Ten years ago, I had a great relationship with my bank teller. I knew her sons' names, noticed when she got her hair cut and told her about my efforts to save for a new car. Today, I visit 24-hour ATMs, use direct deposit, make automatic bill payments and receive automatic e-mail alerts if my balance hits below my preset limit — all without speaking to anyone.

Last week, DMNews held its first editorial web­cast. It was sponsored by e-mail marketing firm Lyris, developed and hosted by associate editor Dianna Dilworth, and featured input from Sylvia Sierra, VP of marketing at Access Intelligence; and Jeanniey Mullen, executive director of the Email Experience Council and EVP and CMO at Zinio.

I am a late-adopting iPhone user and, while I like it, there is one element of the device that is simply too smart for its own good — that is, the autocorrect of e-mail spelling, which has a habit of interpreting my rather basic vocabulary choices as arcane proper nouns. For example, a slowly typed "which" will sometimes translate to Whig, "have" becomes "Han," and the word "paying" for some reason morphs into "Latin."

Should newspapers be bailed out? Maybe. Each day brings new reports of newspaper layoffs, sales, bankruptcy filings, cutbacks in production or home delivery and moves to online only — and, of course, diminishing ad dollars and readers.

Last week, I left behind New York's cold weather to enjoy the tropical temperatures of an island off the coast of Central America. While I missed out on some scarf and glove wearing, I did not suffer for lack of good direct marketing examples.

As I watched the inauguration of President Obama last week with bated breath — mostly in fear of being kicked off of the NYTimes.com live video feed, which did eventually happen — I wasn't thinking much about the state of direct market­ing. I was too busy wondering how Michelle Obama could stand and walk for hours in those shoes!

Last October, the DMNews team had an unparalleled opportunity to eavesdrop on the judges of the John Caples International Awards, who gathered in New York to assess creative work of peers from countries around the world.

At some time anyone who sends e-mail and manages e-mail deliverability will have to deal with failure of an Internet service provider (ISP).

I've overheard a number of my colleagues whining over the lack of Internet media spending, given that 80% of the population are on the Web and spend considerable time there.

I don't want to hear any more about continuing economic gloom. After weeks of dismal retail sales (despite all my shopping), round after round of layoffs (been there), ricocheting stock markets (ditto) and dire threats of more to come, I'm done. Time to stick a fork in this recession.