It seemed an act of callous disrespect and unimaginable effrontery.

Joe Merchant roared with fury. His assistants trembled and clutched at their clipboards, each pushing the other forward in an attempt to escape their boss' wrathful eye. But Joe was implacable. "Who did this?" he yelled. "I'll have his head in my egg cup tomorrow morning!"

Spitting obscenities, Joe began to pace the sidewalk, tightly clenched fists on hips, glaring fiercely up at his storefront through the odd spectacles he wore. After a few paces, he ripped the frames from his face and rubbed his eyes furiously, gawking at the store with his naked corneas. Then he shoved the glasses back on his nose, peered again at his store and howled with renewed dignity.

On the opposite side of the street, a number of passing strangers, all wearing the bizarre spectacles, gathered in a slowly expanding crowd. The buzz grew. Some pointed at Joe, some at the seemingly unmarked windows behind him. As they pointed, the distraught man began to tear at his hair. "Find who's responsible for this!" Joe snarled. "It must be cleaned up IMMEDIATELY!"

The casual observer would not have noticed anything out of the ordinary about Joe's store, the windows of which were gaily plastered with signs advertising the week's specials. It was the biggest supermarket in town, and prices were, admittedly, quite high. "FINEST PORK CHOPS", one sign boldly proclaimed, "$5.99/LB." "FRESH BROCCOLI," read another, "$2.79/BUNCH." Other than the excessiveness of the prices, nothing seemed amiss.

Nothing, that is, until one put on those strange and magical glasses. And then one noticed that the sign for pork chops had been amended, somehow, to read "CHOPS LOUSY; FILLED WITH FAT & GRISTLE." The broccoli sign was equally condemning. "FRESH THREE WEEKS AGO, LIMP AND DRY TODAY." Indeed, when one looked through those glasses one noticed that ALL the signs on Joe's windows bore the same sort of transparent amendment. "BOYCOTT JOE'S MARKET! JOE'S A JERK! WILTED PRODUCE AND ROTTEN MEAT!"

And then Joe, peering with apoplectic rage through the glasses, spied something which sent him completely over the edge. The message - which could only be seen through those damnable spectacles - read:

"DELL? DELL?" The old man screeched. "Did Filbert Dell have anything to do with this? I'll sue! I will ruin that interloper!" Panting, he ripped the spectacles from his nose and held them close to his face, looking for identifying marks. "Did Dell manufacture these evil things?"

The most junior lackey was pushed forward, clutching a handful of the strange eyeglasses. "N-no, sir, he didn't make the glasses, though the, er, graffiti can only be seen by people who are wearing them. Can only be created by people who OWN them, sir. In f-fact, sir, we've determined that NONE of the graffiti was created by Dell."

"No? No? Then WHO?" demanded Joe. The lackey cleared his throat andmumbled something.

"What's that? Speak up, confound you! Who is saying these dreadful things about my beautiful store?"

"Our c-customers, sir. Our c-customers did this."

Joe just gaped with disbelief. With a tiny sigh, Junior delivered the worst of the news. "Sir, we've talked to our l-legal counsel, and, ahh..." he paused, reluctantly. "And there's nothing we can do to stop it, sir."

Chilling little tale, isn't it? Like something out of an entrepreneurial Twilight Zone?

Well, it's happening NOW, in the wild, lawless streets of the virtual universe. Thanks to a fascinating new application, disgruntled customers everywhere have a new outlet for their dissatisfaction.

Where To Toss Your Two Cents

Ever heard of Third Voice?

Maybe not. It's fairly new (launched in May of this year) and quite small (the number of downloads is still "only" in the tens of thousands, though growing fast). But it's captured the attention of industry analysts, who say that this odd little application may yet find itself on trial.

The brainchild of three Singaporean immigrants from California, Third Voice provides a way for consumers and surfers to place virtual Post-it notes all over the World Wide Web. After downloading the program, users can highlight any text on any web page and, with a single click, open a blank note box on which they may leave a comment, a complaint, or a condemnation.

Notes are flagged with tiny markers; other Third Voice users can click the markers to read the notes and create their own responses. As the creators explain, Third Voice notes posted by users do not change the underlying sites; they merely overlay them with a "transparency".

Though releases for Netscape and Mac are in the works, the free utility is currently available only to users of Internet Explorer 4.0 and 5.0.

The application is at the center of a growing controversy. It's gotten a lot of press, too. Time, Fortune, Wired, the Village Voice have all run articles on Third Voice. A group of "concerned Netizens, who work diligently to provide good, clean information about ourselves, families and businesses" has formed Say No To Third Voice, to protest the application. (I noted that the list of SNTTV's supporters includes links to many Angelfire, Xoom, and Geocities domains, including e-locations like Pearl's Hall & Oates Fan Page, Ice Skating Clipart Galore, and The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive. I was not impressed.) Without too much effort, you can even find scripts to add to your Website's HTML code, so that Third Voice will not work on your site.

In his interview with Wired, Jonathan Zittrain, a lecturer at Harvard Law School (and a brand-new addition to Third Voice's advisory team), defended the utility. "Arguably, this is a way to draw a mustache on the site. On the other hand, if all you're doing is painting a mustache on a transparency and you look through it, is that a derivative work?"

Third Voice is a brilliant concept with a number of intriguing applications. Angry individuals can use it to form virtual picket lines and protest unsafe products or government shenanigans. Timid employees of large, poorly run corporations can announce to the world that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. And satisfied consumers can tell the world why Acme Widgets are the only kind of widgets worth having.

But what about the possibilities for scoundrelism? Because all notes are posted anonymously, a tiny company could use Third Voice to lift its leg and pee all over the competitor's big, shiny fire hydrant, and redirect traffic to its OWN site. A political candidate might start all SORTS of nasty rumors about his opponents.

When I surfed with Third Voice, I didn't see anything that really offended me, except for the fact that it slowed my system down quite a bit. I did discover, however, that a lot of people use the software inappropriately. They add links to porn sites and multi-level marketing pages. They babble about sites or issues that have little or nothing to do with the page being visited. Or they reveal a flair for inanity in the messages they leave. A Third Voice note on Microsoft's site, created by a user named kpage, states what many of us have long suspected: "Bill Gates wants to own the world."

The creators of Third Voice say they are simply making the Internet more interactive. Unlike sting forms of Web communication e-mail, hat, instant messaging or message boards) and Web sites with read only content, Third Voice empowers users to form inline discussions that weave together their opinions with existing content," explains the site, "making the Web more meaningful."

As an e-lancer, I find the Group services provided by Third Voice most intriguing. I can create a group made up of members of my virtual team, and then we can all create notes that are visible only to ourselves. We can look at the sites of our clients' competitors, and comment on the products, services, and features that are most compelling. We can even remark upon our own work, adding notes to our pages as they are published online. "I think that heading is too big, and there needs to be a graphic here," a note might suggest. Or: "This explanation is unclear; perhaps it should be simplified".

There you have it: my two cents on Third Voice. And you got 'em for free.

SITES TO SEE:

Third Voice
www.thirdvoice.com

Caroline Wright, of WRIGHT FOR YOU Word Services, is a freelance writer. A former resident of Hawaii, she now lives in rural South Carolina. Feel free to e-mail your comments to Caroline at cw@wrightforyou.com.