This Spin is dedicated completely to an appreciation of a major interactive market that those of us who live and toil on either coast can get in the habit of neglecting. That's right, all you flyover types. This column is a Christmas Valentine to Chicago.

Some major telcos have started lobbying our elected officials for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, "regular" and "premium." You guessed it, not only would the telcos get to charge everyone more for the faster service, they'd also get to deny the faster service to competitors. Ouch!

I read an article last week, right here in MediaPost, that centered on the potential revenue streams associated with delivery of content on-demand by broadcasters. I think their execution is smart, but they need to realize that there will be no "winner" in this model, except for consumers themselves.

Before I jump on the bandwagon and offer up my predictions for 2006, let's take a look at how I did this past year. For those keeping score at home, last year I made some fairly bold predictions, some of which came true, others of which fizzled. Let's go down the checklist and see where I did well and where I whiffed....

As advertisers and marketers, should we be worried that threats from extreme groups regarding the way we promote--or don't promote--Christmas will damage our businesses and our beloved brands? How do we address these issues? Post your thoughts on the Spin Board.

I get the impression that most folks in our industry simply haven't even noticed that e-mail has been the killer app this year already, and that doesn't even include what it's been doing during the holiday run-up.

Outlook didn't just crash, it crashed and burned. Nobody I know had ever seen this kind of a problem before. I called my IT guru and described the problem--dead silence on the other end of the phone. This was bad, and I knew it was going to get worse.

The last few weeks have been so full of earth-shattering advancements in online video and video-on-demand that it's probably been hard to catch a breath. But this week I want to slow down and issue my annual predictions for what you can look forward to in 2006.

When we seek to leverage community in order to give our brands a boost, our brands must be respectful of the community, in part by avoiding the temptation to work against its purpose.

Just like many online marketing and advertising terms, viral is as obscure as they get. Say it to someone outside our industry and they'll probably cringe and not want to go near you. Yet in our industry viral means something good; many of us want to create a viral hit.