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Sunday, September 28, 2003 |
 BTW: here is a thread on a potential fix the iGetNet (addressbar spyware) problem. I wonder which software iGetNet piggybacked on?
11:08:57 AM 
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More bad corporate behavior. If you haven't noticed already, Verisign has created a new portal called "Site Finder" Whenever you type in a bad URL (ie. "www.traaavel.com") it will send you to a page it runs. It looks fairly lame given that no partners are in evidence (Yahoo or Google) and it doesn't use any performance marketing techniques (contextual ad placement). My recommendation to Verisign: if you are going to make a powergrab like this, at least do a good job.
Of course, that is not the only system that has grabbed control of my Address bar. My badly formatted URLs (ie. "travel" or www.travel) goes to an iGetNet/Overture page. iGetNet sells keywords direct to customers. For example, words like "travel" go to FlyingDutchmenTravel.com which has paid iGetNet a fee. www.travel goes to an iGetNet/Overture search page. I probably picked this redirect up from some software I downloaded. This is in turn a hijack of the MSN search default that Microsoft attempted to reserve for itself.
That isn't the end of this foolishness. I downloaded Google's toolbar which makes Google the default search engine for the search button on IE (a Google sidebar will pop up when the button is pressed). However, when I hit customize at the top of the sidebar to change the search preferences I get taken to a search screen powered by HP/Inktomi/Overture. LOL.
11:05:01 AM
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Ray Ozzie hints that Groove is going to do something interesting with Web Services that will be very hot. Any speculation? My guess that the work being done is to integrate a Groove client with sources of corporate data that can be then shared across a Groove connection (other than simple documents). Think of it this way. I have a team of people I routinely work with via Groove. I would like to share sales data for a given product or customer with those people but there isn't an easy way to do it (it's locked in a different application). A connection to the sales tool that allows me to use Groove to acquire that data (generate reports) and then easily share it with my team would be ideal. Now if I use Groove to autogenerate that report every day, the whole team could then get up to date data via secure Groove synchronization.
10:05:31 AM
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With Apple's entrance into the weblog tool market (see below), that leaves two major players left (AOL and Google have already launched their own tool): Yahoo and Microsoft. Note that AOL, Apple, and Google have approached weblog tools as a customer retention strategy and not as a source of new revenue. This probably means that the remaining players will take the same approach. That's too bad, this approach leaves lots of money on the table.
9:50:48 AM
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Paolo has heard that Apple is giving away iBlog (from lifli Software) to people that renew their .Mac accounts. Backup Brain has heard this too. Interesting. This would make it impossible for Apple to put pressure on lifli to change the product's name (since it does infringe on Apple's itools portfolio of trademarks). My guess that this is a try before you buy situation. The outlook for success is good. Paolo's demo weblog looks like lifli has done a good job at integration with other .Mac tools. There is no doubt in my mind that people will like this tool much better than Apple's current Homepage tool.
9:25:08 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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