UPDATE: Thankfully, the MIT Media Lab’s Vision & Modeling Group’s server has taken down the hacked pages. When will the rest of these websites do the right thing?

One of the burdens of being an international software mogul is the comment spammers that attempt to pollute my brilliant commentary with their garbage.

I can deal with the fact that there are vampires out there that prey on the weakness and absent-mindedness of others. But shouldn’t the folks running MIT be smart enough to secure their own servers? Like, perform some rudimentary check for exploitable devices and compromised systems?

Since I won’t link directly to the pages the comment spammer wanted to place in a comment to my blog, You’ll have to figure out how to go directly to this page yourself: http://vismod.media.mit.edu at page /people/health/bakhtear/@top/viagra/order-viagra.html. If you do a search on the text following the @, you’ll see a few other sites hacked by this ass.

While Geoff Pado and I were inspecting the exotic URL and attempting to decipher how the strange ‘@’ would be processed by a server, and which server was actually responsible for this monstrosity, Gus Mueller used curl to determine it was actually stored on The MIT Media Lab’s server for the defunct Vision and Modeling group.

Other hacked websites whose URLs have been posted on my site:

http://www.gatlinburgeducation.org at page /custom/css/
http://www.silvergalleon.com at page /custom/css/
http://www.hayloftonline.com at page /custom/css/
http://www.vinosbrewpub.com at page /buy_ats/Client_carts/css/
http://www.dhowardpottery.com at page /custom/css/
http://tecpapers.com at /css
http://www.sandboxsoftware.com at page /new/css/
http://www.dallasavionics.com at page /tkm/css/
http://ukindustrialtapes.co.uk at page /new/ice/
http://redstonemedia.com at page /invoice/icq/
http://kartingnortheast.com at page /e-news/new/
http://thequadruscentre.co.uk at page /pdf_files/pdf/
http://freemancateringbutchers.co.uk at page /images/gif/
http://aldg.co.uk at page at page /Connections/ip/
http://initialimages.co.uk at page /images/sr/
http://learntotile.co.uk at page /images/twu/
http://www.dupeyrou.ch at page /css/
http://weardock.co.uk at page /guestbook/res/
http://personalgiftsuk.co.uk at page /sanddancer/bat/
http://sq-one.co.uk at page /news/wqs/
http://advertisingready.com at page /css/
http://adsenseready.com at page /css/
http://asylum-gameservers.com at page /epass/card/
http://www.cerrone.net at page /txt/bin/
http://www.sthelenahospital.org at page /info/css/

I’ve not provided the markup to actually link to these sites so the search engines don’t think I’m linking to them, although they may actually follow the text in that case, and so I don’t get considered as an affiliate of these bozos.

Three other hacked sites that the perpatrators spammed me with have since taken down the offending pages. Let’s hope they’re more secure and that this helps to shame the laggards into shaping up. But seeing as how they haven’t corrected their lapses after my emails, I don’t think this will fare any better.

For an entrepreneur, particularly a one-man shop like a microISV, the problem of product development is one of what to produce and the feature mix it should have.

The problem is that there are different cultural values that could be represented by a product. Not just the obvious geographical, ethnic, age and gender cultural values, but values which are more subtle, and reflect an individual’s vocation and skill set more than any genetic or environmental demographic factor. These are reflected in the ways an engineer, a marketer and the customer think about a product’s design.

The Engineer
The engineer is a problem-solver. His main interest is in using his tools to build solutions.

He thinks in terms of his solution to a problem versus the previous method. Ergonomic and aesthetic qualities are not considerations for the engineer, features are. Features. Options. Variability. He’ll look to add other components to his solution so it solves a wider range of problems and is thus more useful (volume, speed, duration, size, angle, etc.). Adapting his solution for other uses though, will throw the engineer into bewilderment. “Why would you want that?”

The engineer who makes use of a variety of tools to solve his problems will build solutions to others’ problems in the same way: a plethora of tools in a variety of qualities.

The Marketer
The marketer is a persuader and influencer. His main interest is in getting his message adopted by the customer.

Because the marketing department is one of the few which are customer facing, they generally have a sense of what issues their current customers face, what they need, what price point they’ll tolerate, etc.

Due to his preoccupation with perceptions and feelings (prestige, security, intelligence etc.), the marketer’s input on product designs focuses mainly on the physical attributes (e.g., color choices, materials, textures) that will reflect qualities that bestow intangible or perceived value to the user.

The Customer
The customer is a doer and a responder: performing his routines, following his processes. He may be looking for a solution to some problem he’s currently facing (e.g., new car, faster time-to-market, rising prices). Or, as is most often the case, he may not realize there’s a problem to which someone will happily sell him the solution.

While he might rationalize his decisions with some logical arguments (takes less space, improves productivity, etc.), it is for the emotional value (trendiness, security, etc.) of owning the product for which he actually chooses.

Putting it into Perspective
This difference in perspective is vital for the microISV to know and understand in developing his products, as the tool which was developed to solve his problem is often not what the general buying public will want. Engineering a solution is one thing. Creating the want for the solution is what business is about.

In the Mac market, this conflict in viewpoints is easily demonstrated in the topic of “Delicious Generation” applications.

Many of the indie developers/microISVs developing for the Mac have criticized the arrival of apps which they have denounced as all flash and no substance. Apps such as Disco, whose designers put more emphasis on the visual quality of the product (to the extent it rendered smoke effects when burning a CD or DVD) rather than the functionality it provided, are seen as providing very little value to the consumer. These developers have a dislike for the hype surrounding these types of products, seeing them as distractions from real needs which can be solved by more functions, options, and the like.

An interesting counter-reaction was given by John Gruber in his presentation Consistency vs. Uniformity in UI Design at the C4[0] Mac developer conference, however. His description of Disco? “That’s f—— gorgeous!”

The lesson for entrepreneurs, indie developers, and anyone overseeing development of a new product: while engineers may carry the bulk of the responsibility for developing the technology that goes into your product, until machines start buying products, or your target market isn’t other engineers, you must rein in their enthusiasm to over-engineer. Think about how you’ll market the product first. Understand what the customer is motivated to want to buy. Bring them into the discussion as early as possible. Then you can engineer a solution within that envelope.

Describe. Develop. Deliver.

As I was putting the finishing touches on this entry (links, pics, and such), I came across this fabulous example.