STEVE WODA'S BLOG

Woman to record industry: Stop spying A woman who claims the recording industry’s anti-music piracy campaign threatens and intimidates innocent people has filed a new complaint accusing record companies of racketeering, fraud and illegal spying. Startup RatePoint bets that people want user reviews refereed – Technology Review One of the great things about the Internet is the way people post reviews on just about anything you are considering trying, whether it is a movie, a ne

Pay-per-click Spyware and Other Scams: Tips on avoiding and detecting If you thought click fraud was bad, consider this: your Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing ads and Microsoft adCenter accounts are new targets for spyware applications, hackers and scam artists. If thieves obtain access to your pay-per-click account, they are in complete control of your pay-per-click activity and could place ads on their behalf but charge your account for them. Wikipedia founder defen

The Psychology Of Buying – Behavioral Insider The recently launched 7 Billion People is an intriguing application to e-commerce of the real-world psychology behind buying behaviors. As CEO Mark Nagaitis tells us, his new Web analytics system tries to discern in a site’s audience different "buying personalities" that marketers can talk with in very different ways. InternetNews Realtime IT News – Americans’ e-Commerce Conundrum A new study from the Pew Internet Project casts li

New York Comes to Silicon Valley The relationship between the venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road and the securities firms and power investors of Wall Street has long been a cozy one. VCs hoping for a return on their investments will need banks eventually, while Wall Street needs VCs to nurture the most promising startups until they’re ready to go public. Or do they? Lately, some of New York’s biggest players have been cherry-picking the best pre-IPO investments for thems

A CEO Manning the Phones Each Day? When Alden Kellogg discovered a glitch on Wesabe, he went to the personal finance tracker’s home page, looking for a tech support number or e-mail. Instead, he found a link labeled "Talk to Jason, CEO of Wesabe." The page invites users to reach CEO Jason Knight by phone during a four-hour period seven days a week. Kellogg, a 35-year-old attorney in New Orleans, called the number in July, and Knight picked up. Amazon.com Tests Retailer Ads –

Would Microsoft-Yahoo! Mean More Competition? – eMarketer On the surface, Microsoft’s $44 billion offer to acquire Yahoo! seems to simplify the US search market share race. The combined firm would be second in online ad revenues to No.1 Google, and ahead of AOL. In 2007, Google rang up nearly $6 billion, while Yahoo! had about $3.4 billion and MSN had $1.4 billion net revenues. McAfee’s New Secure Web Platform Steers Millions of Consumers to the Secure Internet McAfee, Inc. t

It has been a big week of news related to Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo!. Today, I thought I would try to provide you with a link to series of articles and analysis on this big Internet development. Little Reason To Shout Yahoo! – Allan Sloan Most of the talk about Microsoft’s hostile offer for Yahoo has focused on whether the deal could tip the scales in the battle for Internet dominance. Today, I’d like to steer the conversation to something a little more basic tha