There's a new Whole Foods in Lynnwood. I got the impression after two visits that the service manual was cribbed straight from Nordstom. This story reinforces that. My experience with T-Mobile mirrors yours with AT&T, ie, really horrible customer service. In the case of T-Mobile, it was because of ignorance about their own products.

Hi, Mike ... thanks for sharing this experience and idea. if I could offer one suggestion, it would be to paint a picture of what the future would look like if your system were in place. By this I mean show us the scenario, this is how the world works "today" and this is how it will look "tomorrow." Help us see how we -- the people you want to help build the idea, as well as the people who will be "amplifying" -- fit into this new picture. In short, what is the sizzle? To continue that metaphor, I'm not sure you are showing us the steak. I think you may be showing us the cow. To do this --paint pictures -- you will need to abandon the traditional PPT approach. I suggest Presentation Zen and Guy Kawasaki's suggestions for pitching to a VC: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html#axzz1LWxwhb2K

Steve, I think the more troublesome point is the possibility that publishers might move content off the web and onto iPhone applications. Certainly, they are unlikely to do so in the short run, since the universe of people who read news sites on a computer+browser is much larger than the universe that does so on an iPhone, iPad or iPodTouch -- whether on browser or app. But that threat is, I believe, a real one. It is that potential balkanization of content -- off the web and onto iPad apps -- that causes my angst. Look at the WSJ iPad app: no highlight/copy, no visible URLs to snag. A very tightly controlled one-way communication environment: old school, in other words. Regarding user experience, however, I think the constraints that Apple has fashioned around iPhone apps are comparable to the constraints that made Mac computers "just work" when the PC world was an anarchy of mismatched software and hardware. The mainstream consumer benefits -- the lunatic fringe (edge case geeks) and early adopters, not so much. An anecdote about controlling the store: I was watching a Harvard Business School video this weekend - one on the continuing gender gap in salaries. What ad was served up before the video? One for Trojan condoms! I don't think that Harvard would have been very happy had they known this -- does that make them "bad" should they decide to exert control over the user experience associated with their videos? I think not, at least in this case. And that's how I think about the iTunes store. Disclaimer: I own AAPL stock. And my S.O. works for MSFT.

I know it's not the same, but you need to visit The Central Market in Shoreline. Don't remember if it was here when you last lived here!

"Ends on 22 July" means, to me, that the 22nd is the Last Day of the offer. However, the offer appears to have actually ended on Tuesday 21 July .... since at 10.20 am Pacific the Kindle version is not free. Chris, I would have expected clarity from a wordsmith.

Hi, David - did you see my not-as-nice response to David Carr -- No More Free Content : http://bit.ly/keg_free I debunk the implication that newspapers consumers pay for content with their subscription fees. We don't - we pay for delivery (maybe). Subscription revenue doesn't pay the cost of newsprint (on average, based on date in Media Economics). Grumble, grumble, grumble. That's not to say that news organizations don't need a new business model. They do. Just like Every Other Institution challenged by the move from scarcity to "abundance" (head nod to Chris Anderson). But the business model failure is not the fault of subscribers.

I've written quite a bit about finance and this election. But I guess I haven't written enough! You might be interested in this: What Is A Leadership PAC?, http://uspolitics.about.com/od/finance/a/leadership_pac.htm or this 2008 Federal Election Price Tag: $5.3 Billion, http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2008/10/24/2008-election-price-tag-53-billion.htm

Dave, YouTube has pulled the interviews. :-/