Among the winners is portal of the year, Yahoo. The whole category is on its back nine. All three (I don't consider Google a portal) will continue to lose ground, since the 13-year-old-plus crowd looks at email the way we view letters. However, there is plenty of money to grab on the descent.

Amy Auerbach and Jason Krebs recently wrote about the stand-off between the buyer who isn't interested and the salesperson who calls repeatedly for the appointment. It's a classic situation that defines the nature of sales and the need for salespeople who sell smart. The buyer thinks she knows what the salesperson is offering -- but, until the buyer has seen the pitch she really doesn't know what she is rejecting. The salesperson thinks he knows the buyer would need his media, if she would only listen to a pitch.

Question from buyer: Do salespeople ever give up? I've had the same vendor calling me now for 10 months. Why won't he take the hint?

I started this year by laying out a step-by-step strategy for how to transform publishing in the age of the iPad. My January article "iDiots' Guide to Publishing on the iPad" was a hit on Twitter. Boy, was I wrong. I dished out a ton of advice, offered specific suggestions about how publishers should cross the chasm to digital publishing, how to engage their readers, and how they should productize it. For all my good ideas, I fell short by missing the most important element: the hardest thing in the world to change is human nature.

How many of you find yourself competing with the "big guys" on a smaller budget? Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager, was determined to find a way for a low-revenue professional baseball team to compete successfully with teams spending two or three times as much on top player salaries. He found a way, with strategies vividly described in the book "Moneyball" -- and now the much more widely consumed movie.

Question from an agency person: "I'm new to the digital world and sometimes I can't understand anything you people are talking about. What's with all the foreign language and acronyms?"

The first time I witnessed how comfortable our industry was telling stories in public based on half-truths was at the iMedia Summit in Arizona in 2002. During one session Joe Apprendi, who is now the accomplished CEO of Collective Media and the owner of a great smile, took the stage in front of hundreds of sellers and buyers to show off his company's wares at the time -- a rich-media company aptly named Eyeblaster. He claimed his company's rich-media ads were more effective than other display ads that didn't make him rich.

The Unabomber delivered an anti-technology manifesto as he terrorized the U.S. for nearly two decades. Technology and its impact terrified him. He's not alone. Technology stalks the halls of the executive suites of America's corporations, and while most executives won't admit it, it scares the hell out of them.

Last week I stopped in Chicago to speak to a conference of local-media publishers. If you too have traveled through the United hub in O'Hare recently, you have also seen advertising for a hotel chain printed on the handrails of the moving walkway and escalators. It's just one more example of the targeted media that is assaulting your market. The "escalator media" sales team -- or its moral equivalent in your market -- is calling on your advertising customers, distracting them from buying from you.

Question from a media seller: I'm hearing mixed things about the ad business in 4th quarter. Now that we're here, should I be bullish, bearish or in between?