It’s a hot day. The sun is beating down and you’re sweating through your clothes. Not far from you are small round coffee tables with glistening chrome water pitchers and these strangely shaped glass containers, each about the size of a grapefruit.

You look in the pitchers and see what clearly looks to be clear, cold, water. Nearby you see a young man who looks just as warm as you, but looking at his face you see an obvious look of relief and in his hand you notice one of those weird glass containers. He took a drink!

As the hours pass you see more and more people, mostly young but not all, boldly grabbing these glass containers, filling them with the liquid from the pitchers, and drinking. They don’t all get the same exhilarated look of relief, but certainly none of them seem the worse for their efforts.

"If only," you think, "someone would take this liquid to a laboratory, verify for me that it is in fact water and tell me exactly how much I should drink. Then I’d know what to do."

This little story is my way of making fun of anyone who needs to pay Forrester $379 for a 15 page report to tell them that blogging is a good idea.

Of course, I realize that nobody is going to pay Forrester $379 to tell them that blogging is a good idea. They’re going to pay Forrester $379 so their bosses and colleagues will believe them when they say that blogging is a good idea.