I received an odd email on the Samuel’s Persiflage email address yesterday…have a read…
From: administrator@pod-planet.com <administrator@pod-planet.com>
To: podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com
Date: Oct 15, 2006 7:51 AM
Subject: Your Podcast Was Added to Pod-Planet.comHello From Pod-Planet.com!
Your Podcast Was Added to Our Directory.Dear Podcaster,
Congratulations! A fan of your Podcast added your RSS feed for Samuel’s Persiflage to the Pod-Planet.com Podcast Directory! Pod-Planet.com is quickly becoming the hottest Podcast directory on the Web. Use our site to post or subscribe, rate or sell (coming FY07) Podcasts.
Although your Podcast has been added to our Directory, you may want to go in and categorize your Podcast in our taxonomy so that Users can quickly and easily find your Podcast by category.
In order to categorize your Podcast, you simply need to create a free account on our site. Once your account is created, simply click ‘My Administration’ in the toolbar to view and categorize your Podcast.
So far so good, it all sounds very nice, a random podcast directory has taken the time (even if a robot took the time) to let me know that I’m in their directory…the emails takes an interesting turn though…
All we ask in return for being listed in our directory is for you to add the Pod-Planet.com badge to your Website. The badges for Pod-Planet.com can be found on our badges page, and is depicted here:
It is important to note, that for security purposes, your email address in your Podcast feed must match the email account you specify during the registration process or you will not be able to categorize your Podcast.Once again, congratulations on being submitted to Pod-Planet.com.
Pod-Planet.com (A Subsidiary of BerkeleySoft, Inc.)
http://www.pod-planet.com
Uh huh…a listener, or probably more likely a BerkeleySoft employee or robot has added me to a random podcast directory, and because of that I have to add an advertisement to my website.
A whois search shows that pod-planet.com has existed since March, but other research shows that these emails have only started in the last couple days…has BerkeleySoft wasted a heap of money on yet another pointless podcast directory and decided that they should embark on a semi-spam advertising campaign and trick a bunch of egotistical podcasters into advertising pod-planet in a bid to save their ailing investment?
I don’t know why I remember the name BerkeleySoft, but if memory serves me correctly, in a previous incarnation they were responsible for “The Learning Company” brand, which sold old software titles for $5 (I’ve got a copy of Microsoft Golf 98 from them around here somewhere, purchased sometime around 2002) and included various bits of invasive and buggy software with it. I might have them mixed up with someone else, but the name rings a bell, and for bad reasons…just can’t quite put my finger on it.
I’m not going to sign up on their website, and I don’t care if they de-list Samuel’s Persiflage, but the next episode of Samuel’s Persiflage looks like it will have a theme of “Tricks, Scams and Cons”, and I might just record a phone call with them where I probe them about their spammish practices…I’ve got a couple Australian ISPs I would like to probe the same way about other topics too.
Samuel