Small Business Survival Committee: "The Small Business Survival Committee (SBSC) works to influence legislation and policies that help to create a favorable and productive environment for small businesses and entrepreneurship. By educating policymakers, legislators, the media and the public about the critical role that small businesses play in our economy--and how government actions can positively or negatively affect the small business community--SBSC strives to establish a solid public policy foundation upon which entrepreneurial activity and small businesses can survive and flourish."

When a Terror Threat Is Real: "We've seen how jumpy the Bush Administration gets when it receives even vague hints about possible terrorist attacks. So what would the President and his advisers do if they discovered, for sure, that terrorists were going to launch multiple strikes against American energy facilities in three days? A detailed drill, involving more than a dozen high-level current and former government officials, will examine this terrifyingly real possibility late next week."

E-Mail Mining - The Wages of Scandal: "You think you have e-mail overload? You have it easy. The lawyers working on Enron lawsuits -- they have overload. They probably have north of 100 million text documents to go through to prepare for any litigation. That's a lot of discovery. Finding the few hundred key e-mails that will serve as evidence for an Enron case won't be cheap: E-discovery services often cost about 20 cents per e-mail or per page (for other files). But there is certainly money available to do the work, as there is for countless other big lawsuits that hinge on who wrote what to whom."

Low-cost Klog Network: "The level of investment required for really excellent km tools, such as weblogs, has gotten so low that it is much easier for a relatively low level employee to start a grass-roots movement within the staff if they are motivated. Given the failure of enterprise level KM initiatives and the burst .com bubble, this could be the perfect time to stealth in some web-based knowledge sharing tools."

David said, and I forgot to post: "Please join us in welcoming Benjamin Butcher as our new internal salesperson. Ben comes to us from Pleasanton, CA with a degree in business as well as 4+ years sales experience for companies such as Verio and ADP. He was also a founder of a dot-com startup (which ultimately failed). His scheduled start at ETL is October 7th conveniently coinciding with the move of the Marketing Dept to their new office. However, due to logistics, this scheduled move might take longer than expected and therefore, he might be without a desk for awhile. Therefore, you will probably see him following Jennifer and Ray around while he learns exactly what goes on at ETL. His new email address is ben@energytechlabs.com and his AIM screenname is BenDButcher."

75 painful questions about your customer satisfaction: "Customer satisfaction is not something that you achieve then tick it off on your 'things to do' list, it is about continuous improvement throughout the whole organization. But in today's quest for highly advanced up to the minute customer service, some of the fundamentals appear to be brushed aside. Fundamentals such as what the customer actually wants, for example. Perhaps it is time to go back to basics. To actually ask the consumer instead of taking answers for granted. Do they want high-tech, electronically run call centres that reduce costs and cut queuing time or would they rather wait for longer in order to hear a human voice? Do customers want to see facts or product advertising (or both!) on your web site?"

Microsoft Pulls Ad After Web Flap: "Who was that mysterious Windows user? Red-faced executives at Microsoft Corp. on Monday pulled a breezy advertisement purportedly by a free-lance writer who switched to using Windows software from the rival Macintosh, amid questions about whether the woman actually exists. "

Winner in World Champion Pumpkin Weigh-Off: "An Oregon man is the big winner -- and we mean big -- in the annual Half Moon Bay World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off. Kirk Mombert of Harrisburg took the title today after his whopper of a pumpkin flattened the scales at one thousand, one hundred and 73 pounds."

Nevadan Nevadas used to name game: "People named after state accustomed to questioning looks when they introduce themselves."

Excerpts of Bin Laden's Alleged Comments: "The fact that all this coincided with the one-year anniversary of the start of the Christian crusade is not a coincidence but a clear and strong message to all our enemies and friends alike that the Mujaheddin, thanks be to God, have not been weakened or exhausted and that God repaid those who sinned with their mischief."