Here's the perfect free web app to do just that. Introducing Slydial!

Sign up and you can route your calls through Slydial, for free (sort of), and it goes straight to voicemail on any U.S. mobile phone. It doesn't work on landlines or international calls.

For the confrontationally- challenged, think of the possibilities:

- You need to report in to your boss, but don't want to be peppered with questions. Slydial!

- You have bad news that you're obligated to tell your client, but don't want to give him or her the opportunity to fire you or demand new terms or conditions on the account. Slydial!

- You've decided to hire someone else, but need to call the other candidates as a courtesy to let them know you've taken a pass. Slydial!

- Calling in sick... AGAIN! Slydial!

You get the idea.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to get your message across without actually having to talk to a real person. There's e-mail, texting, even snail mail; if you're that desperate.

The great thing about Slydial is that it appears you tried to be a grown-up and speak directly to the person you're avoiding like the plague.

Brilliant!

It seems telecommuting is finally hitting critical mass. According to a recent survey put out by Gartner Research, one in four Americans worked from home at least one day a week during 2007.

I'll spare you the usual reasons why this is a good thing, like accomodating families, which are well understood by employees and not much of an enticement for employers.

Here are some other reasons employers should be more aggressive about sending more staffers home to do their work.

1. According to a recent article in The Economist, Companies save, on average, about $10,000 a year in savings per full-time telecommuter from less office space, work equipment and furniture, etc. Do that and you can quit griping about all the money you're shelling out for health insurance premiums. Everyone wins! Employees save you money and work from home, so they can actually find time to go to the doctor and use that health insurance you're paying for.

2. Telecommuting allows businesses to widen the recruiting net. You can hire someone from literally anywhere in the world. If your business is located in an area with a high cost of living, that can put pressure on offering higher salaries. Why pay San Francisco prices for a bookeeper, instead of Indiana prices?

3. Less turnover. Most people who work from home know they have a sweet deal and it's still a rarity. People who work from home tend to feel that is their highest priority in what they need out of a job and less is their concern about higher salaries and faster promotions.

4. Less office gossip and intrigue. Human nature is what it is. Let's be honest; it gets ugly sometimes. There's nothing more demoralizing to an entire staff than bad blood among a few colleagues and living with the drama of it as it unfolds day to day. If you have someone in your workplace that tends to stir the pot; this may be the perfect person to send home with a laptop and VPN password.

5. It's your patriotic duty and responsibility as a good corporate citizen of the world. No, I'm not kidding and you shouldn't be either. Anything to get more drivers off the road, especially during rush hour, helps. Do your part. More companies need to look at staffing their offices with only essential on site staff and send everyone else home. Period.

P.S. A special thanks to INC for allowing me to blog this from home, as I always do. I'm in my pajamas as I write this. Now that's business casual!

In the two weeks since the launch of the new iPhone 3G, there's been a fly in the ointment.

Apple's MobileMe service that keeps the e-mail flowing to those iPhones hasn't been flowing so well. Outages have been spotty affecting pockets of users here and there. Without a major e-mail blackout, it has been enough to worry users and shake their confidence in the service's stability right now.

So much so, Apple has set up a MobileMe status blog to keep customers informed about what's going on regarding recent outages. Apparantly the blog came as direct order from Jobs himself requesting daily updates until MobileMe is less rickety.

How old do you have to be now to even remember what a Rolodex is? Rolodex is, of course, still around. Typewriters are still around too.

The question is where do you store your contact information?

If you're like me, the answer is; everywhere.

I'm having a devil of a time managing my contacts. I have frequently called numbers in my cell phone, people I frequently e-mail are stored in my e-mail client and then I have stickies and pieces of paper with contact information passed on the fly on my refrigerator under an Elvis magnet.

This is not exactly a good contact management strategy.

I think I was better off a decade ago with the Rolodex.

Now there's the whole new wrinkle; contacts generated through sites like Facebook and Linkedin.

Contact management has never been more difficult because it is so fractured; personal contacts, networking contacts, colleagues, Facebook friends, Linkedin contacts, people who only respond to phone calls, or e-mails, or text messaging, or instant message.

I am on both Facebook and Linkedin and I get two or three invitations a week from people I know to join their network. So, I can't downsize to one social network. I also have three e-mail addresses, which also complicates my life.

And for the record, I refuse to Twitter simply because it's one more place to manage more connections.

Sigh.. it used to be so easy to just reach out and touch someone.

Most entrepreneurs have a singular goal; creating a successful business.

There are other motivations for the entrepreneurial spirit, however. Case in point, meet "Dancing Matt".

Dancing Matt isn't a very good dancer, but he's one heck of an entrepreneur in my book. This is a guy who just wanted to travel the world taking videos of his crazy little dance to upload on the Internet and make other people happy (Mission accomplished, Matt! It made me smile!).

I don't think Dancing Matt cares one wit about building a business. But, he has managed to hustle up a sponsorship with Stride Gum to support his global dancing habit. Stride Gum, I'm sure, crunched the numbers and figured out he's drumming up enough publicity for them to earn his keep.

Dancing Matt says he's not rich. But in one year alone he danced his little jig across all seven continents and 39 countries. How many millionaires can say the same thing? Matt is rich in something and what's more he's sharing his wealth with the rest of us.

It's Friday. It's July. Give yourself a break and do check out Matt. It'll remind you both how big and how small our world truly is and that it's full of mostly warm, friendly folks who are more than happy to drop what they're doing and dance a jig with a stranger.

I could wax on about the global economy and all of that. But that goes without saying. Just take a moment and don't forget to dance once in a while.

Have a great weekend. We'll get back to business on Monday.

- Renee Oricchio

p.s. Special thanks to CLM for introducing me to Matt.

It's a fair question!

If you're like most businesses, technology purchases like:

- mobile devices and usage plans
- flash drives
- maybe even a cheap laptop
- blank DVDs and CD-ROMs
- a simple printer for individual use
- scanners
- software
- subscriptions to various online apps
- cables, as needed
- laptop bags, mouse pads and various accessories
- iPods
- microphones, etc. for podcasting
- printer paper

are not going through the IT department, but getting mixed in with client dinners and mileage on the monthly expense report. In other words, it's untracked and not counted with the rest of the IT budget.

Is that a problem?

What percentage of your IT budget is happening outside the IT budget?

I suspect that percentage has been growing in recent years. How do you reign in technology expenses and prioritize them in a tightening economy, when you don't know what you're really spending?

food for thought...

It really depends on what kind of business you run. However, a decent GPS system starts around $250. To avoid delivery vehicles getting lost and wasting productivity while ticking off a customer, this is probably a small investment to avoid major headaches.

The question is: what's wrong with a map?

Before investing in GPS, poll your drivers accordingly:

1. Which is easier to read; a map or a GPS screen?
2. Is it easier to just call and get directions?
3. How comfortable are you with gadgets?

Other factors to consider:

- GPS systems aren't perfect. It may give you a route, but not necessarily the quickest route or one that takes current road construction or traffic patterns into account. For local stops, a driver with a map who knows his community will likely be more effective.
- GPS systems are probably best for distance runs (in other towns and states), for the above reason.
- If you have more than half a dozen deliver trucks or cars in your fleet, start with one or two and see how it goes.
- Shop for features carefully.

This audio interview with the CEO of ADV-Group, a software partnership consultancy displays a rare bit of brilliance around explaining how mobile devices exacerbate the "10,000-social-security-numbers-on-a-laptop" problem to a very high degree.

An excerpt:

"The proliferation of these devices and the software like IM, SMS, all of the things that the users really want to do with those devices… and mind you, mobile devices aren't just handhelds. I use handheld as an example because they're so common, but laptops are mobile, tablet pc's are mobile, etc. So all these devices have the kinds of applications that users really want, that you're describing. It is certainly the case that it goes directly against the best interest of IT and sometimes the best interest of the company to assert and prove to an auditor that they've got all this under control. Well, how do you do it? Again, it really goes back to good communication about why this specific program works. Here's the business that we are in and here are the consequences of being out of compliance and the cost to us and the impact to you, the employee. So that's a big part of that. You can certainly bring down a very heavy-handed technology solution to bear to try to detect programs like that. It's also the case that you can bring down a very heavy-handed (or a light touch if you'd like) audit program."

To make my point, I'm posting this tidbit at 10 p.m. EST, instead of my usual 9 a.m. According to new research coming out of the University of Chicago's Psych department (lead by a Dr. Joseph Ferrari), chronic procrastination is no laughing matter in the United States, in fact it's bordering on epidemic. Guess what's too blame in large part? That's right, all the technological gee-gaws at our disposal; cell phones, e-mail, the Internet, texting, etc.

Ferrari points out that the little beep that goes off throughout the day signaling a new e-mail has arrived to the inbox is costing the U.S. economy $70 billion a year.

That's a lot of beeps.

My thoughts (that's why they pay me to pass this stuff on to you):

- Whenever I hear about something cumulatively costing the economy so many billions of dollars a year, I say, "So what!". It's not like it's costing one specific company or individual that amount. It's spread across, well, the entire U.S. economy. So, I don't think anyone is actually feeling that $70 billion e-mail beep.

- What are those e-mail beeps adding to the economy? Call me crazy. Call me madcap. But, I'd just like to point out a lot of business transactions and decision-making happens through e-mail. So a lot of those e-mail beeps are likely also adding to the economy.

- Chronic procrastination: hmmmm. Let me think about it and get back to you next week. Just kidding! I do think procrastination is a problem. Mea Culpa. And, yes, I think techie gadgets and communication tools like cell phones, IM, texting, social networking, all of it are great ways to suck time. The research makes a point there. But then again, ten thousand years ago it wasn't twitter; it was painting cave walls or making a few more arrowheads by the camp fire.

AJAX is a web programming methodology where you can make any webpage behave more like a client application. The best example is Google's mapping site, where you can see the map updating as you slide things around in the absence of causing the entire page to refresh. It gives the illusion of a much faster user experience.

The problem has always been that different browsers treat the javascript differently in significant ways causing programming in AJAX to be bug-prone.

Along comes prototype.js, an open source javascript library which encapsulate all the ugliness and makes AJAX much easier. A large user community full of web developers has advanced this technology to the point where it is now very easy to create fantastic dynamic content which is safe across browsers - and getting safer every day.

Take a look, play around, and you too will become a protocol.js addict. I have.

Curt is CEO of a time tracking software company and has a new project management book.

Sorry, I couldn't resist the Bugs Bunny homage. In light of all the hyperfocus on the release of the new iPhone 3g; I think it bears mentioning that a week later Opera has quietly released its latest version of its mobile web browser.

Opera Mobile Version 9.5 is now available in beta. If you want to see screen shots, check out this page which also includes a list of all the new bells and whistles (faster web surfing, pan and zoom on sites, debugging from your desktop version of Opera, etc.). Apparantly, it still does not accomodate Active X.

As promised in yesterday's post, we're taking a look today at the case "for" and "against" dumping the lifeless- as- a- lugnut corporate blog.

To backup, raise your hand if this applies to your company: a year or two ago, it sounded like such a good idea and everyone else was doing it. The corporate blog has been ballyhooed nowadays as an absolute essential for keeping in close touch with customers and other key audiences, as well as keeping the corporate site lively and dynamic. A blog can be the drawing card to pull them in on a regular basis and hopefully get them to look at the other content, as well (like the sales and shopping parts).

It's all still true. But, it doesn't always work out that way. In fact, most corporate blogs start with a bang and slowly die with a fizzle.

No one likes a soggy blog. So, are you better off with no blog? That's the question.

Here's the answers:

Yes, dump it!

- A stale blog does more harm than good. When I see that the last post was several months ago, if not a couple of years ago; I wonder if the business still exists.
- If your blog has grown cold, chances are it wasn't helping you and that's why you abandoned it. Pay attention to that.
- Blogs are cheap. But, the expense of employee time (which is typically at the executive level) is not. What would that same executive being doing instead of blogging for a half hour a few times a week? Answer: probably something that has a more direct impact on the company bottomline.
- Maintaining a blog out of fear "because everyone has a blog now" is not a sound business reason to do something. If company xyz jumps off a cliff, will you do the same?
- If the content is not compelling enough to write about, chances are it's not a very compelling read. Why expend time on something no one wants to read?

No, don't give up!

- Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Overhaul it and make a new committment to maintain it with a steady flow of new postings each week. This is an opportunity to relaunch your blog and promote it allover again to your community of site visitors.
- Create a new mission statement. What are the objectives of the blog? Is it to make your site more "sticky" to draw in your clients or customers to the site for lengthy repeat visits? Is it supposed to turn your customer base into a more loyal community base? Is it supposed to add credibility to a marquis executive within the company? How would you know if it succeeded in its objectives?
- Redefine your content area. Is your content area too narrow to generate a constant flow of new postings and comments? Is your content area to broad to draw in an audience of visitors who want to come back repeatedly for niche information? Is your content fact or opinion? If it's facts, is it accurate? If it's opinion, is it generated by someone who has an opinion anyone cares to hear?
- Make sure your blog is visible and easy to find. Is it on the home page or one click in from a high profile link? If not, rethink your navigation. That may be the reason there's no traffic. There's nothing more motivating to a blogger than an active community of respondents leaving comments.
- Blogs do offer a company web site many opportunities. Its a way of building traffic and getting other sites to link to yours. It's a way to communicate with customers, etc. It's a PR and marketing tool, when done right. It's a way to establish yourself as an industry leader by offering value-added information about your products or services. It's a way to explain changes; whether its new products, a relaunch of the site, justifyiing a fuel charge or to introduce new members of your executive team,
- Who ever is the company- appointed blogger needs the responsibility built into their job description. Too often, blogging starts out as voluntary and is seen as an ad hoc responsibility; the first thing to neglect when other parts of the job get busy. The company blogger(s) needs to have time built into their day (with other duties reassigned, if necessary) to work on their postings, monitor and respond to comments and do a little cross pollinating with other sites and bloggers to generate link backs.

Now what? You have the rest of the summer to decide and act... or not.

It sounded like a good idea at the time, and after all everyone's doing it. But, like everything else; corporate blogs often grow stale.

Here are some sure signs you're in the doldrums:

- The last post wasn't in the current month (or year).
- The appointed executive in charge of authoring the blog is fresh out of ideas; and people to draft into helping out doing a little ghost writing in his or her place.
- You dread it.
- No comments.
- Content doesn't inspire more content ideas.
- Traffic is dead.
- No one notices just how dead the blog has become, including people within the company.

Question: When it gets that bad, should you bag the blog altogether?

A case for "yes" and a case for "no" tomorrow.

EBay has to have the hardest working and, perhaps, most demoralized PR department in high tech these days. I'll enumerate all the ways the auction giant is coming under fire these days. But let's start with the big one.

The sellers' community has become pretty much unhinged recently following EBay's pact-with-the-devil deal with Buy.com. Buy.com is being allowed to sell products en masse at lower fees than the smaller sellers.

According to the NY Times, Buy.com now has as many as five million products listed on EBay at fixed prices. They are, of course, rock bottom discount prices that most sellers just can't compete against. Buy.com is also big enough to afford waiving shipping charges and other customer perks that boost sales and feedback ratings.

So much for a level playing field or that online auction business model. EBay is on the fast track into turning itself into Amazon.com.

The irony is Amazon was initially an online discount seller (starting with books and quickly expanding out to a gazillion different product lines) that added on secondary sellers. EBay's evolution is the backwards version of that; first the secondary little guy sellers and then adding on the big online discount seller.

How long will it be before the two are essentially the same thing?

More importantly, how will all those EBay entrepreneurs that have worked round the clock for years building an online business within EBay fair against the likes of a Buy.com. So much for a level playing field.

This is the online equivalent of Wal-Mart moving into small town America and decimating all those small, typically family-owned, downtown shops. It happened to my former home town of Marianna, Fla.

In the 70's, my mother operated her CPA practice right on the courthouse square in a thriving downtown that included department stores, an electronics store, restaurants, a pharmacy, furniture stores and even an athletic footware store that wasn't called FootLocker. It's all gone now and literally the children of former merchant families now work as Wal-Mart greeters for less than $10 a hour. Downtown,meanwhile, is a mere shadow of its former self.

EBay executives should take a driving tour through rural America and visit towns like Marianna, Fla. See what happens when the playing field is tilted in favor of the big guy. After awhile, that's all you have left; the big guy.

Buyers may enjoy the discounts in the short term. But don't count on them to stick around as much, either.

A recent MSN-Zogby poll estimates 31% of the American public will buy something off EBay this year. It was 40% last year. Even George Bush isn't seeing dramatic dips in his poll numbers like that in such a short amount of time!

Another reason you could see buyer flight; so many of those buyers are sellers too!

As for EBay's other PR Headaches:

1. Big luxury brand companies are getting really tired of their knock-offs being sold on EBay. EBay just won a case filed by Tiffany & Co. in the United States. They were not so lucky in France, where they just lost a case to companies such as Dior or Louis Vuitton and have been ordered to pay $66 million in damages.

2. Sellers are not happy that only buyers can post negative feedback without defending themselves and giving feedback on the buyer, as they used too.

For those of you wondering about the Et Tu reference. It's from Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar; the famous line (Et Tu Brute - and you, Brutus) uttered by Ceasar just before his assasination after learning his best friend, Brutus, was among his conspirators.

Impressive, but true! Last summer, when the first iPhone was launched, it took over two months to sell the first one million units.

Why?

Because Apple is relaxing it's slick marketing hype machine sales and turned to old fashioned sales and marketing.

1. Lower prices, more units sold.
2. More established technology, more units sold.
3. More tangible features and improvements, more units sold. (Last year, people had to visualize exactly what an iPhone would be like. Now, they know this one is faster, easier to sync up at work, etc.)
4. More apps, more functionalities for users, more units sold.
5. Did I say lower prices? Let's say it again. Lower prices.

'nuf said.

Yes, it's true the saber-rattling out of Iran became a bit more chilling this week with reports of long range missile tests that would put Israel and pretty much the rest of the middle east, including Pakistan and Turkey, all within reach.

The bottom feeders of the Internet (spammers!) have perfectly timed a new round of malware ladden e-mails with subject lines like "Third World War Has Begun" and "20,000 U.S. Soldiers Cross Iran's Borders". Apparantly, these e-mails include embedded video clips promising recent footage of U.S. soldiers on the march. The footage is bogus, of course; but worst of all it contains a trojan virus sure to declare WWIII on your hard drive.

Don't be fooled.

I rank spammers somewhere between drug dealers and Washington lobbyists. But, this is low even for them. It makes me nostalgic for that guy from Nigeria in desperate need of help if you'll just float him a loan that he can pay back ten fold later.

And all through the line, not a geek was stirring
they were all happily in recline.

lawn chairs, and coolers, and credit cards
they awaited with glee
soon to throw down their money
for the long-awaited 3G

When all of the sudden there arose such a clatter
they sprang from their sleeping bags
to see which news crew wanted to interview a chatter.

"It's cheaper, it's faster, I can sync it at work.
I can make phone calls, listen to music, play games
and surf with my finger.
I'd like to talk with you more CNN,
but I'm too excited to linger."

I may not look busy all camped out in this line,
but I have friends to twitter, colleagues to text,
and a pizza delivery about now would be mighty fine.

The reporters got their soundbites and drove away out of sight
thanking all for their gushing with all of their might.

And meanwhile in Cupertino at Apple HQ
Lots of executives and Steve Jobs
watched the coverage and let out a
"WOO HOO!"

I recently had the opportunity to take an online public speaking class from a local company here in Austin, Thinkwell.

I'd never participated in any formal online education before (except for defensive driving, which was much less pleasant.) It is a great resource for people who are home schooling their children too.

Increasingly people are getting degrees online, software product training online, and other kinds of education too. There's plenty of competition in this field but Thinkwell's online education system seems to really be one of the most professionally put together examples out there.

Check it out!

Curt Finch is the CEO of a company in Austin that sells timesheet software, among other things. His new book about project management is available on Amazon's Kindle.

In case you missed it while celebrating Independence Day (in a minute, the irony of that will be obvious), Viacom scored a big win off of Google (YouTube's parent company). Judge Louis Stanton, the federal judge presiding over the big one billion dollar copyright infringment lawsuit initiated by Viacom against Google, has ordered Google to hand over some 12 terabytes of data that include it's "viewing log".

That viewing log includes two things: a whole lot of privacy violations and a treasure trove of marketing information.

You can't swing a dead cat on the Internet right now without "stumbling upon" the widespread outrage of the court's decision. The order includes the user names, passwords, IP addresses and registration information of every single person who has ever viewed a video on YouTube. It includes a log of which videos you've watched, how many times and the duration of your viewing.

Other than that, it's all very discreet.

I'll spare you my own diatribe about the death knell of privacy, how Thomas Jefferson and all the other founding fathers are spinning in their graves right now, the chill that should be going up the spine of every person in the world who uses the Internet, etc. There are much better write-ups on all that.

My job is to look at decisions like this through the lense of small to midsize businesses.

Attention small biz and entrepreneurs; as we say in Texas, you gotta dog in this fight!

Viacom is a very, very large media company. It owns CBS, Nick, MTV, Comedy Central, a ton of local TV and radio stations, theme parks, publishing houses including Simon & Schuster, film studios and even the big outdoor advertising company, TDI Worldwide.

In other words, Viacom is all about advertising.

Marketing.

So let's say you're the creative, hungry entrepreneur who comes up with a great marketing video that takes off on YouTube. Here's a great example; Blendtec.

Blendtec makes these industrial strength blenders and has a whole series of videos called "Will it blend?" on YouTube. Most of them are clever and hilarious. One features blending an iPhone, another glow sticks, a tiki torch, video camera, marbles, a baseball, you get the idea.

Some of Blendtecs videos have been viewed more than three million times.

And now Viacom will have all that marketing data on who watched them, for how long, their viewing patterns, what else they viewed on YouTube, what part of the country liked which videos the most, etc., etc. Blendtec doesn't even have this information.

Are we supposed to trust Viacom not to pass on this information to its advertising arm(s). What's to stop them from taking advantage of such precious marketing data the next time the Oster people walk in the door ready to make a million dollar media buy across a variety of Viacom media outlets?

Where will the 81- year old Reagan appointee seating on the bench that made this disasterous decision be should that happen? If a little guy like Blendtec gets run over, how many lawyers can they afford to hire to fight Viacom?

Happy belated Independence Day. I think Lady Liberty has a migraine.

It's very easy to do. Just set up mulitiple user accounts or a login page requiring a network user name and password and voila! You can let as many employees (or guests) get computing access from any PC in the office.

At the enterprise level this is all but ubiquitous, of course. But for smaller companies, there's still more of a "one PC for one user" culture. Maybe it's time to think big!

Here's five reasons why:

1. Take a look at how many hours your staff actually spends in the office versus in the field or on the road. Does it make sense for someone who's only in the building 10 hours a week to have a desktop assigned to them for 40 hours a week? Buddy up, where it makes sense.
2. Employees need to move around the office. They need to collaborate with colleagues, access files in a meeting, cover the phones temporarily in one area away from their own desk, etc. The days are gone when you can sit elsewhere in the building and still be productive without access to your own desktop remotely.
3. Peer Pressure. If employees understand up front that their computer is a shared tool with other colleagues, they are less likely to dabble in porn, youtube and online gaming on the sly.
4. Think outside the cubicle: Is your work space your physical space? Your work space is where you get work done and for an increasing number, that is a moving target.
5. The obvious: share PCs and you'll probably need fewer of them. Fewer to repair... Fewer to upgrade... fewer desks... chairs... etc. you get the idea. Save money.

Okay, so the tape doesn't quietly self-implode in a puff of white smoke. That would be sooooo analog, after all.

The "Mission Impossible" gang would love this Web 2.0 application that basically does the same thing. You might find it handy too.

It's called Privnote. It's free and simple (my two favorite qualities in a web app).

Simply type in your note in a post-it looking box on the front page of the site. Click a box whether you want to be sent an e-mail that your note was read. Click again and you get an URL. Cut and paste the URL into an e-mail to the one you want to send the note too (drawback: this wouldn't work with multiple recepients). The single recepient opens the URL, reads the note and its gone forever as soon as they close the page. They can save the screen or cut and paste the note somewhere else, of course. But, it's not in anyone's e-mail server.

Probably not secure enough for real cloak and dagger stuff. But, it looks like a good way to send around a little office dish and make it at least a little tougher for IT to track your every move.

Also on a practical note, some executives give full access to their e-mail to their admins. Here's a good back channel way to have some privacy.

It just got easier. Here's my favorite Web 2.0 freebie app of the week: DexRex.

DexRex allows you to archive all your old chat threads. Here's a list of all the IM and network clients it supports, so far.

Your web-based archive stored wtih DexRex is searchable; meaning you can find that phone number of a contact buried in an IM from last week or reconstruct a conversation on a project with a specific colleague.

This is a handly little tool for smaller businesses and the self-employed crowd. If your company has special compliance issues, I'd take a pass for now.

Until recently, it was basically impossible. One good reason to avoid Flash features on your corporate site has always been that they don't get picked up by the search engines. Historically: they've been impossible to index.

One woman's opinion: I think it tends to be over-produced eye candy that doesn't deliver the stickiness to your site that one would hope. But, I'll leave that point for another day.

Meantime, the search engine issue has finally been laid to rest with Yahoo! and Google both announcing their search engine spiders can now detect flash sites and index them to show up in their rankings. This is thanks to new technology provided to both companies in partnership with Adobe.

Here's Google's write-up on their webmaster blog.

I still think Flash bits are more often than not over-produced eye candy.

It's hump day, unless you're Bill Gates. For him, it's just another day; no longer working full-time at Microsoft.

I have no idea what Bill's really up to this week; his first week post-Microsoft. But here are some ideas:

- More time to deal with the blue screen of death on his PC.
- Upgrading to Vista? Nah!
- Calling his geek buddies to see if they want to camp out next week at the local Apple store to be the first in line for the new iPhone 3G when they hit shelves on the 11th.
- Finally has time to see how Halo 3 ends.
- Agitated, with a perpetual caffeine headache; no more free soft drinks from any of the Microsoft employee lounges.
- Crank calls to Ballmer.

I got an e-mail today from Apple pointing me to their newly posted video stream of a guided tour of the soon-to-be-released iPhone 3G (July 11th. The Apple faithful will be camping out in their lawn chairs any day now).

I had a hard time concentrating on all the new bling. I was too distracted by the spokesperson hosting the demo.

Question: Does Steve Jobs have a little brother?

We all know the real "Fake Steve Jobs" is really Forbes senior editor, Daniel Lyons. But, I think this may be another fake Steve Jobs: only blessed by the real one.

This Stepford Steve is a bookish white guy with wireless rim glasses wearing a long sleeve black cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Key differences: no turtle neck, less greying at the temples and only a five o'clock shadow with no actual facial hair.

Question: Why didn't the real Steve Jobs do the demo? Did he have something more important to do than promote the new iPhone?

Question: Which is the bigger brand: the Apple logo or Steve Jobs?

Question: Does everyone at Apple HQ in Cupertino wear long sleeve black cotton shirts with the sleeves pushed up?

July 4th is just around the corner and - not to rain on your pary - but there are folks who
are starting to show concerns about how to make those pyrotechnics more eco-friendly.
It basically comes down to improved technology being used in the chemistry of modern
fireworks (albeit at increased cost).

You know it is chemistry when it stinks and goes boom—and entrances us. “No other application in the field of chemistry has such a positive association for the general population as fireworks,” says Thomas Klapötke (University of Munich, Germany)

If you're fortunate, you'll end up with a show like this one for your company's fireworks fiesta!

To see how different cities were competing to have the best fireworks last New Year's Eve (with movies of the best examples) click here.
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Curt Finch runs Journyx, an employee time sheet software company in Austin, TX.