Labor Day
I love Sunday night, when everything is possible. Even this trail-ender, leading up to the Labor Day weekend. Everybody goes into the week faking it:
- Monday is the day to get things lined up for triage. Employ preemptive phone calls and IMs to head off buck-passing assignments by peers and superiors bent on getting out of town Wednesday. "Hey, are you going to that____ on Thursday, I'm booked already." By the time Thursday rolls around to check on whether I'm actually busy, the boss is gone.
- Tuesday--Make East Coast calls after lunch Pacific time when Easterners have started to slip away at 4PM. Leave voicemail wherever possible, preferably suggesting a Monday meeting to get a head start on the next week. Two birds, one stone: guilt trip over early departure, confusion over scheduling a Monday meeting that resolves to not even talking about it until Tuesday.
- Wednesday--Make West Coast calls after lunch, winnowing down available responses to those who are manning battle stations for executives already disengaged. Chances of setting up any meetings or direct interaction: zero. Blackberry takes over after lunch.
- Thursday--Feels like Friday, which is cancelled.
- Friday
Nonetheless, this week offers some interesting possibilities. GTalk has created a competitive reality for both IM and VoIP, smoking Skype out with an extended headless API for embedding Skypeness in federated apps. GTalk won't be far behind, particularly on Pocket PCs and tablets running EVDO. As the delta between connections shrinks, so does the difference between streaming and downloading. Radio flips this week, not six months from now. The paidcontent.orgs and Om Maliks of the podosphere bypass CNN just like they bypass the New York Times, which has become a ratification engine for the blogosphere.
More later...