Earlier this week I mentioned my problems with Chapters censoring their in-store Internet terminals. Because Doc Searls’ weblog was one of the sites I couldn’t view, I sent him a carbon copy of the email I sent to Heather Reisman.

In reaction to that, Doc mentioned the incident on his website which, in turn, prompted a man named Buzz Bruggeman to send me an email. Buzz met Doc at last years Pop!Tech conference in Camden, ME. Why he emailed me, I’m not sure. But it was one of those emails that, for some reason, amdist the clutter of the penis enlargement and the interest free loan spam emails, I paid attention to.

Buzz is hawking a nifty little program for Windows called ActiveWords. Buzz’ Big Problem is that he is trying to sell the world a product that the world doesn’t know it needs. In fact he’s trying to sell the world a product that you don’t really know you need until you’re using it. And even then there’s a learning curve. Actually it’s not really a learning curve — it’s more like an “experiencing curve.”

I will not even begin to try and describe what ActiveWords does. Go to their website and download a free trial copy (don’t bother reading the PR on the website; most of it won’t make much sense). Install the program (again, this is a Windows-only program) and take it for a spin. Then you’ll understand.

I’m still learning how to integrate ActiveWords into my workflow. I cam imagine hundreds of ways I will put it to use. It’s one of those rare “shareware” programs that I will actually purchase. Enough said.

Back when I was a wee lad myself, during my one and only year of higher education, I used to look forward to Thursday nights. At 9:00 p.m. (or was it 10?), I would head off to the snack machines and buy myself a bag of chips and an icy cold Fresca, and then adjourn to the Junior Common Room ato watch Hill Street Blues.

I liked Fresca then. But then it went away.

Now it is back: eagle-eyed Catherine spotted a lone bottle of Fresca in the cash-side cooler at Zellers tonight and we agreed to split it. Alas this was not the Fresca of old: first, it was Diet Fresca, and so it had a horrible “sugar free” aftertaste. Also, it appears that in the 16 years since I was in university they have reformulated Fresca so that its taste approximates that of Lemony-fresh Pledge.

Advice: avoid Diet Fresca.

From Susan Arbing: the Iowa Corn Cam. And if you find that interesting, be sure to check out The Amazing Maize Maze, which is the Official Maze of The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

My spritely friend Oliver from California passes along links to live Pig, Cow, Sheep and Goat cameras.

I’ve always condemned the charter airlines (like WestJet and Canada 3000) for advertising cheap fares by using the “one way fare based on return travel” gambit. They advertise a $99 fare to Toronto, but then, in smaller print, tell you that this is the one way fare, but that you have to buy a return ticket. So the real fare is $198.

Until now I hadn’t seen Air Canada adopt this deceptive technique. This changed last night when they announced their latest seat sale.

They’re advertising a one way trip to Boston for $189, a fare which, deep into the fine print, you read is “each way based on return trip travel and may only be purchased on a return basis.” So the real return fare to Boston is $378. This isn’t a bad fare, but it’s not fantastic — I’ve flown with little advance notice in the past year for $490. It’s certainly not a “jaw-dropping” fare, as they suggest on their website.

I wish Air Canada would stop the sneaky tactic; they shouldn’t have to lower themselves into the charter gutter to compete.

It is interesting to note that you can fly to Zurich from Charlottetown for $10 more than it costs to fly to Seattle from Charlottetown.

Not satisfied with the ultimately useless chat I had with Network Solutions about their annoying pop-up ads, I decided to have an ultimately useless telephone call with them.

You can listen to the entire call or the call without the 1:30 of on-hold music) [MP3 stream: you’ll need a player like WinAmp to listen], the highlight of which is the customer service rep telling me “the people you would have to contact about that would be Microsoft.”

I’ve been evaluating Urchin, a web traffic reporting tool, for several clients. Everybody I’ve showed the output to has been impressed: it’s flexible, uses its own database, lets you look at reports and graphs over different periods of time, and has a nice little e-commerce revenue reporting system built in. You can download a trial copy.

Recent search terms that have led people to this website:

• stores for belly dancing outfits in california
• technology: the way we might be
• martha stewart living archives
• pepperidge farm goldfish jingle
• tamara hickey fan
• big and advanced and email and system
• guys in bike shorts
• flowjet water dispenser

At the corner of Grafton and University Streets in downtown Charlottetown, in front of Province House there is a tree with its own phone line.

I first noticed this last summer: about halfway up the tree there is an Island Tel box similar to the one on the side of my house. There’s a Big Black Cable running out the top of the box that disappears into the sky, and a regular old beige 4-conductor wire running out the bottom and down the tree.

As regular readers will know, I have been, from time to time, mildly critical of Island Tel. On this occasion, however, it would appear as though they are living up to their rhetoric:

Your business has special needs. At Island Tel we understand that you need to grow while keeping costs down, and be accessible to customers without having a large office.

Craig Wilson writes (in response to my quest for a car):

Allow me to go out on a limb and suggest you get to know Bob and Nettie Likely at Sherwood Volkswagen. Small dealership, honest people who expect to make a fair margin, a service manager who has been involved with VW for over 20 years and friendly qualified mechanics who welcome you poking your nose into their world and asking questions. I have purchased 4 cars there and am now looking at another. I have colleagues who have purchased 3 cars there. Each of us is satisfied.

I will pay them a visit. My brother Mike has a VW Golf and likes it a lot.