You attract them, you screen them, you interview them, you hire and train them, and then they leave you. It is estimated that employee turn over costs U.S. companies over one billion dollars annually.

Users who participate in the Google Apps for Your Domain service from Google have a new option available, a custom start page for members of the organization.

Recently I asked if your business was ready for sudden attention. I wanted to follow up on that post with some thoughts about what you should do when you get a new influx of traffic. It’s not enough to do business as usual is you want to retain your new visitors. You need to improve to meet the new challenge.

Tony Ruscoe, so far an Internet Explorer user, upgraded to IE7 and wrote a review. Firefox is winning 4 to 0, thanks to issues like these:

Apple’s iPod has already conquered land, now it’s conquering air with the integration of iPod into airline’s in-flight entertainment systems. What’s next for iPod, scuba gear integration?

Yahoo’s CEO Terry Semel told the Engage 2006 conference in London that estimates of the Internet advertising market do not account for the impact of ads outside of a PC.

The Zune came out today, as well as news that Microsoft is paying Universal Music $1 per Zune sold, in order to get Universal’s music in its Zune music store. Looks like the music industry and the mafia aren’t so different after all

My entry on the “independent” vendor comparison hosted by Citrix’s German marketing firm has stimulated a fair amount of interest. A couple of German bloggers seemed to have similar takes on the apparent conflict of interest and hidden sponsorship of the comparison site. I’ve had lots of hits on the article since WebProNews ran it on their site.

So, the news is official: (and yes, I agree with IBM’s question as to why Sun didn’t join one of the community projects focused on delivering open source implementations of Java SE, ME and EE instead of trying to build their own community.)

Zippy is a new meta search engine that queries other major engines and returns results in a format most suited for Webmasters and SEOs. The site was launched in September by the seasoned SEO Dave Naylor, and provides some valuable tools for site optimization.

Damn, I take a few days off of blogging and the New York Times (er, John Markoff) goes and invents Web 3.0.

I’ve been trying out the new Gmail Mobile email service on my mobile phone.

It is a truth held to be self-evident among IT professionals: geeks are from Krypton, suits are from Uranus. The antipathy between members of the code is poetry tribe and the non-IT managers for whom they often work is so common and all-prevailing that it has even become a marketing cliche-like the obnoxious propeller head in the CDW commercials who is always one-upping the guys from the Dilbert cubicles.

Have anyone ever been on the phone with a client after the job, where the client wants more information, needs a copy of the report, or just wants to spend some time discussing the implications of the report that the company generated for them?

Matt Asay believes that Sun’s rumored move to put the Java SE reference implementation under the GPL shows that “Sun is one of the few BigCo’s” that really gets open source.

Kami Watson Huyse has begun a very interesting experiment I’ll be watching with keen interest. In response to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ interview in PRSA’s Tactics, Kami has followed Wales’ advice and posted suggested changes to a Wikipedia entry in its related “discussion” section.

Tony Ruscoe stumbled upon a couple of Google Calendar related files that were only supposed to show to Google-internal IPs…

After what seemed like a very long flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas, Jolina, Karen and I have finally settled in.

Reuters and Pluck have announced a strategic partnership aimed at syndicating third-party blog content as part of Reuters news and information service. In return for its $7 million investment in Pluck, Reuters will receive an undisclosed share of ownership of the company.

All companies have a risk tolerance, some companies have a higher tolerance for risk than other companies do, many follow few lead.

Yahoo is making its way, one step at a time, into the mobile market.

On the web there is a meshing of a virtually unlimited number of value systems.

The House of Mouse has given former Rocketboom anchor Amanda Congdon a new home, where she will contribute to ABC News online and television broadcasts.

I bought a new microphone/headset combo at the weekend – a Logitech USB Headset 250. A good price at PC World with added bonuses: it’s Skype certified, and comes with 60 free SkypeOut minutes plus a month’s free voicemail. Nice additions to my existing Skype account.