New Year's Eve is here, and its as good a time as any to reflect on the stuff you know you should be doing but haven't been. Resolutions aren't so much about sticking to them like an iron clad contract. If we could do that, we would already have done those things. They're about thinking through some of what's going on with you and what you can do to make things better.

In that light, here are some of mine:

#1. Refocus on some of my core business products.

Resisting the temptation to endlessly tinker with Second Signal -- which now mostly just needs to grow a bit, I plan to get revisions out for all three NCT products. I also plan to tie these new versions into the new UI functionality of the Notes 8 client. That's a good bit of work so I'll stop there.

#2. I'm resolved to formally dump -- not just ignore -- all the web site social networking sites that I've tried and didn't care for.

These sites are mostly annoyances. The biggest one that comes to mind is the old "Classmates.com" site which is a nightmare of spam-like lures to get you to pay them money and is of little value otherwise. I signed up when it first got started quite a few years ago. Their business model was annoying then and has only gotten worse. You get the free membership which is enough to write up your own profile and see enough of other people's to see that they're signed up but not how to contact them unless you pay a membership fee. However, when you look at their information the system sends THEM an email telling them that someone looked at their profile and they can only see who did by paying for a membership. In other words, you can't see anything about how to get in touch with your old friends if you don't pay the site -- but you can cause them to be fooled into thinking that possibly their long lost BFF from back in the day just checked in and if they just fork over some cash they can find out who it was. Its as close to a pyramid scheme as I think you can get away with and not go to jail. It may not be fraud by a legal definition, but it sure is by any moral or ethical one. Sites like this rely on the fact that even though you sign up and never pay them, you're generating the attraction that gets other people to sign up.

If you don't like a site, dump it. Don't let them use you to lure in your old friends. By the way, finding out how to remove your free account on these sites isn't always easy. Poke around a bit and look through the support help. I did find it on Classmates and you can too. Its not just Cla$$mates either. I plan to do a formal "remove" from all sites that I think could be using me for demographics or as a hook to get other people involved unless I'm actually using that site.

#3. I'm resolved to get closer to a normal work week.

That doesn't mean I won't be on the PC during the evening, but I plan to try to keep the things I do which are specifically work related to regular working hours. I don't think that's going to last long, but its worth a try.

#4. The standard resolutions

Eat better, exercise more, and be more tolerant of idiots. That last one is going to be extremely hard in an election year.