oh, well, of course we noticed the people who slammed on their brakes when they hit a bridge, which is what made us decide to head home and heed the mayor’s warning.Well, this morning, I got this e-mail from our town of Durham, New Hampshire:Because of the high heat index today, we have made arrangements toutilize the air conditioned meeting room at the Durham Town Office as acooling off location for individuals who perhaps do not have airconditioning at home or are in need of a break from the heat…. Ifyou or someone you know is in need of a cool location in order to findrespite from the heat, please stop by the Durham Town Office located at15 Newmarket Road, Durham, NH.

Well, I guess being in Chicago for three days made me miss the fact that Skype sneak-peeked the beta of their next round for the Mac, and even made public (though not promoted) access to the video-capable version of the beta.This thing’s pretty stable, and is *well* worth your time to check out.

Just a quick note to let you all know that (a) yes, I’m back from vacation and (b) I’ll be at ad:tech Chicago next week…. If you’re not, or even if you are and know of any good Italian or Vegetarian restaurants, please recommend ’em!

While watching the fireworks this past weekend in Portsmouth, NH, my son and I really enjoyed the view with the fireworks as the backdrop to the waving American flag. Couldn’t help but share.

The explanation he gave us was even more shocking: from us. When pressed to explain, he reminded us of our recent trip to the Polar Caves here in New Hampshire…. This was the first time we had explained slavery to the kids (yep, right there in the cave), and obviously it was a concept they had trouble grasping (thank goodness!).Apparently, my son had confused things and thought that the smugglers and slaves were the same people…

So, for almost 5 hours, my “main” gmail account has been unavailable, but other accounts are fine.I did a little bit of web searching and found some people saying this has happened for days at a time…… Let this be a lesson to you kiddos: never trust anything you don’t own, and certainly don’t trust the stuff you don’t even pay for!All that aside: anyone got a contact at Google that wants to sort this out for me?

Brief messages, varied creative, interstitial ads, and making sure you understand and respect the audience to which you’re advertising are all excellent points of wisdom here…. Frankly, if you were to take all of his advice and roll it together, most folks would wind up with a different answer: give the host of the show talking points and let them deliver the ad in the style and context of their show.

A number of years ago, when I got my wife her first laptop, she went through and selectively ripped portions of “most” of our CD collection. Well, over the years, there have been moments of frustration as I looked to play a song only to find that it hadn’t made the cut way back when.

In the last 24 hours, I’ve received at least three distinct offers (via three different forms of communication) from Vonage to get in on their IPO, an offer being made to existing customers who meet a certain set of criteria. While this certainly sounded tempting when I got the first notification via e-mail yesterday, especially to someone who was investing in the market “back the the day” when “tech IPO” meant “gravy train to the bahamas,” by the time I got my second notification in the PO Box this morning, I started scratching my head.

…otherwise they’ll just keep on stealing, and that couldn’t possibly be good for them or their general karma, could it?I’m referring to the add/drop scheme, described in great detail by Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy. In a nutshell, folks “in the know” can register domain names (by paying their fee), sit on them for 5 days (earning search engine affiliate revenue all the while), then cancel the registration and get their money back.