing all these problems.Let’s hope the new DHS TRIP program can resolve this once and for all, otherwise I might want to go visit the DHS in person to fix it. It’s bad enough having to experience this, it’s worse when your children have to watch you get “screened” (as they did this time) and it’s unacceptable when your pre-school children are forced to go through it themselves (as happened the last time).

Focusing on one metric at a time yields nothing, hence the need for Integrated Path Analysis.Unfortunately, Brandt’s goal of “end-to-end” analysis falls short because, well, he’s *starting* at the end by beginning his analysis when someone clicks on an ad…. Was that *single* ad impression the sole deciding factor that lead them to click and then be comfortable purchasing from said vendor?I doubt it.Chances are, they had seen other advertising for this vendor, and all of that *in total* added up to the customer’s comfort level being high enough to move forward with the purchase.

Put the same event on Saturday and Sunday (or, heaven forbid, a *holiday*), and it’s a royal pain in the ass — something which they’re likely not going to attend unless they’re absolutely forced to go…. Of course, those of us in business for ourselves know that work often extends into hobby time, and often the lines are blurred between what’s work and what’s a hobby, but we’re not the ones who need to be convinced and educated about new mediums like podcasting.

In my view, the only valid reason to be a reporter is a strong desire to have a front-row seat so as to rush out and tell everyone else what you have seen…. Politics, next door over.This comes from my friend, Dennis Powell, now writing a column for The Athens News (yes, in Ohio).

On Friday, it was all over the AP that Universal Music plans to go after YouTube and MySpace in an attempt to pierce the “safe harbor” veil that’s been protecting these online services from the actions committed by their users…. This egg *is* going to crack eventually, and the companies that change their strategy first will be in a much better position than those who fight tooth and nail down to their last dollar.

Joe Consumer, who has nothing and is looking to get a DVR to go along with his spiffy new plasma screen, is going to sit in his living room and compare this to the one his cable company offers…. And *because* the Comcast box sucks so much, we’re actually considering the $1000 to TiVo just to get the same (basic) functionality but with a much better user interface.

So, for almost 5 hours, my “main” gmail account has been unavailable, but other accounts are fine.I did a little bit of web searching and found some people saying this has happened for days at a time…… Let this be a lesson to you kiddos: never trust anything you don’t own, and certainly don’t trust the stuff you don’t even pay for!All that aside: anyone got a contact at Google that wants to sort this out for me?

In the last 24 hours, I’ve received at least three distinct offers (via three different forms of communication) from Vonage to get in on their IPO, an offer being made to existing customers who meet a certain set of criteria. While this certainly sounded tempting when I got the first notification via e-mail yesterday, especially to someone who was investing in the market “back the the day” when “tech IPO” meant “gravy train to the bahamas,” by the time I got my second notification in the PO Box this morning, I started scratching my head.