Bruner Blog
All Bruner, All the Time
Just How Are These Companies Making Money, Anyway?
A Bruner Blog reader writes in offering grains of salt about my recent optimism for new free software products, including Cloudmark's anti-spam plug-in SpamNet, and the free utility for creating reader comments on blogs and websites from Enetations, which I use on ExecutiveSummary.com. SpamNet, it should be noted, is experiencing a fair bit of bugginess in its beta release.
My reader (who didn't want the message made public) specifically wondered about Enetation's business model, which as I mentioned in my prior note about them, is not exactly transparent or well marketed, if there is one at all. (No fee, no ads, no self-promo. Just plain free. Sound too good to be true? It's not 1999 anymore, after all.)
The reader speculates that they could just be farming email addresses for resale. On the face of it, that's true. When you sign up to use the service as a web logger, they ask for your email address, but they never mention what their purpose is in acquiring that address. Also, when someone uses the utility to post a comment on my blog, by default the form asks for their email address. (I believe I had the option to edit the form and perhaps turn that off when I set it up, but I'm not sure and can't be bothered to go back and check.) Does that email address get stored on their servers? I'm not sure. Either way, there appears to be no explanation about privacy policies or how they treat email addresses in the FAQ or their About Us pages.
Furthermore, the About Us page gives no real explanation of the mission of the "business" (if it is, indeed, even a business), how it intends to make money, what happens to all my comment records if they go bust, or even biographies of the founders. It only offers their email addresses.
My own assumption has been that these are a couple of well-meaning techies who coded this elegent little utility and made it freely available to the world just for their love of the blog world and their programming creativity, and that how to make money or issues concerning privacy just haven't really occurred to them yet because they're too good and pure for that. And their British modesty makes them think no one would be interested in their biographies anyway.
Describing it like that makes me sound like quite a sap. But I think I'm right. In part because I wrote them email earlier with a minor bug report, and they both answered me personally. I know this thing's gotten a lot of publicity inside the blog world, so they're doutbless getting tons of mail. If they were just running an elaborate scam to farm email address, I can't see them delivering such good customer service.
But the reader's question is a good one that deserves a response, and an update of the site w/ a privacy policy at minimum. As readers should know, I am not just an armchair Internet media pundit: it's how I make my living. I've done a lot of research in the email marketing space, and I can assure you that theirs are not best practices in terms of handling sacred email addresses online. But I am willing to bet they're just naive, not nefarious. I'll update with a response if I get one. (I'm not holding my breath for a consulting gig on this one.)
- 6/22/2002
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Run, Little Robot, Run!
English scientists building artificially intelligent robots were surprised when one broke free of its cage and made it as far as the parking lot.
- 6/22/2002
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Morto the Magician
This animation was written by Steve Martin, apparently. I guess Morto is even suposed to be a caricature of him. Frankly, I would have expected better from him, tho it's rather amusing.
- 6/22/2002
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Webbies
Lots of interesting sites to explore among the winners of this years Webby Awards, announced earlier this week..
- 6/22/2002
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It's Only Fun Till Someone Gets Hurt
I just upgraded this morning from the free version of Blogger.com to Blogger Pro. (It's great. If you use Blogger.com, you should really upgrade to the Pro version. Ev could use your support.) The transaction was confirmed with an email that began, "You are now a Blogger Pro subscriber. May you use your new powers for good and not evil."
I have to admit, I've been a bad blogger. The other day I used the blog to mock a friend, a journalist who didn't think blogs ammount to a hill of beans. I thought it was pretty funny at first (and so did a few readers, I believe), but it got a bit out of hand. I'll spare you the details, because that wouldn't really be having learned a lesson to gloat about it. Point is, it was mean, and he was offended, and I've learned my lesson. I'm sorry, and hereby take the Blogger Pro pledge to use my powers of blogging only for good from here on after.
- 6/21/2002
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Bush Doctrine 2.0
My sister sent this very funny political animation by Mark Fiore.
- 6/20/2002
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Must See TV: 'Bigger Than Enron' on PBS
Just finished watching the PBS Frontline documentary expose "Bigger Than Enron," by correspondent Hedrick Smith. Amazing. If you missed it, you must go to PBS.org (via link above) and find out when it is rebroadcasting in your area.
First rate investigative journalism. Top level access to key players, including past and present chairmen of the SEC, Andersen CEO Joseph Berardino and many other luminaries who, presented with the smoking gun, basically fess up about just how egregiously Corporate America has been and continues to ride the American people doggie style. Total breakdown in fundamental moral values. Greed. I'm not a religious guy, but isn't that one of the 7 deadly sins?
Clear moral of the story: nothing has changed. Bush's new man at the SEC, Harvey Pitt, is toeing the auditor's line on the question of breaking apart auditing and consulting (among other issues, but that one's key). In the seven months since Enron broke, nothing but cosmitics have changed in the system that makes Enron-style accounting abuse so commonplace, as the documentary makes abundantly clear.
Favorite quote: Andersen CEO Berardino: "People are always asking me how I can sleep at night. I tell them I sleep like a baby: I wake up every two hours and cry."
- 6/20/2002
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Trading Fat Credits?
Sounds like a combination of eBay and those ridiculous schemes companies use to trade pollution credits. Per my earlier note that Soutwest is going to charge fat people double for two seats, Mark's ex-wife observes:
"A whole new business could arise out of this. Very
thin people could sell 1/2 of their seats to very fat
people, so the fares would be more equitable. You
could have brokers handling this for a small fee,
checking heights, weights and hip sizes to make sure
everyone will fit in as planned."
- 6/20/2002
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What Do You Feel Is Essentially American?
 I had the pleasure of lunching yesterday with Vanessa Amador, whom I met via the funky online networking community Ryze (listed among my favorites). Vanessa wants to hear how people answer that question: "What do you feel is essentially American?"
It's pretty much her obsession these days. But in a good way. She moved to NYC from Florida (where she was/is an actress, model and real estate marketing specialist), arriving a few months before Sept. 11. But her pursuit of this question, spurred doubtless by the country's introspection in the wake of that awful day last fall, is now approaching a full-time occupation, or at least so she hopes.
The idea is a TV show, shot documentary style around the country out of an RV, a la Charles Kuralt. She would engage people with the question (the fact that she's easy on the eyes certainly helps her case; I don't think I'm over-stepping to post her picture here (lifted from her Ryze page), as she also uses it on her business card), and then she'd build the show around their responses. As they share their thoughts, she would weave in images and background on the themes they are talking about: family farmers, jazz music, the founding fathers, Christianity, diversity, civil liberites, New York City, fried chicken, Elvis, etc.
At first blush, it seemed a bit schmaltzy to me until I actually tried to give her a straight answer. I found myself blathering on (imagine that) as thoughtfully as I could on a range of topics till she changed the subject back to her idea for the show.
One thing you can't doubt is her determination. She sold me. I think that if done well (tightly edited, thoughtful, balanced, honest, down-to-earth), it could be quite an interesting show. There's a lot there to the question: really probing what it means to be an American and what America represents in the world. Everyone in one way or another has already been having that same conversation for the last nine months, all around the world. Having an ongoing TV dialog to just discuss that one theme could prove tremendously stimulating, if you think about it. Perhaps even good for international relations (I could see it having an avid international following). She also envisions a rich and lively Internet component, which could be great. I think the whole package could also be very attracitive to advertisers.
In short, it's a crazy dream, baby, but it just might work! She's a great saleman (in the Malcom Gladwell "Tipping Point" sense). Problem is, all that I know about producing a TV show I learned from those "Show About Nothing" episodes of Sienfeld.
If anybody out there has any ideas or contacts in the TV industry, or even if you'd just like to answer her question, you can drop her a line at vanessa@bruner.net (not her actual address; I've set up forwarding for her to remove her one layer from the weirdos among you).
- 6/20/2002
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Relief From Spam!
Thank you Cloudmark! This company, founded by one of the creators of Napster, has just released a peer-to-peer spam filtering plug-in that removes spam from your email! Check out my longer note about this on ExecutiveSummary.com, or just download it immediately at Cloudmark.com. (Note: it only works at the moment for Outlook, tho support for other email clients is coming soon.)
- 6/19/2002
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Comments With Enetation
Just discovered a neat new comments tool from Enetation. Yes, their name is stupid (it's a dense play on "annotation"), and I don't see how they expect to make money off the thing, as it's free to web developers, there a no ads and not even any self-promotional "Powered by Enetations" kind of thing in the utility, but the app seems to work perfectly well, so the rest is their problem. (Come to think of it, I guess it will be my problem when they go out of biz, as all the comments appear to be stored on their servers, but a risk I'm willing to take.)
To see it in action, visit my biz blog ExecutiveSummary.com (and leave a comment!).
- 6/19/2002
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Bloomberg Compromises on Recycling
Updating my earlier post on Bloomberg's efforts to cut recycling in NYC to close the city's $5 billion budget gap, WNYC was reporting this moring that the City Council (pro recycling) and the mayor (against) were near a compromise on this key sticking point in the overdue city budget, whereby glass recycling would be suspended for a year and mentals for two years. Not clear what's up with paper. News Day has a piece that touches on the compromise.
Not good enough in my opinion, but the best we're likely to get, I suppose. Such is politics. Heidee (who apparently likes seeing her name in print, even if just on a friend's blog), points out that recycling also represents inome for many of the homeless. Bloomberg's record on the homeless, meanwhile, appears to be shaping up as a mixed bag, with the mayor seeking to increase funds for public housing (I heard the figure 7,000 new units on the radio today), while trying to overturn a ban that presently prevents the city from evicting trouble-making families from city shelters.
Regarding recycling and NYC environmentalism, here are some interesting links:
- 6/19/2002
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Southwest Super Sizes Ticket Prices
Per my comment the other day on corporate responsibility for overweight Americans, Southwest Airlines is about to start charging double for any passengers that can't fit into a seat with the arm rest in normal position.
Source: Haas
- 6/19/2002
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Sad But True
This from my dad:
A guy walks in and asks the barman, "Isn't that Bush and Powell sitting over there?" The barman says, "Yep, that's them." So the guy walks over and says, "Wow, this is a real honor. What are you guys doing in here?"
Bush says, "We're planning WW III." And the guy says, "Really? What's going to happen?" Bush says, "Well, we're going to kill 23 million Iraqis and one blonde with big tits."
The guy exclaimed, "A blonde with big tits? Why kill a blonde with big tits?"
Bush turns to Powell, punches him on the shoulder and says, "See, smart ass?! I told you no one would worry about the 23 million Iraqis!"
- 6/19/2002
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Goldfinger Bin Laden
Fox News weblogger Ken Layne had the same reaction I did watching "Goldfinger" on ABC Monday night: how creepy the the climax scene now seems where Goldfinger uses nerve gas to sedate the U.S. army so he could blow up Fort Knox. Yikes. I guess Bin Laden watches the old movie classics, also. Too bad James Bond doesn't work for the CIA.
- 6/18/2002
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Legos and the Christian Faith
Perhaps the most stimulating thing to happen to the Net in years was for all the really creative people to get laid off. Otherwise we wouldn't see things like this.
- 6/18/2002
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More on Anthrax Investigation Cover-up
More support for my pet issue of an alledged cover-up by the FBI on the anthrax investigation. Where the hell is the mainstream media on this?
- 6/18/2002
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Did McDonald's Make America Fat?
I love this. John Banzhaf, the American lawyer who first started suing tobacco companies for injury to smokers back in the 1960s (though the late '90s) is now proposing to sue the junk-food industry for America's obesity epidemic. His George Washington University class on legal activism is preparing a suit against McDonald's. I say, go get the bastards! Fry them in their own deep fat fryers. I'm sure when they take the lid off this industry, Eric Schlosser's expose best-selling book "Fast Food Nation" will prove to be only scratching the surface of the vilany and damage this industry wreaks on humankind.
I'm serious. I make it a point not to eat in McDonald's, have avoided them for decades. And this nation is fat as hell, it's disgusting. Quoting from a piece in the UK Independent (see link below):
America, as we all know, is the fattest nation on the planet and getting fatter all the time. According to a report by the US Surgeon-General, released a few months ago, 61 per cent of Americans are now significantly overweight, compared with 55 per cent in the early 1990s, and 46 per cent in the late 1970s. Obesity generates $117bn in annual medical bills and triggers 300,000 premature deaths each year
I was recently outside of NY and spend a few hours in Chicago's Midway airport, and I can confirm it: outside of NY, everyone's fat. And I certainly think McDonald's and many other purveyors of needlessly and knowingly harmful crap food bear some of the responsibility.
- 6/18/2002
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Greetings Dork!
Big shout out to Dork Zygotian, who recently googled the Bruner Blog and read it cover to cover and wrote in with a long missive, his first in a while. Dork and I go way back, to late 1990, to be precise. Budapest Week was actually conceived over a joint of Dork weed, as Steve likes to point out. Wonder if it made a difference to the fate of the poor little pub that it was such raggy-ass dope (albeit the best one could grow along the roadside back then). Dork became a key player at the paper for many years, editing the vaunted Style section for while fairly early on, before I fired him once or twice. He always wrote the most brilliantly hilarious opinion pieces the paper ever published.
In his note, Dork makes few brief political comments on my earlier posting about the recent Socialist (MSZP) election victory in Hungary and defeat of nationalist egomaniac former Fidesz party prime minister Viktor Orban:
So I read through the thing, and found the Hungarian election rant amusing.
You should check the news here now. Basically, Fidesz is acting like they
didn't lose the election and setting up "civic committees" to do street
demos and harrass MSZP officials in public. You can even go to
OrbanViktor.hu and read how Orban "is, naturally, still the prime
minister in our hearts." Somebody ought to take the time to tear Vikibacsi
a new a-hole concerning his post election anti-democratic antics. Also,
there is a movement to compensate voted-out Fidesz politicians and civil
servansts who "have been victimized and lost their jobs because of their
political views," i.e., they were voted out. This ain't joking, this is in
the parliament care of Repassy Robert.
Dork vows that he is not interested in blogging, which is a huge mistake, as it would be the funniest blog on the Net, hands down. But he is a rather stubborn character, so I don't know how easily I can wear him down. I'll see if Steve has some of his old columns backed up that I'll repost here.
Instead of applying his brilliant craft of writing the funniest stuff in Eastern Europe, Dork is running a publication he's so ashamed of I'll omit all identfying details: "Absolutely the worst job since I was a rat handler in Boston at a lab." That and he continues to perform with his klezmer and Eastern European folk band around Europe, with a U.S. tour this summer in the offing.
FYI, DorkZygotian.com is an unregistered domain. :-)
- 6/17/2002
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America the Beautiful
 Just allow youself for one moment the pleasure of envisioning a U.S.A. sweep to become the World Cup champs for the first time in our history. I have to admit soccer is far from my favorite sport, and I'm not really such a nationalist that I care for that reason. I guess it just so appeals to my sense of irony and fantasy. I don't know why, but picturing it makes me giddy like a school boy. The slack-jawed expression on the faces of billions of people worldwide... Would it make them begrudgingly respect us or hate us even more? It's just such a topys-turvy world anymore, it seems perversely possible.
In any event, NBC must be thrilled after the U.S. 2-0 victory over Mexico (advancing us to the quarterfinals), and the idea of securing rights to air the World Cup probably doesn't sound like such a frivolous idea at this point.
- 6/17/2002
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The Women
Quick heads up, this Tuesday night at 8pm, the PBS affiliate Channel Thirteen (in the NY area, anyway) is airing a filmed version of the stage play "The Women," a hilariously bitchy all-female play set in the '30s (when it was originally written by Clare Booth Luce, wife of Time Magazine founder Henry Luce). I mention this because I was lucky enough to see this on Broadway at a special pre-screening several months ago thru my friend Alev, who is the women's pages editor at the NY Daily News. I don't know how well this filmed version of the stageplay works, but if it works well at all, it's probably worth tuning into, as the play was quite hilarious. The performers are all great, with stand-outs including Kristen Johnston (of "Third Rock From the Sun"), who is absolutely brilliant in this, Cynthia Nixon (of "Sex in the City," whom I was friends with in college!) and Jennifer Tilly (of "Cat's Meow"), among many others.
- 6/17/2002
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Bush Rich From Nazi Loot?
I try to avoid blogging about political stuff while still trying to keep this thing interesting, because many others do it better. But this was too intriguing to pass up. Was just browsing the site of an old favorite pub of mine, Unte Reader, and came across a link to this piece from Clamor Magazine, alleging that Bush's family fortune in part came from money Dubya's grandfather Prescott Bush made in banking lending money to Hitler. The article reads in part:
According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and US government archives, President George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. In fact, President Bush himself is an heir to these profits from the holocaust which were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush.
Throughout the Bush family's decades of public life, the American press has gone out of its way to overlook one historical fact – that through Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Prescott Bush, and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, along with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, financed Adolf Hitler before and during World War II. It was first reported in 1994 by John Loftus and Mark Aarons in The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People.
If true, would be nice to see that get a bit more pickup in the mainstream media...
- 6/17/2002
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The Thayers
Congratulations Alev and Nelson! Wishing you many happy years together. Special thanks to you, Nelson, for rescuing her from spinsterhood!
- 6/16/2002
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