Great post today. You are more correct than you know. Back in 2000 a friend of mine at Army Intelligence (stop chuckling) informed me that the media houses were hiring MI (military intel) (okay you can chuckle a little bit) but the purpose was highly classified. Why would the government classify something the private media is doing? That is all I can say.

With regard to today's 'Media Disconnect' I would like to share a story: A few years ago, a close friend of mine was stuck at home in Atlanta with a brief illness. He is a Senior Producer at a major news network. I happened to be passing through town and spent the night at his house. In the morning, over coffee, he told me he would let me listen in on his conference call if I promised to stay quiet. It goes without saying, that it is bad form or unethical to allow an outsider to be on the line when other participants are unaware of you presence, but we are close friends and he knew I would find it fascinating. I don't have anything really shocking to share about the experience except to say I found it a bit chilling.

I have never forgotten the call and how I felt about it ever since for one particular reason: There must have been 15 different Producers or Executives running through the days news in a conference room explaining their status on each story. The tone of the conference call was jovial and cynical with an occasional joke about how they knew how predictable a particular story was going to be.

Why it disturbed me so much is that the process didn't allow room for disagreement or challenging of any take on a story. The Executive Producer running the meeting was setting the tone and each Producer seemed to be programmed on an acceptable approach. There was no discord, there was no debate. Day after day, I watch the mainstream television media and see certain stories never make it on the air. The executives at these networks have programmed their employees with what is acceptable and it was clear to me from the conference call that day, that you might have a long career if you toe the company line.

Yesterday as you certainly know the Madrid Stock Exchange practically exploded with housing and construction firms losing up to 13% in one day’s trading.

Spain has been building more homes than other country in Europe and the bubble is of huge proportions. This was just Act I.

I mentioned Hendaye last year and these last weeks I have seen in the San Sebastian area housing construction has rocketed.

The interesting thing is I planned to invest in a bigger apartment nearer the beach and I met several realtors, they all told me the same story, nothing is selling,

the market has stalled, mainly because the buyers have been priced out of the market. So I have put off any plans for the present.

I followed the whole Madrid debacle on Spanish TV and though the government has tried to calm things down, the house price collapse and that of connected industries has begun.

The major banks were also losers with a fall of 3% to 5% on Tuesday.
This has alarmed the Brits who are big buyers in Spain.

Search engines have long generated the same results for queries whether the person searching was a mom, mathematician or movie star. Now, who you are and what you're interested in is starting to affect the outcome of your search.

Google Inc. and a wide range of start-ups are trying to translate factors like where you live, the ads you click on and the types of restaurants you search for into more-relevant search results. A chef who searched for "beef," for example, might be more likely to find recipes than encyclopedia entries about livestock. And a film buff who searched for a new movie might see detailed articles about the making of the film, rather than ticket-buying sites.

The company plans eventually to offer personalization based on a user's Web-browsing history -- including sites people visited without going through Google -- when users agree to let Google track it.

Also, within three to five years, Google will start serving up personalized ads to searchers, says Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for Search Products & User Experience. Another possibility: reflecting a user's interest in watching videos or searching inside books.

"You can't believe anything you see or read," complains Ted Murphy. "You think those judges on American Idol want to drink those giant glasses of Coke?"

It's funny to hear him say this because Murphy, who founded a Tampa-based interactive ad agency called MindComet, also runs a side business that pays bloggers to write nice things about corporate sponsors -- without unduly worrying about whether or not bloggers disclose these arrangements to readers. (A scan of relevant blog searches strongly suggests that, often, they don't.)