Condi is gonna testify. Set your Tivo.

Google search is getting personalized. Use thie slider to get search results to match a "profile." DSBPI tech team analyzing.

Surely there is a balance between the Western customer service model -- where phalanxes of phone agents with little power to make right, offer focus-group tested sweets, like "how can we provide you with excellent customer service?" to a consumer audience hypnotized by a radio-man's impersonation of natural conversation, sing-songing about the importance of your call -- and the Eastern way, where every corporate representative is super-empowered to cut a different deal with each customer, gouging the tourist and upgrading the buddy, or helpfully, overruling the official line to solve a customer problem.

There is solace in the Western model, knowing that a defined set of rules govern consumer relationships, where the computer CRM system, with its litany of if-thens, and the marketing department, with its pie charts of platinum points, can be relied on to provide consistency, wrongheaded or not.

And there is frustration in the Eastern model, always wondering if there was a better deal to be had, or if prolonging a debate would have, in the end, made the other side cave.

Between these poles should exist a company that treats its customer interactions not as an opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell using marketing scripts that insult intelligence, and not as an opportunity to bargain until heart failure, but as human interactions, without the overt Eastern sales pressure, or the subversive Western "helpfulness."

This NYT article:Leisure Pursuits of Today's Young Man, reports on the drop-off in 20-something's TV viewing in favor of spending more time on the Internet -- playing games and downloading media.

Clearly the Atari-generation (Coleco-generation for some) is coming of age.

Hamas' iron-tight grip on Gaza will be difficult to loosen, even with Israeli action against the group's leadership.

In Gaza, the only place to buy an alcoholic drink is at the UN beach bar. Hamas has violently shut down all other watering holes to conform with Islamic law. Women in Gaza today wear traditional Islamic dress, a marked change from just a few years ago. Hamas has systematically shaped Gaza into a religious Islamic enclave -- very different from "cosmopolitan" Ramallah.

In Gaza, Hamas has a social services infrastructure that USAID, UNWRA, UNESCO, etc. can't beat unless they are massively re-funded, and even then it will take time.

Can the UN take over Hamas' social services activity in Gaza as Israel disassembles the military wing? Don't know.

Not sure if W should take campaign advice from Bob Dole. The final line from Dole's NYT Op-Ed: "His (W's) job now is simply to remind voters that America is safer and more prosperous than it was on the day he was sworn into office."

Somehow we don't think it will be that simple. Note to W: Dole lost.

For those of you using Priceline without BiddingForTravel.com you are flying blind.

Biddingfortravel.com is a bulletin board where people post winning and losing bids for Priceline hotel and air travel.

Walmart has opened its music download stores -- no iPOD compatibility. Will Apple match the price cut to $0.88 song?

DSBPI hopes so.

E - Ink will soon be launching their first product. This is part of the input/output revolution we like to harp about.

DSBPI believes that one strategic option for Kerry ads is to attack Cheney's voting record in the house, just as BushCheney are attacking Kerry's votes in Senate. The title of this campaign should be: "A Heartbeat Away." Pun intended. More on this to come.

If Kerry follows this tact, Bush should respond "Is Kerry running for Vice President?"

Noted in Germany (DSBPI Field Trip):

1. Parking garages that reserve the 1st level for "Ladies Parking."
2. Bicycles in airport for use in traveling long concourses.

The image of Kerry calling for middle class tax breaks while carving the slopes of Mt. Baldy at Sun Valley seems incongruous. Unless the idea is for the middle class to use the tax savings on snowboard lessons. In that case it adds up.

Finally some words of moderation, from our tzadik in chief, Joe Lieberman: Kerry and Bush urged to tone down election attacks frenzy. "Let's keep it civil so we don't get so nasty that we discourage people from coming out and voting in a very important election," said Senator Joseph Lieberman, who was a contender against Kerry for the Democratic nomination. "This nation is almost evenly divided politically. And there are strategists in both parties who are urging both candidates to go for victory by whipping up into a frenzy the partisan, ideological base of both parties," Lieberman told Fox News channel.

DSBPI thinks Urban Outfitters should sell these retro-cool hats from the Bush/Cheney online store.

John Kerry is in a favorite DSBPI vacation spot: Sun Valley. The AP has a picture of him shreding (not documents).

The L Style Report, a quarterly publication of the Lambesis Research Group, says that EFFEN Vodka is the new hip spirit.

The Bush website team should read The Cluetrain Manifesto to help de-corporatize their message and speak in a more human-sounding voice.

An ad from Moveon.org showing rummy in a pickle.

Can global terrorism fuel consumer spending as much as it hurts business investment? Do individuals save less when they fear (irrationally?) for their mortality?

What are the implications of this?

Fake Borders

DSBPI has written before, at least we think so (if not it is part of our regular lecture series), about how those in large cities have more culturally in common with each other than their own "countrymen" that live in rural areas. That a Londoner and a New Yorker are more alike than a New Yorker and say an Iowan -- the urbanites shop at the same stores, watch the same movies and face similar lifestyle choices. And that the increased ability to connect these globally disparate communities threatens (not in a bad way) a part of what is nationhood.

We layer on top of that the "nationhood" of multi-national corporations; that is the nation of IBM, Cisco, or McKinsey, where global teams join with common corporate culture.

And today we revise this model: breaking down barriers between corporations, so that the engineer at Microsoft working on Internet search algorithms can be part of the same nation as his Google counterpart. Of course, this is a major challenge because of the competitive nature of modern corporations. However, in no small part due to the growth of blogs, individuals are piercing corporate borders and firewalls, and starting conversations with "the enemy."

How will these growing communities of connections affect democratic institutions?

The NYT article Where the Boldface Bunk tells the tale of 740 Park Ave. -- the toniest address in town for the Forbes crew. The text raves for two (web) pages on the heritage and design of this edifice, where prices soar to $30mm for an apartment. But a revealing quote ends the article, hitting on a theme oft cited on these pages:

"In the interim, fortune, not fortunate birth, has become the primary qualification to live at 740. But newcomers soon discover that living there does not answer life's persistent questions. "When one aspires to grandeur and lives with grandeur it becomes matter-of-fact rather than grand," said A. Laurance Kaiser IV, owner of Key-Ventures, a Manhattan real estate brokerage, who has sold many apartments at 740. "They can't wait to get in there, but once they do, they find out it's just a nice building with lovely apartments."

A clip from today's NYT's article entitled White House Letter: It's 10 O'Clock. Do You Know Where Your President Is? In Bed: "To break it down further, the president is generally awake by 5 a.m., when he has coffee and reads the newspapers in bed with his wife. By 7 a.m. he is in the Oval Office, where he makes calls, often to leaders overseas or his parents, before his national security briefing at 8. For the rest of the day, Mr. Bush is in more meetings - with the National Security Council, his campaign staff, his domestic policy staff, his speechwriters. He often eats a lunch of salad alone while he channel-surfs in a small dining room off the Oval Office. He exercises in the White House gym, usually in the late morning or early evening. Either way, he's back at the residence around 6 for dinner at 7. The teetotaling president retires around 9 p.m., even when he has guests, and takes to bed a giant briefing book to read as preparation for the following day. Lights are out at 10."

....And then Clinton sneaks in the backdoor and gets the kegerator going.

In traditional crime fighting, making a neighborhood "feel" more secure (more uniformed police, better lighting) actually made it more secure. The perception of security, let's say on the NYC subway systems in the early 90s, drew more non-criminal riders and, like the snowball effect, made the trains safer for everyday straphangers.

In the case of terrorism, the perception of security does far less to help actual security. A safe neighborhood, or "secured area" can be as much a magnet for terrorists as a deterrent -- and unlike the criminal of opportunity, the well-financed groups of martyrs can patiently seek-out and later exploit holes in feel-good policing.

The NYC police commissioner was on Fox news, post the Madrid bombings, being asked about his subway system's security. He spoke about different methods in place, including one where teams of officers boarded trains en masse. The anchor asked how many of these tactics enhanced "real" security and how many were designed to make riders "feel" more secure. The chief answered that the ratio was about 50/50. Today's IHT quotes Fred Pfisterer, a TSA lead screener at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport as saying, "My whole focus as a TSA lead screener is to ensure that the passenger is getting the very best customer service I can give them each and every time, not just once in a while."

With regard to fighting terrorism, is their value in the psychic benefit of "feeling safer" even if there is a tenuous connection to actually being safer?

Terrorism is a tactic, that definitionaly seeks to instill fear. The more terrorism achieves this end, the more it will be viewed as a successful method of attack. Making people feel safer -- through ridiculous TSA screening, swarms of men in blue, video cameras galore -- may on the one hand seem phony, a sham to protect the politicians more than the people; but if the people are made to feel safer, the effect of terror is partially negated. While it may seem like a cop-out (wink, wink) to expend tremendous resources on fighting the effect of terror instead of the cause, this tactic is not totally without merit. It is the result of a compromise between the people's desire for security without any real sacrifices in personal freedom, and it has worked to date.

In the end, though, this approach will prove to be a medium-term panacea that can only provide comfort until it is proven to only provide comfort.

As the use of terrorist tactics spread beyond "hot spots." The relative country risk of these hot spots should decrease. This should be represented in bond spreads.

How sad it will be if we look back on this time as one of relative peace and prosperity. As the time before terrorism went nuclear or biological. This is unfortunately an all too likely scenario.

From MSNBC's The Afflictions of Affluence: "Psychologist Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College makes the broader point in his new book, 'The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.' Our individual culture worships choice, but too much of it leads to choice congestion. Consumer Reports now 'offers comparisons among 220 new car models, 250 breakfast cereals, 400 VCRs, 40 household soaps, 500 health insurance policies, 350 mutual funds, and even 35 showerheads,' Schwartz writes. People feel overwhelmed by the time it takes to make the 'best' choice - and may later regret having made the wrong choice."

The explosion in customer choice is not good for the economy. While we would normally postulate that competition drives market prices down, in fact, customers overwhelmed by too much competition, will choose not to participate in the market at all. One example is the market for flat screen TVs, where the offering range is so complex that many otherwise willing consumers have become bystanders, denying manufacturers production scale.

As previously discussed here, companies are leveraging databases of customer information to hyper-segment product portfolios. It's not yet working. If the segmentation were just right, there would be no consumer confusion.

Market is sending sell signals to DSBPI as companies beat estimates and stocks trade off.

Note: if you ever have a discussion on software IP, always belittle the protection that patents offer. Always.

For the sake of anarchy, a DSBPI favorite state of play, let this WSJ opinion resonate and put Brokaw on the Kerry ticket.

As reported in Wired magazine's Complete Guide to Googlemania!, a new bumper sticker out on the highways of Silicon Valley: just give us one more bubble.

DSBPI wrote a while back on the coming revolution in input/output devices, here is news on the input: Virtual Laser Keyboard Available at the End of this Month.

DSBPI believes that the first blogger was Doogie Howser, MD.

An AP story - Kerry Looking for Super Tuesday Triumph reads:

Ousting Bush was the top priority for voters in nearly every Super Tuesday state, with large majorities saying they are angry at the president, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and TV networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.
"Bush don't mean nothing to nobody but Bush," said Kerry voter John Richburg, 66, of Cleveland. "His lies done him out. He's got to go."