Did anyone else see the article that was in The New York Times Sunday edition about two weeks ago regarding the topic of brands versus bargains?

One Saturday morning in 2006, you head to your local home improvement store for some supplies. You buy a low-voltage lighting kit for your walkway outside your house, a gas can for your lawnmower, and a few bags of fertilizer for your lawn and garden. Packing this stuff into the back of your Dodge Ram pickup truck, you head home, stopping at the gas station to fill up on diesel and pick up a quart of milk at the mini-mart.

So I've got another acronym for you as I write on this rainy Monday. It's RFID. It stands for radio frequency identification. I believe it will be the next generation of wireless technology.

Thursday - the day I'm writing this - is the last day to register for Google's Dutch Auction IPO, right? They aren't extending the opportunity - at least that's the latest. So, by the time you read this, it's too late to get in on the early action.

Do you remember the first time you used a third-party ad server for an online advertising campaign? How excited were you that you no longer had to track down reports from ten, twenty, perhaps forty different sites and then input them all by hand?

How are you budgeting for your 2005 interactive ad spending?

On Friday, I heard an announcement that shock jocks Opie & Anthony had signed with XM Radio, the subscription-based satellite radio company to broadcast a morning show. You may remember Opie & Anthony from the national attention they attracted when they were canned by Infinity Broadcasting in 2002 for broadcasting descriptions of their radio listeners having sex in public places, including St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. The stunt resulted in Infinity being fined a hefty, six-figure sum by the FCC.

Spin writer Mark Naples takes a look at how his 2003 predictions shaped up.

With the country seemingly in a state of unrest as the presidential election looms closer, in conjunction with a weak economy and anxiety about terrorism, Americans need somewhere to turn. Not surprisingly, it's the Internet - the comfort medium of the new millenium.

This is a new world of uncertainty, where the credibility lent to a news story by publication in an established news venue simply doesn't cut the mustard anymore. That's why political and news blogs are thriving. It makes terrific sense to be asking "who do you trust?" in this context, but it's also very important to realize that blogs are starting to fill a void left open by the mainstream press.