Microsoft, as you might know, is a big company.

I wouldn’t know an employee stationed in, say, New York, and an employee in New York likely wouldn’t know one in, say, Paris.

The point? There are a lot of moving parts that make the method to this madness.

The recession’s end should mean only good things.

A smidgen of job security might return, that pension hopefully comes trickling back and – maybe, just maybe – employers will start to hire people again.

But believe it or not, there are some downsides in the return to normal.

For one, you might’ve noticed that airfares over the past year or so have been marginally decent.

It's no secret that many college students are quickly sucked deep into credit card debt. U.S. college seniors, for instance, carried an average of $4,138 in plastic debt in 2008, according to the Wall Street Journal.

And, since roughly 70 per cent of Canadian students have a credit card, there’s no reason to think that things are any different here.

But, thanks to new U.S. laws aimed at protecting young adults from debt, this may be changing.

I always enjoy watching a local U.S. news telecast whenever I can, if for no other reason than the obligatory “Is America getting too fat?” story a few minutes in.

You know the ones I’m talking about, the features where a reporter rambles off a bunch of stats while they show those shots of fat people from the neck down.

Those are always fun.

Who here remembers Lycos? What about Infoseek? Excite?

Anyone? … hello?

Unless you enjoyed the early years of mass Internet consumption, you probably won’t recognize those three sites, bonafide heavyweights in the ‘90s online surge toward the new millennium.

Environmentalists won’t stop at much to conserve.

They’ve developed a panel you can plunk on your roof to save electricity. They’ve engineered giant, swooping windmills that dot our landscapes and power cities. And they’ve designed the hybrid car that, just earlier this week, we wondered if it had somehow become too  quiet to be safe.

But here’s one eco-conscious idea that, despite the benefits, might take a bit to catch on.

For years, environmentalists have been tripping over themselves to heap praise on hybrid cars and their drivers.

After all, the vehicles are less polluting, conserve a fraction of the fuel and are whisper quiet. It’s like they’re not even on the road.

But, are the cars too quiet?

If you’re having a bit or trouble remembering all those pesky usernames and passwords, think what it’s going to be like after you die.

With an increasing portion of our personal lives locked away online in password-restricted accounts, pulling together an estate following a death can cause major headaches.

Enter Legacy Locker, an online service that allows you to securely store usernames, passwords and other access information for all your digital assets — from Facebook and MySpace to PayPal — and transfer that information to beneficiaries in the event of your  death.

Any chubby guy with a gym membership knows exactly why a subscription to anything generally stinks.

You buy a pass to use the weight room for 12 months, go three times in the first week and the thing essentially becomes a tab you put on your keychain to unsuccessfully pick-up girls.

This is what happens.

But as you can imagine, subscriptions are big business for big companies, and their influence on the purchases we make extend further than you might think.