Comments on: Let’s get rid of podkeyword.com http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/ and I mean it Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:45:03 +0100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Tom Elstob http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-347 Tom Elstob Sat, 24 Dec 2005 05:55:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-347 This blog entry is ridiculous, sorry. I really find it funny how one article in the register can provoke this kind of reactionary response from so many 'podcasters'. The fact's, which I won't repeat because George has laid them out very well himself at podkeyword.com, are that no-one was ever hijacked or even redirected. George was providing a free service, which Marcus signed up for, then didn't like the fact that George's service worked really well and Marcus got loads of listeners. Hello?! I think this goes to show that idiots and the internet do not mix well. This blog entry is ridiculous, sorry.

I really find it funny how one article in the register can provoke this kind of reactionary response from so many ‘podcasters’. The fact’s, which I won’t repeat because George has laid them out very well himself at podkeyword.com, are that no-one was ever hijacked or even redirected. George was providing a free service, which Marcus signed up for, then didn’t like the fact that George’s service worked really well and Marcus got loads of listeners. Hello?! I think this goes to show that idiots and the internet do not mix well.

]]> By: Peter http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-346 Peter Wed, 14 Dec 2005 06:50:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-346 I'm willing to accept that Mr. George Lambert, or 'Marchon' as some refer to, acted in good faith, although starting a spam blog called cashcowmarketingplan.com didn't do much for his credibility. I'm also willing to accept that for some reason he was more succesfull in getting his mirrored feeds into the iTunes directory than the original authors were in getting theirs. If so, I'm sorry that this whole thing turned into a marketing disaster for his service. While his idea was not bad (make podcasts easier to find), he should have made a redirection service to the podcast <B>web page</B>, not a mirror service for the feed. It will always be the podcast author who wants to decide about the feed URL, and who will add it as a <I>link rel="alternate" type="application/rss xml"</I> to the blog's URL. As for the numerous defenders of Mr. Lambert: you can write a comment, no problem. But if you have such a strong opinion against blogs/bloggers and all the bad they do, don't be a coward and put your name under your comment. I will delete future "anonymous" reactions. I’m willing to accept that Mr. George Lambert, or ‘Marchon’ as some refer to, acted in good faith, although starting a spam blog called cashcowmarketingplan.com didn’t do much for his credibility. I’m also willing to accept that for some reason he was more succesfull in getting his mirrored feeds into the iTunes directory than the original authors were in getting theirs. If so, I’m sorry that this whole thing turned into a marketing disaster for his service.
While his idea was not bad (make podcasts easier to find), he should have made a redirection service to the podcast web page, not a mirror service for the feed. It will always be the podcast author who wants to decide about the feed URL, and who will add it as a link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss xml” to the blog’s URL.

As for the numerous defenders of Mr. Lambert: you can write a comment, no problem. But if you have such a strong opinion against blogs/bloggers and all the bad they do, don’t be a coward and put your name under your comment. I will delete future “anonymous” reactions.

]]> By: Anonymous http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-345 Anonymous Wed, 14 Dec 2005 06:15:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-345 Oh come on, dont be so hard on him... why would anyone bother to get facts straight when he can get a really cool story by paraphrasing media outlets and adding personal opinions disguised as 'fact'? Oh come on, dont be so hard on him… why would anyone bother to get facts straight when he can get a really cool story by paraphrasing media outlets and adding personal opinions disguised as ‘fact’?

]]> By: Anonymous http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-344 Anonymous Wed, 14 Dec 2005 05:59:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-344 Read the full story at http://www.zzine.org/read.php?op=view&item=1375 Get your facts straight before spewing lies, mkay, thanks. So much for the bloggers having more objectivity than the traditional media. This story is just the same rehashed lies that the media itself spewed. Good work uncovering the facts citizen journalist. Read the full story at http://www.zzine.org/read.php?op=view&item=1375

Get your facts straight before spewing lies, mkay, thanks. So much for the bloggers having more objectivity than the traditional media. This story is just the same rehashed lies that the media itself spewed. Good work uncovering the facts citizen journalist.

]]> By: Anonymous http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-343 Anonymous Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:12:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-343 I know a little bit about the folks behindPodkeyword.com because I had some early discussions with them about the idea, about a year ago. They merely provide a free 'booster' service to relatively unkown podcasters who have a small internet footprint. The hope is that a few shows, amongst the many, might attract big audiences and lead to related business. They make no claim concerning content ownership but di expect some recognition for their efforts and possibly some revenue stream in the future. The fact that one successful podcaster now wants to abandon one of his early supporters is just human nature at it's worst and is causing the podkeyword.com folks a lot of unwanted and unecessary grief. Don't look for conspiracies where none exist. Podkeyword.com is still an excellent place for listeners to locate free content that may be of interest to them and reward those podcasters with their ears. I know a little bit about the folks behindPodkeyword.com because I had some early discussions with them about the idea, about a year ago. They merely provide a free ‘booster’ service to relatively unkown podcasters who have a small internet footprint. The hope is that a few shows, amongst the many, might attract big audiences and lead to related business. They make no claim concerning content ownership but di expect some recognition for their efforts and possibly some revenue stream in the future.

The fact that one successful podcaster now wants to abandon one of his early supporters is just human nature at it’s worst and is causing the podkeyword.com folks a lot of unwanted and unecessary grief. Don’t look for conspiracies where none exist.

Podkeyword.com is still an excellent place for listeners to locate free content that may be of interest to them and reward those podcasters with their ears.

]]> By: David Lawrence http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-342 David Lawrence Tue, 06 Dec 2005 05:05:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-342 Regarding this "podjacking" controversy... I just spoke with George Lambert, the owner of podkey.com. He was on my radio show this past Saturday night: http://onlinetonight.com and my Personal Netcast podcast directly after: http://feeds.feedburner.com/pn I also spoke directly with Erik on the subject, so I believe that I am the only person so far that has spoken directly to both parties, and also am registered at both Feedburner and podkey.com. it's nice, Peter, that you think Feedburner is not evil. I happen to agree. That doesn't mean that someday they, or anyone that might acquire them, or any other site on the Internet (like, oh, I don't know...Google?) might not turn to the dark side. Again, note, I use my Feedburner feed, so I like them, too. That's irrelevant. Feedburner and podkey.com serve exactly the same purpose: redirection of your feed so that you can change in at will, and take advantage of whatever value-added services both offer (chiclets, ad insertion, subdomains, whatever). I submit that your take on George Lambert is based entirely on what you've read on a website that should have behaved more like a trusted publisher and less like the National Enquirer. This is what I told Erik's lawyer, Colette: My take on this: George Lambert is being unfairly blamed, and you and your client, Erik, don't understand the very simple technological constraints here. There's no difference here between George's free service, podkey.com, and Feedburner podshow.com's proposed redirection service, or any other redirector/aggregator. After speaking with a clearly shaken George Lambert, who have been getting phone calls in the middle of the night from people who don't know the full story, I believe that Erik Marcus, the vegan podcaster, who had registered vegan.podkey.com and a series of keywords associated with vegetarianism about a year ago, noticed that the podkey URL that he had registered with George was getting more play on the search engines than his original vegan.com feed was, and in fact, via OPML, had been picked up by iTunes and Yahoo <I>in addition </I>to his direct feed. Wanting to aggregate his traffic, he asked George to remove the feed, which George did. Erik's traffic then, predictably, dropped a lot (75% it appears), since people had been subscribed via the podkey.com feed. He panicked, called George and told him to reinstate the feed, which George agreed to do, and did. Erik also demanded that George remove those vegan-oriented keywords and their association with the podkey feed from any existing OPML feeds (impossible) and prevent anyone from registering those podkey keywords (unreasonable but doable with special coding), and that's when George then became annoyed. To be clear: George is NOT preventing the podcast from being fed at either feed point, and he's done every thing that Erik's asked other than do custom programming to filter out keyword based individual vs. OPML requests. I think this needs to be made clear, and I will on tonight's show and podcast. And I think we should reserve the word "podjacking" for real fradulent activity. And, I am more than happy to give you equal time on the air to discuss anything I've missed. You may want to save your words for court, but it appears that you also may want to tell your client that this case has no merit. So...who's going to actually take a breath, stop the flaming, and start looking at actual facts? Regarding this “podjacking” controversy…

I just spoke with George Lambert, the owner of podkey.com. He was on my radio show this past Saturday night:

http://onlinetonight.com

and my Personal Netcast podcast directly after:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/pn

I also spoke directly with Erik on the subject, so I believe that I am the only person so far that has spoken directly to both parties, and also am registered at both Feedburner and podkey.com.

it’s nice, Peter, that you think Feedburner is not evil. I happen to agree. That doesn’t mean that someday they, or anyone that might acquire them, or any other site on the Internet (like, oh, I don’t know…Google?) might not turn to the dark side. Again, note, I use my Feedburner feed, so I like them, too. That’s irrelevant. Feedburner and podkey.com serve exactly the same purpose: redirection of your feed so that you can change in at will, and take advantage of whatever value-added services both offer (chiclets, ad insertion, subdomains, whatever).

I submit that your take on George Lambert is based entirely on what you’ve read on a website that should have behaved more like a trusted publisher and less like the National Enquirer.

This is what I told Erik’s lawyer, Colette:

My take on this: George Lambert is being unfairly blamed, and you and your client, Erik, don’t understand the very simple technological constraints here. There’s no difference here between George’s free service, podkey.com, and Feedburner podshow.com’s proposed redirection service, or any other redirector/aggregator.

After speaking with a clearly shaken George Lambert, who have been getting phone calls in the middle of the night from people who don’t know the full story, I believe that Erik Marcus, the vegan podcaster, who had registered vegan.podkey.com and a series of keywords associated with vegetarianism about a year ago, noticed that the podkey URL that he had registered with George was getting more play on the search engines than his original vegan.com feed was, and in fact, via OPML, had been picked up by iTunes and Yahoo in addition to his direct feed.

Wanting to aggregate his traffic, he asked George to remove the feed, which George did. Erik’s traffic then, predictably, dropped a lot (75% it appears), since people had been subscribed via the podkey.com feed. He panicked, called George and told him to reinstate the feed, which George agreed to do, and did.

Erik also demanded that George remove those vegan-oriented keywords and their association with the podkey feed from any existing OPML feeds (impossible) and prevent anyone from registering those podkey keywords (unreasonable but doable with special coding), and that’s when George then became annoyed.

To be clear: George is NOT preventing the podcast from being fed at either feed point, and he’s done every thing that Erik’s asked other than do custom programming to filter out keyword based individual vs. OPML requests.

I think this needs to be made clear, and I will on tonight’s show and podcast. And I think we should reserve the word “podjacking” for real fradulent activity.

And, I am more than happy to give you equal time on the air to discuss anything I’ve missed. You may want to save your words for court, but it appears that you also may want to tell your client that this case has no merit.

So…who’s going to actually take a breath, stop the flaming, and start looking at actual facts?

]]> By: Anonymous http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-341 Anonymous Mon, 05 Dec 2005 14:21:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-341 Let's everybody jump to conclusions and start a blog!! Let’s everybody jump to conclusions and start a blog!!

]]> By: Paul Puri http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-340 Paul Puri Mon, 05 Dec 2005 10:20:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-340 I just interviewed Mr. Lambert, the gentleman being accused of doing this, and he has some very interesting things to say. In fact, every single post that I have seen to date has been wrong. The interview is at www.unsignedpodcastnetwork.com Also, I break it down somewhat in my blog. www.unsignedpodcast.blogspot.com Very interesting how anything the press has said is not true. I just interviewed Mr. Lambert, the gentleman being accused of doing this, and he has some very interesting things to say. In fact, every single post that I have seen to date has been wrong.

The interview is at http://www.unsignedpodcastnetwork.com

Also, I break it down somewhat in my blog.
http://www.unsignedpodcast.blogspot.com

Very interesting how anything the press has said is not true.

]]> By: George Lambert http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-339 George Lambert Mon, 05 Dec 2005 03:50:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-339 Peter - someone using your email address registered your podkeyword is it a case that someone misused your identity? Why dont we try getting all of the facts straight - I never hihacked anyone. 67 83 smoothpod http://feeds.feedburner.com/SmoothPod peter@smoothouse.org S253 Peter – someone using your email address registered your podkeyword

is it a case that someone misused your identity?

Why dont we try getting all of the facts straight – I never hihacked anyone.

67 83 smoothpod http://feeds.feedburner.com/SmoothPod peter@smoothouse.org S253

]]> By: Peter http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-338 Peter Sat, 03 Dec 2005 05:17:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-338 Just ran into this post from Feb 2005: <I>Regardless of how useful or well-used it ever was, the point is now moot. It appears that every sub-domain of podkeyword.com now points to Golden Hawk Technology. Even ones that I suspect were never registered (like http://f*ck.podkeyword.com/) resolve to the Golden Hawk Technology webpage.</I> <a HREF="http://kinrowan.net/blog/wp/archives/2005/02/28/bait-and-switch" rel="nofollow">kinrowan.net/blog/wp/archives/2005/02/28/bait-and-switch</A> Just ran into this post from Feb 2005:
Regardless of how useful or well-used it ever was, the point is now moot. It appears that every sub-domain of podkeyword.com now points to Golden Hawk Technology. Even ones that I suspect were never registered (like http://f*ck.podkeyword.com/) resolve to the Golden Hawk Technology webpage.
kinrowan.net/blog/wp/archives/2005/02/28/bait-and-switch

]]> By: Eric (eric@feedburner.com) http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-337 Eric (eric@feedburner.com) Sat, 03 Dec 2005 04:25:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-337 Thank you for your excellent analysis, Peter. This sounds like something that we can and should do ... if anyone else has any additional suggestions for how we can prevent (or at least detect) hijacks, please let me know at feedback [at] feedburner.com or our forums at http://forums.feedburner.com. Eric Lunt CTO, FeedBurner Thank you for your excellent analysis, Peter. This sounds like something that we can and should do … if anyone else has any additional suggestions for how we can prevent (or at least detect) hijacks, please let me know at feedback [at] feedburner.com or our forums at http://forums.feedburner.com.

Eric Lunt
CTO, FeedBurner

]]> By: jeff eske http://blog.forret.com/2005/12/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/comment-page-1/#comment-336 jeff eske Sat, 03 Dec 2005 03:24:00 +0000 http://peter.smoothouse.com/2005/12/02/lets-get-rid-of-podkeywordcom/#comment-336 I'm sure that you've gotten numerous responses on this already, but here it goes anyway. Why not protect your podcast files just as people have been protecting images from hotlinking for some time now? Setup rules in an .htaccess file that only rss feeds that reside on your server, or servers that you designate as "trusted" can link to your files. Granted, this SHOULD be done immediately, to prevent the hijackers from building an audience, based on their hijacked page, but even done later, it would allow you stop the hijackers. You could even add a custom message that would let people know that they arrived there via a hijacked link. Jeff I’m sure that you’ve gotten numerous responses on this already, but here it goes anyway. Why not protect your podcast files just as people have been protecting images from hotlinking for some time now? Setup rules in an .htaccess file that only rss feeds that reside on your server, or servers that you designate as “trusted” can link to your files. Granted, this SHOULD be done immediately, to prevent the hijackers from building an audience, based on their hijacked page, but even done later, it would allow you stop the hijackers. You could even add a custom message that would let people know that they arrived there via a hijacked link.

Jeff

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