Downloaded p2p phone service Skype this AM. Later in the morning, noticed that images on sites were slow/no loading. Turned Skype off, browsing returned to normal. Anyone else have this problem with Skype?

OK, found a couple of threads suggesting others share my pain here but nothing in Skype’s user forums.

Update: things are working smoothly today. Hum.

A mystery solved in Prague. (Via M. Welch.)

We drove up the Blue Ridge Parkway Sunday and enjoyed hiking the Graveyard Fields trail. (Here are some someone else’s pictures of the area.) Taco (now 37 pounds) got the longest walk of his short life. In the falls at the top of the valley, we found a orange and brown salamander, speckled exactly like the small granite basin he lives in. Wedged among the rocks at the bottom of the falls, a boy spotted a dead fawn, probably swept over the falls in a recent downpour. Finally, we saw a tiny ring necked snake. The moist trail, warmed by the day’s steady sunlight, smelled like a perfume shop. I hope we can go back and see what it looks like mid-winter, assuming the parkway isn’t snowed shut. (Here’s another hike two miles up the road we should consider.)

Blog maven and CBS Marketwatch columnist Frank Barnako picked up on the Sex and the City blogad order.

BTW, blogger and radio commentator Hugh Hewitt, having run that blogad for a few hours, decided to put principles over money and take the ad down, after hearing from readers arguing that Sex and the City doesn’t necessarily square with his Christian conservative worldview.

Some people worry that bloggers are more susceptible than publishers — who’ve taken lots of ethics classes in journalism school or school — to being bent by advertising. I’ve always felt that the contrary holds. In contrast to traditional corporate publishers, each blog has a single decision maker, perfect transparency and point-blank accountability. In short, everybody knows where the buck stops.

Andrew Sullivan declares: “I CANNOT SUPPORT HIM IN NOVEMBER.“

Three engineers go for a joy ride.

Just sent out an avalanche of blogads, our biggest single order yet, for Sex and the City. Something I really wouldn’t have expected a year ago.

Stuart Elliott in the NYT on the proliferation of political motifs in ad campaigns: “Rather than waiting until fall, as they usually do, to introduce advertising with election themes, agencies are already infusing commercials, Web sites, promotions and print ads with images of voting booths, campaign buttons, flags, debates and conventions. These trappings of democracy are being augmented with copious references to compassionate conservatism, hanging chads and states colored red and blue.”

Watch this space today and you may see a new sexy blogad that typifies this trend.