The Cynical Bastards: No One is Safe [podcast]

Last night, Sean, Steven and I recorded the inaugural episode of the Cynical Bastards show we call CobWEBS (i.e. Cranky Old Bastards on the InterWEBS).

The show is for our new flagship site we’ve launched, theCynicalBastards. It started as a thought Sean and I had while we were both at Mashable – starting a blog network showcasing the crankiest of the tech blogosphere.  The thought grew out of the fact that Sean and I took our headslapping at some of the infuriating things we saw on the web to each other almost incessantly throughout the day.

We would have launched the site ages ago, but really didn't want to jeopardize our positions at the company by starting what could possibly be viewed as a competing venture.

Now that we’re all off on our own and ex-Mashers, we have no such compunctions.  The only thing stopping us from launching it was to get the crankiest friend we both had, Steven, to sign up and join us.

How does it work?
Essentially, the site is an aggregator that syndicates all the stuff that Steven, Sean and I write and record on a daily basis, organized by topic and category.

“We get away with this” by linking directly to the source, rather than scraping the feeds and hosting them locally.  This means that as TheCynicalBastards grows in popularity as a destination site, we’ll be able to offer those we freelance for a better bang for their bucks, being able to funnel more traffic their way.

We’re also able to combine our pageviews, like any blog network, and get better sponsorship and ad deals.

You’ll Hear More Later
As the network evolves and grows, I’ll be providing more updates later on. In the meantime, enjoy three cranky old bastards pontificate about what bothers them in the week’s tech news on the show!

Yowza: One ‘Heroes’ Star’s Answer to Coupon Clipping [GBTV]

I don’t tend to do a lot of iPhone app reviews, but local Dallas-ite Cali Lewis got a chance to sit down with Greg Grunberg, aka “not-baby Matt Parkman,” one of the stars of Heroes (a show I still prefer to Lost since things are actually explained once in a while).

In this episode of GeekBriefTV, Cali gets Greg to explain his new iPhone app called Yowza:

It’s an iPhone and iPod Touch app that uses your location to find deals near you. If you’re out shopping, you can find out what stores are offering deals near you, in either a 5, 10 or 15 mile radius. The app also lets you search by city to enable you to plan ahead and still save money.

I’m not a particularly huge proponent of the iPhone, though I can certainly recognize the brilliance of this idea, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed with Greg’s savvy in spearheading the project. 

On the topic of life on Twitter post Oprah – I’m guessing we can expect to see more projects like this spearheaded by celebrities. One of the things that Twitter makes almost effortless for those with large enough social graphs is crowdsourcing ideas like this.

NAB Attendees Excited about mDTV and Attendance

Chronicler of all things New Media and online video Daisy Whitney attended this year’s NAB conference, and reported on her general impressions of the event. In light of the prevailing opinion that our economy is completely tanking, Daisy expressed surprise that it wasn’t a complete ghost town.  Attendance was impressive and decision makers were there to evaluate new purchases for both New Media and Old Media organizations.

The big topic on the floor of NAB was the mobile DTV announcements and plans I talked about the other day over at SiliconANGLE. Sure, it’s the same thing we’ve had at our disposal since 1980, and no one’s figured out how to make any real money off the ‘new’ technology, but they’re supposedly all very excited about it.

Watch the clip – Daisy, as always, is informative and entertaining!

SearchMe Rolls Out New Features at Ad:Tech SF 2009

My friends John Furrier and Nate D’amico from SiliconANGLE have been roaming the halls of Ad:Tech 2009, and one of the more interesting updates has been when Furrier caught up with John Galatea, the VP of SearchMe’s marketing and sales.

The video contains a few words on where SearchMe is going as well as some demonstration of SearchMe’s new integrated search results and iPhone application.

Download the MP4.
Subscribe to the Feed.

Can I Be a Career Content Producer?

A lot of people are thinking about blogging today, and more specifically, blogging as a business. It’s not surprising that this is a topic gaining grassroots traction, given the fact that the standby job for most prolific writer’s, that is working for an Old Media print organization, is a job that’s very quickly going the way of the dodo.

There have been a lot of posts this morning that have put this topic on the fore of my mind this morning, but on a personal level, a friend of mine and I had three hour conversation last night centered around what it would take for him to someone who made a living off his writing.  He’s a gifted writer, always engaging and interesting, and very focused.  The problem is that he’s seen the community around his writing erode lately because his niche is national politics, something that very quickly went out of vogue after the elections.

His problem, if you can call it that, is that he’s only at his best when he’s writing what he’s passionate about: national politics. Get him outside of that, and he doesn’t enjoy it, and thus his writing suffers.

He’s not alone, though. On a fairly regular basis, I get people that approach me and want a job writing either for my personal website or at some respected blog that I’ve either worked for in the past or have connections with. As Penelope Trunk pointed out on Brazen Careerist today, though, chances are, “you're not going to make money from your blog.”

In her post, she outlines ten reasons why you’ll never see dime one from your blog.  Some of them hold water, like “supporting yourself from your blog is crazy hard,” and “you have to be controversial.” Others indicate a myopic view of what’s going on in the blogosphere, like “big bloggers come from big media,” and “you can make more money flipping burgers.”

The truth is that it takes a certain type of person to make a career out of creating New Media, be it blogging, videoing, and podcasting, and getting there is easier now than it ever was, despite the economic difficulties that exist currently.

As Jeff Jarvis and Mark Penn pointed out today, “there are more people making their primary income from blogging than there are those working as computer programmers, firefighters or bartenders.”

There are a number of ways to get paid for your words, but chances are your dream includes being self-directed and working in your pajamas.  This means you’re going to need to posess a lot of skills not always commonly found in those with the gift of good writing ability.

You’re going to need to be a marketer.
More to the point, you’ll need to be able to market yourself, both to your readers as well as to those that would pay you sponsorship.

You’re going to need to be a salesman. You will have to ask people for money, whether you’re asking your readers for donations or asking corporations or ad networks to pay you for the attention of your readers.

You’re going to need to be flexible. Gone is the era where you can concentrate on one media type and be successful.  You’re going to need to understand how to podcast, produce video, and write beautifully. You’re going to need to understand how to best distribute that content so you can monetize it and have it gain eyeballs.

You’re going to need to be customer service manager. It won’t take long for you to start receiving pitches for stories from those with a vested interest in serving a client or their company.CSRM is about balancing the needs of the company with the needs of the customer. It will be your job to balance the value of continuing to receive those story ideas from PR people with the best interests of your audience, or else risk losing both.

You’re going to need to be an aggressive businessman and researcher. If you’re really trying to make your fulltime living off writing, you’re going to need to understand your niche and understand who has a vested interest in marketing to your niche. This means trying out ad networks, bargaining and negotiating for the best deal you can get, and even cold calling companies that can help you achieve those ends.

Most people don’t understand all that’s involved with going it alone and making it work – which is why it’s easy for folks like Penelope Trunk to say “you’re not going to make it.” Chances are, she’s right, since it’s essentially starting a new business, and the majority of all new businesses fail.

Similarly, it’s understandable why Jeff Jarvis might be skeptical.  In response to the WSJ figures quoted above, he said:

As much as I would like to believe that blogging is a lucrative profession, I’m not sure I buy it — not quite yet. He says that bloggers with 100,000 readers a month are making $75k. Name a few. Still, the trend is heading this way and I’m certainly happy to hear talk of blogging as a business model.

Granted, 100,000 readers a month won’t grant you an automatic $75k.  It’s possible, but not likely, and that number certainly doesn’t scale upwards at a 1:1 ratio.

To say that blogging is a fruitless endeavor is completely wrong, and that is the sentiment that the uninitiated and the frustrated have been putting forward lately.  It’s a very complex business, and it isn’t easy.  For the dedicated and qualified, though, it is possible.

Pirate Bay Shut Down!

Update: The Pirate Bay as a website is not shut down, and I realize now my headline is a bit misleading – the individuals have been shut down and ruled against in court, which must have been what I was thinking when I hastily typed up the headline.  Apologies.

I’m tired of trying to explain to the world why things like the verdict against The Pirate Bay is ridiculous, particularly when folks like Owen Thomas make arguments such as:

“People will still share files after this verdict. If The Pirate Bay shuts down, new servers will spring up. But can we give up the pretense that just because it's easy, it's legal?”

If it was an anonymous commenter who I figured couldn’t be bothered with things like intellectual curiosity or, you know, googling it.

But it’s Owen Thomas.  He may be a purveyor of rumor, but stupid he ain’t. He can make a decent point when he wants to, and he has the ability to defend that point.

When I talked about intellectual dishonesty last week, this is the sort of behavior I referred to. In the same piece, he refers to Mike Masnick’s response as trite, but then instead of factually rebutting anything goes down the road of the ridiculous.

So I’m done with this topic.  If you want to learn about piracy and file-sharing, read a book or a website on it. The end of this long battle is written in stone, the pirates win, there’s little to be done about it, and debating it now is mostly a wheel-spinning maneuver.

So if you want to mimic Lars Ulrich or Owen Thomas, go do it on someone else’s time.

The Last Word (Hopefully) on #AmazonFail

Update: Clay Shirky calls time of death on #AmazonFail and Mary Hodder’s argument.

I’ve been debating for the last ten minutes whether or not to post on this idea simply because it borders on politics and philosophy rather than technology, but it is in response to a posting on Techcrunch, ostensibly a tech blog, and I generally feel that given the general audience of the tech blogosphere, if I don’t say something on it, it probably won’t get said.

The post is a guest spot from Mary Hodder, the founder of Dabble, a social video search site.

Her perspective is that despite the explanations of what happened from Amazon, there still is a conspiracy between the robots and humans who run the Amazon catalogue to discriminate against homosexual authors and authors of books covering homosexual topics.

She trots out most of the same examples that we saw fly across the blogosphere, like Heather Has Two Mommies vs. A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.

Ultimately, her argument rests on two points:

1. Algorithms are evil tools of the devil.
2. Homosexuality is not an adult topic.

This Shouldn’t Require Explanation…
… but judging from the fact that the editors at Techcrunch are still giving airtime to these ridiculous points, I’ll rebut them both here.

Algorithms aren’t evil.  They’re tools just like a hammer, screwdriver, or a microprocessor.

You can bludgeon someone with a hammer.  You can stab someone with a screwdriver.  You can launch an ICBM through the use of a microprocessor.

You can also build a house with a hammer. You can put together your infant’s crib with a screwdriver. There’s no end to the altruism that can be accomplished by way of the use of microprocessors.

An algorithm is just like that. It’s a tool.  It can be used for good or evil. It boggles the mind that the founder of a web tech company can put together a five page guest post on Techcrunch that’s largely devoted to extolling the evils of automated decision making mathematical expressions.

When she gets done talking about the inherent dangers of algorithms, she attempts to define why the word “homosexual” has nothing to do with “sex”:

The ethics bar in creating algorithms and classification systems should be very high […] the issue with #AmazonFail isn’t that a French Employee pressed the wrong button or could affect the system by changing “false” to “true” in filtering certain “adult” classified items, it’s that Amazon’s system has assumptions such as: sexual orientation is part of “adult.” And “gay” is part of “adult.” In other words, #AmazonFail is about the subconscious assumptions of people built into algorithms and classification that contain discriminatory ideas.

I’m sorry, “gay” isn’t part of “adult?” Let’s break it down real simple-like so we know what these two words mean.

Adult implies grown up. Grown up implies not a child. Child means someone under the age of 18, the socially and legally determined age of minority/majority.

Gay is slang for homosexual. Homosexuality refers to which gender an individual is sexually attracted to. Sexual attraction is the desire to engage in reproduction, copulation, or in the common vernacular: sex.

Now that we have these terms defined, let’s ask ourselves: “Do we want our children having sex?”

I’m not asking a hypothetical question, and I’m not asking if children are having sex. 

You! The parents out there! Do you want your kid having sex? The answer is probably “no.” Realistically, you at least want to be the ones to guide their sexual education, rather than have it defined by mistakes and experimentation.

The truth is that homosexuality has everything to do with sex. Sure, the topic branches out from there but for Mary Hodder to suggest that homosexuality isn’t about sex …

… particularly when the word sex is in the word homosexual …

Well, I’d say that it screams a lack of critical thinking, but this really isn’t rocket science. It’s reading comprehension.

The Truth about Magpie [Google It]

Marshall Kirkpatrick today over at ReadWriteWeb has unleashed the fury all over Magpie this evening, as he has over many other similar paid posting companies.

Unfortunately, most of his analysis doesn’t extend towards any inspection or research past the broad generalities. He knows he doesn’t like it when ads are run on blogs that don’t fit his narrow definition of what an ad ought to be, so he goes after Magpie with reckless abandon.

What is his latest tactic?  Instead of calling out Magpie directly, he skips directly to the users and advertisers using the service to pay Twitter users to run their ads. He calls out Apple, Skype, Cisco, Box.net, StubHub, and FatCow.

Am I being a little harsh with Marshall? Maybe, but no harsher than he is with the whole concept, letting loose invective like “bring on vapid, vile, stupid shilling,” and name-calling to Magpie users: “you are allowing yourself to be turned into a lying robot zombie for a few dollars a month!”

He didn’t stop there.  He went so far as to call out Apple: “Apple is paying them to lie like a robot to their friends on Twitter. Nice.”

If he’d done five minutes of research, though, he’d have found out that the companies themselves aren’t behind the ads on Twitter at all. Each one of the products mentioned in his article all have affiliate programs.

Simple as that.  Google Apple affiliate. Google Skype Affiliate Program. Do I need to put the rest of the links here? You think you might be able to find an affiliate program or two to sell the Cisco Flip? You ever checked to see if hosting companies offer affiliate programs?

Seriously. 

Incidentally, it’s not against his morals for Dell or Jason Calacanis to sell things via Twitter. But because it’s convenient and nominally popular for him to bag on Magpie, he takes the opportunity. For him to trash the service, it’s users, and the people he views as advertisers, he goes for the easy jab rather than do the research.

[Disclosure: I use Magpie (sparingly) on my own Twitter account.  I have no other incentive to defend them or attack Marshall other than that. I’m just calling it as I see it.]

Nortel Likely Not to Survive; DFW Layoffs Imminent Following Nokia’s Partial Acquisition

Potentially bad news for Dallas comes from GigaOm today. Stacey Higgenbotham writes today that the news looks pretty grim for Nortel, a Canadian telecom with a significant presence all over the DFW metroplex. Nortel, in addition to having a good amount of operations centered here in Dallas also owns a significant amount of high-rise real estate along the I-75 Telecom Corridor area.

According to Stacey’s report, Nokia Siemens Networks has offered to buy several of the business units, and Nortel itself won’t be re-emerging from bankruptcy proceedings:

Executives at Nortel, which filed for bankruptcy back in January, had said the company planned to emerge from bankruptcy, but as the process continues that scenario looks less likely. Instead, the Canadian company is being dismantled and sold for parts, pending approval from the bankruptcy court.

As is common when any consolidation occurs, you can look for a large amount of layoffs to ensue following merger. Dallas seems to have been largely and relatively unscathed by the economic collapse, but given that Nokia also maintains a large presence here in the DFW area, there will be inevitably a great deal of overlap between the two following the merger, and likely a number of layoffs from both sides.

Why Do We Care Why GMail is Still in Beta?

Slate put out an article yesterday about GMail’s “protracted beta phase,” and of course the echo chamber is pulling out their old posts, dusting them off, and giving Google a big ol’ wag of the finger on it.

Mike Elgan talked about it this morning in his column at Datamation:

To label something "beta" is to hang the equivalent of an "under construction" sign. The idea is that a "beta" product should be judged by a more lenient set of criteria than a "shipping" product. Normally, "beta" products are distributed free in exchange for constructive feedback that enables product improvement before the company starts making money on it. The "beta" stops before the income starts.

Somehow, Google got the wacky idea that it could start calling free online services "beta," and never stop. The most conspicuous example is Gmail, which has been "beta" for five years! Meanwhile, the company has raked in billions in advertising on this "beta" product.

A more honest label for online products like Gmail would be no label at all.

I think I caught the article originally on Friendfeed when Susan Beebe posted the link. The comments were fairly predictable:

I have a feeling we'll be saying this next year - Bwana

still evolving isn't it...?? ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

Most of google stuff is in beta. - Oskar Murand

It allows them to skimp on support for general users. - Sprague D

Here is my response, though: Why do we care if there's "Beta" after the title? A large number of us obviously trust it well enough to carry on as our primary email. We might as well call it GMail Mxyzptlk.

Does using the word Beta somehow harm us as a species or as users of the service (or even as users of the word “beta”)?

Seriously.  I mean, there are really only two ways to look at Google’s usage of the word on GMail.  Way one is that they’re legitimately still in Beta, as the Slate article says:

“Company spokespeople won't say exactly when Gmail will be out of beta, but apparently there's an "internal checklist" that's lacking in some crucial checkmarks.”

The other way you can look at it is the same way everyone in the movie The Princess Bride looked at Paul Wallace’s character Vizzini’s use of the word “inconceivable!”

He kept saying it in reference to things that were clearly happening, and finally Inigo says to him: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

It’s a funny line, and it’s delivered once, mostly because Vizzini dies shortly thereafter.  Here’s the thing… most of us aren’t Inigo.  We don’t get all the good lines.  I’m here to tell you that when it comes to GMail and it’s beta situation, all the good jokes and good points have already been said. 

When you continue to repeat the Inigo lines here in your all too clever comments that Google’s usage of beta doesn’t mean what they think it means, you run the risk of looking more like Vizzini, endlessly repeating the same line.

Essentially, you’ve set up the situation for me to be the Inigo.

My name is Inigo Montoya. You beat a dead horse. Prepare to die.

My Twitter Cloud: “Yeah, I’m Good.”

This is just pure fun.

It’s my wordcloud, as assembled by TweetStats and displayed by Wordle. I especially like the association of words in the upper left corner… “Yeah, I’m good.”

Pretty good representation of my undeservedly large ego.

This Week’s AYRE.

This week, Michael Sean Wright and I are joined by Finnian Makepeace of The Makepeace Brothers for a discussion of social nets, emerging tech and the ART of music. The music pick of the week (same as last week): The Makepeace Brothers.

The raw stories we covered and the ones we didn't get to this week can be found here.

Thanks to Mosso - The Rackspace Cloud - for their support. Special thanks to Peter Himmelman for being a leader in using technology to build stronger connections with community.

Experience Peter Himmelman's Furious World LIVE every Tuesday at 7 pm PDT – here.

 <%Podcast(http://www.nicefishfilms.com/audio/Are You Really Experienced_ - Fair Use - Fair Play.mp3|Play Show)%>

To subscribe via iTunes - click here Want the show via RSS? click here We record the show live every Monday at 7 pm PDT. You can join the live stream/ chat here.

Music intro: Set the Music Free By Geoff Smith from the album Ones and 0s.

Does Sitepoint Endorse Splogging?

Today, I’m going to assume you know what splogging is, and have made up your mind as to whether you agree with it as something allowable by law or moral code.

I’m always interested in a good debate around that meme, and we’ve had several rousing discussions here at rizzn.com on the topic, but this evening before I head off to bed, I’d rather ask the question in the title, since I encountered a very odd sequence of events this evening.

Backstory (Not Relevant to the Question, But Might Be Interesting).
I’ve recently experienced an uptick in my income. The last couple months are the first time I can say I’ve been on the happy side of a sustainable income since I left Mashable, and rather than waste the money on booze or skydives, I figured it might be a good time to invest it.

So I decided to focus on acquiring blogs and content that I thought might make this site more enjoyable.  I’ve always had the dream of making rizzn.com something more than just my personal ramblings, and hiring writing staff is out of the fiscal question at this point (I’m not making that much money right now), so acquiring blogs that have similar focuses and recurring traffic as my own and carefully integrating them to the site seems like a sound proposition (particularly since I have some very lucrative and stable ad relationships at the moment).

All that to say – when I saw a listing on Sitepoint this evening, with a current bid of $175, for a blog called TekPop, I thought I might have a good candidate for acquisition.

TekPop is a Splog!
It was pretty evident, though, after a quick perusal of the site that everything there was unorginal content.  It was all stolen from Techcrunch, Engadget, Crunchgear, BoyGeniusReports, and a few other lesser known sites.

Depending on your interpretation of the law, this is illegal.  At the very least, though, the site was a poor purchase at the Buy-It-Now price of $600. The primary sources of traffic would be search engine traffic.  For someone like me who is trying to build a site of value, all the people would come into it, notice that the content is stolen, and assume my entire site operated off stolen traffic.

What’s more, the level of traffic the site received didn’t justify the $600 pricetag.  If it were an original content site with the same content focus, you’d do well (in this market) to sell it at half the price.

Furthermore, if I purchase it, I put myself at risk. My name is known in tech circles, and I am pretty sure that if I buy a site that steals most of it’s content from Mike Arrington’s blog network, I’d get a pretty terse email from the man himself. It wouldn’t be my first. The last time I inadvertently posted something originally aired on Techcrunch with improper attribution, it only took a few minutes for him to alert me to it.

So Why Do You Mention It On Your Blog, Mark?
I’m not the blog police, and frankly, it’s not the only splog currently for sale on SitePoint.  It is the only one I’ve seen that’s been improperly represented as something other than that, though.

I pointed it out in the comments of the listing that the price is a bit steep for a what is essentially a splog.

About ten minutes later, I got a forum private message from the seller:

Auction spoiling is against Sitepoint's terms and conditions.  I deleted your comment, after I took a screenshot and reported it to support.

Don't ever leave another comment on my auctions if you still have an account left when support reads their mail.

I quickly responded thusly:

Stealing content is illegal - and the site you have for sale has no original articles.

I know some of the owners of Sitepoint - so I'm not very worried.  If I were you, I'd be more worried about whether or not I was going to be sued for attempting to profit from stolen work.

I don't have anything personal against you, but you're posting for sale a site that is illegal. I was simply pointing that out - if it's not true, you should have simply responded honestly instead of making this personal.

I wrote that “I wasn’t worried,” because a couple months ago, I interviewed for but ultimately didn’t take the job as editor for Sitepoint’s blogs.

I, like many of you, was first familiar with Sitepoint because of it’s marketplace, but also because the former Editor in Chief was Josh Catone, formerly of ReadWriteWeb. He ran a tight ship over there, but ultimately Sitepoint is much more than just a blog or just a marketplace – they’re a multi-pronged outfit that benefits primarily from the publishing of printed technical books.

As such, I’d figure they’d at least have some respect for intellectual property.

Color me surprised, though.  Before I had even hit send on the above message, in my inbox was the following email from Sitepoint:

Hello,

A seller on the SitePoint Marketplace has made a complaint about negative comments you posted on her auction.

I am writing to remind you of the SitePoint Marketplace guidelines regarding negative comments:

"Comments should be made only by those who are seriously interested in buying the item for sale. Frivolous comments, even if they are well-intentioned, are discouraged and may be removed by a moderator.

"Negative comments about or criticism of the seller or item for sale are strictly not allowed. This includes accusations of fraud or theft, even if they are well-intentioned (for example, to warn others). If any member has a dispute with a seller, it must be solved privately, and not be referred to publicly in auctions. A member who posts negative comments or accusations about a seller may have their posts removed, or may be banned permanently."

This message is your first and final warning. Repeated breaches of these guidelines will result in your account being suspended.
--
Kevin Yank
Technical Director, sitepoint.com

Incredulous and irritated, I quickly tapped out a reply:

Howdy,

First of all... I was a serious buyer - until I realized that all the content on the site was stolen, mostly from Engadget.

That makes the seller someone trying to profit from stolen content.  That's illegal, at least here in the US.  It also makes the site fairly worthless.  During my due diligence, I discovered this and saved myself some potential heartache, given I would have otherwise purchased the site.

It wasn't an allegation - it was a point of fact - anyone that browses the site can see that.

As you may or may not know, I am a blogger with a fairly decent sized and influential audience.  Would you rather I blog every infraction?  I can, if you'd prefer it.

I'm getting that you'd rather protect criminals and threaten do-gooders who point out the obvious.

I await your response.

/rizzn

Meanwhile, Suzanne the seller had already replied to my private message reply.

I pay good money to list my auctions.  Know your facts before you run your mouth.  Using rss feeds is using syndicated content with attribution back to the original post.  If you don't know what syndicated means, google it.  It means it is for distribution.  Not a single site has complained about my content because they benefit from all of the backlinks to their sites.

You obviously don't know anything about rss and I'm telling you again, do not comment on any of my auctions again.  You're obviously an auction spoiler.

Otherwise you would have just contacted me with a question via pm.  Don't contact me again.

Here’s how I responded:

I'm actually, a professional blogger, and have been using RSS in all it's forms since it's inception. I know what I'm talking about.

You're a splogger. Just because you link back to the original article after stealing the entire content of that article doesn't make what you did legal. You haven't added any original content or commentary, which generally violates the spirit of fair use.

You get away with it because sploggers are like roaches. You smash one, and find a thousand more. If you make this personal, I can point you out to the editors of Engadget, which I have in my rolodex.

They might want a piece of your auction proceeds, since it's not just about splogging for you, but profiting from their work.

Or you may get lucky, and they won't. Who knows?

Want to apologize, or want to escalate this further?

Sure, I Was Terse and Self-Righteous, But I’m Right
Here’s the thing: yeah, in retrospect, I’m just pissing into the wind. Dozens of splogs are bought and sold each day on forums just like Sitepoint. The only reason I responded on that particular one was that at first glance at the description, it looked like a decent purchase.

Had it been priced a bit lower, I might’ve impulse bid on it and then possibly been stuck with the purchase. I was, by definition, a serious buyer (at least when it came to that auction). My concerns were valid.

If Suzanne had a leg to stand on, she could have defended the site’s legality and viability as a commercial property in the comments.

More importantly, though, Sitepoint arguably has a duty to police themselves a bit better. Josh Catone, in his writings at ReadWriteWeb, demonstrated a clear awareness of the meaning of the word. It is certainly hard to imagine that a blog the size of RWW, or Sitepoint for that matter, can exist without at least a passing awareness of the damage sploggers can do to their brand:

“The problem with [splogging]: it’s simply regurgitating your content and thus risking your content being marked as the duplicate content […] its using your work to bring traffic and make revenue for nothing more than a PHP script that reads RSS and outputs it onto a page.”

- Sitepoint user ShayOUU, March 26, 2007

“Splogs in particular need to be dealt with severely as they are not only creating lots of bogus "desperation" clicks by users simply trying to go somewhere useful, but they are polluting search results. I'm constantly finding splogs that have scrapped one of my pages using cloaking to feed the scrapped content to Google's bots and then feeding bogus gibberish surrounded by CPC ads to users.“

“If these spammy types of sites that use the labor of others to generate search engine fodder for no purpose other than generating CPC clicks were effectively dealt with, it would not only improve the quality of clicks that advertisers get, but would improve the average CPC payout legitimate publishers see because the garbage sites wouldn't be deflating the value of clicks.”

- Sitepoint user KLB, December 30, 2005

I’m Not the First to Say This
As I’m writing this up, I did a bit of searching around, and it appears the common association between Sitepoint and the facilitation of splogs goes back at least three years.

Whether or not you think Sitepoint should better police it’s marketplace is one thing – coming down so harshly on me, someone that they’ve actually been on the phone with and tried to hire before – that’s another thing. This, to me, indicates a willingness to sell their soul rather than do what’s right.

It’s hard to argue that sploggers do anything valuable for the ecosystem of the Internet.  They drag down ad values, they take other’s work and try to profit from it, and they create no legitimate engagement amongst the audiences they may accrue.

Given all of these factors, with the added bonus that Sitepoint’s primary income is derived by profiting from original writing, I’d imagine they’d at least respond to an email or review the case rather than tell me within seconds that “it’s my first and last warning,” and I better not say negative things ever again on their marketplace forums.

Am I out of line here? Has my ego run away with me?

Or maybe, just maybe, am I right for once?  You tell me.  I’m honestly curious what everyone else thinks about this.

UPDATE: Since I posted this blog entry, Suzanne has posted another site for auction, this one centered around scrapbooking.  All the content is stolen, as well.

The Hunt for the Cure for SxScurvy

I’ve been talking to and catching up with all my SxSW contacts today – and an amazing number of them are still suffering from the what’s being called the South by Scurvy, or SxSARS by others.

I was feeling better from my bout some time last week. The symptoms of the disease are not pretty. The best way to elegantly describe it is the worst case of Montezuma’s Revenge you’ve ever had (think: Dave Barry’s description of his colon cleanser), and severe fatigue that keeps you in bed for most of the day, and intense body ache – possibly fever as well.

Since I was one of the few who seems to have defeated my illness quickest, I thought I’d start a discussion around finding the cure.  Sure, it isn’t a Twestival for Ethiopian well water or anything, but it’s a fairly good cause.

My cure was copious amounts of sleep, Aleve, orange juice and Pepto Bismol. It isn’t a tasty combo, but it got the job done.

What worked for you?