Dead Tree Version of Click Fraud–Shorewest Realty v. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sued for alleged circulation count fraud. UPDATE: Not surprisingly, the Journal-Sentinel has denied the charge. UPDATE #2: July response by the Journal-Sentinel. Then, on August 26, Shorewest alleges that the Journal-Sentinel “reimbursed carriers to buy extra copies of…
Self-Publishing and the Long Tail
The New York Times runs a lengthy article on self-publishing books. The emergence of self-publishing shops reinforces the Long Tail theory. By reducing the publishing costs, more niche-oriented content can be produced cost-effectively. Thus, self-publishing houses put real pressure on…
“Attention Deficit Trait”
CNET ran an interesting interview a couple of weeks ago with Dr. Edward Hallowell about “attention deficit trait,” described as a type of ADD developed in response to information overload, except that it can be cured by reducing the attention…
2005 Pew Report on Spam
Pew has released its annual survey on recipient attitudes towards spam. The 2005 version shows that recipients are becoming adjusted to the spam influx. As the report says, recipients are “minding it less” and that the “worst case scenario—that spam…
Data Mining and Attention Consumption
My short book chapter, Data Mining and Attention Consumption, has finally hit SSRN (it took almost a month to go through the SSRN review process–not sure why it took so long). The abstract: “This Essay challenges the prevailing hostility towards…
Boalt Spyware Conference Recap
On Friday I attended the Spyware conference at Boalt. This was an outstanding conference—I learned a lot. You should take any opportunity to attend a Berkeley Technology Law Journal annual symposium in the future—their events are typically first-rate. Tutorial on…
Infomediaries–Where Are They?
I have been thinking a lot about “infomediaries.” If you’re not familiar with the term, John Hagel first described it in a 1997 Harvard Business Review article The Coming Battle for Customer Information (with Rayport) and then fleshed out his…
Getting Paid to Drive an Ad-wrapped Car
Do you remember the dot com boom phenomenon of turning cars into mobile billboards? Some great photos here. The model was that advertisers would give drivers a new car (or pay some amount per month) to drive around in a…
Targeting of Television Advertising
NYT article on new technologies allowing more precise targeting of television advertising. I think this sentence captures the evolving environment: “The television commercial – a blunt instrument that often reaches as many disinterested people as desired ones – is beginning…
DoNotCall.gov
Tonight I looked through donotcall.gov, the FTC-operated website where people can register telephone numbers for the Federal do-not-call list. Two observations: 1) There is zero authentication that the person registering a phone number actually is the subscriber for that number….