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The Web publishing world was saddened to wake up this morning to the news from three nights earlier, repeated from a presumably reputable source, of the passing of the Golden Age of Tech Blogging. The Age apparently succumbed to complications following a series of seismic shifts in the industry, brought on by corporate media interests who, despite all evidence to the contrary, continue to believe they can make money publishing blogs.

Casualties include various editors for some of the industry's most renowned publications for several weeks running, who have evidently been hired by identically-sounding media firms to produce similar-looking publications, with equally ambiguous editorial responsibilities.

How long have you held your current position? If you answered less than two years, you are not alone. It seems that turnover could be IT's biggest challenge in the new year: keeping talented developers. Network World's Carolyn Marsan writes this week about the topic and it is well worth reading her story.

This isn't a completely new problem. In 1980, I took my second job, about two years after I started work at a consulting firm in Washington, DC. My father was not happy about the switch. He was working as an accountant for the same place (and ended up putting in 30 years by the time he eventually retired, yes complete with gold watch that I have somewhere). He thought it was too quick a transition. What would other employers think? Little did I know I was starting a trend in the tech field lo these many years ago

It was NCSA Mosaic that introduced the world to the Web. Since that time, the browser has become the principal software-based element in all the world's digital communications and transactions. It is the harbinger of a very powerful new class of dynamic language interpreters, making JavaScript the unlikely, though undisputed, vehicle for conveying interactive functionality. And for some manufacturers, it is the center of an apps ecosystem unto itself.

So the browser is in no danger of disappearing. But as the Web expands into a delivery mechanism for all forms of applications and services, is a stand-alone, exclusive window into the Web, complete with bookmarks and toolbars and add-ons, truly the most sensible usage model for a system that may yet embrace all of computing? This is a question Mozilla began asking last summer, and whose answer remains inconclusive.

You may have never heard of Brandon Campeaux, but more than 265,000 folks have "circled" the photographer on Google+. As of this morning, Campeaux packed his virtual bags and left Google+ claiming that the company has done nothing about death threats leveled against him on Google+.

According to Campeaux's last post, "I received 4 separate death threats through Google+. That brings the total for the month of December way over 10. I've reported each account & flagged the individual death threats. Google responded by doing nothing. Not one account suspension."

A few weeks ago, RWW Channels Editor David Strom posted Why BYOD Isn't a Trend. He skewered the notion that BYOD is new, noted that IT leaders have dealt with user-purchased tech for generations, and declared the "consumerization of IT" a new name for an old trend.

Strom's take away: BYOD has been around since the '80s, and the only change is that it is now writ large, thanks to low-cost smartphones, tablets, and Internet-enabled access to corporate data. But he asked the wrong question and missed a much more important point, about how rapid the influx of tablets is changing enterprise IT. Don't ask if BYOD is a trend. Ask what IT leaders are doing about BYOD.

The memo has already gone out to the various book editors, news editors and technology analysts: The proper phrase is not "tablet PC" any more. A tablet and a PC are perceived by both consumers and businesses as two separate classes of device. You probably saw the TV ads this season where Santa's elves kicked out the 4G smartphones and tablets, and dispensed with the old gifts nobody wants. "Bye, bye, computer," the elves sang to an old Johnny Mathis tune.

Since its very inception, Microsoft's business model has been about leverage. It uses its established foundation in one popular platform to extend another. The advance of the tablet had been announced further ahead of time than Margaret Thatcher announced the surge on the Falklands. It's not like Microsoft didn't see this coming. But in 20/20 hindsight, it's remarkable to see now how the company appears to have actively worked to thwart that advance, to slow it down, by introducing potential form factors that could deflect interest in tablets - for example, an embedded device that could reveal the weather forecast and present your e-mails, that could be sewn to one's luggage.

Earlier this fall, a judge ruled that a lawsuit filed by PhoneDog.com against one of its long-departed employees, Noah Kravitz, has merit. According to Eric Goldman's Technology and Marketing Law Blog, the company is suing Kravitz over three points, including trade secrets and misappropriation of the account. The ruling, reported by Goldman and the New York Times, states that Kravitz is liable for several hundred thousand dollars in damages, calculated at $2.50 per month per Twitter follower.

This isn't the first conflict over who owns your Twitter account, and it certainly won't be the last. When Rick Sanchez left CNN he kept his account but changed the name. This is what Kravitz did when he left PhoneDog.

New rules will go into effect in a month for US airline advertising that take the emphasis off the asterisk and adds transparency to their add-on ticketing fees. Ironically, some of the low-fare airlines such as Spirit are fighting the changes, claiming freedom of speech infringement by the government. I guess the right to deceive their customers should be part of the Constitution, or at least left to free enterprise to sort this all out.

The rules were supposed to go in effect earlier this fall, but were extended to January 24th to give the airlines time to legally outmaneuver them. I mean, to comply.

Saying "'Bring Your Own Device' is an IT "trend" is like saying peanut butter in school lunches is a trend.

It's not a trend, but it's a well-established practice that's been going on for years.
A decade ago, my then-employer didn't offer me a laptop, despite the amount of travel required for the job (a lot), and despite the fact that laptops were business staples even back then. No: they gave me a desktop, forcing me to tote 3.5-inch discs with me wherever I went, and leaving me subject to the whims of both the machine that awaited me at my destination and its owner's goodwill. My solution to this craziness was to buy a laptop with my own money. And even then, I had to hide it. I couldn't ask for IT support, and even if I could persuade someone in the IT department to enable me to connect to enterprise applications, they swore me to secrecy!

You should write more what you feel, I've been told. Be more open about yourself, Scott. If you want to engage people, to build a community, to get people talking in comments, and bring more people into your social circle, you need to be more open, more accessible, more of a personality. Show people your soft side, your heart. What do you really believe, Scott M. Fulton, III, besides your insistence on using Roman numerals in your name? You talk about issues that have six or seven sides to them, but you don't tell people where you stand. How do you expect people to engage with you if you don't engage with them?

Well, okay, if you insist. I am a Christian.