Judging by the behavior of certain companies out there, you'd think that some decision-makers in high places believe that consumer choice is a thing of the past. Some would like to charge companies money to ensure their e-mail gets through to their customers' inboxes. Others would like to charge Web sites to ensure that people who try to connect to those Web sites do so at an acceptable speed.

I've been spending a lot of time dealing with IPs, shared IPS, black lists, white lists, lists that were white that are now black. If you service, send, or buy anything e-mail-related, you may know what I'm talking about.

I've been following the fallout from the AOL-Goodmail announcement pretty closely--but I still can't get past my first intuitive barrier. It's seemed to me from the start that the wrong people would be hurt by such a postage-ish system as what Goodmail represents.

My video iPod loves me! Unfortunately, I only like it "as a friend." It all started last December when we met at a holiday party--the chemistry was extraordinary. It was sleek, beautiful and full of mystery ("Lost"), drama ("Law & Order") and intrigue ("Desperate Housewives). It had a sense of humor ("SNL") and even a penchant for history ("Alfred Hitchcock Presents"). Yes, this was a relationship that could seemingly last forever... not!

Yes--the ads on this year's Super Bowl were not good. It's a bad sign when the only lasting impression I have from the ads was the line about a "code black," which only resonated because it left my cohorts and I trying to figure out what it was (and for the record, we were right--it was a bomb).

The value equation that many in the content business have used for decades, sometimes referred to as "the implied contract," has been almost completely annihilated.

So what did you think of the big-game ads? Was it me or did most of them well, er, suck?

Since the "Big Game" is this Sunday, it's only natural to write about the smart marketers who are leveraging multiple platforms to maximize their $2.5M investment for a minute of time.

There are some people who have had some very sub-optimal experiences with PayPal. Personally, I have only had good experiences with the service. But, according to some of my closest friends and advisors, I may belong to a pretty small club.

There's a tangible buzz these days surrounding UGC (user-generated content) and I'm not doing much to slow the hype by continually writing about it, but what is it, really, and how can it be harnessed?