28 April, 2010
@dahowlett looking for a job?
Ever since my real self, @dahowlett started to suck up to Steve Gillmor, I suspected he was after a gig at his new “media venture” within Salesforce.com. Of course it takes more then just one post and a couple of tweets: old time Dennis-wathcers can just feel the change of winds: when he starts cozying up to one vendor while getting critical of the competitors, you just know what’s behind the change of heart.
Have doubts? Here’s the money quote from an intriguing post today:
Have doubts? Here’s the money quote from an intriguing post today:
Again, in conversation with Benioff, he said the company is starting to become a media entity, hiring no more than maybe 10 journalist types to lead the company’s messagingHey, it’s better then chasing gigs here and there:-)
29 March, 2010
Congratulations to @FreeAgent and @dahowlett to Getting Funded. Just Don’t Forget Disclosure Next Time.
Congratulations to SaaS startup FreeAgent Central to their recent funding and joint development / distribution agreement, as reported by (Real?) Dennis Howlett:I’m excited about this announcement for a number of reasons. It is a solid endorsement of the saas model from a traditional on-premise player that can leverage shared knowledge to transition between a hybrid computing model and an eventual saas play…Yada yada yada… something is missing from the “number of reasons”. Perhaps it would have been prudent to disclose his equity relationship to FAC – or is that too much to expect from an analyst who takes pleasure in calling others shills?
Although he reported divesting his shares this comment from FreeAgent Central CEO makes it clear that the “divestiture” exercise did not go quite far: @dahowlett simply transferred his shares to his live-in spouse, Jude. That’s still significant material bias, if you ask me.
Not that there’s anything wrong with holding equity in a relevant startup - there is just the small issue of disclosure. Oh, but let’s remember he does not live in the USA and has voiced his opinion on FCC disclosure rules. Viva Espana! :-)
24 March, 2010
When Twitter Backfires: RT @dahowlett: Going Live Now. Or Not.
Going live now: http://www.livestream.com/dahowlett
And the link points to:
So now we know... Dennis does sleep (a little) after all :-)
23 March, 2010
Thanks For the Promotion, @dahowlett
My other half has just promoted me – yes, in his old curmudgeonly manner, saying I was:“directing invective designed to impugn my reputation”Isn’t that interesting? When he tried to shut me down with a bogus DMCA takedown notice, his chief complaint was that I was quoting his tweets. Now, I don’t understand: if quoting his tweets constitutes “invective” – well, does it mean his own words are incriminating? He should not use words that can impugn his reputation.
Nevertheless, what matters is that @dahowlett is sending traffic to this humble blog. Thank you, brother! And I am really sorry that your FakeBook (or was it FaceBook?) account got compromised. Although you attempted to kill my account, nobody, including you deserves this. So I hope you will soon be back in control of your FakeBook account.
21 March, 2010
A Bully Who Can’t Even Take Criticism? Comments Critical of @dahowlett Disappear from ZDNet.
Well, well, it turns out Dennis Howlett really can’t stand criticism. He tried to shut me down, which is not really a surprise, but he is also suppressing criticism on his ZDNet blog, Irregular Enterprise. Readers of this blog already know @dahowlett makes a living out of attacking fellow analysts, bloggers, including his ZDNet colleagues.
His favourite targets are Michael Krigsman and Joshua Greenbaum. Perhaps the low point was when he called called Greenbaum's analysis vomitworthy (you will not find the exact words anymore, he redacted the post). In another attack he called Greenbaum cowardly, then of course changed that, too – now, *that* is what I call cowardly. Howlett has decades of journalism under his belt, he should know that printed words can not simply disappear. What’s said is said, you stand behind your words, defend them or apologize. That is, if you have spine…
In his recent post, Enterprise 2.0: efficiency, effectiveness, blame and responsibility Howlett takes a swipe at Krigsman again, as well as an unnamed author, who is obviously Susan Scrupski. The posts drew some criticism, as evidenced by some of the comments. But at least one comment was too much for Mr. Bully to take, so he deleted it. But not before a smart reader captured it all. Read the deleted comment here:
But this is not about what I think. The point is: here’s one more proof that a vicious bully who does not hesitate to attack anyone can’t even take a little criticism and simply censors those who disagree. Blogging 101: FAIL.
His favourite targets are Michael Krigsman and Joshua Greenbaum. Perhaps the low point was when he called called Greenbaum's analysis vomitworthy (you will not find the exact words anymore, he redacted the post). In another attack he called Greenbaum cowardly, then of course changed that, too – now, *that* is what I call cowardly. Howlett has decades of journalism under his belt, he should know that printed words can not simply disappear. What’s said is said, you stand behind your words, defend them or apologize. That is, if you have spine…
In his recent post, Enterprise 2.0: efficiency, effectiveness, blame and responsibility Howlett takes a swipe at Krigsman again, as well as an unnamed author, who is obviously Susan Scrupski. The posts drew some criticism, as evidenced by some of the comments. But at least one comment was too much for Mr. Bully to take, so he deleted it. But not before a smart reader captured it all. Read the deleted comment here:
I don’t necessarily agree with everything the commenter says. I actually believe Howlett is an independent thinker, a good analyst- but one who turned ad hominem attacks into his trademark style, and yes, I think in the long run what he does damages ZDNet’s brand.Dennis Howlett has no integrity
It seems Dennis Howlett does not miss a chance to insult and demean his ZDnet blogger colleagues. As usual, Howlett insults are off target. His blog claims that the Project Failures blog by Michael Krigsman tries to point the finger of blame at people responsible for IT project failures. Showing his lack of understanding of IT, and his lack of analytical skills, Howlett completely misinterprets and mischaracterizes the work of Krigsman, probably intentionally, in order to attempt to make himself seem wiser or more knowledgeable - both could not be further from the truth.
Krigsman's blog describes HOW failures occur, not WHO is to blame. Krigsman does his own fact-gathering and reporting, unlike Howlett who mostly comments on the analysis done by others. Only Howlett repeatedly points fingers at others. As in this case, Howlett's accusations are almost always wrong. Perhaps Howlett hopes no one will click over and read Krigsman's blogs, because that is the only way his readers could fail to see his vain puffery and thin analyses. By contrast, Krigsman's recent posts on "The IT Failures Blame Game" (in two parts, completely demolishing Howlett's characterization of Krigsman as a finger-pointer), and on "The twin evils of IT gridlock and denial," are great examples of journalism and analysis to which Howlett should aspire.
Just take a look at Howlett's twitter stream at http://twitter.com/dahowlett. It is a constant stream of profanity, invective, insults, ad hominem attacks, rants, and a true glimpse inside a dark mind.
It is not clear why ZDnet allows this train wreck to continue. Perhaps Howlett gets a lot of page views by being controversial, but controversy without substance corrupts and redefines ZDnet's brand (see the decline of MSNBC as an example). If I were Michael Krigsman, I would not put up with it. I would take my substantive blog elsewhere and leave ZDnet to its chosen path to the bottom.
But this is not about what I think. The point is: here’s one more proof that a vicious bully who does not hesitate to attack anyone can’t even take a little criticism and simply censors those who disagree. Blogging 101: FAIL.
15 March, 2010
Once a (Cyber) Bully, Always a Bully. Except This Time He Makes a Fool of Himself
Wow, @dahowlett (my twin brother) must really have a split personality: he misses me, claims I am doing him a favour - then he tries to shut me down. Seriously. It came out of the blue when a friend noticed fakedahowlett.com was down, and soon after I discovered an email from Posterous, my blog host telling me they took my blog offline, due to a DMCA Takedown Notice by none other than the Real Dennis Howlett. (Bad move, my “real half”, this will backfire on you. If you attack, fine, but I’ve expected something more intelligent.) He emailed Posterous claiming I had infringed on his copyright in a number of ways – below are his claims and my responses.
By using this image.
There are only two problems with this claim. The image is published under a Creative Commons type 2 licence, which allows me to share and even remix it. What’s more, I’ve not taken it from Flickr, but indirectly from his tweets: Dennis Howlett chose this picture as his Twitter avatar, so every time he tweets, he reposts this image. How could it be copyrighted material?
By lifting his tweets.
Lifting? Really? It’s called "retweeting'. I’ve acknowledged right at the Posterous profile that:While I am fake, the tweets and post republished here are 100% real - by the Real Dennis Howlett.Nothing "private" or copyrighted is stolen, I am not claiming these tweets as my own writing, in fact most of my posts are titled as "retweets". Again, how does that infringe on his rights? By the way, all of these mini-posts are retweeted at @fakedahowlett. In fact you could argue the blog itself is just a string of my re-tweets in a more readable format. If re-tweeting selected tweets of an author was infringing on anyone's rights, would twitter have the retweet function at all? But this leads us to the next point:
The intent of my site is to attack Dennis Howlett by selectively picking tweets.
How exactly can I attack him by quoting himself? Once again, the posts in question are not my writings by verbatim quotes from himself. Yes, I am selectively picking his tweets or posts, mostly based on two criteria: ad hominem attacks and profanity.I am performing a public service here, helping people recognise who he really is: a bully who constantly attacks other persons in public, mostly "Net celebs" to draw attention to himself and increase pageviews. Here’s a short list of his victims: Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Mashable, Gabe Rivera, Loic Lemeur, Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis, SAP executives, ZDNet colleagues ... the list goes on. Simply unbelievable. If his own words paint him in bad light now, so what? He should have thought about it before attacking all those people. And since when are cyber-bullies such cry-babies?
ZDNet colleagues are asking Howlett about what’s going on
Now, this is one “claim” I don’t understand. What his ZDNet colleagues are asking is his own problem. Incidentally ha has attacked several of them - and some of those cases are documented right here in my blog, so perhaps those colleagues are quite happy with the dirt being aired now.Google had shut Fake Dennis Howlett down for 'questionable behavior'
Cute. He tries to paint me a refugee who runs from one platform to another as the shut me down. This is what really happened, and I’ve blogged it myself:Google’s blogger service marked this blog for suspicious activity. First I suspected @dahowlett had his hands in it, but it turned out it was not him or the content.. Google algorithmically analyses blogging patterns and their bot considered my blog spam because it had too many links – yes, Twitter is by nature link-rich, and I probably should have used nofollow. Upon review Google unblocked my blog - but in the meantime I got to like Posterous so I moved there anyway.
So where does all this leave us with Posterous? I responded to them with just about all the detail you can read here. I wanted them to understand the background, but make no mistake, whether @dahowlett is a bully and what my motives are is is immaterial. It is not the job of a service provider to judge content and interfere in personal debates. What matters is that I’ve proven that the foundation for this take-down request was bogus: neither the image nor the quoted tweets were copyrighted material and all I am doing here is reprinting tweets which are in the public domain – which Twitter’s TOS confirms, too.
All that’s left is a person who viciously lashes out at everybody left and right yet he doesn’t like criticism and bullied another victim: this time Posterous.
Yes, despite the fact that Posterous surrendered, I am not holding it against them. They are a startup coming up with great features, are probably understaffed and really hate getting involved in chicken fights like this. The DMCA Takedown system is skewed against the publisher: the service provider tends to take down content as a default, since this way the can not be held liable. It’s a self-protection mechanism. So au revoir, Posterous, no hard feelings here.
I am back to Blogger, owned by Google which has published that in 2009 over 50% of DMCA Takedown Notices were bogus. I apologise for the broken URL’s: I simply had no time or desire to fiddle with redirection. But I have a better idea: I will retweet some of my early posts, the juicy ones only read by a few dozen / hundred followers. Now that I have 3,000 followers and am closing in on the Real @dahowlett, it will be fun to share them with everyone. :-)
28 February, 2010
Accman Pro – The Second Coming, or No Free Lunch
Well peeps, by now you must have heard the earth-shattering news: no more free lunch. You all have to cough up if you want to pick my brain.
I’m generally happy with your feedback, but some dimwits just don’t get it, so I decided to spell it out for all of you. But listen carefully, I am only going to explain this once. As a bonus, and because I am in a generous mood today, I will share with you some of my money-making methods (what some dickwads would call shady practices) – this is a one-time bonus, before I shut off the free firehose. So bear with me, this will be a long post but you will learn more than you could learn elsewhere in 3 years. Actually, I may just break it in two pieces – it would get too long and I’m worried you peeps can only absorb so much in one reading.
This dickhead just does not get it: Blogs: No more free lunches? I’ll just eat elsewhere, thanks:
So while I wish Mr. Howlett all the luck in the world, unfortunately, the next time I run into a prompt telling me I need to pay to view some content – you can be sure that I’ll be Google-ing shortly afterwards and reading another three brilliant posts written by similarly qualified writers – for free.Asswipe… has no idea about the IP I have accumulated, but good luck to him finding “comparable” value – as they say you get what you pay for.
Then there’s Ben Kepes, who, as usual doesn’t know shit from shinola: he basically questions the validity of a paywall, and says only the biggest mega-blogs can generate enough revenue to make it work.
He doesn’t get it – nor does anybody else. Do you all think I’ve just announced a for-pay blog? Bollox. Utter bollox. I’ll let you in on a secret: for all the noise I make, Accman has miniscule traffic. Close to nothing:
I’m getting 5k uniques a month – do you think I can make a living if a fraction of those pay a few bucks? Jude will kick me out of the house if that’s all I bring home. But my brand is bigger than Accman: it comes from ZDNet and Twitter. I’m influential because of who reads me and asks for my advice. Did you all missed the gist of my post?
Investor analysts from Wall Street, company investors, potential buyers, vendors and others have increasingly been asking me to add colour to what you see on these pages. They rightly assume that what I say in public is not the full story. I’ve never refused a call or offered an opinion that I didn’t believe, at the time, was correct. I’ve never charged for any of that. But…and it is a big but…that is consuming more and more of my time. I don’t mind and I hope that adds value. Is it fair that I should provide what amounts to a free advisory to one organization and not another? No.So here’s the deal: I will publish “for pay” material, but I don’t expect significant income from it. But the message is loud and clear: I am open to consulting, but vendors who approach me better be ready to pay. For my time to start with.. then we’ll see the rest.
I’m really happy with this arrangement. We all need food on the table but I hate the stupod ‘I got paid for…’ paranoia around transparency in the blogging world. Who wants to disclose left and right? So if you pay up, I don't have to engage in funny practices… forget pay-to-play, extortion, badmouthing, “blackmail” (what you dimwits consider blackmail), undisclosed equity stake and more… I’m now clean, am a Star Analyst, won’t need to resort to such practices. But first, as I promised, I will tell you all about it – so come back for the juicy second part. And if you don’t like it – f*ck off.
(P.S. You wonder about the title? I started my blog as Accman Pro. The renamed it Accman. Now it becomes Accman Pro again. On your dime.)
27 February, 2010
"Dickhead" convo with @dahowlett re. @NetSuite sponsorship, worth a read
@jeremyross - I'm pretty broad minded but you really excel in the 'dickhead' stakes. Do you read what I say? I doubt it
via twitter.com
Wow, this is a nice one, it all started with the NetSuite sponsorship (more on it later), for now let's just have the full convo:
Fresh content: NetSuite: new sponsor http://cli.gs/4d2qd
RT
RT @dahowlett Fresh content: NetSuite: new sponsor http://cli.gs/4d2qd <-- For me, this is a huge conflict. Can't trust your coverage now.
Typical knee jerk moron: http://bit.ly/bPj5X4
RT
@dahowlett Not knee jerk. Don't have to go to J-school to know that your NetSuite relationship makes no sense. You're in their PR dept now.
RT
@jeremyross - I'm pretty broad minded but you really excel in the 'dickhead' stakes. Do you read what I say? I doubt it
RT
@jeremyross you deserve it. Pricks like you don't deserve a rise. This is the last time you get my attention. Blocked
RT
@dahowlett Are you kidding? I have nothing to gain off you. Your response to valid criticism says it all. Good luck with that.
Wow, that was a nice professional argument, wasn't it?
Classic by @dahowlett: I came, I saw, I farted...oooh shit
rt @dahowlett calling @mashable shills
@jackschofield - why do you channel that crap from Mashable: they're thinly disguised shills
rt @dahowlett: oh for gawd sake - fuck off with THAT discussion...
@hendrixhargrove oh for gawd sake - fuck off with THAT discussion. Fomented by peeps with too much time and too little brains
Oh, how nice! This is what he is responding to:
rt @dahowlett I am so going to rip this lot a new asshole on Monday
I am so going to rip this lot a new asshole on Monday: http://bit.ly/9YHLDi < on AccMan
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