http://www.cooltown.com/vision-safety.htm

Click on "View vision" button and see what is already possible with existing technology - now, today.

Although I find it fascinating, I hadn't stopped to ponder how complex this idea is. The car must talk to you, check your schedule, contact nearest garage, verify parts availability, confirm arrival time, call a cab, communicate your destination, arrange pick-up of repaired vehicle and literally dozens of additional steps to complete this seemingly simple diversion without your participation.

Voice recognition, wireless communication among dozens of "devices" and scheduling-perfection itself must be present. Clearly, complexities are all cast aside in this vision to illustrate how easy our life might be made soon. Maybe.

The vision is compelling and Hewlett-Packard is quite serious in promoting possibilities. They've launched what they're calling "The Mobile e-Services Bazaar" at http://hpbazaar.com

In their own words:

To help fuel creation of innovative mobile e-services, HP has established mobile e-services bazaar. Combining an online community with a number of regional centers of innovation, mobile e-services bazaar is an eco-system of participants: application and service providers, mobile operators, and enterprises who collaborate to fuel rapid development of innovative new e-services.

Located around world, e-services bazaar is designed specifically to support growth of your e-service business.

This concept is actually an incubator for small business offering serious clout for participants and networking opportunities nearly undreamt-of by smaller companies. HP is on a quest for my "Waterfall Watch" and although I don't often gush about monstrous corporations, I'll make this one exception -- wish them best of luck and thank them for supporting little guy.

3) Try to reply to all of your email messages within 48 hours. If not, many people get annoyed and will think you're avoiding them.

4) If you publish an ezine make sure you place subscribe and unsubscribe instructions at bottom of every issue.

5) Don't use foul language in an email; that will get you nowhere. If you're upset about something, please state problem clearly along with how you'd like to see issue can be resolved.

6) If you visit a website and it's not to your liking, don't fire off a nasty email stating what a loser site owner must be. Remember what your Mom use to say "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all."

7) Make sure every page of your website contains an email address to contact you. Please don't make me fill out a long form just to ask you a simple question.

8) When replying to an email, keep original message intact so person you're replying to knows what you're talking about. Personally I receive over 300 messages a day, so I need to see your message in context -- otherwise, I may not understand it.

9) If you buy or sell products/services online, make sure you're using an online payment service like PayPal.com in order to move money around quickly. Don't make snail mail your only payment option.

10) Pay your bills in a timely fashion. If you owe someone money online don't make them send out 10 emails telling you your payment is overdue. Pay promptly.

So there you have it; my Top 10 rules for being more polite and less rude online. If you incorporate these tips into your daily Internet dealings you'll find Net a little warmer and a friendlier place to be.

There's enough road rage in world, so when traveling information highway please remember that we're all human. Your computer is just a tool used to communicate with others. Please be KIND to them!