I am both on LinkedIn and Facebook. I go onto LinkedIn about every 2nd Tuesday of the month on months with an "R" in its name. You get the idea. Facebook on the other hand has become all but an addiction.

Here's the rub. I really wish Facebook would make it easier to separate the personal from the professional.

I find myself often self-censoring in deference to work colleagues or networking contacts. And actually, I self-censor even more when curbing my professional networking dreck, so that I don't look like a posing work nerd to my buddies. Sometimes, it just doesn't mix. In fact, more often than not there are subtle conflicts of interest.

I would like Facebook to be one-stop shopping for my social networking. Here's my wish list for the next version whenever it may come:

1. The ability to put "friends" into folders (old classmates, professional contacts, family and best friends, etc.) and then have a set of access preferences for each folder. Everytime I put something on my page, I'd like the option to check off which folders of friends have access.

2. Different backgrounds and themes for each folder view. I would like something more sterile and clean for a professional networking page, with perhaps a box of business contact information in a pull-out box prominantly displayed. Something my colleagues could download to a Facebook Rolodex. For the inner circle of buddies, let me have more personalization to express myself.

3. Make all of this seamless to my contacts. They dont' need to know what folder view they're filed into by me. I can see the headaches, otherwise.

4. Give me a discreet way to let go of contacts without them noticing.

5. Give me a discreet way to no longer be someone's friend without notification.

6. Let me set up my page tabs according to my folders. I want to be able to tab from view to view of my page as seen by different groups of friends. I want to be able to double check it this way and then hit "publish".

The other day I referred to the announcement of 40,000 layoffs on Monday alone. I stand corrected. It was actually more than 70,000 American workers losing their jobs (some were reported later in the week after the fact). I'm having a hard time framing anything to do with technology for small business in any other terms outside of this hemmoraging economy.

Stupid question #1: How could anyone do otherwise?

Stupid question #2: Everyone keeps referring to this as the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression. The technology sector didn't exist back then. How will an industry that lives and breathes on "the next new thing" adapt with a dwindling customer base that only wants to hear about making do with the old thing?

Stupid question #3: Senators Sarbanes and Oxley have retired, as of Congress returning to work this month. Is SOX helping or hurting business? Passed in 2002 in reaction to the Enron and Tyco crisis, it is supposed to prevent big public companies from punking shareholders. Is it me or did a number of financial institutions manage to do just that anyway? We do know companies are paying through the nose on primarily additional IT infrastructure to comply with SOX. Small companies are affected too since so many do contract work for big companies and are therefore held to SOX compliance standards, as well. I repeat, is SOX helping or hurting?

Stupid question #4: Software as a service makes sense in this economy. It's scalable and offloads maintenance somewhere else. Everyone talks about SaaS. But, we don't hear as much about hardware as a service (it's around, just less buzz). Will that change this year? What will that look like for smaller businesses?

Stupid question #5: I firmly believe there are technologies that can help businesses ride out the bad economy by streamlining work and creating money-saving efficiencies. But, if a company doesn't have the money (or the credit) to buy the gear or the service regardless of how helpful it might be, what difference does that little fact make? Should Washington be looking at ways to help keep these technologies accessible to smaller companies? Could it mean life or death for a significant number of fledgling businesses?

Why it's a good thing the digital television conversion date got postponed; click here!

p.s. For those of you that read my blog posting earlier in the week announcing that the Senate had voted to delay the conversion until June. FYI... that is not my mother in the YouTube video link above.

Code-named Fennec, according to Mozilla's official wiki, their new mobile browser may be good to go as early as next week stating they are now "two patches away" from being ready to launch.

Here's a demo video posted on YouTube to give you a sneak peek.

The mobile browser will be very limited to only a couple of mobile device models in the beginning; namely the HTC Touch Pro or Nokia's N810 Internet Tablet. That should change very quickly.

Stay tuned...

p.s. A Fennec is a breed of fox. The Fennec fox lives in the Sahara Desert and is known for its small size. Uh huh, just a like a mobile device. Very clever, Mozilla. Is it me or does it also look like that little alien character from Lilo and Stitch.

Yesterday was a bad day for some 40,000 Americans. They may not have received their pink slip yet. But, it's on the way. That's how many layoffs were announced in just one day of this increasingly fragile and bruised economy.

It's no coincidence, I believe, that as unemployment goes up; high-end cell phone sales are going down.

iPhone outsold the new Blackberry Storm five to one last month. Not surprising when you consider Blackberry is still the mobile device of choice for the typical corporate executive. Corporate executives are a dwindling population these days. Ergo.. less demand for the fancier model Blackberry mobile devices.

The same for other mobile devices. Motorola announced earlier this month that it is actually laying off half of its handheld device division and putting out less than a dozen new mobile device models this year.

And then there is Nokia. Yipes! The grandaddy of all mobile phone manufacturers in the world just published their 4th quarter earnings for 2008 a couple of days ago. N-O-T good. Sales were down 69% from the same quarter a year ago. Yes, you read that right. 69%!

So why is iPhone holding up as well as it is? A) It's Apple (insert shoulder shrug here) B) iPhones are popular with the personal consumer market (read that: teens, college students and DINKS who still have disposable income even in this economy).

So what are the recently laid off doing to stay connected without wires? We'll talk about that more tomorrow.

Digital Television Conversion Gets A Game Delay

Late breaking news out of the Senate last night, by the way. That February 17th deadline for American broadcasters to ditch analog television signals for good and make the jump to digital only... well, it's been postponed. It's now June 17th.

Please don't tell my mother in Florida who just spent $1000 on a new plasma TV.

Someone turned 25 over the weekend. For those of you old enough to remember, it was the famous "1984" ad (directed by Riddley Scott, no less) that debuted during the Superbowl that announced to the world the launch of the Macintosh. The ad promised to turn the world of personal computing on its head; and it did.

Or did it?

25 years later, the Mac is still barely breaking into double digits of the market share in PC sales.

While it may be the personal computer of choice for graphic designers, college students and set designers who want to make their movies and shows look hipper; businesses are still wary to commit to them.

At the end of the day, it's still a Windows world.

Here's what I think the Mac has really done for personal computing over the past quarter of a century;

It made computers cool.

If you think Vista stinks, imagine what Windows would be like without the pressure of user-friendly Macs over its shoulder? Apple's Macintosh has consistently raised the bar for the rest of the tech industry. Yes, it's a tool. But make it a cool tool, please. PCs don't have to be ugly almond boxes with blank black or blue screens with scrolling DOS code. Without the Mac, maybe that's where we would still be. Maybe we would have all been forced to learn DOS (perish the thought).

Here's two words that will make you shiver: DOS Vista.

It's what might have been. If that's the case, then thank you Mr. Jobs and get well soon.

CNet has put together a fun little Mac trivia test together. Enjoy!

Here's an interesting case testing uncharted waters in American jurisprudence.

You may have heard about this story. It made the rounds among tech blogs and was even covered by Businessweek Magazine. Back in 2006, Zipatoni, an online marketing company was outed for running a viral marketing campaign for its client, Sony, called alliwantforxmasisapsp.com. Zipatoni got flamed by tech sites and bloggers for the phony fan site.

But, it wasn't just Zipatoni that took the heat. Apparantly, more than a few bloggers dug around and got the name of the registrant of the domain; one Greg Meyerkord. So, he got flamed too. Shopping watchdog, The Consumerist, went so far as to call him a very naughty name. I won't repeat it here. Trust me. It was crude.

Here's the wrinkle: Meyerkord left Zipatoni in 2003 (three years before the campaign). Zipatoni never bothered to remove his name from the web site domain and he got hammered as guilty by association.

You can see why Mr. Meyerkord might have a problem with this.

So far, he has attempted to sue Zipatoni. It got thrown out of court. However, an appeals court is kicking it back to the same lower court allowing for the case to have another day in court.

Moral to the story for folks leaving an employer:

1. Know where your name is being used across all marketing collateral, especially the web site, at all times. Demand that it should all be removed in writing on the way out the door.

2. Check and make sure it gets done.

3. Make sure your bio is off the "Who we are" page.

4. Test your old e-mail and make sure it bounces back as an invalid address. You don't want colleagues e-mailing you at your old job and assuming you're being rude by not responding.

5. Make sure your name is off all accounts.

6. Write a letter to your former employee making sure they understand they no longer have permission to use your name or picture on their corporate site or any other company publication.

7. While employed, make sure your name and background are being published accurately.

I just read this great round-up of design trends for web sites for 2009 on Smashing Magazine.

If it's at all spot on, I am thrilled to pieces. It's a reversal of so many of the things web designers tend to do that I just can't stand and have never understood..

Let me count the ways:

Graphics:

Before: Small, cramped and cluttered.

What's in: Big, clean and vibrant. Smashing Mag predicts a trend towards larger search boxes (yea! for us over-40 somethings), clean white backgrounds (hallelujah!) and a resurgence of retro artwork, pictures with texture and even a water color look.

Navigation:

Before: Puh-leeze!

What's in this year: Dynamic tabs, Navigation buttons that "speak" and my favorite: more icons to visually explain where you're going.

Better Attribution:

Before: Oh puh-leeze again!

What's in this year: Could 2009 be the year web designers figure out attribution and credibility go hand-in-hand. I hate going to a site and having to dig like a beagle to find out who authors and funds the site, along with archives of previous of content. Incoming this year: author icons with postings for starters. The other trend I find promising is that instead of having a "tag cloud" of search topics (which is a foofy way of describing the lazy mish mash of category words bunched up in the corner); more sites are shifting towards a "tag index". Simply put; alphabetizing those categories making it easier to find things. Somewhere in heaven my sixth grade librarian is smiling down on us all now.

Tips for all time:

1. Display copy in a "F" pattern going across the page. The farther you scroll down the more narrow the column. People read less across the page as they scroll (assuming they scroll, which most don't).

2. Avoid weird fonts. They are likely hard to read and everyone's browser sees them differently. Play it safe and stick to the nice, clean, universal fonts like Arial, Georgia, Times, etc.

3. Light fonts + dark or busy backgrounds = headache.

4. Date and time stamp please. It's a basic thing to make you look like you update the site at least once in awhile. Date your postings, as well.

5. Who are you? Who's authoring the content? Whose site is it? Who's your sponsor? Where are you located (at least a country - town, state, e-mail address and P.O. Box preferred).

6. No more than five or six navigation tabs.

7. When redesigning your site; think evolve and not overhaul. You want to hang on to enough of the old look that returning visitors can see that you're still the same company, blog, whatever you are. If you change out to a completely different site with all new colors, navigation, bells and whistles; people won't realize it's still you.

The liquidation sales are in full swing after last week's announcement that Circuit City is closing all of its doors. That's 567 stores nationwide if you care to count. This is sad news for a number of reasons.

1. 30,000 people will be out of work.

2. Now there is one less place out of too few options where you can actually go touch and feel the merchandise before making a tech purchase.

The big enterprise level businesses aren't really affected by this. When Pepsi buys PC's, they don't send someone out from the IT department to scoop up a few thousand desktops or notebooks from a local store. Smaller businesses and self-employed folks are more likely to do so.

Not all computer shoppers buy into the Dell concept of customizing and buying online (which, by the way, even Dell now sells computers at Wal-Mart).

With Circuit City now liquidating into that long goodnight, what's left?

There's Best Buy, Costco, Wal-Mart (as mentioned), Fry's (in California), Staples, and others here and there.

All those retail outlets have one thing in common; they don't specialize in computer sales.

Best Buy comes closest. But, it sells consumer electronics that include computer equipment. Heaven help you if you go in to look at laptops at a time when the sales person from the vacuum cleaner department is covering the computer area.

There's an obvious joke here. But, I will take a pass out of respect for the sadness of the occasion.

This may be a good day not to rely very heavily on your mobile devices or anything with Internet access.

At last count, crowd estimates in Washington D.C. are expected to swell anywhere between two to four million people today converging on the inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama.

That's two million people, most of whom will likely be carrying some sort of cellular or mobile device.

What happens when a good chunk of them start calling friends, uploading pictures and videos, tweetering, texting and blogging roughly at the same time?

No one really knows. The telcos have been beefing up their bandwidth in anticipation of the heavy traffic. The CTIA - The Wireless Association is asking spectators within the crowds to text (lower bandwidth option), rather than call their friends. They are also asking people to put off uploading their pictures and videos, etc. until after the event to prevent overwhelming networks.

“Despite all the industry’s efforts to increase network capacity, it’s really important for the public to understand that unusually large crowds can generate congestion and communications delays... Think of a wireless network like a highway. Even though we’re building more lanes, if millions of people jump on the road at the same time, there could be a traffic jam. For this reason, we want to remind Inaugural event attendees to do their part in decreasing network demand by texting instead of placing voice calls, and holding off on sending cell phone pictures or video until after the events are over.”

Raise your hand if you think that's going to happen? Didn't think so. The media is not helping.

CNN has been inviting viewers about four times a hour for days to make sure they upload their pictures instantaneously during "the moment" when the President is sworn in. CNN is attempting to create an on the spot digital collage of spectator pictures.

But, I don't live or work in the D.C. area. This won't affect me, you say!

That may not matter.

The other great unknown is just how many will be turning to their mobile devices and desktops to follow the inauguration through streaming coverage via their iPhones, Blackberrys, PC's, etc. CNN is simulcasting it's coverage live on Facebook, even. Today will truly be a test of what the social networks like Facebook and Twitter can handle.

Here's hoping it will all go swimmingly. But for those businesses just going about their business today; have a "plan B" if you were hoping to rely on any of the above services to get through your day.

Another strategy; if you can't beat them, join them. It's a historical day.

This happens now and again. Overzealous PR and marketing executives sometimes can't resist pumping up online customer reviews with bogus ones that pump up their product ratings. I'm sure it happens more often than any of us realize. Every now and again, a company gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Today's cookie-crumbed hand belongs to....

Belkin.

Say it isn't so! Apparantly, Belkin was not only populating Amazon.com with trumped up reviews; they were soliciting people with money to do it for them.

Tsk! Tsk!

Many of you may not realize this (and it's a little gem of an opportunity for the right techie looking to make a little extra scratch); but Amazon has a site called Mechanical Turk where they farm out little tasks that can't be automated and aren't worth tasking out to staff or even a typical freelancer. Other employers can post odd jobs, as well.

Belkin apparantly was one of those employers posting an odd job indeed; to write fake positive reviews for their products and post them on Amazon. It was so successful that more than a dozen Belkin products mysteriously had a sudden five star rating, including a router that is notoriously buggy and consistently gets flamed by online reviews.

Here's a screen capture of the original job posting, along with a screen grab of the LinkedIn page of the Belkin employee who masterminded the whole thing.

Props to the site "The Daily Background" for breaking the story.

Belkin has posted an apology on its site pleading mea culpa and that it was the actions of that one employee.

Moral to the story:

Welcome to the age of transparency. Someone always finds out, folks. And when they do....

YouTube is cracking down on videos with copyrighted material, specifically music. Word is spreading fast around the YouTube community that many videos have now been muted with the following disclaimer underneath the screen:

This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled

Here's an example of just one video silenced by the new policy.

YouTube gets 20 million unique visitors a month. Look for that number to plummet if this nonsense persists.

Already fans are flaming the comments sections of videos with censored audio.

In the past, when there have been complaints from copyright holders, YouTube has given video contributors two options; take the video down or use their "audioswap" tool to strip out the copyrighted music and replace it with some canned, copyright-free dreck.

In a posting on their official blog this week, the YouTube team justified the new muting option as a good thing; spinning it as a third choice and thus giving amateur producers more options.

I'm guessing YouTube has its hands tied by the evil record companies who just aren't making enough money these days.

What does this mean for entrepreneurs and smaller businesses using YouTube as a marketing tool?

1. Save yourself a headache and double check your videos for copyrighted material. Fair or not, this is a battle you're not going to win.

2. Today they are muting audio tracks. Expect copyrighted stock photos, movie clips, the voices of celebritites, television clips, logos, etc. to be next.

3. Rule of thumb; make sure your videos are all original content; the music, the images, the graphics, all of it. Then copyright it, so that you don't get ripped off by someone else.

Prediction: YouTube is wildly successful because it has scrillions of home-brewed videos that more often than not use some well known images and/or sound and puts a fun spin on it. Increasingly, the business community is starting to turn to YouTube for guerrella marketing possibilities.

With this crackdown on copyrighted material, I suspect there will be fewer videos of guys dancing on treadmills in the future and more how-to's, sales pitches and seminar clips, etc.

This has been a sad week for the high tech industry and it's only Thursday.

First, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced an immediate leave of absence until June while he recovers from a mysterious "hormonal imbalance" ailment that has left him clearly gaunt and sickly looking. Speculation about what's really going on with him has run rampant among the techno-blogosphere (as I like to call it).

It can't be good. Jobs had a bout with pancreatic cancer a few years ago and beat it. Let's hope it hasn't returned and that whatever is ailing him will truly be gone and healed by summer.

From a business standpoint, Jobs' on and off again tenure with Apple since co-founding the company back in the 70's almost exactly mirrors the times of Apple's greatest successes. Steve Jobs IS Apple and one has to wonder what will become of Apple without him whether it's temporary or permanent.

Cautionary tale: it's dangerous for a company and its leader to be one in the same branding. A strong company can go on for hundreds of years. The strongest person cannot. Most start-ups begin with just one person who gets that first great idea. My advice is as you add-on employee #2 - #2000, etc let your growing company have its own identity.

And then there's Google.

Outside tech circles and financial watchers, the average bear probably couldn't even tell you the names of Google's original founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) or its current CEO (Eric Schmidt). What we all know is Google is not just another search engine. It launches new products and apps faster than Simon Cowell rips through American Idol contestants.

Not so fast.

This crummy economy is apparantly hitting Google too now. Google hasn't stopped hiring people altogether. But let's just say the recruiters are no longer on roller skates. In fact, the company announced this week that it's laying off 100 of its hiring staff.

This news comes with quiet announcements of killing, downsizing or putting certain products on hold indefinitely. Products on death watch include: Google Video, Dodgeball (Google's Twitter knock-off), Google Mashup, and Jaiku (another Twitter-like knock-off).,

Another sign of the times that Google is feeling the economic pain comes from my boots on the ground in Austin, TX. Thank you, Zelda Cook, for sending me this link from the Austin American-Statesmen announcing the quiet closure of Google's new Austin offices. Doors opened less than six months ago. The staff of 20 engineers will be offered positions at other locations.

If nothing else, Google is an exciting, always interesting idea factory. The trouble is they launch just about every idea they get. In business, that can be dangerous.

Cautionary tale for start-ups: Roll-out your business somewhat slower than your brain trust works. Have a corporate mission and keep it simple adding on new products conservatively and judiciously.

But it will require a little extra brain power and geek savvy to pull it off. Google has just released a new application to convert blogs from one platform to another without content getting lost in the translation.

It happens. People get fed up with their blogging platform from time to time and then what? Google Blog Converter is an open source app that accomodates all the major blogging tools (Blogger, Moveable Type, Typepad, WordPress and LiveJournal). So, you can convert among them with relative ease.

The application is written in Apache (that's an open source code). I would make sure you read the "read me" and make sure you have the tech chops to pull it off.

Kudos to Hewlett-Packard! HP has just a year left to fulfill its pledge to recycle a staggering two billion tons of electronic equipment. (Let's do the math: two billion times 2000 pounds = Ouch! That hurts my head to count that high!).

It's a great pledge. One problem; where do you get all that old geek gear to recycle? The company's solution is to buy it - from you. HP has had this sort of trade-in program for years buying back your gear and putting it towards your next HP purchase. But this is even better! Now HP will just buy your old gear and send you a check (deducting shipping charges, of course).

There's an online calculator on the HP site where you can plug in the make and model of your gear; even upgrades, and it will calculate its buy back value.

I plugged in the specs on my laptop and discovered I could get about $60. Taking into consideration a new HP notebook can go for as little as $500 - $600, that's a 10%+ discount if I did take in the trade-in. Not bad!

And all for a good cause! That's two billion tons of gear that won't spend the next 50,000 years sloooooooooowwwly decaying in a landfill.

Word is that HP, so far, is about half way to its goal. This beats paying Staples $10 to take your old gear off your hands for recycling.

Regretfully, there is no buyback program to recycle old ink cartridges.

Just a suggestion, HP.

We all know laptop batteries don't last nearly as long as we'd like. (Where's the Duracell Bunny when you need him?) The question is do you know what's zapping the life out of your battery the most.

The Microsoft 7 team (Microsoft 7: as in the operating system to end the long national nightmare known as Windows Vista) is apparantly working on tweeks for their next version that will economize battery power. In doing so, they've put together a little pie chart showing what parts of the laptop suck up the most energy.

Here's a screen shot of the graphic on Lifehacker.

The big culprit is your screen, which uses up nearly half of the battery power all by itself (43% to be exact). The hard drive is only responsible for 5% and graphics only 8%.

Moral to the story: turn down the brightness on your screen and save some battery time.

Here are some other things you can do to squeeze more juice out of your battery:

1. Keep your laptop cool. Blow out the vents or wipe them clean with a proper cloth. A cool laptop runs more efficiently.

2. Turn off applications like iTunes running in the background. Take a look at your toolbar in the bottom right hand corner and check out all the little icons to see what's actually running. You may be surprised how hard your laptop is working.

3. Use fewer USB devices and external devices of any kind. This is one of my personal weaknesses. I hate touchpads and indulge in using my mouse. That's one more thing draining my power. It's also better to load your data or media files onto your hard drive than work off a cd or dvd.

4. Tis better to hibernate than sit on standby.

5. Do your routine maintenence tasks like defragmenting your hard drive to improve efficiency.

The fourth screen! Now here's a term Alvin Toffler must love. I'm surprised he didn't think of it, himself.

We're talking about communication mediums. The first screen was and is the cinema screen, the second would be television. The third screen (which coincides neatly with Toffler's third wave) is your PC screen and now the fourth screen is the mobile device.

Heady stuff. Even headier, check out this viral video I recently watched on Youtube put out by Nokia (yes, self-serving. But, very worthwhile regardless.).

I wrote about the quickly emerging mobile web about a year ago for this site. For the most part, the article holds up.

I'm not sure the mobile web has yet "hit critical mass". But, I don't know anyone who is disputing that we're really, really close.

The question is how is your business leveraging the mobile channel to reach more customers, streamline work flow and change the way your employees do their work.

What's unique about the fourth screen that businesses need to think about?

- It's intensely personal. Communicating to someone through their handheld comes with a visceral understanding that it is personalized and intimate. You are not broadcasting on a small screen. You are nichecasting on an individual screen.

- Information is a moving target. It's dynamic and being created and modified by the user as much as the original source pushing the content. Bottomline: you do not have control of the message.

- This is not just the stuff of the young. Generation mobile is growing up fast and they have parents, by the way. iPhones and other 3G devices aren't just for Manhattan hipsters, Silicon Valley geeks and early adopters anymore.

- A few years ago, transparency was the buzzword du jour. It still is. But more than ever, people want it their way and now. Customers truly don't understand waiting for what they want and getting it exactly how they want.There's a growing expectation that you can get whatever you want at the touch of a few buttons in the palm of your hand. Are you mobile accessible?

- If your employees aren't able to work and connect on the fly, you are likely hobbling them from doing their job well. This is especially true if they are in sales or do any kind of field work or business travel. The cubicle is increasingly irrelevant.

If you are the boss, it needs to be you!

Here's a little tale of loss and redemption from my holiday break. I went to my local theater (which is a national chain that I shall leave nameless) to see "Doubt" (which was great, by the way. Go Meryl!). When I left the theater, I discovered that I had a flat tire. I called AAA. A tow truck guy came out and changed out my flat. We discovered the tire had been slashed. It was a cold, CT night in sub-freezing temperatures.

While waiting for the AAA man for up to an hour, I asked the manager of the theater if I could come back in and wait. He actually had to think about it, before offering a grudging "yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh". After finding out the tire had been slashed, I went back inside and looked up the same manager to tell him what had happened. I didn't expect the theater to take responsibility in any way. This was purely a courtesy on part to alert them to a security issue in their parking lot. The same manager was, at best, indifferent. He didn't say "thank you for letting me know" or "I'm sorry that happened" - nothing!

I was so dismayed by his non-plussed interactions with me that I e-mailed the theater chain's corporate web site and told my tale of woe in great detail.

The following business day, I followed up by calling the theater's local on-site general manager. She asked me if I was the same person who e-mailed the web site and that she was actually about to call me. Surprised, I said "yes" and expressed my surprise she had already read it. She said that actually it was the COO of the company that had read it and then forwarded it to her.

Needless to say, unlike her floor manager, I had her undivided attention and concern. Because someone high up the food chain read my e-mail, a negative customer experience was turned into a positive one.

How many times have you filled out a feedback or comment form on a company web site and never heard a peep back? I've lost count. I've come to assume those feedback e-mails go straight into a blackhole, most likely an e-mail account that is rarely checked and only then to hit delete, delete, delete.

What's the protocol on your company web site. Moral to the story: folks, this is not 1999. It's 2009. Customers are not going to write you a letter of complaint or praise by snail mail. We do cruise your sites looking for e-mail addresses and feedback forms to submit, however.

A quick, attentive responsive is not only required; it needs to be from someone in a position of authority. If a national theater chain can tend to their customer e-mails at management's c-level; then why can't you?

One last tip: post your response protocol on your feedback page. Who reads them and do you guarantee in a response? If so, what's the turnaround time? Once you make that committment, stick to it.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer still prevails in the top spot. The figures, for the month of November, were released this week by Net Applications.

That 20% plus share may hold through December's figures when they come out next month. But, don't be surprised if they slip again in January.

Here's why:

Firefox is primarily popular with residential customers. November featured a lot of downtime at home due to the holidays.

Then again...

Given Firefox's popularity with residential clients, the sour economy may be good for their business. I'm imagining all those recently laid off workers home surfing the web for job postings, contract work and face time on Facebook.

Microsoft has a new strategy for roping in start-ups and grooming them to be lifelong customers. They are giving away select software applications for free for up to three years. There are conditions, of course.

The offer is for tech startups only who are less than three years old, privately held and with annual revenues still under one million dollars. There is a one hundred dollar fee that has to paid when the company leaves the program.

For companies secure in making a committment to a Microsoft IT infrastructure, this is a good deal. Not only is there the break in software expenses, there's also technicial support and access to a network of hosts and partners.

Check out the BizSpark web site for more information.