Just saw on the Fairbanks Daily News Miner's Twitter feed that Norwegian Cruise Lines announced it will be taking its last ship out of Alaska in 2010 to put it in more profitable European waters.

The cruise line cited hostile Alaska tax legislation as the reason. This may be a part of it, but with a down economy and an Alaska cruise market that has essentially been flat despite worldwide growth, it is becoming a more challenging environment for cruise lines to operate up in Alaska.

Almost two thirds of visitors to Alaska typically travel via cruise ship. Many repeat visitors indicate that their first Alaska travel experience was via cruise. If this turns into a trend, it could dramatically impact the size and composition of the Alaska tourism market.

Are you involved in Alaska tourism? What do you feel is the impact of the NCL decision? Important? Not so important? Please share!

MarketingVox reported this morning that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 2006 ruling on buying trademarked search terms. The decision means that buying trademarked terms could be a violation of law.

This is the first decision of its kind and will have a serious impact on keyword buying practices, particularly in competitive industries.

What it means to you: if you have been buying search terms that are competitor names, and those competitors have trademarked those business or product names, this decision could place you on the wrong side of the law.

What do you think about this decision? Is it overdue protection of commercial proprty? Or is is the start of a slippery slope that could imperil the keyword buying concept? Share your thoughts.

Building forms on a website is a pain. It is hard to automate. And Google Docs has just made it a lot easier.


This small, simple, but free tool can be a boon to anyone who has felt, "If I could just pull together a quick form, it would save me a lot of time." This includes very small businesses that don't want to get charged another hour by their web designer, bloggers, community groups, and more.

You can create your form with text, paragraph, multiple choice, checkbox fields and more. You can send it in an email or embed it in your website or blog. And you can tally the responses in a spreadsheet or via email.

As a quick example of how easy it is, check out this form I made and loaded on my website in approximately 5 minutes.

Have you had frustrating experiences with forms? Have you tried out Google forms? What are your thoughts? Please share!