This is very much what I would like to see happen, whether with or some other equally easy-to-use tool.
2:20:38 PM    

We've always said that privacy is like tailoring. If you want a perfect suit, you have to let a tailor probe around in spots usually reserved for a spouse's touch. Without that sort of intrusion, you may as well just buy the thing off the rack. People who have never worn a hand tailored suit may not understand the extraordinary differences in fit and feel. Be assured, the intrusion is usually worth the return.

That doesn't mean that we want everyone groping us trying to make their products fit.

In a solid article (from the Direct Marketing - DM - perspective), Lee T. Capps, a CRM pro now working for Revere, makes the case that better customer service can be provided by merging and sharing CRM data between companies. Of course, consumer choice and participation gets short shrift in the discussion, that's the perspective of a DM pro.

Yes, we'd like Safeway to better understand our needs (right now they're just tracking what we bought, not what we came for and couldn't get) and, yes, we want things that fit better in general.

But, we want to decide which tailors we let stick their hands into our crotch. We're protective down there.

CRM technology will migrate rapidly into the Labor Market. The combination of blogs, CRM and solid human networking skills will be the model of Human Capital Acquisition over the next century.

Observing the dynamics of CRM in the consumer markets with a critical eye on the relationship between choice and privacy is a critical element of developing effective systems.

(Privacy Digest alerted us to the article)

2:07:13 PM    

I just stepped out for lunch, into a warm and breezy day. A few moments later, I found myself singing a song I surely have not heard nor thought of since 1975:

When I get home, I will see all
The holy men I read about:
Peter and John; James, Luke, and Paul;
And brother Tom without a doubt—
And I do believe there will be King David on the harp:
A song of praise with every chord...

Where did this come from? I must have stepped out into the sun and thought, “What a day!” and the association brought out this song, whose first words are not “what a day”, oddly enough. I managed to sing the whole song to myself, except for the last few lines, which I find do not match the rhyme, and so became—if not unmemorable—unmemorizable. Strange.
2:00:41 PM    

Seniors are the fastest growing group of online users and a powerful resource to focus on the emerging labor shortage.

This group mirrors the early Internet population:

• About 60 percent are men.
• Forty percent are women.
• They're more likely than their offline peers to be married.
• They're highly educated.
• They have relatively high retirement incomes.

Characteristics:

• Many wired seniors are newcomers to the Web.
• They're more likely than younger Americans to be online on a typical day.
• The most fervent wired seniors say the Web helps them better connect with loved ones and makes it easier get information they seek.

The five top uses of the Web by seniors:

• using email
• looking up hobby information
• seeking financial information
• reading the news
• checking weather reports

Ooopsie....looks like we're almost seniors by these definitions. From ClickZ

1:12:22 PM