In a recent WSJ article, Google's efforts to create effective "fast lanes" for their content are uncovered a bit further than they have been in the past. Despite previous calls for net-neutrality and the company's early mantra of "Don't Be Evil", Google is making strategic decisions that more closely mirror the behavior we'd expect from a highly monopolistic "mega-corp" than the company that slaps a beta logo on everything and gives it all away in the name of selling keywords. On the surface its divergent from their past moves to democratize both content (putting books online for free) and applications (docs, spreadsheets, you-name-it), but perhaps they are just showing some early cards in the next phase of the strategy for world domination. If Google's ultimate mission is accomplished, will they will evolve from being synonymous with the Internet to being the Internet? This particular issue is around net-neutrality, and Google's discussions with broadband providers to prioritize their traffic. I'm not going to spend time arguing for or against net-neutrality here, but what motivated me to write this post is the underlying significance of the leading content and search platform trying to buy an even further advantage with consumers. Google is already the #1 search engine, and more importantly has achieved the brand-mindshare of the public when it comes to finding information online. To many, many web neophytes (and experts alike I suppose), search=google. Here's the reason this needs to be carefully watched; broadband penetration is now over 90% in the US, and the majority of us get our broadband from the top 3-5 cable/telephone providers that Google is talking to. While this may be good for us as consumers (faster page loads, snappier Gmail, etc.) it will also drive us to use more and more of Google's services because they are faster then their competitors. Knowing that one company's webmail and online docs will load faster than the other guy's will drive a lot of web users to those services.

Almost every day it seems a new service or mashup for Twitter comes out. Some will stick, others won't. That's the great thing about the internet is that everyone gets to try!  Twitter has reached a point of critical mass now where mining the data and the trends around what's happening on Twitter is as valuable as the messages themselves. I use twitter for both business and personal pursuits, and have tried a ton of the apps and services that have come out. Here are my favorites;

• Twhirl - AIR based desktop client - there are lots of other desktop clients but I like this the best because it includes URL shortening, retweet, finding users, etc. Its the most feature rich. Tweetdeck is cool too but is short on some of the key features. Since I like to have at least two accounts open at once (arinewman and filtrbox)
• search.twitter.com - a great way to find mentions of anything specific in the twitter stream. At Filtrbox, we've taken the twitter search API and integrated it into our media monitoring service so you can set up the searches once and receive daily emails with any new mentions from ANY twitter user (as long as their stream is public). You can also turn these searches into RSS feeds in Filtrbox, but I digress...
• Tweetie - the best iPhone client I've used so far. I've tried twittelator, twitterific and others and found this new entrant to be superior for a few reasons. Its fast, stable, simple, supports location/photos, multiple accounts, following others, trending topics and saved searches. 
  
  Totally worth the 3 bucks. Here's one of the menus... 
 

• Monitter - a cool web UI for search.twitter.com - its pretty basic but enables you to set up a bunch of searches and see the stream of tweets. I don't use it that much because its an app that requires constant attention, which is impossible. Its on this list because its a great demonstration of the value of the twitter search API.
• Filtrbox - (disclaimer - I'm a founder and President) - a powerful and cost-effective online news and media monitoring service that does keyword-based persistent search across online news, the blogosphere and social networks (twitter and Friendfeed). If you want to track brands, companies, people, hot trends, or any specific topic across all types of online media, Filtrbox is awesome. It supports twitter via the search API, and you can receive emails every day listing all of the mentions on Twitter. You can also post articles the system finds directly to Twitter from the web dashboard. Rather than checking search.twitter.com all the time or running manual searches, its sort of a set-it-and-forget-it thing...if there's a mention, you'll see it. With its trending and coverage reports, you can keep track of who on twitter is talking about things you care about. 
• MediaOnTwitter  - a wiki, and overall good resource that identifies what media outlets are on twitter and how to find them. Check out the US page to get an idea...http://mediaontwitter.pbwiki.com/United States

There are a ton of others out there, but these are my faves and what I rely on. Let me know what I missed or what you like better!

Thanks to VeloNews I just discovered a new pair of pants that have reflective material in the pant leg just for commuter-safety. This is a great idea and is quite convenient for those of us that ride to work. Seeing as how I recently shredded a pair of jeans because I was too lazy to roll up the pant leg, and I forget my little reflective ankle-wrap velcro thing half the time, these pants seem like a good solution for those short winter days when its dark well before I get out of the office.  Only problem is I NEVER wear khakis and they don't make denim so until then I'll keep an eye on the site. Check out Cordarounds.com. I'm curious - are they water or stain resistant? Do they hold up well in the seat? Are they Old-Navy or Banana Republic?

I was doing pretty well for awhile. The whole Inbox Zero thing was working for me, even though its mostly BS. I managed to stay on top of the inbox clutter for about 4 months. Then something happened, some increase in busy and decrease in time, and inbox zero faded into the rearview mirror like a geriatric in the slow lane. My inbox is now at 1400 messages. This works for some people but not for me...I can't help but feel I've dropped the ball on 1400 items somehow.  I keep thinking I'm going to get the time back, or that I should just wipe the whole inbox and admit defeat. In the meantime, I'll keep trying to recover and process 300 messages a week of the backlog. Most get deleted, some require responses. I have noticed a 90/10 rule in effect also - 10% of the emails require 90% of the time to deal with. The other 90% of the emails are easy to file or delete.   Update 12/08 - My inbox still has 1k messages in it. I am still hoping to get back on track over this winter holiday and start 2009 with an empty inbox. We'll see. I'm losing confidence this will happen. We'll see.

The Newman family was supposed to fly to Puerto Vallarta tomorrow to join the in-laws for a sun (and Tequila) soaked Christmas. While we were busy having kids and starting a company, the rules changed and even kids now need passports to travel to Mexico. Something to do with the new WHTI, which we were not paying attention to. I feel like a dumb-ass because this isn't exactly news to most travelers, but we went to Mexico 3 years ago with just a birth certificate for our daughter and hadn't been out of the country since. So on the eve of our departure we were informed that without passports for the little ones, we couldn't fly. Even if we got a rush-job for the passports on Monday and paid the outrageous rebooking fees, the vacation would be whittled down to two days.  No one to blame but ourselves I suppose, but we are pretty devastated over here. No trip for us, so it looks like we'll be heading out for Chinese food and a movie on the 25th ;-)