Well, these clowns are wising up somewhat, as evidenced by findings presented at the Jupiter Media Forum yesterday, a conference for people willing to pony up $1,495 to listen to execs from Sony, WSJ, RealNetworks, and Playboy, among a few others who represent the only Internet success stories in terms of making the Web generate cash the way the little hyper dudes said that you could. On the other hand, a Jupiter media analyst presented the results of a survey of online users indicating that people are as tight with their money online as they are anywhere else, and will usually select the free alternative when there is one. Selling software that requires regular infusions of cash, like the RealOne player, does net a profit if your product is popular (RealNetworks claims to have 500,000 people paying $10.00 a month for its streaming content player). ABCNews.com executive Bernard Gershon is quoted as saying that this concept had "better work," because "otherwise, we're all screwed."

Let's hope the concept doesn't work. Personally, I subscribe to Salon.com and I'm glad I do, but no way on Earth am I going to run RealOne player. The Raven gets by with the free G2 version just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Who do I root for? Judges for the infamous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard more arguments regarding the odd case of Stephen Cohen's theft of sex.com from its rightful owner back in 2000. One wonders just how valuable this domain name could be when anybody surfing for porn would assume that the site would be complete garbage. The Raven snuck a peek and was surprised to see that instead of endless pop-up traps and banner ads, the site is a portal structured along the lines of Yahoo. Well, except for the fact that the categories read like the sub-index of the DSMIV under "sexual dysfunction." So in the current appeal, Cohen argues that the $65 million judgement against him amounts to "slavery" and a "death sentence." Well, that's the penalty for stealing a Web site. Didn't the little hyper British dude explain that to you?

Fighting Back. The Raven received an e-mail from Andy Sivak, vice-president of sales at DigiPortal, the company developing a spam-blocking tool called ChoiceMail. The way it works, in case you missed this, is that anybody not on your "accept list" gets directed to a Website in which they have to state their name and business before getting through to your in-box. Spammers don't even try. Sivak assures me that they're working with Apple to bring out a Mac compatible version that should be able to import Eudora mailboxes. On the other hand, Anick Jesdanun, writing for AP, gives the product a negative review. According to him, you'd need a pretty big ego to expect someone to jump through any kind of hoop whatsoever to reach you by e-mail. I'd say it depends on how much spam you get. The larger issue, from my perspective, is that the Mac and Eudora remain supported by the industry because I prefer a Microsoft-free Internet experience.
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