Mere words cannot express how moronic this idea is. 1998 called, and they want their digital media plan back. The studios think that we will pay 3-4 times the price of a ticket in a movie theater, just to watch the movies we didn't go to when they where in theatrical release.

As Daedalus said to Icarus, "Good luck with that".

I've set up blogs/Facebook pages/Twitter feeds for a few friends who have small businesses, and my advice to them has been simple: Online marketing is a conversation, and conversations have ebb and flow. Sometimes you listen, sometimes you talk. Sometimes you ask for favours, and sometimes, people ask you for favours. It's a conversation, not a sales pitch. In fact, the best sales pitches are the ones that don't seem like a sales pitch, and the best salespeople are the ones who use their personality and social skills to establish trust with their customers, no matter the medium.

Pay attention to what's being said, let the customer tell you what they want, and then fill that need. Works offline, and it works online as well.

With more people watching NetFlix than most pay cable channels, this was only a matter of time. There is a brief window here for cable channels and cable providers to push for a la carte programming in order to avoid being crushed by the NetFlix/Hulu juggernaut that is headed their way, but they'll have to move quickly if they want to survive. To borrow a phrase from online antiquity, TV content streamed by the internet sees locked-in channel selection as damage and routes around it.

I post quasi-anonymously on a local/national political weblog and I've been fiercely guarding the firewall I've put up between the political persona I've created on the weblog and the rest of my online life.

That may change.