Sites like MySpace, Friendster and Bebo, on the other hand, were especially easy to mine for private data, Patton said.

FORBES: Mining MySpace

Why make it easy for the IRS to mine your own data?

FORBES: Should You Give IRS Your QuickBooks?

"We're trying to move it forward as quickly as possible, but it's not easy and straightforward to get a mine opened and to raise all the necessary funding, " operations manager Jeff Harrison said.

BBC: Den and Lynn Fellows

But one of the reasons that Splunk is growing like hotcakes is because its solution is easy for individuals or departments to use to quickly mine their data vs. having those users waiting for corporate IT to get around to doing that for them.

FORBES: Beyond BYOD: The Shift to People-Centric IT

Appropriate tops were easy to find, but a proper bottom for a body like mine was impossible.

FORBES: How To Hit 'Restart' After Age 50

Bulls can rebut the gloomy view of the BLS report with easy aplomb thanks to the government employment data serving not as a canary in a coal mine for discerning economic trends, but more like a turkey in a wind tunnel.

FORBES: The Harsh Reality Of The Falling Unemployment Rate

And WiLife even offers free and easy remote monitoring over the Web (although some firewall and network configurations may limit sessions to three minutes, as mine were).

ENGADGET: Switched On: Creep spy for the cheap guy

It is always interesting watching people make their Test debut - mine was not an easy experience because I did not get a wicket and I was constantly striving to show that I was good enough at that level.

BBC: Jonathan Agnew column