Seems like no matter where you look everyone is Instant Messaging (IM). Like everything else online, IM is being threatened. If you, like me, use IM like me for work and personal messages, this is a red flag waving--you are most likely at risk for viruses, Trojans, worms and hackers.

Anyone who reads this space knows that I've not yet become sold on the vitality of blogs. That is, I don't really see what the big deal is, except as they pertain to a special class of sub-media, if you will. That is--blogs feed search. And when people search for something, as an increasing number do, they are at least as likely to be influenced by blogs as they are by anything else.

I am at Telecom '05 in Las Vegas this week, listening to all the telecom industry's future plans. As you can well imagine, IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is the flavor of the month. Everybody has a technology, everybody has software, hardware, middleware, intelligence layers, content partners, billing systems. In fact, there's only two things missing... a customer, and even more important, a consumer value proposition that might actually attract one.

I love when I read the posts on the Spin Boards and get feedback proclaiming things like "You missed the boat!" These are the kinds of posts that make me reexamine the articles I write and consider if I did miss the point, or if I glossed over something of value, and last week I think I did.

Ever written a letter to someone at a corporation with your feedback about a product? A substitute teacher at my high school used to hammer home the importance of knowing how to write a coherent business letter by telling a story about the time he wrote to Johnnie Walker to voice his dissatisfaction with their product, and received an entire case of Scotch whiskey for his trouble. How often do you hear those stories in the Internet age?

We spend countless hours, days, weeks and (some of us) years trying to get into the minds of consumers. We all know that getting one bit of a consumer's attention is like an X Game of hoop-jumping. We seek out the intersection of the rational and emotional. For instance, you buy a car because you need to commute to work. You buy a Hummer to be cool, hip and show status.

Lately, much has been made of the (maybe) increasingly blurred lines between marketing and journalism. I put maybe in parentheses because, depending on the outlet, this line has either been nonexistent or as impenetrable as the Great Wall of China since the advent of the insertion order.

Did Steve Jobs finally screw up? After all, if there was such a thing as the portable video business, wouldn't everyone have been walking around with a Sony Watchman for the last 20 years? No and no.

The video iPod is a MUCH bigger deal than most of us realize. The iPod is a cultural phenomenon. It's had at least as wide-reaching an impact as Napster did when it initially launched, if not more so. The video iPod has the potential to go even further.

There's been a resurgence of discussion about RSS and how it may change how content is consumed. Surprisingly, a lot of what I've been reading lately hasn't focused on the RSS value proposition to the consumer, and what the consumer expectation is concerning RSS. And unless marketers and publishers understand these things, they can't hope to monetize RSS.