Forbes reports on the internet metrics tracking company comScore’s software being installed without users knowledge, not the first time I might add, given my online services treat the comScore software and Malware and Spyware:

“[The] software is sneaking onto users’ computers without the user agreeing to receive it,” says Harvard University researcher Ben Edelman, who documented at least ten unauthorized comScore downloads. Eric Howes, director of malware research at antivirus company Sunbelt Software, and his researchers separately observed hundreds of unauthorized comScore downloads in a three-month period this fall. (Edelman and Howes spend their days patrolling the Internet for new threats.)

I’m sure comScore investor and Director Fred Wilson will deny it again, but Harvard isn’t exactly a backyard research lab now, is it.

(via Slashdot)

The SMH reports that James Kim took a bad road possibly due to the advice of Google Maps, and that taking the road cost him his life.

Certainly if proven true, this could be a world first: Google kills CNet journalist.

From the SMH:

According to Associated Press, drivers are advised not to take Bear Camp Road to Gold Beach in winter, the route taken by the Kims.

“Authorities say the cyber-savvy family may have plucked the route from Grants Pass to Gold Beach from an online mapping service, unaware of the elements,” AP reported.

“Despite its impassable snowdrifts and single lane, Bear Camp Road is offered as the preferred route on some websites and on-board-directions software available on some new cars. And most of those have no business in those mountains in the winter.”

When using the Yahoo Maps, MapQuest and Google Maps online services to plot directions from Grants Pass to Gold Beach, Yahoo and MapQuest both recommend taking the same, safer highway route, while Google suggests a shortcut through roads that become dangerous in winter.

I suppose on a positive note, atleast for the Kim family, Google isn’t short on cash for a settlement.

Tags: James Kim, Google

Threadwatch quotes Jason Calacanis at SES Chicago:

“SEO is bullshit, if you generate a web page with good content Google will rank the page properly.”

Can’t say that I agree. SEO is like getting regular checkups on your car, sure, the car will run without them, but it will run a whole lot better with it. I can’t help than think though that maybe Calacanis was trying to be provocative for the sake of it, after all, telling a crowd at SES that SEO is shit is about as clever as attending a meeting of the National Association of the Advancement of Coloured People and saying that all black people are shit. The further irony of course is whether he likes it or not, Weblogs Inc., implemented a SEO strategy from day 1, and that’s the network blogroll. We all know the benefits of cross linking sites, not only do the search engines love it, it also leaks (and therefore shares) page rank around as well. I also don’t believe that good content alone will deliver traffic, I’ve known plenty of people over the years with what I would consider good content who never went well with Google. Why? because the sites weren’t optimised, there was no SEO strategy. Weblogs Inc. also had the first mover advantage into many of the verticals they went into as well, combined with a strong publicity machine. The average Joe Blogger doesn’t have that advantage, and that’s where SEO plays an important role. OK, I could argue like this for weeks, SEO isn’t Shit, it’s a smart practice for anyone online.

Tags: Jason Calacanis

Michael Arrington writes at TechCrunch that AskCity is cool. It might be cool if you live in the States, but try anywhere outside of the US. It’s not only not happening, it doesn’t exist. Let’s see: crowded marketplace, lot’s of competitors, you’d want to maximise your potential viewing audience, wouldn’t you? and there’s a damn site larger number of people outside of the United States than in it, and yet AskCity doesn’t even have the most basic of service for the rest of the world.

Tags: AskCity

My old hunting ground, The Blog Herald, has been sold again. Although I’ve been aware of it being on the market for 6 odd weeks, I’ve got no idea who Blog Media sold it to.

It’s weird really that the site has sold again. Twice in 12 months. It’s not that long ago that selling blogs was a totally foreign concept to everyone, indeed the marketplace was even fairly limited when I sold the site. As anyone knows who watches these things (I’m still a blog news junkie, although it’s not as bad as a use to be) blog sales are a dime a dozen these days, one only has to take a look at Sitepoint to see blogs regularly coming onto the market and being sold.

Kudos to Matt Craven on his excellent job as editor of The Blog Herald for these last 11 months. I can’t imagine that it would have been easy taking over the 400 pound beast, coupled with the fact that prior to sale The Blog Herald has statistically had it’s best ever 6 months, and secondly with a whole pile of people watching to see how you went. It was a difficult task for which I sincerely believe he rose to the occasion.

Kudos also to David Krug. After the nightmare of using a third person to sell The Blog Herald in the first place you’d think that I would have been dead against the practice, but Krug’s sale of The Blog Herald follows a string of deals he has negotiated, including numerous sales of smaller blogs. If anyone in our industry deserves the mantle of top blog salesman it would be Krug. Indeed, if he can stay out of Mexican jails long enough, I think he may have found his calling.

I guess with this sale now that I’m free to write on blogging news again. There was never a written non-compete agreement when I sold The Blog Herald, indeed it was never really discussed, but certainly I always took it as a fair given, a gentlemans agreement that I wouldn’t compete with The Blog Herald as owned by Blog Media. Naturally that loyalty doesn’t extend to the new owners, who ever they may be. Does this mean I’m going to rush out and start a Blog Herald competitor? no, but it does become an option in the what I’m going to do next list. Personally I don’t think there could ever be another Blog Herald for me, but having said that writing, and reporting still runs through my blood, and news junkies work best with an outlet. Food for thought.

Tags: Blog Herald, Blogmedia

Thought your traffic was good? We’ll I’m not about to add a pinch of salt to everyone’s idea of good traffic, but a f*cking great big truck load of it: Perez Hilton did 3.97 million unique viewers in 1 day. Not page views, not visitors, but uniques. I’d guess that that’s probably higher on average than the entire Gawker Media or Weblogs Inc networks over an average day, and certainly it’s way more that many of the smaller blog networks traffic put together. How in the world Perez hasn’t been either bought by one of the big media companies, or even used this traffic to build his own network is a wonder in itself. Congrats to Perez though, credit where it’s due. Some more perspective:

That’s Perez rising above 2 of Australia’s largest websites, news.com.au, and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Tags: Perez Hilton

TMZ.com reports on news that Mario Lavandeira, aka Perez Hilton is being sued by a Hollywood photo agency for $7.5m US for copyright infringement. (I believe I read elsewhere the agency was X17).

Admittedly Perez goes a lot further than other blogs in posting pictures taken from elsewhere, however the case could present a chilling effect moment for bloggers who use photographs from other sites under fairuse if Perez loses. Indeed, success could result in a raft of similar lawsuits against blogs and blog networks who use photographs in a similar way. One to watch.

Steve Rubel writes that the Page View is on it’s last legs, because Ajax and DHTML markup will mean that visitors to a page will no longer necessarily call a page from the server. I don’t agree. Sure, with my Web 2.0 cheer squad hat on, I get and support the idea of attention, however with my marketing trained hat on, as much as attention and not needing to load a page to view more is the future, it also lacks one critical feature: metrics. How do you start measuring attention? with page views you’ve got a tangible, a fairly universally accepted metric to use when selling inventory, or vice versa when you’re buying inventory. Page views won’t die until such time someone comes up with a universally acceptable way of measuring attention. If time the equation? possibly, and I guess one day we’ll see. Personally, despite what the Web 2.0 cheer squad might say, I’m don’t think that time is anywhere in the next year or 2.

Michael Arrington writes at TechCrunch that he believes TV is dead. I don’t agree. I do believe that traditional broadcast TV is in trouble, maybe not nearly as much as radio at the moment (that’s another post, but radio is dying a whole lot faster), but it is in trouble none the less, but I think Mike confuses the B2C model with the actual box itself. TV is not only alive, take a walk into any large electronics retailer (Best Buy in the US, Harvey Norman in Australia) and watch the big screen LCD’s and Plasma’s walk out the door…TV is booming. What we do with the TV on the other hand is changing. OK, so the idea of a computer attached to a TV hasn’t take off in a huge way, but I think that’s more representative of broadband still not being quick enough (note, I have an XP MCE box)…and yet PVR’s, which are essentially computers anyway (a lot of them run Linux) continue to grow in consumption. HDTV, at least in countries like the UK and Australia which have essentially mandated their introduction, is now not only widespread in terms of availability, but it continues to grow also in terms of marketplace awareness and acceptance. So people are watching less broadcast TV…we all know that as a fact that’s a given, but they are still using TV’s, to watch DVD’s, record TV’s, playing Playstations and Xboxes….TV is more alive and kicking than ever before. The smart operators in broadcast will continue to look at ways of tweaking their business models to better cater for services like VOD…Foxtel in Australia for example offers this service now. Will TV look anything like it does today in 5 or 10 years time? No, but we’re all still going to have one, and we’re all still going to be using it.

Steve Rubel reports on yet another example of Digg coming after mashup and fan sites that dare use the word “digg” in their title. You just can’t be a good Web 2.0 citizen and go around threatening to sue everyone…it just shouldn’t and doesn’t work that way. I’m just waiting till they sue a site with the word “digger” in it. We’ve got a pile of great diggers here, many of which could do a great raid on Digg’s headquarters I guess….and given that with recent reports that US spies are spying on Australian businesses and using this information to benefit American businesses, we’d be edging close to being in some sort of conflict with the Yanks anyway I’d guess. Bring it on 🙂