populicio.us

November 19, 2009 | Issue 45•47

LOS ANGELES—As the White House considers sweeping strategic shifts in the war in Afghanistan, heroin addicts across the nation called on President Obama Monday to stick with the current U.S. policy, which has flooded the world market with low-price narcotics. “There’s no need to change nothing, Joe Biden,” said addict Reginald “Bones” Dillow, who, when conscious, is an outspoken proponent of the U.S. military strategy that has resulted in a nearly 40-fold increase in Afghan opium production since the end of Taliban rule in 2001. “Everything is so cheap—it’s all totally fine like it is, right? Over there, I mean. Why would you want to…do the…[garbled].” Obama is reportedly looking into economic incentives that would both persuade poor Afghans to cease opium cultivation and benefit chemically dependent Americans, the most promising of which involves constructing facilities in the war-torn country for the manufacture of methadone.

Rupert Murdoch is pointing a gun to Google’s head, and Microsoft is helping him pull back the trigger. For the past few weeks, Murdoch and his officers at News Corp. have been very vocal about their distaste for Google and their desire to lead other media companies in a boycott of sorts.

Murdoch keeps threatening to stop letting Google index the WSJ.com and his other media sites, and wants other news sites to join him in this self-imposed silence. The folks at Microsoft’s Bing think this is a great idea. Not only that, but the FT reports that Microsoft is in fact in discussions with News Corp. and other publishers about the possibility of paying them to remove their sites from Google’s search index. This report comes on the heels of a meeting in Europe where Bing dangled the prospect of premium spots in search results to publishers and outright money for search R&D.

Microsoft is not afraid to buy search market share, which is what it’s doing with the Yahoo search deal and even its Cashback program. But with these latest talks, it is literally trying to buy the news, or at least exclusive access to the news.

Bing can’t buy all the news, it can only buy certain brands. If Bing can somehow become the only place you can find news results and working links to the Wall Street Journal and other top papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times, for instance, that would be a big reason to switch for a lot of folks. But it’s not clear how much Bing would have to pay the news companies of the world for them to give up all the traffic Google sends them in return for a fraction of that traffic and some cash.

Even Google couldn’t afford to strike such deals. Says Murdoch, of Google, “If they were to pay everybody for everything they took from every newspaper in the world, and every magazine, they wouldn’t have any profits left.”

In order to actually make a dent in Google’s market share, Bing would have to pay such exorbitant sums to so many different news companies that it would be difficult to recoup its investment. Bing certainly get some marketing buzz out of any such move, but that’s about it.

The big problem with a search engine trying to buy market share by buying parts of the news is that information spreads so quickly these days, exclusives last about 30 seconds. That information will end up on a site that is indexed by Google. Or the same news will be broken by someone else on the Web before the WSJ.com even gets to it.

Exclusive indexing goes against the Web’s inherent openness. Companies that try to curtail that openness don’t last long on the Web.

Are you a new company that needs an email compliance policy? Maybe you are an established company that realizes you aren’t email compliant and probably should be. Regardless of your business being established or in the beginning stages, we can help you with all of your compliance needs.

Have you ever had an employee that was great at his job, but he was obnoxious to everyone else. Maybe he even bragged about being or doing better than his colleagues. What if he was also obnoxiou and rude s in his emails? Our email compliance technology and policy writers will help eliminate these types of situations.

Maybe you even have that employee that sends you unimportant emails filling up your inbox like chain letters and other spammy junk, our security software can help with this as well.

An employee may have inadvertently done something to cause email spam by signing up to the wrong kind of service or leaving their email address posted someplace on the net for email harvesters to get it. Our email software, along with other features, can help control this whether an incoming or outgoing. Our technology will catch the spam before your employee replies to it possibly causing computer failure.

Email compliance is no different than following a list of rules a business or government creates. We are here to help in case you may have forget a rule where someone could eventually find a loophole and your rule would be void. We make sure we have everything in tact before your compliance is put together. Having an email compliance policy can protect you and your business from harm such as litigation issues and many other types of issues as well.

Some businesses strictly use email as their only form of advertising and must follow public email compliance laws such as the can spam act. For example, telemarketers must follow laws such as no calling before 8:00 in the morning and after 9:00 in the evening. Of course, some of these people call at 8:00 am right on the dot, which can be very lucrative. Just like in telemarketing, incessant email can be opted out just like being on a no call list. Even bill collectors have harassment and privacy telecommunication rules.

So if you are a business that needs compliance policies, contact us for help. You will have to have email compliance at some point and to get in earlier is a lot better than getting it later. You never know how laws will change and if you have something already in place, it will be easier to amend the policy or upgrade in the future.

Those who argue against having email compliance occasionally have good reasoning, especially when it comes to privacy issues, but this is rare. A business is a place to be professional and a place to work, not send personal email to whomever you want, whenever you want. If a business has an email compliance policy, everyone must follow it including the owner; otherwise, what is the purpose? Check around our site to see what you need. Email or call us and we are sure to help.