Improving Customer Experience (ICE) started out as a paper newsletter back in 2001. Paper. How quaint. It was actually mailed out to people using a device that the ancients called "a stamp."

Archeologists recently unearthed a sample issue. You can peruse it in PDF form if you care to.

This version of ICE gave way to the new-fangled medium of e-mail. For a while there was a broad subscriber base, but I am sure that the newsletter would get trapped in a myriad of spam filters these days. Too many visuals. Links to web sites of all stripes. Definite spam filter bait.

Then came the first blog era. Yes, intrepid reader, this isn't the first version of this blog. In 2002, while trying to beat some sense into Capital University's web strategy, ICE was briefly transformed into the shortlived "Usablog." Using the Greymatter platform and a little rage against the machine, the superhero of usability blogs was born.

Unfortunately, when I left Capital for greener pastures, the Usablog (nee ICE) went into hibernation. My life became busier and busier until ICE was just a fading memory.

But like many memories, the concept of ICE nagged at me. It was a little voice inside my head begging to be set free once again.

And so we have come around again with a brand new era of ICE. From Paper to E-mail to Blog.