I subscribe to the misleadingly named booksfree.com, I enjoy it. They raised my monthly price; so no link for them. I assume they notified me but my spam filters ate the message. I’m sure some vile marketing dudes will start a consultancy to helps firms craft their “service improvement” notices so they are likely to never reach the customers.

Some briliant twit at Belkin decided they could upgrade their home routers to occationally feed you advertisments. Just how vile is that!

I got a reciept at the gas pump yesterday that had two blank lines on it. One said “odometer reading” the other said “gas mileage.” The mind boggles. I assume the idea is that my car and the pump will cooperate and get those two lines filled in. You gotta start somewhere, so first they have changed the pumps and now they are waiting for the cars to get with the program.

One of my gas stations insists on advertising to me as I fill up. Presumably pretty soon they will customize the ad based on my credit card profile.

I enjoy suggesting big marketing ideas to small or non-commercial operators. My barber seemed entirely unenthusiastic about my plan for him to offer a loyality card, do better discrimitory pricing, while cross selling services with the post office. I’m still holding out hope though that the library will adopt my suggestion. My account should show how much money I’ve saved so far compaired to buying those books.

In the 19th and 20th century agricultural productivity exploded and farm jobs evaporated. The labor displaced moved into the cities. There is always more stuff to do, so in time they generally found new work. Often in manufacturing. I read today that worldwide manufacturing jobs are disappearing; down 11% in the US, but more interestingly down 20+% in China. Improving productivity again. One wonders what work people will find to do next. My fear is they will all get to work on clever marketing ideas like the ones above.