May 2007

Dear Client,

One of the things that motivated us to start our Internet company originally had nothing to do with the Internet. It was disgust with our government and how we are governed—or more accurately, how special interests peddle influence in state and national government and we are left holding the bag. We saw the opportunity to provide tools that for the first time would allow ordinary citizens to participate in—and influence—the direction of pending legislation.

There are numerous examples over the last 12 years of how effective this has been. Huge government giveaways have been averted, while other opportunities have been missed.

A recent article on Wired Magazine’s website (www.wired.com) talks about how this process of monitoring our elected leaders has evolved over time. You can read it at http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/04/maplight. I still believe the two strongest attributes of the Internet are communication and the opportunity for self-governance. Both uses have grown beyond anyone’s imagination.

In terms of communication, we now use email more than we use postal mail. It looks like this trend will continue for some time. While that is good in many ways, it also has a disappointing aspect—in that historians will have a much tougher time documenting our lifestyle as there will be far fewer records available for them to track. Such is change, I guess.

Given the rapid growth of email, it isn’t surprising that some trusted sources are now starting to generate spam. One of these we have exempted from blocking in the past, Yahoo Groups, has started spewing enough spam for us to remove them from the exemption list. As such, if you subscribe to any YahooGroup lists, you may find some mail gets blocked. Complain to Yahoo, not us. Specifically, when they can kill the group called “finalrestingplace” we will reconsider exempting them.

On a personal note, the peppers and tomato plants are doing well. I decided to plant sunflowers in between the two as a sun and wind break. These will grow between 7 and 10 feet tall at maturity. Should be pretty nice!

Hope you have a great month!

Sincerely,

Ben Conner