I've added Sudoku to this Website (located in the right column near the bottom).  Also, here are some good tips on how to solve these puzzles without going completely insane.

Hat tip to Dan Woolston on this one.

Here are the questions that we are planning to ask of our panelists at the GlimaWest Blog Event:

1. When does blogging make sense for marketing purposes and how does blogging integrate with a marketing campaign?
2. When using blogging for business purposes, what is the return on investment?  What is the investment?  What is the return?
3. Does blogging reveal "news" that is not available from traditional for-profit news channels?
4. What are some of the challenges and rewards of establishing a personal blog for self-promotion and idea expression?
5. Should companies have a policy specific to blogging like many do for email, intellectual property and other business risks?  And are there technologies for managing offensive blog content just like email tools?
6. What is the most effective way to find and be kept up to date on blogs that match your personal or professional interests?
7. When is it better to create a blog from scratch versus using a system or community like blogger.com or typepad.com?
8. Is blog commentary essential?  How does it enhance the experience for the blogger, commenter, or passive reader?
9. How is it typically that blog readers identify themselves as sales leads?
10. Blogging has traditionally been text based.  What about photos or video? What about embedding content from other sites?  What about commentary doing the same?  When do these enhancements make sense?
11. Is blogging functionality converging with others such as social networking?
12. Should glimaWest establish a blog?

I love these types of discussions and I can't wait to get started.  Feel free to comment on any ideas or questions that you would like to see discussed, or comment on the questions already listed.

Supposedly Microsoft has started an investigation to determine how these supposedly private internal training videos were leaked to the Internet.

Apparently Ricky Gervais (The Office - British version) and Stephen Merchant (his writing partner) made these videos back in 2003 with funding from MS.  These videos should be required material for all aspiring young IT executives.

This free software will let you save any YouTube video to your iTunes/iPod.  Simply paste in the URL of the video and iTube does the rest.  Thank you Mr. Benjamin Strahs!

iTube

Update:  It occurred to me after I posted this that some of you might not be familiar with YouTube.   According to a July 16 announcement, 100 million video clips are viewed daily on YouTube, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded per 24 hours. The site has almost 20 million visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.  YouTube is an example of how the internet is nibbling away at the fabric of popular media, including traditional forms of video delivery such as television and DVD formats.

I will be moderating an event about blogs and blogging, hosted by glimaWest.  Our intention is to discuss blogs as a means of promoting business and political messages.  We have asked for participation from several local bloggers, and we are getting some very interesting panelists lined up.  A blogger from the Granholm for Governor campaign blog may be a participant.  Also, bloggers from the Media Mouse and The Local Area Watch blogs have shown interest and may be among the panelists.

I'll post more information here as it becomes available.  My most excellent employer, Blue Sphere, will be sponsoring this event.  We have yet to decide on a venue (it will be somewhere in the Grand Rapids area), but the panel discussion is scheduled to start at 6:30pm on September 28th.