One hour and counting and I still haven’t been able to cancel my order (Flip camcorder) through Dell. Adding insult to injury, it was Dell that messed up the original order. I paid for express shipping, so I could receive the item on 12/13. Receiving it on 1/8/2010 doesn’t do me any good. Happy Holidays … I won’t be surprised when your stock price hits 8.37 again.

Note: You can follow the saga on my Twitter account. 1 hr 15 min and counting …

Alas, the saga has ended and it only took 1 hr 58 minutes. I must admit the last rep was very helpful.

After countless hours of research, I ordered a new laptop (yes, I am giving up on macs- another post) from Lenovo. I customized the laptop and before I hit “buy” I was compelled to call customer service. Regardless to say, I had the single best customer service experience I have had in years. Job well done!

So far, we have received great press with the launch of Newssift. At the same time, user feedback has been positive but qualitative findings suggest that the UI is not entirely intuitive and our corpus needs to be larger. Our next release begins to address both matters.

Using my family as a case study(we never shop Wal-Mart and only buy music through iTunes), it was interesting to see that only Wal-Mart sells more music than iTunes. Apple continues to tighten its grip on music sales and reshape how we listen and buy music.

Like most of America, I am sick and tired of hearing and reading about the iPhone. No it won’t save lives, nor cure cancer, but it will blend. Watch and enjoy.

I guess this will put to bed the Skype naysayers. With Wal-Mart’s distribution, Skype will have access 84% of U.S. households (Source: AC Nielsen).

In addition to selling the pre-paid cards, Wal-Mart will be the first major retailer to dedicate a section to Skype equipment. The deal with Wal-Mart is a huge win for Skype. Skype hopes it will help drive usage among the mainstream and build the Skype name into household brand.

Another step forward toward ubiquity.

Reported today, Microsoft and Yahoo have re-enter talks to strike a deal to help fend off Google. How many times have we heard these whispers?

A Yahoo-Microsoft combination would account for 38% of all U.S. searches compared to Google’s dominate position of 48% of all searches. This will certainly close the gap domestically, but until both parties improve their efforts to monetize search they will be playing catch up.

Also, a deal could conceivably help Microsoft to re-energize their MSN and Live.com brands or better yet kill them off in favor of Yahoo. However, in the end, it will all come down the integration or lack thereof.

Although there are upsides to be sure, bigger doesn’t always mean better.

Great article on GigaOm concerning Cisco’s $3.2 billion purchase of WebEx. As Om noted with 2 million customers (many in the SMBs marketplace), there is seemingly little downside.

From burning laptops to ill-conceived viral marketing campaigns, Business 2.0 tracks the Top 10 Tech Flops.

My 13 year old daughter has already asked for one. Wow … Steve Jobs is a master marketer. I think I am sure he has another winner on his hands.

Stock Price (1/9): 92.50 Up 7.10 (8.31%)