websense

I hope the last couple of weeks have been spent among good friends and family, enjoying the time of year that is meant for gatherings and parties. TKG had a great Christmas party this year. It’s always a good time, but this year we had it in a bowling alley due to our impending move to a new house, and it was really a lot of fun. They surprised me with a theme party – see if you can guess the theme:

It was a lot of fun: bowling, decorative Christmas apparel, cheese whiz on crackers, cocktail wienies, Reese’s mini cups on a stick, and a tower of twinkies; a very classy time was had by everyone, I think.

A few folks from TKG went up to the Browns / Steelers slaughter game on Sunday, as well. About half of us had a really great time – the half that was wearing black and gold. The other half, well, lets just say the tailgating and great food made for a fun morning, and leave it at that. Kidding aside, it’s great to work with a group of people who like to hang out together. It fosters great working relationships, cooperation, and teamwork. It doesn’t hurt that these folks are a lot of fun, to boot.

I hope that you were able to spend some time over the last few weeks with good friends and family, as well, as it’s now time to get back to the grind, and we’ll need the fortitude offered by all those cookies and um, beverages, to keep us warm as we power through the coming winter months.

NE Ohio seems to stand at the ready for whatever comes our way. The political scene is a little less bleak. Businesses are hitting the ground running after a great holiday shopping season. We are done with this recession, we’re rebounding – ready to do business, ready to make some money – for ourselves – and help our clients find the best ways to do that as well. I hope that as you plan your marketing budget for 2011, you seriously consider including some SEO and SEM. Not only is it incredibly cost effective, it is the way the world/business/markets are trending. I am looking forward to 2011. It’s going to be the year America lands back on her feet, and TKG will be here to do our part. It’s gonna be a great year!

So, of course the FCC passed this thing. The only thing we can hope is that the new Congress, with a Republican (believers in Free Enterprise) House, can do something to stop it from being implemented. Net Neutrality has already been taken to court by Comcast, and ruled unconstitutional. The FCC had no authority to do this, so hopefully this will be undone, overturned, and shelved.

But, what if it’s not? That’s a prime question, isn’t it? If it’s not overtuned I see a lot of fallout for Web based commerce. These new rules, and there are a bunch of ‘em apparently, will make doing business on the Web harder. Over regulation always does. So far, things have run smoothly, for the most part. People have been able to find a market for products that was otherwise unavailable to them – just check out Ebay and Etsy. Do you really think the big Ebay sellers would have had as much success without the Web? And as for Etsy, most of those products are handmade and so niche that finding a market for them took a pretty broad spectrum of shoppers. You’re not gonna find that at your average flea market, craft show, or what have you. Even if you did well, you couldn’t touch what was possible through Etsy, while doing business from your home. The FCC is going to make this type of enterprise really difficult. The regulations are going to be expensive, and time consuming. There is no need for any of this, so the FCC will spend a lot of time trying to legitimize it’s own existence. Part our job, as Web developers, will be to know how to work with and around the FCC regs and still help our clients make as much money as possible.

I’ll reiterate what I’ve heard so many times already – this is a solution looking for a problem, because there is no problem. This is a power grab by the current administration. No one knows, yet, what exactly the rules are going to be, as they are being decided on. What we do know is that the FCC has decided that they can police the Web. This is going to go far beyond regulating ISPs and SEs. The FCC will go for control over commerce and content – just watch. It’s about to get real interesting.

So, I really want to hear from you. What are you seeing as potential fallout from the Net Neutrality vote? How will it affect you, or your customers?

Unfortunately. Today is the day the FCC is going to vote on Net Neutrality. According to several different news reports, it seems as though Commissioner Genachowski has got enough votes to be able to move forward with what seems to be no more than your basic governmental power grab. This one doesn’t even make sense, since it will be incredibly hard to enforce, and even harder to prove and prosecute offenders.

If you are wondering what Net Neutrality is, there are plenty of places on the Web to tell you, but in a nutshell, the FCC wants to be able to enforce certain rules. For example, the FCC wants to make sure that ISPs and Search Engines are providing only the information requested, that they are not stacking the results in favor of one cause or issue or marketer over another. I think this will be very difficult to enforce, I mean, whose going to sit around all day running queries to see if this ISP or that, or SE or other, appears to be slanting search results in one direction or another? Our massive, incredibly over sized government really doesn’t need to grow in this direction. The Web tends to maintain fairly well without the interference of the government. Nothing has really changed in this regard except that a governmental agency has decided to set its sights on the Web.

What will this mean in the long run? Nothing good, if you ask me. It’s going to make a mess of some things, as further regulation always does. It’ll tie the hands of a lot of folks, making it harder to earn money on the Web, and give everyone else involved in Web efforts something to complain about, and attempt to work around, and spend money to avoid. The end result will be that everything will get more expensive as a result. It’ll create a choke hold on Web based business, and give the government control over the Web like it’s never had before. Over regulation always means an economic loss. Yeah, now sounds like the perfect time for that – let’s create more economic loss.

Republican Robert M. McDowell, criticized Genachowski’s proposal in a Wall Street Journal column on Sunday.

“Nothing is broken that needs fixing … ” he wrote. “Analysts and broadband companies of all sizes have told the FCC that new rules are likely to have the perverse effect of inhibiting capital investment, deterring innovation, raising operating costs and ultimately increasing consumer prices.”

A few Dems are harping about free speech and the like, leaving me to wonder what in the world they think is happening on the Web right now. If we don’t have free speech on the Web as of now, I don’t know what you’d call it. We can now say nearly anything to anyone, anywhere in the world, anytime we want. We can find nearly any bit of information we need to make decisions large and small. We can buy anything we want. We can view nearly anything you can think of. Net Neutrality is the first foothold in the climb towards content control over the Web. Enjoy your freedom of speech while it lasts you may very well loose it soon.

Content control is just what it sounds like. The government will somehow try to make sure that for every opinion that is presented on the Web, the user is provided with the opposing view. How exactly is this possible? How in the world do they think they can enforce it? Fines when they find instances of it, surely. Sound like a Web tax to anyone else? Raise your hand if you see lots of dollar signs in this whole deal.

If this thing passes today, and I am pretty sure it will, it has to be voted on by Congress (because no one has even given the FCC the authority to do this – the Obama Administration just decided they could, so they are). That means there is one more chance this thing can be shot down. It won’t go for a vote in Congress until the new House and Senate are in session in the new year. Please make your voices heard on this one. This is a power grab by this government. They want to govern every aspect of our lives. The Web was built to provide free access to information, not regulated, government approved access. What is this? Iran? We don’t need to be regulated. We need the freedom to run our businesses, whether Web based or not, nearly every business is impacted in some way by the Web, even if it is only through local map searches. Let the Web alone – go regulate something else, FCC. I can’t imagine you are lacking anything needing a good dose of government regulation. Go run your car companies, leave the Web alone!

More info-
CNN
FoxNews

So, as of Thursday evening the new Obama/Republican Tax deal passed the House. It passed in the Senate earlier in the week.
Now, I’m all about Tax Relief, and something needed to be done to extend the Bush Tax cuts, but this bill is nuts. It’s 2000 pages long – does anyone know what’s really in it? Earmarks to the tune of billions of dollars and a cost of $858 billion over two years, will be added to the federal deficit.

Laurel over at Black Political Buzz has some interesting insights into the earmarks and the bill in general. You should check out her list of some of the crazy earmarks. It’s almost funny. But not quite.

While I agree that the Bush tax cuts needed to be extended, I don’t think this was the way to go about it. The Republicans have traded the tax cuts for billions in earmarks, funding for Obamacare, extending unemployment benefits, and billions in other spending. Why won’t they listen? If this had been reported as what it is, another stimulus, the American public would have been vocal about not wanting more stimulus, but instead it is being touted as a tax break, so people aren’t up in arms about it. I’m thinking they will be when they see and understand what this is gonna cost us.

Why didn’t Republicans wait a few weeks and then go after a better bill that included the tax cuts, but cut the pork? They will have control of the House come January. They could have made the tax cuts retroactive to January 1, and made sure that the pork/spending/earmarks were trimmed. They didn’t do this because they wanted something pushed through now. They didn’t want to get to January 1 and realize that the American tax payer was getting hit in a down economy. I think they could have rallied and gotten a much better bill passed in January. I have to say it, though I don’t like it, but the GOP doesn’t seem to differ so much sometimes, from the Democrats. Spend! Where will it end?

It’s easy this time of year to get so busy that we may forget those who are stationed throughout world, protecting us. I want to give a shout out to all our service people, and ask if some of my readers might take a moment to go to one of the sites below and maybe get a box together to send to a military unit or personnel. Our family spent the last week gathering under armor, gloves, scarves, hats, thick socks, snacks, hand and toe warmers, and more to send to the unit of one of the young men who recently graduated from our homeschool group. The local USO gave us some great ideas for needed items.

Afghanistan is freezing right now, with some pretty nasty conditions. Whatever we can do to help keep them warm, I think we ought to do. If you watch the video below, you’ll see one lady who has made scarves for service people ever since WWII. That’s dedication!

Here are a few ways you can help the people who provide the safety and freedom we all enjoy:

Any Soldier Want to send your support to a Soldier in harm’s way,
but have no idea of what to send, who to send it to, or how to send it?

Help the Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan: The Care Package Project

Send a Message to Our Troops – Soldier’s Angels

And lastly, if you’d like to send a card to a recovering American soldier:
A Recovering American Soldier, c/o Walter Reed Army
Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20307-5001

Awesome how the web has made giving easier too – it’s just a very small way we can all say thank you to those who risk everything on a daily basis. Merry Christmas!