We have seen the US and Canadian dollar be around par for awhile now but we have NOT seen Canadian stores change their prices. Even stores with both Canadian and US companies prices are very very different.

Are these stores gouging us?

I think Canadian stores are taking advantage of the situation and although they are making money now I am a little concerned. We are less then 2 months before Christmas holidays and if these stores continue to keep their current pricing model I think a lot of Canadians will be angry and seek alternative shopping.

Where are you shopping this Christmas?

I know I would prefer to shop locally but if the prices are not reflect of the actual costs I will most likely be shopping in the US or online. I think I am not the only one who feels that way and I think Canadian shop owners need to start seeing the big picture instead of the bit of cash they are making today.

What do you think?

Radiohead an English rock band announced that they had dropped their record label and will be selling their own content via their website. Madonna, Oasis and Jamiroquai quickly followed suite announcing that they also are dropping their record label. In one week Radiohead sold 1.2 million songs at $8 each.

Do you think that this will be the way of the future for already successful bands?

I can see record labels working well for new bands with little to no fan base. Once you have a fan base though a record label really does not add any value for musicians. I think we will see more and more artists moving away from their record labels because of the success of Radiohead.

Do you think they could have sold more if they had a record label?

A record label takes care of marketing and distribution of a new album. They of course do it at a hefty cost. Personally I think a record label would have produced a similar amount of sales for Radiohead. The problem of course is that Radiohead would have most likely made less. Also the consumer would have paid more for the CD. The real looser here is the record labels and music stores.

Will this put music stores out of business?

I don’t think so. Music stores that sell CD’s know that the industry is changing and have started to focus more on selling DVD’s and Video Games. The last time I went to HMV I noticed that less then a 1/3 of the store was actually devoted to selling music.

We had posted in April that Google will penalize people for selling text links. We also surmised that this would bring the fall to companies like Text Link Ads. Over the last week or so bloggers have finally seen that those selling links are being penalized through page rank. Lower page rank to them means a lower income.

Has Google with this penalization brought the Fear of Google God into you?

This may only be the beginning of penalization for those sites that sell links. If you do sell links you may want to add the nofollow to those links ASAP and notify your customers.

I know every site owner thinks that they could improve their own site. Your content could be more compelling to convince visitors to buy or visit more often. The look of your site could be a bit more polished. The functionality of your site could improve with various scripts. Also if only your site was search engine friendly to get more traffic to your site.

When you decided to make improvements to your site which one is more important?

Depending who you ask I am sure you will get a different answer on which one is a priority. When it comes to sites I believe that order of priorities are functionality (programming), design, content and then search engine optimization in that order.

What order would your priorities be and why?

Technology has been adapted into many organizations to help with communication, branding and to make life easier.

I was recently invited by a neighbour to attend his sermon at a local church. We packed up the family and made our way to the church expecting a traditional sermon. When we arrived and found our seats I did a quick look around. To my surprise I found a lot of technology being used at the church.

Some of the technology used was a reader board to display their web site and various up coming events. An overhead projector was displaying the agenda for the day. After the sermon I went home and decided to visit their site. Again I found more technology being used in RSS feeds, online donations, forums and more. I searched a few other church sites to see how they compared and found they have very similar technology usage.

With all of this technology being used by the Church does it detract or add to the experience?

PS – Let’s not turn this discussion into a religious debate.

Today I read the paper, watch some TV, listen to the radio and visited some sites. All of these presented some type of advertising on them but if you were to ask me if any of them stick out in my mind I would say ‘no’.

Is society at the point where we have blocked out advertising?

I know my brain mentally checks right out during commercials and ads are skipped right over. I know the online community is showing a lot of growth in advertising but is the mental blocking of ads the way to follow the Internet?