"Oh no! I could cyberlose e-millions of virtual dollars and end up in thepoorhouse.com!" —Lisa Spizer, day trader

"Can you pour Guinness by e-mail?"
"No."
"Then there will always be an Ireland."
—An exchange between an Irishman and Reed Hundt, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, during a discussion about the transforming power of the Internet.
 

NO SIESTA IS NO FIESTA

With Europe becoming more unified, Spain doesn’t want to get caught sleeping on the job.

So it is logging the same kind of work hours that other countries do and has even begun to phase out the traditional midday siesta. The change has left plenty of Spaniards sleep-deprived—and turning to caffeine to keep them from dozing off. The country’s per-capita consumption of coffee has risen 10% since the late ’80s.

PSST, PASS IT ON

Human viruses mutate and get more deadly. Computer viruses just get more creative. A few days after the dreaded "I Love You" virus passed through our offices, this e-mail missive appeared in several of our in-boxes:

"This virus works on the honor system. Please delete all the files on your hard disk, then forward this message to everyone you know. Thank you for your cooperation."

FORE FUN

The next time your golf swing has you down, remember these immutable laws of the game:

Whatever you think you are doing wrong is the one thing you are doing right.

The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas about the golf swing.

Golfers who claim they never cheat also lie.

A golf match is a test of your skill against your opponent’s luck.

Always limp with the same leg for the whole round.

There are two kinds of bounces: unfair bounces, and bounces just the way you meant to play it.

It is a simple matter to keep your ball in the fairway if you aren’t too choosy about which fairway.

Hazards attract; fairways repel.

For most golfers, the only difference between a one-dollar ball and a three-dollar ball is two dollars.

The frequency with which balls are lost increases as the available supply decreases.

If you really want to get better at golf, go back and take it up at a much earlier age.

PATENT (NOT) PENDING

Call it the home for misfit inventions. Or call it crazy.

Chindogu, Japanese for "weird tool," is a society devoted to "un-useless" objects. It features slippers for the cat to wear so it dusts the floor as it walks around. A chopstick with an attached fan to cool noodles off before they burn your mouth. A portable crosswalk to throw down in busy streets.

Would-be inventors submit ideas, hoping to have them posted to the official Chindogu Web site or, better yet, included in the book series. Requirements are tough: Chindogu can’t be for real use and can’t be for sale. Should you come up with one, though, you needn’t worry about having anyone steal your idea, the site assures visitors. "If it’s worth stealing," the site says, "it isn’t Chindogu."

E-MAIL GETS E-NORMOUS

E-mail marketing will explode over the next few years, according to research firm Jupiter Communications. By 2005, spending on e-mail campaigns will increase by a factor of 40 over last year’s tally of $164 million. Our virtual mailboxes will be positively bulging with marketing messages. Last year, the typical user received 40 such messages. Jupiter expects that, in 2005, we will receive about 1,600.

GOING, GOING, GONZO

Madison Avenue has long focused on broadcasting a barrage of messages aimed at the lowest common denominator in the target audience. But Christopher Locke, a co-author of the Internet’s widely read Cluetrain Manifesto (www.cluetrain.com), says the communication explosion caused by the Web means the end of such traditional marketing. In its place will arise "gonzo marketing," which will be based on authentic one-to-one conversations with customers. Context asked Locke to elaborate.

CONTEXT: Where does the name "gonzo marketing" come from?

LOCKE: It comes from the participative journalism that Hunter S. Thompson invented in the ’70s and called gonzo. Thompson didn’t feign objectivity. When he wrote about Nixon, Thompson hated him to the point of intimacy. Thompson gave other newspeople permission to be human, too. Companies today also need a human voice.

CONTEXT: How do they gain that voice?

LOCKE: By being totally uncontrived. By putting amateurs, who are not steeped in being smarmy, in charge of marketing. By being more interesting, not louder. By belonging to a community.

CONTEXT: I understand how this would work at a hip start-up. But how could it possibly apply to Huge Inc.?

LOCKE: Ford Motor just gave each of its 350,000 employees a personal computer and told them to fan out over the Internet and listen. Ford has tacitly granted each of them permission to speak on its behalf. So, when welder Joe Schnausigg participates in his gardening interest group, he’s representing Ford. He’s a marketer.

Ford, and other smart companies, will begin to sponsor these communities of interest. Say Ford puts a banner ad on its site and gives the communities money for their activities. When somebody in Joe’s gardening group has a problem with his Ford, he will tell Joe, who will put him in touch with a high-level customer-relationship person. Everybody feels good about Ford.

CONTEXT: Ford will be like an art patron of the 16th century.

LOCKE: It’s the Medicis all over again. And it costs pennies on the dollar compared with broadcast advertising during the Super Bowl. Over the next five years, you’ll see billions being saved as marketing changes to this win-win proposition.

CONTEXT: Truth and beauty emerge from this?

LOCKE: Well, I think Ford has been reading my stuff. The other day, it put out a press release saying it was unhappy with its Explorers because they added to environmental pollution. So, truth, anyway.