Yahoo Real Estate Home Values center offers a combination of local information and gives users a view into home value estimates for properties in the U.S.

"Reply.com offers an extensive portfolio of valuable, unbiased information and decision-making tools, along with connections to local agents that are designed to help buyers and sellers of residential real estate properties make more educated choices," said Sean Fox, Executive Vice President of Business Development, Reply! Inc.

"Yahoo! is one of the most recognized brands on the Internet and we’re privileged to join forces with them to enrich the real estate consumers’ online experience."

Reply offers consumers information on homes in the U.S. such as aerial photographs, parcel maps, square footage, tax data and home valuation.

"Timely, rich home value information is essential to help home buyers and sellers make informed decisions," said Michael Yang, general manager, Yahoo! Real Estate.

"Our goal is to provide consumers the information and content they want close at hand, and Reply.com enables us to integrate their highly comprehensive and relevant home value results to greatly enhance our visitors’ online experience."

Shell, who claimed IA’s web crawler entered into a contract while indexing, responded (quite reasonably, I might add) with a countersuit accusing IA of conversion, civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of both federal racketeering and Colorado organized crime legislation.

It was an important case, not necessarily because of its overall merit (all but one claim was immediately dismissed), but because the judge would have to consider whether or not spiders could enter a contract, and the world was listening.

Seems the judge won’t be able to make that declaration any time soon, as IA and Shell seem to have kissed and made up, issuing a joint statement about the settlement.

“Internet Archive has no interest in including materials in the Wayback Machine of persons who do not wish to have their Web content archived," said an IA spokesperson in a statement.

"We recognize that Ms. Shell has a valid and enforceable copyright in her Web site and we regret that the inclusion of her Web site in the Wayback Machine resulted in this litigation. We are happy to have this case behind us.”

Shell seems to have gotten over it, too. “I respect the historical value of Internet Archive’s goal," she said. "I never intended to interfere with that goal nor cause it any harm,” said Ms. Shell.

That’s interesting…could have sworn she sued them for theft, racketeering, and organized criminal activity. But if both say they settled it amicably, then who am I to question? Maybe IA just didn’t want to give the judge a chance to rule that web crawlers could actually enter a contract.

The statement ends with this gem:

Both parties sincerely regret any turmoil that the lawsuit may have caused for the other. Neither Internet Archive nor Ms. Shell condones any conduct which may have caused harm to either party arising out of the public attention to this lawsuit. The parties have not engaged in such conduct and request that the public response to the amicable resolution of this litigation be consistent with their wishes that no further harm or turmoil be caused to either party.

The turmoil they’re talking about may include 15-year-old Canadian and Digg.com user Jeff Veillette, who issued a kind of online challenge to Shell by framing her entire site, daring her to take action against him. While brazen, Shell claims it went well beyond framing.

If you visit her website, profane-justice.org (careful, you’re entering into a contract with an anti-child protective services activist), Shell posts Veillette’s name, home address, emails, and phone number after accusing him of hacking her website and setting up a pop-up spam campaign, viewable by 25 million people and defaming her. Shell says he expressly admitted to the hacking and spam campaign.

She includes blogger Billy Wiseman (a guy she really, really doesn’t like) in the accusation, listing his address as well. The FBI Computer Crime Center was contacted.

However, in an interview with WebProNews, hacking and spamming came as news to Veillette, who says his personal information listed is outdated (remember, at 15, he’s a minor  — is it legal to post a minor’s information online? Maybe the FBI needs to give her a call). Jeff denies hacking her site or spamming anyone, but does admit to framing her site elsewhere, an act we reported when it happened.

As for Wiseman, Veillette says he had nothing to do with any of it. "Billy Wiseman wasn’t part of the attacks," he said. "He was a blogger that was watching the Shell case and interviewed me."

"What happened was I put the site in a frame. How that’s hacking I’ll never know."

So Shell never lost control of her site?

"Nope," said Veillette. "She ran out of bandwidth for her hosting."

So, has the FBI been in touch?

"Nope. They probably laughed at this, too. What I’m wondering overall, though, is if she’s for supporting kids, why is she going out of her way to try and ruin a 15-year-old’s life?"

Good question, Jeff. I’m sure, though, she never meant any harm. 

Financial terms of the settlement between Shell and Internet Archive were not disclosed.

Danny VS. Digg?

Danny’s reply to Calacanis though scathing at times, did a fair job of defending the legitimacy of the SEO industry.   Where Calacanis had used half-baked imaginary statistics to fuel “90%” of his claims, Danny had relied on reason and real life examples. He cited several examples of good SEO practices and used a number of Google statements as ‘character references’ for the industry.

Where Calacanis ranted –and indeed at times I felt as if I could almost hear him screaming his words through the screen at me (and I’m not even an SEO), Danny’s tone was much more levelheaded and reserved. Now, in all fairness, the latter view may have been biased by the fact that I have personally spoken with Danny on several occasions and just know what he ‘sounds’ like. My interactions with Calacanis have been limited to hearing him speak – most recently at the now-infamous Chicago SES where, in a brilliant display of diplomacy and wisdom, he told a room full of SEO professionals their work was ‘bullshit’.

Nonetheless, let’s just say I thought Danny did very well -until his post got Dugg. Danny’s post eventually found it’s way to Digg where he was summarily attacked from all sides. Much to my amazement, Danny waded into the bloody waters of Digg and actually attempted to rationalize and explain things to the Diggers. Now, I have followed Digg for some time. I figure Danny has too, as such, I can only assume Danny had to have some idea of what he was getting into.  Which made his attempt to actually conduct some sort of rational dialogue there all the more mysterious to me.

One Digger went so far as to accuse Danny of a “nasty attempt to build pathos using women as your crutch”. The basis for this accusation? In response to Calacanis’ charge that “90% of SEOs were snake oil salesmen”, Danny had said “the vast majority of them were not snake oil salesmen — or women, for that matter. SEO has a huge number of women working in it let’s not forget.” – And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Digger equivalent of using women as a crutch.

There was no shortage of gems amongst the Digger responses. “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a euphemism for link spam in -all- cases.” In -all- cases even. No ifs ands or buts… -all- cases. Danny actually gave this fellow a 2-paragraph reply citing Google’s take on SEO. Danny needs to go to Amazon and get a new copy of Don Quixote. It’s almost like Danny really thinks someone of the opinion that SEO is a euphemism for link spam in -all- cases can be dissuaded by a simple contradiction from the biggest search engine on the planet. Pshaw!

Another mistake Danny made – beyond the fact that he bothered to go in there in the first place – was his choice in language. He used way too many words like ‘architecture’ and ‘relevant’ and ‘conversion’. You have to keep your audience in mind. He might’ve gone a little too cerebral for this crowd. At no point, for example, did Danny use any of the language of the land. When in Rome, Danny.

A more appropriate retort might have been:

“OMFG!1!1 that is teh ghey! SEO hax are teh k1llz0rs, n00bs! Your’e all just pist cuz your moms pron fell off teh yahoos. You shuld be kicked off teh internets1!eleventy!1!!”

As Danny observed, Digg describes itself as "digital media democracy". That’s fine and good. That being said, you also have to keep in mind the demographic of this particular slice of the “digital media democracy”. I’m not saying Diggers are morons in -all- cases, but I feel pretty comfortable saying the Beavis and Buttheads substantially outnumber the Vint Cerf’s of Digg-nation.

How can I make such an outlandish claim? Well, a couple of weeks ago, after Lee Odden was unceremoniously (and undeservedly) exiled from Digg, I decided to take a closer look at ‘the Digger’. What were his (gender neutral) likes, his dislikes… what kinds of things did he Digg etc…

Is your average digger an angst ridden 19 year old nerd… or is your average digger actually representative of the internet’s upper crust intelligencia.

Well, let’s count the digs.

Let’s take a look at some of the highest dugg items from the past 30 days. Remember this was about a month ago, so the numbers of Diggs have no doubt increased but the Digg count I list is where they were at the time.

You have: Get Me out of this job weighing in at 8,597 Diggs. The gist of this one is the author has made a deal with the Digg community. In exchange for digging his post to the top, he’ll go in and tell his boss what he thinks of her. Apparently she’s a masculine shrew with a penchant for ballbreaking (or something like that).

Geek Squad .. SUCKS! … Here we have 5,194 Diggs for undercover cameras apparently busting GeekSquad for some sort of repair misdiagnosis/over billing shenanigans.

And rounding out our top 5 (at the time) we had:

YouParkLikeAnAsshole.com  -  4,369 diggs

To the women who work in my office… I hate you  -  4,703

My Sister is a porn star  -  4,178

Now, make no mistake. I don’t dislike Digg. I check Digg almost every day. I frequently find cool links and sites on Digg well before they show up anywhere else. That’s the cool part about Digg. What isn’t cool is the lame juvenile behavior on display in most any Digg discussion. What’s even worse is the fact that the lowest common denominator of the Diggosphere has no checks and balances against it running roughshod over intelligent users and discussions. I’m talking about the “all SEO is the sux – let’s ban them all from the Diggz!” set. And there are a LOT of them.

I’m all for democracy in any form. However there is a reason why we have a minimum age for voting. Otherwise my 7 year old would write-in Mario every year. And while I may not be able to argue the merits of his candidacy based on what we’re usually offered, it’s just typically not a good idea to have the power of democracy in the hands of children… or smacktards in -all-cases.

Watching Danny post in Digg yesterday was like watching your dog run in traffic. You just know it isn’t going to end well, but there’s nothing you can do. It’s always good to try though, right?

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Steve Hermann, BBC News Editor, has now posted a reply to user comments and in particular he details why the BBC chose not to use Flash Video for its news stories.

Reading in between the lines it seems that the overwhelming reason is cost due to the heavy investments the BBC has made into other platforms, infrastructure and so on, all of which related to non-Flash technologies.

The BBC streams a ton of video and audio content, both live and on demand. I

t would of course be a mammoth task to migrate this to Flash – and likely to be very expensive not only to set up but also to run – I hope Adobe takes note and considers loosening the licensing screw for Flash Media Server a bit.

One positive fact is the overwhelming push for Flash by the BBC website visitors, just check out the comments on this post.

Wow, public opinion has definitely shifted towards Flash and most readers appear to agree that Real sucks, WMP is ok-ish (if you’re not on a Mac) and that Flash would be a very welcome addition, backed by the already existing platforms.

Hermann agrees that Flash Video would be up for the job, both in quality and penetration, but that timing was bad as the BBC is essentially set up for Real and Windows Media and not for (streaming) Flash Video.

I really feel that Hermann would use Flash in a second if he could but unfortunately the BBC is a huge organization and they must generate some ROI on behalf of license fee payers for their Real and Windows Media investments, and that’s understandable.

I think they call this a tie-in

Comments

Tag:

Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Stefan is a certified Flash Developer who has been involved with Flash Media
Server since its very early days. From his home office in the UK he has
handled a variety of projects, specializing in Flash Video and Rich Internet
Applications for clients that include CNET, USA Network and Unilever. Stefan
is the author of a series of Adobe Developer Center articles, has spoken at
several industry events and contributes a regular column on Flash Video to
Streaming Media Magazine. His site www.flashcomguru.com is one of the
largest online resources on Flash Video.

According to the Help Center, you can write paragraphs in right-to-left by default, or switch at any point by clicking a button to write left-to-right, hitting a button to switch back. I would be very interested in seeing what this interface looks like, especially the inbox, if anyone wants to send me a screenshot.

(via the Google Blog)

Google also added a Reply By Chat feature. Now, when you are replying to an email, if the person is signed into Google Talk/Gmail Chat, you can hit the Reply By Chat button and reply to the email in an IM conversation. What makes it truly useful is that the IM conversation is grouped with the email, not with your IMs.

Add to Del.icio.us | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

One can purchases insurance, real estate, home improvement and other items by providing information relevant to your searches and then they’ll come back with results. In the real estate market for example, choose your city, compare neighborhood profiles, look at crime rates and cost of living.

According to Silicon beat, Reply has picked up $17 million in venture capital from BA Venture Partners. The business is designed with both consumers and businesses in mind as they user their search system to help hook up buyers and sellers for various good and services.

The Silicon Beat Story also picked up an article from VentureWire saying:

People shopping for cars, homes or insurance go to reply.com, fill out forms, and then later get contacted via phone or e-mail by one of Reply’s more than 13,000 customers. Reply makes money each time a customer finds a business through the Reply portal. The Internet users shopping for homes and cars are not charged anything. The company’s sales were about $20 million in 2004, and have grown at around 50% per year in each of the past three years…

Overall, it looks like a good project. Reply is acting as matchmaker of sorts and it looks like BA Ventures is betting on a very good match.

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

… even the APPEARANCE that a church is pushing around Microsoft is just wrong in my view (and, when the pastor makes claims that we buckled because of his pressure then I’m left trying to figure out who to believe: a CEO of a company, or a religious guy. Most people I know will pick the religious guy, sorry).

One of the reasons I came to Microsoft is because of its very strong stance on human rights.

The fact that Microsoft is even in this position makes me want to leave and join a different company that won’t be pushed around by religious folks. Is that the message you want to send?

Steve: this comes down to leadership. What kind of society do we want to live in? One where religious folks decide the society we live in? Hint: my wife left Iran for a reason. My mom left Germany for a reason. There are bloggers in jail as we speak because religious people are so powerful in their societies. I guess we (Microsoft) have to now pass every decision to our religious leaders to make sure it’s OK with them.

As to the religious’ guy’s claims. I’m not gonna name him cause that just makes his popularity even higher which is EXACTLY what he wanted. He says that Microsoft should not be pushing an agenda outside our walls. Well, sorry, the religious right has pushed an agenda outside of THEIR walls. My money says “in God we trust.” That’s not my agenda. It’s one that was pushed on us. (Our money didn’t always say that, by the way). Same thing for a whole raft of issues.

But, I guess, religion in America has become so powerful that even we are willing to cowtow to them.

Steve, I’m sad. Very sad. This is leadership? What if we were a company in Germany in the 1930s? Would we have taken the same position you just did? After all, most of the churches back then were on the wrong side too. It took the Catholic church about 60 years, for instance, to issue an apology for their part in the Holocaust.

On the other hand, I see your point that Microsoft should only be about making great software and that we should leave the social issues to others to fight out. I disagree with that stance, but can see how you arrived at it.

Finally, I wanna get my readers involved.

What do you think about this?

Steve Ballmer: Microsoft and the Anti-Discrimination Bill

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

Of course, Paris Hilton was the first. Unfortunately for Fred, his T-Mobile Sidekick contained a 3 and a half minute video of him banging a sexy young girl.

Apparently, Gawker.com found the video on the internet, downloaded it to their servers and then linked to it prominently. The essence of the suit really is the fact that they hosted the video. If they had simply linked to the video on another site they may not have faced possible liability.

What I find astonishingly childish is Gawkers response. Possibly, they were just keeping in tune with the typical irreverent Gawker style, but when you are faced with a muti-million dollar suit you would think they would have vetted their sarcasm with their lawyers first.

I’m a big fan of Gawker and some of their other blogs as well and I can understand that they would want to give their spin to their readers … but this in your face sarcastic public response to Fred Durst and his lawyers is crazy … it can only hurt them in court.

At Gawker.com here is what they said: (The headline is theirs)

Fred Durst: Touch My Balls And My Ass And Then Sue Gawker

xoxo,
Gawker

Gawker Media also owns a popular site called Fleshbot which is a well done blog linking to a lot of porn. At Fleshbot they had this to say:

Gawker Media Dursted!

There’s nothing like some hot and heavy celebrity lawsuit action to spice up a slow sex news day, especially when it’s your parent company being served the papers: The Smoking Gun posts all the juicy Xeroxed goodness regarding Fred Durst’s lawsuit against Gawker Media (along with nine other named defendants and “Does 1 through 100, inclusive”, whoever they are-we only remember seeing one girl in the tape) for our roles in disseminating what had already been posted in approximately umptyjillion other places before we even rolled out of bed last Friday. We’ll let the mothership handle the official response, although we should add that we are never, ever going to be able to get that “touch my ass and balls” soundbite out of our heads, and who can put a price on that kind of damage?

Gawker, I hope this all goes away because you produce great blogs … but please take this suit seriously… it’s for your own good! Mocking Durst is simply a stupid legal strategy and will not help your case with a judge or jury.

I have no idea if this case has any merit (and it probably doesn’t) but when you are sued for $80 million you should call your lawyer … not vent in your blogs.

Rich Ord is the CEO of iEntry, Inc. which publishes over 200 websites and email newsletters.

Rich also publishes his blog WebProBlog which focuses on internet business and marketing trends.

• Answer it!
• Answer it promptly!
• Answer it completely!
• Answer it with grace and style!

These all seem obvious, I’m sure. They reflect plain good old common sense. Yet I find one or more of them ignored in much of the email I receive.

Answer It!

Apparently many are selective as to what they will reply to. Big mistake. If I visit your site, ask a question and do not receive a reply, I promise you won’t hear from me again.

You say you’re just too busy to deal with dumb fool questions or stuff of no interest to you? If that is really true, then you can afford to hire someone to do it for you. If a person felt it was worth the time and trouble to write to you, they deserve a reply.

Not so? Try this. Pick three sites you feel are successful and ask them a question. Let it be something way off the mark. Maybe: I was given this URL as a source of information about Dobermans, but the address must be wrong. Do you by chance know of such a source? You will get a reply. Brief, most likely, but courteous.

Spam is probably part of the problem. Much too much of what I receive is pure junk. Even so, I take the trouble to read at least the first line or two before hitting the delete key, for serious email does occasionally come in looking like junk.

A Tale: A newsletter I follow asked for articles in a way that sounded as if material was needed. So I wrote what I thought was a neat piece, and worked it over carefully. I put about four hours into it, then submitted it. No reply. Well, things get lost, so I resubmitted. No reply. Out of curiosity, I sent a brief positive comment about the newsletter, and asked a question easy to answer. No reply. Rejection slips? I deal with them. No reply? Nuts.

Think about what a person risks in asking a question. Ridicule, rejection, and such, and the possible misuse of the email address that brings more spam. A reply is mandatory. Besides, it’s good business.

Answer Your Email Promptly!

This can be difficult if you are working a full time job. Still, it must be done. I often get replies so late, I’ve forgotten why I sent the message! If email is answered every evening, in most cases you provide a same-day response, which is sufficient. You might also consider a morning session before going to work. Since not many messages come in during the night, a short session may work well. You can leave a tough question or issue until evening.

I personally check my email four to six times each work day. It really pays off. I see it in a reply that begins with: Wow, that was quick! I see it even more clearly when a sale comes through an hour later.

Again judging from my email, some apparently wait until the weekend to answer. This may mark you as a part-timer in your Web business, a negative to be avoided if possible. For the same reason, I do not reply to business email on Sundays or holidays.

Answer Your Email Completely!

Next to waiting too long for a reply, my pet peeve is a reply that fails to answer the question I asked, or an important part of it. Often this is just carelessness, but consider what it does to a company image. Do you want to deal with careless people?

One of the problems with email is the lack of eye contact and body language available in face-to-face conversation. Even the phone gives something of this, as in a hesitant response, the opportunity to quickly repeat something that may have been misunderstood, correct a blunder, etc.

This slack is just not available in email. All you have are the words in front of you. To complicate matters, not everyone is a good writer. This sets things up so that it is easy to overlook the real question buried in the one apparently asked. If I have the slightest doubt about what the question means, I say so. Maybe: I’m not sure I understand the question. If you meant … blah, then … blah. Then I wrap with: If that is not what you were looking for or I missed something, please get right back to me.

Not stated, but implied in the above, is the need to be correct. Never try to fake it; people will quickly peg you as a phoney, con artist, or worse. Sometimes the best answer is: Sorry, I don’t know. Maybe continue with: It seems to me … Also provide a resource if possible. Worst case, suggest a search engine. But in whatever you say, be correct.

Complete does not mean it is necessary to write a manual. In fact brevity is king in all business correspondence. If the question is too broad, the best choice is to try a one sentence reply that offers something of the answer, followed by a reference as suggested above. A few do try to take advantage, and in such cases, this is the only reasonable approach.

Answer Your Email With Grace And Style!

Few webmasters are professional writers, so how is the above possible? Substitute courteous for grace, and the first part may make more sense. The idea is to treat the writer as you would a valued client or customer.

Your first contact with a future prospect is quite likely to be email. Since you are not meeting face to face, you can not offer a hearty handshake, a warm smile of welcome, or show your intense interest with your eyes or posture. While it is not easy, I try very hard to get something of this in every message I send, particularly to someone new to me.

Style is not as tough as it sounds, for we all have one, whether or not we recognize it. I tend to be informal. Some tend to be formal. Most are somewhere in between. What your style is matters little. The important thing is to be true to whatever it is. To do otherwise quickly destroys credibility. That is, cute and clever doesn’t make it, unless you truly are. And grand formality doesn’t fly unless it is who you are. Write as you would speak to a visitor to your office or shop.

All of the above has to do with trust. Any relationship between yourself and a client or customer begins with trust. A question gives you the opportunity to build on the trust inherent in the act of sending the message. Do otherwise, and you will blow it.

The structure of your web site, search engine position, and so forth are essential elements to the success of your online business. But of all vital elements, email seems to be the one most often overlooked. This seems odd, for it is the easiest part to get right.

Bob McElwain, author of “Your Path To Success.” How to build ANY business you want, just the way you want it, with only pocket money.
http://sitetipsandtricks.com
Get ANSWERS. Subscribe to “STAT News” now! mailto:join-stat@lyris.dundee.net

Phone: 209-742-6349