While we're on the topic of annoying business features (see below), I want to direct your attention to something that must be stopped. Occasionally I'll have to fill out an address form on the web, and I'll get a pull-down box from which I must select my country. There are a lot of countries out there. With this in mind, it makes sense to put at the top of the menu those countries from which the majority of one's customers hail, or simply those countries which have an overwhelming number of internet users. (These things are counted, you know.) You could still make it alphabetical, perhaps with a "Top Five" list followed by a divider line and then the rest of the countries.

Instead, some sites force me to scroll through 75 countries to find "United States," rather than put it right at the top. One site I was just on, searching for a new web counter, had "Afghanistan" as its first country. Does this business really think there are that many Afghani's in need of web-tracking services? Were we dropping modems in those care packages? Shouldn't the U.S., if only by virtue of having recently kicked the pants out of Afghanistan's dictatorial rulers, get top billing?

This isn't about jingoism, it's about customer service. When India surpasses the U.S. in another few decades in terms of literacy, and becomes the new center of culture and technology, then by golly, Indians shouldn't have to search for their country sandwiched between Iceland and Indonesia. It's annoying and leads to errors. There's no telling how many businesses out there have my address as Kansas, United Arab Emirates.

On second thought, perhaps that's not such a bad thing.