Achoo!

It appears that in today's economy when Silicon Valley sneezes everyone catches a cold.

According to this article, many of the Silicon Valley companies have closed for the entire week, forcing employees to take the time off either without pay or to use vacation time.

Think San Jose and you think dot-com. Think dot-com and you think of horrible online ad sales. But those poor ad sales aren't just on the web.

This week's InfoWorld is a puny 44 pages. That's half of the previous week's size. It looks and feels more like a pamphlet than a trade pub. I counted only 11 full page ads and that includes the two on the inside and outside of the back cover. One has to wonder if they contracted their ad sales out to About.com.

At the end of last year, the size of Fast Company and Business 2.0 rivaled a Sears Catalog. You could get a hernia carrying them from the mailbox into the house. Since then, they look like they hired Richard Simmons as publisher and started attending Weight Watchers every day.

There is a positive side of all this -- if you are a tree.