Ten years ago, in a fit of frustration with a modem and a phone cord, I predicted that we would one day have a ubiquitous internet, that we would be able to just “jump on” from anywhere at anytime, and we would be able to access just about anything.

We are almost there, at least when it comes to the last part. I am one of those “heavy users” of my web-enabled iPhone. I am constantly emailing, pondering the weather, and googling things. I check and update my Facebook and Twitter accounts compulsively. And, perhaps the best part of all, I listen to my stations on Slacker and Pandora.

On my bike. In a train. Under the sun. Walking in the rain. And in a plethora of other Seussian places.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg as Pandora sees it. At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Pandora announced that its listenership is up four times since 2008, and that it is about to unleash a new partnership with Ford whereby drivers can listen to Pandora through their car stereo. A new web-enabled nightstand clock radio from Sony will have a Pandora app. And new TVs coming soon to a Best Buy near you will have built-in Pandora access.

And so while the Pandora of Greek mythology unwittingly opened her box (technically, it was a jar, but who’s keeping track?) of social and physical ills, the modern Pandora is opening a completely different box. It is a box of utter and complete internet goodness, connectivity and awesome music.

Suddenly I feel so prescient for the dreams rising from my moment of frustration a decade ago.

Pandora is now basking in the black ink of $40 million revenue last year, along with its first-ever quarter of profitability. With listeners come opportunities to sell advertising, and Pandora makes sure that everyone gets a hefty dose of it (the many creative wraps and columnar banners practically reach out and grab you).

While there is always something to be said for dictating your own playlist and knowing which song comes next, there’s also a lot of fun in just feeling lucky about what Pandora might toss into your station. Thanks to Pandora, I have been exposed to some songs and artists the likes of which I would never in a million years stumble into on my own. Like Storyville, the Austin-based blues-rock band (yep, I am rocking out to a Storyville station created by my research buddy, and conveniently co-opted for my listening pleasure).

But it is the ability to take Pandora and the like, not just in my iPhone, but now into a car and into a clock radio, that bespeaks the incipient omnipresence of all things internet.

And that’s a song you might just hear me singing as I ride down the highways between Canyon and Amarillo.

Dr “Turn Up The Volume!” Gerlich

In just the few years that social networking sites have been popular, they have proven their worth a thousand times over. It started with apocryphal story in 2006 of a US student arrested in Egypt who was able to tweet to the rest of the world while he was being driven to jail (his action alerted friends and others; the US was then able to effect his release). This last summer, Twitterers in Iran went crazy during their national election. It was nearly a call to arms amid the allegations of corruption and fraud. As a result of this, I witnessed impromptu street protests in Cambridge MA (near Harvard) by Iranian students.

And now with the tragedy of the Haitian earthquake this week, Twitter and Facebook are proving to be invaluable lifelines between a ravaged nation and the rest of the world. What little cell phone and internet access there remains in Haiti is being used to communicate with the masses, serving both as window to the devastation as well as communication channel. There are also Facebook groups forming, such as Earthquake Haiti (with over 109,000 members as of 12:00 noon CST Thursday 14 Jan 2010).

Sure beats the week-old grainy black-and-white footage I might get to see when I was growing up in the 1960s.

Now you don’t have to convince me of the value of social networks. I recently went on record as saying, that if you don’t have a Twitter and/or Facebook account, you may as well call yourself a Neanderthal. You see, these accounts are the 2010 equivalent of a basic email address 10 or 15 years ago. They are no longer novelty; no, they are powerful (and reliable) communications platforms. I have noticed a profound switch in my personal communications in the last two years, with students, family and friends trending toward more Twitter Direct Messages (DMs) and Facebook Messages. Who needs email when you have never-ending lifelines like these (as well as text messaging)?

This one-to-many model is unprecedented in the annals of communication. One could argue that it got its start with personal home pages back in the 1990s, but this is much better. You don’t need a computer to make changes, just a cell phone and a flicker of signal. You don’t need to know one iota of HTML, and yet your voice can be as powerfully heard as the pros with the microphones and satellite uplinks.

The utter destruction that has befallen Haiti is terrible beyond words (and definitely far more undeserved than the inciting words uttered by US evangelist Pat Robertson). Social media critics can all go away now, because we have all seen on a global scale just how valuable they are, not just as efficient means for people to communicate in general, but more specifically as perhaps the only way to communicate during times of peril.

And that alone is something to tweet home about.

Dr “ReTweet This” Gerlich

It’s always fun to watch old movies that have some element of computing in them, like War Games. In that epic Broderick/Sheedy film, there is a now-ancient IMSAI 8080 computer that used enormous 8″ floppy disks. And those massive floppies could hold fraction of a grain of rice compared to today’s terabyte external hard drives.

But regardless of storage capacity, all through this time we have grown accustomed to the idea of toting our data (i.e., documents, images, etc.) with us on some form of storage media. In recent years, though, an alternative has emerged that unshackles the ball and chain from our ankle, and lets us compute freely.

And that alternative is cloud computing, of course. While a there is a growing number of both free and fee-based providers of these virtual data storage barns, the best-known of these is Google Docs, offering not just a place to store and share Word docs, spreadsheets and PowerPoints, but also the ability to create and modify them without ever having to actually own the expensive Microsoft software.

And now Google has raised the bar by announcing that Google Docs will be renamed Google Any File, thereby removing the file-type limitations of Docs and thus allowing users to store just about anything in the cloud.

Except for your dust-collecting sports equipment, perhaps.

Google’s move signals a shift in the way of thinking about cloud computing. It’s more than just storing frequently-used documents in a common place; no, now it’s simply about storing anything and everything.

And for free, of course.

The notion of storing things in a completely intangible format is still a little unsettling for many people, who fear server crashes and hackers, and who still need to feel something. As if being able to fondle a hard drive is going to make those files any safer.

It also reveals just how intense the battle for cloud computing dominance is becoming. Worse yet, there’s hardly a nickel to be made in data storage, since it is so cheap and abundant. And for that matter, even software is becoming worthless. Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine and author of Free, pretty much predicts this de-pricing of certain apps. Fortunately for Google, they are really not a search engine or data storage company; no, they are an advertising company.

And I’m sure they will mine all manner of interesting little personal facts about me as I push my files their way. It’ll all come back to haunt me in well-targeted advertising in future search queries and emails, as well as ads that will probably start to appear very soon in the Any File workspace.

As for me, I don’t mind it a bit. I have been working in the clouds for several years now. Before I travel, I always upload my various projects to Google Docs so that I can access them from anywhere regardless of which laptop I am lugging around. I can leave flash drives and other such storage media at home, lightening my loud both literally and metaphorically. And as long as Google continues to give everything away, they will continue to get the lion’s share of the users.

One need not look far to find dozens of clouds prospering, and, to be honest, embraced by users in spite of their often vocal resistance. For example, the dozens of photo storage and sharing sites like Flickr are nothing but big image clouds. And my new favorite LaLa allows me to mirror my iTunes library in the cloud, allowing me to access it from anywhere. (Last December, I was in charge of music at the College of Business’ holiday party. I created a rocking holiday playlist on iTunes and Lala, which I accessed on my laptop via university wifi, and then pumped it through a PA system. Voila!)

So if this means we need not carry data around with us, it also means we need not tote 8-pound laptops, either, as evidenced by the proliferation of tiny netbooks that pretty much good at just one thing: accessing the web.

Sure beats trying to compute on the beast that the IMSAI was. Even if Matthew Broderick was in the enviable position of playing opposite Ally Sheedy. Just sayin’.

Dr “Shall We Play A Game?” Gerlich

Although I like to think of myself as being on the vanguard of all things tech, there are some dirty, dark secrets lurking in my closet which I will now share. You see, it was only in April 2008 that I stopped buying CDs. With over 1500 albums in my collection since 1985 (I was an early adopter of the CD player back then), I just wanted to have the tangible product.

Maybe it’s my Baby Boomer mindset, but I had a hard time giving up CDs. They were crack cocaine to this music-loving aging rock-n-roller. But I finally affixed an iTunes patch to my arm. I am proud to say I have kicked my addiction, and now buy everything online or listen for free or cheap at Pandora or LaLa.

That music has gone digital is evidenced by the fact that iTunes has sold well over 6 billion songs. In a few years, we may not even see CDs in stores. And movies are quickly going digital (although I have a secondary addiction going on there as well). But it is books that are trying (and struggling a bit) to cross the digital frontier, because reading a book is an entirely different experience than watching a movie or listening to music.

But that hasn’t stopped what is about to be an onslaught of e-readers, as folks at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas discovered.

Books are my third addiction, yet I have an Amazon Kindle e-reader. The only thing is, I use it for newspaper and magazine subscriptions only. I have yet to download a book, because I love the tactile experience of curling up on the sofa (and not in a Snuggie, thank you very much) and drifting off to sleep with a good book. It’s just not the same with an electronic gadget.

Still, I can’t help but think we are on the cusp of the rest of the revolution here. And if you happen to work for a local chain like Hastings, you have to be worried, because your mainstays are (and always have been) music, movies and books. That leaves video games, which are likely to also go completely digital before long. (Point to ponder: invest in Apple, and ditch your brick-and-mortar stocks.)

The new e-readers coming to stores this year are much more powerful than the early renditions sold by Amazon and Sony, and most recently Barnes & Noble. Once you toss in some web compatibility and access, you effectively have a tablet computer (which sounds amazingly like the new Mac Tablet rumored to be coming this March). And once that happens, it’s Katie bar the door. Marketers will have a field day intruding in your life. Imagine book suggestions while your are reading. Imagine song suggestions while you are listening. Imagine your savings running dry.

But there are also other aspects of e-readers that perplex my colleagues and me (click here to see the prototype web site of what my GNU MediaLab team is up to). We are about to launch a huge study on how USAmericans use social media, smartphones and e-readers. We have a hunch there are significant differences between how men and women engage these applications and devices, particularly the e-reader.

And it is these hypothesized differences that have enormous implications for marketers. We already know that men and women prefer different book genres, but do they also read them differently? And by virtue of that, will e-readers appeal to both sexes? Can e-readers even begin to do this? For example, while I enjoy memoirs and travelogues, my primary interest in reading is the acquisition of knowledge. And while I recently read Eat, Pray, Love by Liz Gilbert, I know that my male experience was far different from that of the 6 million women who read it and turned it into a New York Times #1 bestseller.

Which leaves me in a pretty puzzling place. I am wrestling with going completely digital, yet also trying to investigate exactly how we (all of us) use these darn things. I am old enough to still crave the holding and fondling of the tangible artifacts of our culture and prosperity, yet academically inquisitive to the point of wanting to know how this change is occurring.

And what these changes mean for people in my field.

Because if we all go completely digital, I see a lot of BAM stores closing in the future. I see a lot of books, DVDs and CDs in garage sales. And I see a lot of newly opened space in our homes.

Now if they could just find a way to digitize my Baby Boomer brain. Because I can’t remember a damn thing anymore.

Dr “Can I Get An Amen?” Gerlich

Back in the Stone Age of technology (read: about 15-20 years ago), we knew that computers and database technologies would one day lead us into some sort of a promised land. We weren’t exactly quite sure how this would play out, and to be honest, we weren’t sure we would know it when we saw it. But we have indeed already tasted the milk and honey of this very cool place.

And at the risk of repeating myself for the sixth semester in a row, I must continue to wax poetic about the book Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger (2007). For it is in this epic tome that the notion of our seemingly random yet hyper-connected digital lives are explained in painstaking yet pitifully obvious detail.

You see, back in those days just after the earth cooled, we lived very linear one-dimensional lives. We were the living embodiment of the Dewey Decimal System (which Weinberger dismantles quite handily), with everything and everyone classified in a typology that was as limiting as a straight jacket. You were either this or that, but never both. Once you had an ID number, you were cast for life. And perish the thought that you might represent something not yet considered (or avoided at the time the typology was made, like certain world religions). It was tough sledding if you didn’t match an established identifying number.

The abstraction that Weinberger presents is that we exist on multiple planes (and always have, for that matter). It’s like recognizing there are many leaves on a tree, some on different branches, some at different heights, some on different sides. Yet these leaves could all theoretically be connected in a zillion different ways if you were to try to take a needle and thread to connect groups of ten or more.

Let me put this in simpler terms. I have been tinkering around with Facebook a lot lately, trying to unravel its Suggestion Engine. You know…that’s the “You Might Know…” suggestions you always get whenever you check your FB page. How in the heck does it seemingly put 2 and 2 together so well?

By studying the linkages already established by you and the folks with whom you are friends. Like all those leaves on that tree, I have a very multi-layered and contextualized life. I have friends from high school, college, grad school, Chicago, Indiana, bicycling buddies from all over the world, church friends, Texas friends, WT students and alums…and the list goes on. Some folks fit into more than one category, while most fit into only one.

But somehow FB finds a way to drill down through my existing friends, and their friends, and so forth, to try to help me find (and reconnect with) even more friends. Sometimes it misses, but many times it scores a direct hit.

Never mind all that six degrees of separation business.

A similar engine is at work over at Pandora, where their Music Genome Project allows users to create their own “stations” built around an artist or genre. Pandora proceeds to then push songs our way that it thinks we might like based on the characteristics of the chosen artist or genre, to which we can approve or disapprove. The result, after much personal tweaking, is a finely-crafted station that just rocks our socks off.

There is a much simpler way to describe what is going on here, and it is tags. Whereas Dewey only allowed us one tag for life (Biography, for example), the new way allows everything and everyone to have multiple tags. It’s how I organize my photos (e.g., Colorado, vacation, RMNP, 2009, family, etc.). I can then search on one or more tags to pull from multiple albums to create new collections of photos for a specific occasion. It would like if I wanted to create a slideshow for my daughters’ weddings some day, and I want to cull 100 shots from 25,000 images. Imagine how hard that would be without the ability to sort by tags.

So what does all of this mean in the broader context of marketing? There has to be some application, right? Of course there is! Amazon has been doing this for several years now with their suggestion engine, based on your past purchasing and browsing history, as well as that of others. It explains all those emails you get from them, and all those compelling audience-of-one welcome pages every time you login.

The point is this: While the world may have once seemed orderly in a linear kind of way, it now appears to be quite random and miscellaneous…until you look at it through the lens of connectivity. Whoever can match people and products will reap enormous profit. A quick Amazon search for Everything Is Miscellaneous netted me a few other related titles I did not know existed…and I plan to order them for my library.

I’m happy, and Amazon is even happier. That’s a promised land I like to call home.

Dr “Connecting The Dots” Gerlich

Marketing is a funny subject. It’s all about trying to get people to buy your stuff. Sure, we talk upbeat about how we’re all really your friends, and we just want to service your needs. It’s very altruistic sounding, and makes us out to be a bunch of caring big brothers.

Let me give you a piece of advice. Marketers are all pigs. I know. I am one. (And for the record, please note that my tongue is firmly planted in cheek.)

OK, some women say the same thing about men, but that’s not important now. Unless all marketers are men. Or all men are marketers. You decide.

It really is all about making money. Strip away all the feel-good relationship stuff and you will find, at its very core, marketing is about cash. Money. Lots of it. Nothing more, and nothing less. So go ahead and tell me that beneath my hat are a couple of horns, that I have a pointed tail tucked in somewhere, and there’s a pitchfork on the front porch.

But even if my guilty admission still raises your hackles and makes you want to throw a few punches at me and my marketing buddies, please note that there is a rather natural form of justice already at work in the world. It comes in the form of product failure. Big, fat juicy failure. Expensive. Cash-depleting. And even embarrassing.

Like New Coke. Introduced in 1985 amid much media hype and consumer hysteria, the Coca Cola Company managed to misread market research data. In the process they were deluded into thinking they should alter the time-honored formula of their flagship product so that it more resembled that of its chief competitor. Nothing like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

There are well over 12,000 new food items introduced each and every year, and countless other non-food products. It is the norm for at least 80% of these to fail within the first five years. It’s not a whole lot unlike going to Las Vegas and losing your shirt most of the time. Every once in a while you get lucky, but those casinos didn’s get big and glitzy by giving money away.

And that’s exactly how it works with marketing. The shopping public is like the casinos in that we only pay out if the marketer is lucky enough to have truly provided us with something without which we cannot live. All other times, we just keep the money for the house.

The Marketing Freeway is littered with the debris of many notable product failures. In spite of all the good efforts by the marketer, missteps are routinely made each and every day. We are left to trip and stumble over them, and while the marketers may hope we all just forget about those errors, they never really go away entirely. Like a bad scar.

So if this makes consumers feel better about everything, then be it. It can be poetic when the big guy falls down. And like most people, I will confess to enjoying the taste of schadenfreude in the morning from time to time.

But none of this serves to lessen the importance of what we study in a marketing course. We still have to consider the various marketing variables, the latest data and trends, the competitive landscape, etc. And we must do this knowing full well that the odds are actually pretty good that we will still fail. Miserably. On our face.

It’s a pretty unforgiving world out there. And the casinos are still dealing the cards. It’s enough to give you a headache. Just don’t pass the Ben-Gay Aspirin and hope to get any results.

Dr “I’ve Enjoyed The Journey” Gerlich

In today’s fast-paced high-tech world, it is amazing how quickly something can go from must-have new gadget, to “so last year.” Take the GPS, for example. While civilian GPS units have only been available commercially since the late-1990s, it is in just the last three years that prices have plummeted. This proletariat drift has allowed many people to be able to afford a personal navigation device for help in getting from Point A to Point B.

Of course, sometimes it’s more fun meandering on the way from A to B, but if we need to get there in a hurry, I know I can rely on my TomTom to practically cut through traffic.

But during these last three years, yet another tech change has occurred that is about to push the stand-alone GPS into the tar pit forever. Unless Garmin, Magellan, et al, can reinvent themselves. As in quickly.

And that change is the GPS phone app for smartphones. Who needs a separate GPS when you can just use your phone? Let’s face it, it is a hassle to have to lug the GPS around, moving it among your various vehicles. You have to take it indoors at the motel, lest someone break in a steal it. Having an iPhone app that does the same thing (which is indeed possible on the 3G and 3GS models) makes everything much simpler.

Which all goes to say that no matter how successful you think you might be with your gadgetry and coolness, there’s always someone catching up from behind. The typewriter manufacturers of the world probably never thought they would see the day of their demise, but the 1980s showed them otherwise. It has only gotten worse since then. Our landfills are teeming with cast off products that were once marvels, but are now small boat anchors.

And if I were in the GPS business, I’d be pretty busy figuring out how to respond to this new threat. because the road from Point A to Point B is littered with the jetsam and flotsam of technological innovations past. And there is no meandering allowed on the way to the graveyard.

Dr “I Don’t Need Directions Anyway” Gerlich

A few months ago, I came over to my sofa to play with Cupid, our little Jack Russell/Lhasa Apso mix. He was snoozing away an evening, so I came in close to give him a quick belly rub and nuzzle. Little did I know that Cupid had a dog treat hidden under his paw. Not understanding the don’t-bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you-rule, he thought I was coming in expressly for the purpose of stealing his treat. So he did what most any dog would do. He bit me. Right on the nose.

In a strange kind of way, people can act a lot like dogs. Just step in between them and their intended purchase on any given Black Friday, and you will see what I mean. Fortunately for people with wounded noses, Black Friday’s lesser cousin Cyber Monday is happening today. If rabid crowds, cold temperatures, traffic, etc., are not your thing, you can sit in the comfort of your home or office and shop to your little heart’s content.

It’s the e-commerce equivalent of a retailing PR stunt, and there are many sales to be found. Free shipping, discounted prices, and more are being offered to those who simply do not like to venture forth into the dog-eat-dog brick-and-mortar world.

Analysts and economists are moderately happy to see that total sales this last weekend hit $41.2 billion. More people shopped, but the per capita spending amount was down $30. Last year, Cyber Monday sales hit $846 million, and are expected to climb this year. Still, this is only about 2% of total retail expenditures compared to the last three days’s worth of shopping. While it’s nothing to sneeze at, I don’t think that BAM retailers need to fear their rapid extinction.

Which brings up an interesting point: While e-commerce is certainly a legitimate form of retailing, and one that cannot be overlooked, it is really a virtual side show compared to the retail feeding frenzy that occurs in the real world…the real world of crowds, climate and traffic.

I should know. I was out there on Black Friday morning shooting scenes for an upcoming feature mockumentary on the Black Friday phenomenon. Actually, I started on Thanksgiving night by interviewing people already camped out in front of Best Buy. I then ventured over to the Walmart on Coulter, where I saw workers at 7pm literally gazing over three main arterial aisles cleared of everything…waiting for pallets to be brought in and stacked high with sale merchandise. (As a sidebar, I might mention that WM was none too happy that I was capturing the scene on my DV camcorder. I had folks following me around as if I were a shoplifter.)

By 4am I was back, capturing the scene at Best Buy, Toys ‘R Us, Target, Kohl’s. Old Navy, Walmart and more. Folks were orderly except at Old Navy, where the front door had been ripped from its hinges at 3am. For the life of me, I cannot see how cheap blue jeans could cause a mob scene that caused property damage.

Which is why I was extremely happy to be mere spectator last Friday, and not participant. I am all too happy to do my shopping online. I really don’t need a pseudo-holiday to launch it, but I do savor the fact that I can save my sanity while saving a few bucks. I like warmth. I hate crowds. I detest traffic.

And to be perfectly honest, I don’t like being out and about with other humans who forget that they are…well, human. That animal instinct stuff is best left to the animals.

Dr “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” Gerlich

There’s something nice about the holidays. For most of us, they are a mandated shut-down, a time when work ceases and we all get to rest. Relax. Eat. Watch TV. Shop. Sleep.

There have always been a few businesses, though, that needed to stay open, just in case of an emergency (like drug stores) or selected restaurants (to feed those folks who don’t want to be bothered with the cooking). But by and large, holidays are a day off, a much-deserved respite from the regular 9-5 grind.

but this year our prolonged economic recession we are witnessing an increasing number of stores opening anyway on Thanksgiving. “Forget the turkey. Forget football. We’ve got to sell stuff!”

The thinking is that, if they stay open on Thanksgiving, they might be able to grab a little more of the shopper’s holiday dollars. It’s the same thinking that causes many retailers to be open 7 days a week, and others to stay open ’round the clock.

But I am not convinced that it’s worth the effort chasing those dollars. Fast-food vendor Chick-Fil-A is closed on Sundays because of their spiritual convictions, and they do not appear to be hurting by sacrificing 1/7 of the week.

Yet I also see the conundrum. If a business were only open 2 days a week, countless customers would be lost. So the urge is to be open as much as possible, even if it means racking up huge operating expenses in the process. “No Customer Left Behind” is the mantra.

The only way these expanded store hours are going to work, though, is if customers actually tear themselves away from hearth and home. And on a day in which most folks would rather…well, stay near hearth and home. What on earth could possibly break me (or you) away from all that to run to Walmart? I’m not even sure I would get up from the sofa for a $600 LCD TV.

Which brings me to my point: Take a break, guys. Sure, the recession may have you scrambling and wondering if you’ll even be open come January, but let us all…your customers and employees…have a day off. God knows it’s going to be pure shopping hell on Friday anyway. Turn off the lights. Send everyone home. And have a genuinely Happy Thanksgiving.

I know I am.

Dr “Someone Pass The Gravy, Please” Gerlich

In the internet era, it is pretty much impossible to just disappear (as documented in a Wired Magazine feature this month). Unless you are D.B. Cooper, the odds are good that someone will find you. You can run, but you can’t hide.

Which is why I am laughing hysterically at the Canadian woman who has lost her insurance benefits, thanks to Facebook. Originally diagnosed with severe depression, she took a leave of absence with complete benefits. But her insurance agent happened to…um…be browsing Facebook one day and found this woman having way too much fun. She sure didn’t look depressed.

And the pictures were posted there to prove it.

I’ve warned my students a thousand times, and I will warn you again: Be careful what you post on social media sites. Remember, these are social media sites, not private diaries. Sure, you can lock down your status updates and tweets, but if you allow the wrong person to “friend” you, it could still be game over.

Now I am not saying that we should all be prudes. I’m simply advising (very strongly) that we carefully select our “voice” in social media, because it could turn around and kick us in the backside. We could be fired. We could be denied admission to grad school. We might miss the job opportunity of a lifetime.

Now I am all in favor of transparency, but with a measure of caution. It is good of us all to want to embrace authenticity on this post-modern highway. But to mangle a popular cliche, the road to hell is paved with careless Facebook admissions. And now that Google and Bing index all public tweets (no kidding), something you said last Thursday could appear quite high in a search query someone does right before The Big Interview.

We’ve all heard of drunk dialing. It’s what silly inebriated people do when they’re out with the gang, about 12 hours before they sober up and realize they have done something foolish. Google now has Mail Goggles, an opt-in program for G-Mail users who fear they may drunkenly email incriminating messages late on a Friday night.

But we have nothing to stop us from drunk Facebooking. Given the ready access we now have to phone apps for FB and Twitter, it is all too easy to chronicle our exploits blow by blow as they happen, so that our adoring fans unable to join us for this misadventure can see in graphic detail every last bottle of beer we consumed.

And the table on which we danced.

While I may sympathize with this woman’s condition (assuming it is legitimate), I do not sympathize with nor condone her sheer stupidity for telling the world of her shenanigans. If anything, she may now need to return to that bar, not so much for a good time as much as to pull herself up out of this very real depression.

Dr “In Your Face” Gerlich