Terror in the blogosphere The quirky boingboing.net website isn't usually the type of media outlet to become embroiled in a contentious privacy issue, but the site has done yeoman's work over the last few weeks in documenting a scandal involving Sony Music's apparent complicity in installing spyware on its customers' computers.

The incident centered on the discovery by a security expert in late October that Sony's BMG music division had included spyware in music CDs distributed to legitimate customers. The software, known as a rootkit, enabled viruses, keyboard loggers and other nefarious programs to be parked on users' computers without their knowledge, even if the users had declined the licensing agreement presented to them when they inserted the affected disc.

The existence of the rootkit was first documented by security expert Mark Russinovich in his blog on Oct. 31. Sony at first dismissed the complaint, then acknowledged the problem when F-Secure, a Finnish security company, confirmed that it, too, had identified the problem. However, Sony's initial response was to deny that the problem was serious and to promise a fix when it was good and ready. The Recording Industry Association of America, which is always good at providing comic relief, worsened the situation by basically stating that rootkits are no big deal because every record company uses them. Meanwhile, the blogosphere went into overdrive.

Russinovich's blog was flooded with comments, the issue spread to the computer security community in general and eventually two states attorneys general picked up the baton and promised to investigate the matter.

Sony eventually relented and promised to recall the offending CDs. The rootkit, it said, had been introduced by programmers at an outsourcing firm engaged by the company and had been shipped without Sony's knowledge. BoingBoing.net members rubbed salt into the wounds by identifying posts by programmers engaged by Sony that asked as far back as 2001 how to install software that users couldn't detect. Ouch!

It looks like Sony BMG is going to come clean and offer replacement CDs to all victimized users. But the incident serves notice of how the blogosphere is affecting corporate policy-making. If blogs didn't exist, this problem would never even have come on Sony's radar. Or, at the very least, the company could have contained the objections with a minimum of hassle. But bloggers not only uncovered the story but pressed it relentlessly until the national media took notice and forced a corporate response. Sony BMG gets a black eye out of all of this by looking like it dragged its feet in addressing a known security problem. And bloggers get a gold star for identifying the bug and pressing it until a big corporation was forced to respond. Score one for new media influencers.  ¶ 10:25 PM 0 Comments

  Google as bad guy Dan Mitchell points out in this article in the New York Times (registration required) that Google has become the ogre of the Internet simply by being Google. In other words, the fact that the company is in a position to grab the top position on the Internet is enough for many people to assume that Google is evil. This without any countervailing opinion for Google, which seems to prefer not to speculate about world domination and actually prefers to talk about being a good corporate citizen. Could it be that business success is, in itself, a ticket to vilification? I remember when Microsoft was the scrappy, user-focused upstart. Google just made the transition to bad boy that much faster. Can a successful company every really win?  ¶ 12:19 AM 0 Comments

  Podcast how-to I just listened to an excellent podcast on how to create and post podcasts (how recursive is that?) by Lisa Williams and Ryanne Hodson from BlogHer 2005. If you're interested in getting started with podcasting, this short (56 mins) essay will tell you the high points and give you advice on products that can get you started. The good news: turnkey software is on the way that will make the process of creating and posting podcasts much easier. The bad news: it's still a pretty daunting task if you're not technically inclined.

Lisa Williams also has a fun four-minute how-to video about podcasting that you should watch.  ¶ 10:10 PM 0 Comments

  Curse of success Adam Green's posting about Google Base on his blog looks a little bit paranoid but I'm intrigued by the fears it exposes. I seem to remember that it wasn't that long ago that Google was the scrappy new competitor that was going to keep Microsoft honest. Now, in the minds of many people, Google has become the insatiable oligarch that aims to dominate the Internet and usurp their personal freedom.

Robert X. Cringeley's column on PBS.org puts forth this same Google uber alles vision with regard to Google's investments in dark fibre, server farms and web hosting. It's a dark vision of one company controlling the Internet by monopolizing the way people search for information and, ultimately, the information itself.

It seems you can't win the battle for public opinion in this industry. The greatest sins of Google, Microsoft, Oracle, the IBM of old or any other black-hat competitor is simply that they executed better than anyone else, captured the lead position and drove their advantage to increase their domination. There is no shame in that. On the contrary, the stock markets demand nothing less. The idea that these companies are compelled by some nefarious goal to dominate markets and rob users of choice is ludicrous. They're too busy trying to meet their investors' inflated goals for the next quarter to dream of world conquest.

It is amazing, though, how quickly a company can go from hero to villain in this overclocked industry. Success sort of automatically makes you public enemy #1. Google embodies many of the principles we admire in modern corporations: speed, innovation, decisiveness, flexibility. Why do these qualities make it such an object of ridicule?  ¶ 9:27 PM 0 Comments

  Spreadsheet Wiki Dan Bricklin has released alpha code for a new product he's calling WikiCalc . It looks like kind of a multi-user spreadsheet. It's hard to explain and I'm not sure I grasp the concept completely myself but you can imagine the potential for groups to share access to a tool that kind of lets them build a forecast or a business plan. I suspect at most companies the process of building a sales forecast, for example, is pretty messy. Spreadsheets get passed around by e-mail and consolidated manually and if someone has an interesting insight it simply gets thrown into the chaos. If you could create a way to construct forecasts iteratively with a tracking system that lets you see who contributed what, it would be pretty powerful. I'm sure Dan has thought this through a lot better then I have.

Keep your eye on wikis, by the way. While there's nothing new about the concept of collaborative decision-making (Lotus Notes was doing some of this stuff 15 years ago), wikis bring an open, Internet-based structure to the process. There'll be a lot of development activity around this platform.  ¶ 8:41 AM 0 Comments

  A podcasting network IT Conversations has announced plans to expand and diversify into biotech, science, open source, the future, media, mobile technology and other specialty fields in a group called Conversations Network. The principals apparently intend to continue to offer the service for free, although some paid services are under consideration. This is great news if you're interested in tech podcasts. Doug Kaye, who runs ITC, has put together an effective governance system for organizing hundreds of volunteers and wants to scale up.

I have great respect for what Doug and his associates are doing. They could easily sell this operation or take on sponsors. Instead, they're pursuing more of a quasi-sponsorship approach a la PBS. I've spoken to Doug about this and he appears to have no intentions to build this business into a big monemaker. There's a practical issue, too: if ITC becomes a for-profit company, its access to content will be cut off or severely restricted by competitive media companies. So Conversations Network almost must remain nonprofit to continue to offer breadth and quality.

Tech publishers should take note, though. IT Conversations could emerge as an important channel to your readers. It's become my first step for tech podcasts.  ¶ 8:17 AM 0 Comments

  On to new things I've tried to live by the principle that if you don't try something, you'll never know if you would have liked it. And I have always wanted to try my hand at the business side of publishing.

Thus it was that I became a publisher a little more than a year ago. A company reorganization presented the perfect opportunity because my job as chief editor was being scaled down by decentralization. My boss agreed to let me give it a shot.

I worked very hard over the last year. I struggled to learn stuff that was way outside my comfort zone: sales management, pricing, marketing, campaign management, quotas, forecasting and on and on. I had some very gratifying successes but I also made my share of mistakes. Learning on the job is hard.

And ultimately what I learned is that publisher isn't the job for me. I'm an editor at heart. I'm inspired by the constant change in this technology and I'm fascinated by the dynamics of this industry. I like a good story and I like talking to the people who are creating change. I might have been a competent publisher with time, but I think I'll always be a better editor. Life's too short to do work that doesn't inspire you.

So I decided to leave TechTarget and go out on my own, which is a step I've always planned to take. My idea is to launch a business creating online custom content for technology marketers. There's an explosion of activity in this area - white papers, webcasts, podcasts and live events - and a need for people who can speak the language of IT professionals. Paul Gillin Communications will provide that service when I launch the company the week after Thanksgiving.

I'm leaving TechTarget on the best of terms. The company's management was terrific and even agreed to become my first customer. I'm hoping to do a lot of business with TechTarget customers on behalf of the company.

I learned a lot in the last year. I gained tremendous respect for good salespeople. That's a hard, hard job and it takes persistence and a tough skin to do it well. I learned that advertising decisions involving hundreds of thousands of dollars are often made on intuition and faith. And I learned a ton about the finer points of online marketing. I'll bring all those lessons to my next venture.

Soon this blog will be replaced by the website for my new business. In the meantime, please contact me at paul@gillin.com if you want to learn more about my services. Or just to chat.  ¶ 9:06 AM 0 Comments

  Television in turmoil Give credit to TV producers for not making the same mistake as the music industry and actually making TV programs available free over the Internet. But lest we compliment them too much for their great vision, remember that TV shows don't have nearly the shelf life of music and that the risk of video piracy is much less than the risk of copyright violation in the music world. Giving away old "Welcome Back Kotter" episodes is kind of a no-brainer.I also wonder why AOL and Time Warner are only making programs available in streaming format. Does anyone think people want to watch TV on their laptop? The only time I've seen anyone do that is on a plane or in a car and that's when you don't have a broadband connection.More interesting is Apple's deal with ABC to distribute TV programs as downloads. That's a better model but I'm not convinced the video iPod is the right device. Someone's going to figure this out, though. Give the edge to Apple.  ¶ 8:42 AM 0 Comments

  Tracking podcasts There's an interesting story in Media Post about Audible.com's new technology for tracking podcasts (you may have to register to read it). Audible was distributing podcasts long before there was an iPod and if anyone will figure out a way to monetize this new craze, Audible will. I expect technology and money to move very quickly into making podcasting a commercial medium. The rap on podcasting has been that you couldn't sell advertising on it because you couldn't track what people did with any given MP3 file. Well, companies like Audible are solving that. I expect there'll be an explosion of well produced commercial podcast products once these tracking issues are resolved.  ¶ 8:31 AM 1 Comments

  Yes, it's true It's true what you've heard. I'm leaving TechTarget effective Nov. 18. And no, I wasn't fired. And the company's doing just great, thank you.I'll post more details about my reasons for leaving and what I plan to do next on Nov. 19. I'm sure you can't stand the suspense! :-)  ¶ 12:02 PM 0 Comments