Imagine you're the manager of a business or organisation, selling and/or providing goods and services. You're asked, "Does your business/organisation have a blog site?" "Uh, a what?" you might reply. Well, let's ask the question another way, "How do you converse and relate with your customers? How do you know your customers are satisfied with your product and/or service? Are you supplying the type of goods and services that customers are looking for?"

So you set up a company blog, if for no other reason than your opposition down the road has one (not a very sound reason but there are companies who have bought a computer for their business for that very reason!). Now comes the more difficult problem - are you going to allow, or even encourage, your staff to set up their own blogs to converse with your customers? The answer is simple if your staff are happy in your employ and share your ideals for the business. If that's not the situation...

Rather than spend hours discussing the above questions, as an example start looking at what we're finding out about the next versions of Microsoft products from Microsoft project managers and developers. Not only do these people discuss new features but how decisions are made and how these products are being put together. Of course, comments from other developers are invited. For example, take at look at the Media Center (sic) project manager's blog, Where are we now? or for lots of comments (many of which are highly emotional), the Internet Explorer developer blog.

Other blogs that webDotWiz has been keeping an eye on lately relate to the next version of Microsoft Office, particularly OneNote 12 and Excel 12. Although the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, is due next year, there will be plenty of new applications for XP using the Vista presentation system - one already available is Max, a photo viewer and sharing app. If you want to look through what all those Microsoft developers are doing, start at the Microsoft Developer Channel 9 site - you'll find plenty of material to read, listen to and view.

What to do with a group of young (and not-so young) children on a rainy day when it's too wet to go outside? Well, prime your computer and printer, and get on the web to download some paper models. There's such a wide choice that everybody should be happy with the variety and there's enough challenge to test everybody's skill.

To get some notion of what's available and to watch for new models, visit The Paper Forest. You'll find links so you can download the pages for cutting out and often there'll be instructions to put everything together.

Some of the more fascinating and creative models are the Sasatoku Mechanical Paper Models. The Sasatoku site is in Japanese (you can safely ignore Internet Explorer's prompt to download and install the Japanese language add-in if you wish) but you'll be able to follow the printed out pages to construct their mechanical paper models.

If these models are too difficult for your intended audience, start with the Paper Folding site. For a real challenge, however, there's the Chess Cardmodel to try.