by Lee Gibbons CEO

I was pleased to see that Rob Walch of podCast411 felt it important to correct his blog post and change it to reflect much more accurately where Podango stands on hijacking feeds. He first titled the post “Podango Hijacks Feeds.” Then, upon learning that what he was seeing as clear evidence of same was really a bug, he downgraded his rhetoric to “Podango’s Bad UI Hijacks Feeds.” Now, I see that the title of the post is “Podango’s Bad choices caused lots of pain to user.” I think this is a much more accurate reflection of what is so.

Upon making this change, Rob has also issued this update at the beginning of the post:

Update #2: I have crossed out references to Evil and Malicous as it does look to be an issue of “Don’t blame on Malice what can easily be explained by ….”

Let me complete the quote for Rob, who is basically calling us either incompetent or stupid, depending upon which version of the saying he is quoting.

We are neither. We have responded remarkably well and on the high road to his original admittedly mistaken and unfounded attack on our integrity and now on our competence.
It is just too bad. I have lost some respect for Rob through this situation.

For Ginger Campbell, on the other hand, I have gained greater respect. She has admitted her error and allowed us to say that we were a part of it. She helped me understand that the error I am referring to here actually was NOT part of the reason Rob asserted that we are evil. It was as she suggests, a very separate situation. Due to timing, it did turn out to have a compounding effect of masking our understanding and not reacting as quickly to the actual issue of one of our engineers leaving a temporary redirect tag in our RSS code.

She sent a very kind, supportive email message to Shalon Ironroad acknowledging that Shalon had done everything she could throughout the resolution of these issues. She also had a very open and frank conversation with Dout Smith (Podango President and Co-founder) to resolve the issue and come to a common understanding of resolution steps. She was as gracious as one could expect her to be.

So, onward and upward. I expect this to be the last anyone should need to say about a situation. My take-away from it all is that it might have been handled much more gracefully, and professionally all the way around: Quicker, more precise response on our part. Less rash, more balanced, responses on Rob’s part. As for Ginger, unfortunately caught in the middle, to you again we express our sincere regrets and also our thanks for making us better at what we do.

by Lee Gibbons, CEO
Today Rob Walch, a friend, very capable podcaster, and leader in the podcasting community, latched onto a story that on its face looks like good, juicy news about Podango being evil and maliciously hijacking the feed of one of our valued customers, and posted about it in his blog.
Gratefully, Paul Colligan gave me a heads up, allowing me to participate in this important conversation. (Thank you, Paul.)

Regrettably, Rob, who has been great about advising Podango and participating with us at events such as our Podcasting Unconfernce at PME ‘06, chose not to call or email to try to gain an understand of the whole picture or to confirm his assertion that we are evil and malicious. Hopefully, the response I posted in a comment on his blog will help him, and you, understand the facts and help to remedy the damage done by his post. I applaud Rob for looking out for podcasters and defending Ginger in this situation. Our community needs that. But I hope he will be equally fair as he better understands our actions and the facts.

Here is what I posted there, simultaneos to this post.

First, thanks to Paul Colligan for giving me a heads up about this post and series of comments. Also thanks to Rob for providing such a forum for the podcasting community.

Secondly, an open statement that Podango does not lock people in by using the type of methods Rob accuses us of here. We provide instructions that simply allow users to redirect their RSS traffic to Podango so that we can include their pocasts in stations with minimal efforts on their part and provide them with advertising revenues by stitching short, pre and post-roll ads on their content, just like what is enabled by PodTrack, GigaVox, Kiptronic and others. We never go out and maliciously take people’s feeds and lock them into our service. If the directions we provide for feed redirects are followed, things go smoothly. When anyone wants to leave Podango, we go out of our way to help them redirect their feed, including the Podango feed, to any other universal locator they choose.

Now, to, you, Ginger, since you have brought this matter into a public forum, which is your right and perhaps obligation to do, I feel a real need to reply and help clarify this situation.

I openly acknowledge that you are experiencing difficulties with your feeds since redirecting them to Podango. Please acknowledge that we ARE actively and diligently working and communicating with you to resolve the issue.

I do feel you have not accurately and openly represented the facts here. So, I am sure you will understand my pointing out what you are perhaps unaware of or chose not to share here in this forum:

1. You have been party to every step of the redirection of your feeds. You voluntarily and honestly attempted to follow our instructions and wound up in this unfortunate position. Podango did not hijack your feed or do anything willingly you did not consent to. With that said, we are also actively working to meet your request to aid you in reversing your choice.
2. You made an honest mistake in the manner in which you redirected your feed from within your Libsyn and Podnago
accounts. This error, the failure to follow a key final step in the process as documented caused your listeners to be directed to Podango in a manner that caused our system to throw errors and not deliver your content to your users as it should have.
3. Upon becoming aware of the situation, which took place over a weekend, we responded to your email messages and you have subsequently had conversations with one of our support people, whom I am sure you will agree was professional, helpful, and kind, and we have rolled back and hand-manipulated database records to restore things to a healthy state.
4. We have put additional safeguards in place to help our system respond to and prevent this error condition in the future. We have also reviewed our document and made it more clear as to the vital nature of the step you skipped.
5. Independent of this post, and previous to receiving Paul’s email this a.m., I met for an hour with my team yesterday reviewing what we need to do to reset your feeds back to the state you were at prior to this honest mistake on your part and our admitted systematic mishandling of it.
6. We have scheduled a call with you for this morning to understand this general request more specifically. This call will take place between you, Doug Smith (Podango co-founder and operations lead) and Shalon Ironroad (our support rep who has patiently and kindly supported you through out this mishap).

Finally, I want you to know again of our sincere apology for this mishap. We will remedy the situation to your satisfaction, and will support your request to help you restore your settings in Feedburner and LibSyn.

Rob,

Thanks again for being a friend. Your participation in our initial development of Podango, at the Unconference PME event, and your ongoing advice has been helpful. Once again, you have helped us improve. We regret that you have chosen to characterize this situation as you have and hope you will also follow through and help the community understand that we are neither evil nor malicious. As always, you would have been welcome to call and discuss this and get some clarification, but you were probably just extremely busy, as usual.

Sincere, best regards, Rob.

Lee Gibbons
CEO, Podango

lee@podango.com

P.S. I have also posted this on http://podango.com/blog/

by Lee Gibbons, CEO
Scott Bourne, President of Podango Productions and host of the popular Apple Phone Show on Podango, got some fun press, which isn’t new, just interesting because of the story I had heard but hadn’t seen printed about him throwing his Treo into the SF Bay. This article by Julio Ojeda-Zapata of Pioneer Press appeared on Twin-Cities.com. Here is the excerpt:

“It’s your iPod,” says Bryan Brignac, of Minneapolis. “It’s your computer. It’s your map. It’s your datebook. It’s your life in the palm of your hand.”

It’s a device some hope will make their lives easier. Scott Bourne got so disgusted with his misbehaving cell phone - a Palm Treo - recently that, on an impulse, he skimmed it across the San Francisco Bay. “I wanted to see if it would skip like a rock,” he said. “It went three times before sinking.”

Bourne is hoping an iPhone will eliminate those headaches. “The reason I’m so excited about the iPhone is my hope and expectation that Apple will perform as it does with other” hardware, such as iPods and Macintosh computers famed for their elegance and ease of use, said the former St. Paulite, now a San Francisco tech executive and host of the new “Apple Phone Show” podcast.

Knowing Scott as I do, this story made me laugh. He isn’t a guy given to fits of rage. He probably acted on impulse, but I guarantee he got much more glee out of seeing the Treo skim across the water than he from seeing it go for around US$100.00 on eBay.

I would go throw my Treo 600 into the Great Salt Lake, but I don’t want to lose it from my small museum of cell phones that chronicles my cell phone use since 1992. I am in line for the new iPhone. It will mean switching carriers (I have been with Sprint for seven of my fifteen years of cell phone use.). It may also mean that I change my mind about my Treo and the Great Salt Lake, too.