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Privacy, especially as it relates to the Internet, is a scary topic. It is more and more difficult each day to understand what personal information you are leaving around as you wander the infinite corridors of the Internet. It seems that every week we read about another laptop full of personal data that has been stolen. You have every right to be concerned about this.

I would like talk a bit about the Network Reports feature of Network Magic and the privacy issues it brings out. We want to do whatever is necessary to clarify our position on privacy and let you know what our products actually do.

Prior to developing and shipping Network Magic 4.1 we did a ton of research on the right way to implement Network Reports. The overwhelming feedback was that emailing the reports was the best and most valuable approach for our customers. Getting the reports from any computer, whether at home or at work, seemed to be a valuable feature. In order to do this, we either had to figure out how to send email from the customer computer, or collect the information we need to generate the report, send it to our servers for processing and email it from there. The tradeoff was the agony of trying to send email from a consumer’s computer vs. potential privacy issues. Given the seemingly infinite methods for sending email, there didn’t seem to be a solution that would work consistently in millions of homes.

When we send the data from a home network to our servers, it is sent in a way that prevents it from being read without a heck of a lot of work. There are far easier ways for someone to get information regarding a consumer's Internet behavior than trying to capture this traffic off of the Internet and put it back into a readable form.

Once we have created the network report and sent it on to the customer, we keep the data around only as long as the consumer might need to regenerate the report. I am vague on this period on purpose, as we are constantly evaluating usage to determine if and when customers want to see old reports. We currently keep it about a week, and then it is deleted forever. We are looking at making this window shorter.

Now it is time for me to be very clear: WE DO NOT USE THIS PRIVATE INFORMATION FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE CREATION OF THE NETWORK REPORT. Pardon the caps, but I want to make sure everyone understands this. We do not look at it, we do not let anyone else look at it, we do not sell it, we will never sell it, we do not loan or rent it to anyone nor will we ever. It remains locked in our very secure servers and is never seen by human eyes. During the brief time we do have the data, we do everything we know how to protect it.

We especially do not put it on laptops and leave the laptops on the front seat of unlocked cars, which seems to be the preferred method of distribution these days for personal information.

You might ask: why, then, does your privacy policy say otherwise? Great question. The privacy policy is what the industry and legal profession requires from us. It does not state what we actually do, that would be too easy. It instead states all of the really bad things that can happen in the world of the Internet. Given that no system is foolproof, there is always a non-zero chance that we screw something up and stuff gets out. The privacy policy, generated by well-meaning but paranoid lawyers, is meant to cover every possible horrible thing that can ever happen and is, in my opinion, much like the warning text that comes with every prescription drug about the possible side-effects. The privacy policy is the software industry equivalent of “if you take this drug, you could die. You most likely won't, we don't believe you will, nobody ever has, but just the same...”

We are sending tens of thousands of these network reports daily. While we completely understand the privacy issues and the emotions that can be generated, the customers we have heard from that are concerned with the privacy issue number less than 100 very passionate people. This is not meant to discount the privacy issues in any way, just to put the issue into perspective.

In every case where you have to make a decision about a potential privacy issue, you have to weigh the benefit of the feature against the potential risk. We believe, based on customer feedback thus far, that the privacy risk we create is far outweighed by the benefit of knowing how the computers in your home or small business are being used.

If you opt out of Network Reports, we do not send any of this data to our servers, so if you personally decide that the privacy risk/benefit equation is not what you like, we respect this and encourage you to not use the reporting feature.

Hopefully this helps everyone concerned regarding our policies. I will, as usual, monitor your feedback and am willing to engage in civil conversations regarding our policy and implementation. We are always looking for ways to improve what we are doing, and these forums have been a constant source of great feedback for us.

Jeff Erwin
President & CEO
Pure Networks

Posted by JeffE at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

We are pleased to make available the BETA version of Network Magic for the Mac. The Mac is becoming more and more mainstream (I am writing this on my iMac) and you, our loyal customers have made it quite clear that Macs are a critical part of your home network. You have also made it clear that, as if sharing folders and printers on a Windows network isn’t hard enough, adding a Mac to the mix makes things worse.

Until now!

We are taking the unusual step (for us) of making the BETA version of our Mac client generally available to our entire customer base. There are several reasons for this:

1. The demand for this is very high, and making it available, even in BETA form, will help our customers.

2. We want and need the feedback from you as to what direction we should take the Mac version of Network Magic. The Mac environment is different from the Windows environment, and we realize the needs are going to be different.

Let’s define what BETA means:

1. This is NOT a bug-free commercial release. If you download it and install it, you are doing so with the understanding that BETA is short for “May Not Perform Exactly As Expected”. (MNPEAE is hard to pronounce, so we use BETA)

2. We DO want your feedback. Typically we have a secure BETA forum for this purpose, but since we are opening this up to anyone, we will accept feedback either to this blog or to this public forum area. The usual blog response rules apply.

What does it do?

Our first release of the Mac Network Magic is not intended to be a full replication of Network Magic for Windows. We will eventually get there, but we wanted to get the most critical capabilities to you as quickly as possible. Therefore, this first release implements folder and printer sharing between the Mac and the PC. While the user paradigm is different on the Mac side, on the Windows side you will see your Mac on the map and shares will appear just as they do when sharing between Windows computers. On the Mac side, it has more of a Finder look and feel.

What doesn’t it do?

While we will eventually sync the Windows and Mac capabilities, for now you will not see the network map and you won’t see network repair or many of our other cool features in this Mac version. Since you still need the Windows Premium version of Network Magic on a Windows computer for folder and printer sharing, that is still the way to get those tasks done.

How much will it cost?

The Mac version of Network Magic will be free to our Premium customers, and of little value to our Basic customers if the free trial period has expired.

How do I get it?

Follow this link to download the Mac BETA:
http://www.networkmagic.com/mac

Posted by JeffE at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

After months of development and testing, extensive beta testing and a sneak preview release, we are excited to release Network Magic 4.0 to the world. If you are an existing Network Magic Premium customer, this is a free upgrade. If you are currently in the 30-day trial with a prior version, this is what you really want. If you are currently using and enjoying the free version of Network Magic, you are also encouraged to upgrade to this new version.

You can upgrade to 4.0 through Network Magic itself (Go to the Tools menu and select “Get Updates”) or by downloading it from www.networkmagic.com/download .

Network Magic 4.0 helps you in several new ways, including:

- New Wizards to help you more easily get your networking tasks done.

- A new, more powerful Network Repair feature that helps you solve more networking problems.

- A new Internet Speed Test that helps you determine if your Internet connection is slow, and then troubleshoots the problem if it is.

- A new personal dashboard of everything going on in your network called the Status Center.

As with any major software release, we’ve also continued to make improvements across every aspect of Network Magic.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to give Network Magic 4.0 a try.

Need assistance with Network Magic? Contact Customer Support

I look forward, as always, to your feedback!

Jeff Erwin
President & CEO
Pure Networks, Inc.

Posted by JeffE at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember those TV spots some time ago that asked if you knew where your children were late at night? I don’t even remember what exactly was being advertised, but I do remember the little feeling of angst the ads would cause in people. It’s funny what a subtle reminder about accountability and the difficulty of parenting can do to your mood.

The more modern version of this question might be: when your kids get up from the dinner table and head off to their rooms, what are they doing? With today’s connected world and the ubiquitous nature of broadband, this can be a very complicated question.

These days, the issue is much more complex, given the fact that we are now raising children who have never known a non-connected world. I am continually amazed by the amount of multi-tasking one ‘young-adult’ type person can perform. If you have ever seen one of these kids talking on the cell phone while maintaining 8 or more instant message conversations, all the while surfing through cyber-space you know what I am talking about. Add to this the lure of on-line gaming ala Xbox Live and the massive multiplayer role-playing games and it’s a wonder anyone ever goes outside any more.

I had an interesting conversation with my kids (all in college) about the more recent Second Life online environment. Apparently, the whole point of Second Life is to get online and hang out in the simulated world, doing all of the things you would otherwise really be doing if you weren’t hanging out online and simulating it. You can buy a house, get a job, open a storefront or just go to the simulated nightclubs. You can even invent, manufacture and sell things, making money so you can buy other things etc. One of my kids raised the eerie concept that eventually you might be able to buy a computer in the Second Life universe, and then be able to play…Third Life. Creepy.

Here at Pure Networks, we are very interested in a concept we call “Family Networking”. This addresses the importance of the home networking environment and the importance of staying connected to the family (as defined by related people living under the same roof) and the extended family (as defined by the people you are related to, brothers, sisters, mom, dad etc that may live elsewhere).

If you are a parent, staying connected might mean staying on top of what the kids are doing on the internet, where they are going, when they are using it etc. If your kids are older, it might mean staying in touch somehow on a daily basis without being real intrusive. It might also mean keeping in touch with your parents, your brothers, sisters etc.

What I am interested in here is what you are interested in related to Family Networking. What is important to you in this context? How do you control, if at all, what your kids do on the Internet? Do kids these days have computers in their rooms? Gaming consoles? How do you hold them accountable for proper usage without being a censor? And when the heck do they ever do their homework??

If you could be connected to your extended family through your home network, what would you want to do? Share photos? Files?

The usual posting rules apply. Also, if you put a link of any sort in your post, it ends up in a rather interested set of computer-generated postings and we have to sift through it to find you, so make sure you put links at the end of your post. It makes it easier to find you.

Jeff Erwin

Posted by JeffE at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the things I have discovered in the short time I have been with Pure Networks is the amazing passion our customer base has for our product.

I should clarify. It isn’t all positive passion. It looks to me like only 95% of you love the product, use the product and want more!

It is that other 5% I want to pay close attention to.

As I mentioned in one of the comments in my first post, I spent a ton of time in the early and mid 90’s working to solve the enterprise networking problem. The primary issue was that the industry at that time was creating new technology far faster than we were creating the ability to deal with it. Anyone remember Token Ring? How about the 16Mb flavor? ATM? How about the days when SNMP was in its infancy? All of this lead to the creation of extremely fragile, poorly configured and undocumented enterprise networks built by teams of brand-new IT professionals that seemed to change jobs every few months.

In other words, instability and chaos.

The enterprise network quickly became mission critical, and over the course of about 5 years, the stability and chaos issues were solved. Enterprise networks rarely fail these days; they tend to be extremely well documented, well engineered and well maintained.

Roll forward to today and examine the home network. While we seem to have stabilized on TCP/IP and Ethernet, the home network is created out of whatever the consumer can drag home from Best Buy or Circuit City. The brightest box wins. Plug and Play, WAP/WEP/Pre-N MIMO Super-G biggest antenna ever!

Then you go home and plug it in. What we are finding, and in fact the very premise this company was founded over, is that the average consumer has a pretty small chance of actually getting this stuff to work right, if at all. This is complicated technology! The networking hardware manufacturers have worked hard to provide easy-to-use equipment, but at the heart of the matter is the fact that networking is not an easy science. If a network is not created and configured correctly, it tends to be pretty fragile. Consumer-level networking gear is the most returned product line the average retailer has to deal with, and most of the time there is nothing wrong with the equipment!

This makes you angry, wastes everyone’s time, and costs the retailer and manufacturer money. Nobody wins.

Pure Networks has taken on the task of making sense out of all this for you. While this sounds like marketing crud (at least to me), let’s think about that that really means.

For the most part, we seem to do a pretty good job in most cases. Hmm. Lots of wiggle words in that sentence. I have spent some time going through our customer feedback and customer support logs and talking to our support teams. There are network environments where we can almost do no wrong. We partner with D-Link, and when you purchase one of their newest routers, you get us in the box. These devices are well understood by us, and our success rate is extremely high. In fact, D-Link is probably the least-returned retail level networking product these days because of this relationship.

D-Link, however, does not have 100% of the market for home networking gear (although they are working on it…). In fact, I would suspect there are more than 500 different permutations of routers/wireless/DSL/Cable/Switch technologies, each with various different versions of firmware and each with their own configuration requirements available to the home consumer at any given point in time.

This is what we step into every time we are installed.

It is a tough job, and we accept the responsibility. Of course, we also tend to get the blame when it doesn’t all magically work.

As we progress as a company, and as our product line matures, we have taken on the task of taming this chaotic environment for you. Our goal is that we will help you install and configure your networking equipment on any home network, make it work reliably and allow you to share folders and printers with the simple push of a button. After we have accomplished that for you, we have a ton of very cool stuff to allow you to stay on top of your network, keep it running and use it to its fullest capacity.

We aren’t there yet.

My commitment to you, our customer base, and especially that 5% that are ‘passion-impaired’ regarding us, is that every release of Network Magic will get you closer to this goal of having a ‘pure’ network at home.

I want to hear from you. My first question is this: What is the most frustrating thing about your home network? If we were to solve ONE thing perfectly, what would it be?

I look forward to the conversation.

Jeff Erwin
President & CEO
Pure Networks

A few rules about what will make it through our ‘evil blog filters’:

1. Your comment must make sense. Sentence syntax and complete sentences are useful.
2. No offensive language. If you have something negative to say, say it in a constructive way and we will publish it.
3. If you have a support question, please use our customer support team. They are far better equipped than I to address licensing and product problems that are outside the topic of the specific conversation and allows us to keep the blog focused and interesting.
4. If your comment contains any statement along the lines of ‘you probably won’t publish this’ or some other type of dare, you are right! Stay focused, and you will get published.
5. If your comment contains any links, the spam filters pick it up and I never see it. You cannot believe the amount of automatic spam these blogs receive.

Posted by JeffE at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (44) | TrackBacks (0)

First of all I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Jeff Erwin and I'm the new President and CEO of Pure Networks, the company that brings you Network Magic. I'm very excited to have joined the talented team at Pure Networks, and we're all looking forward to bringing you continued Network Magic improvements and new features.

One of my initiatives is to make sure we're always listening to our customers and incorporating their feedback into Network Magic. One initial result of this is our decision today to move away from subscription pricing for Network Magic Premium, and move back to a more traditional "one-time purchase" pricing model. We found the majority of our customers are much more comfortable with this model, and it fits better with the current set of Network Magic features and how we plan to enhance the product in the future.

What do you have to do?
If you are a current Network Magic Premium owner, the answer is – nothing. As part of this change, current Network Magic Premium owners have been given permanent use of their current version of Network Magic. This change requires no further action on their part and has already been implemented. In addition, as a thank you to these Network Magic owners, we are giving them a free upgrade to our next version, Network Magic Premium 4.0, when it is released.

For people who currently use Network Magic Basic, the free version of our software, or are currently in the 30-day free trial of Network Magic Premium, we hope this gives you one more reason to buy Network Magic Premium.

What's next?
Our team is hard at work on our next version, Network Magic 4.0. If you'd like to experience a preview of it, and are willing to give us feedback on how it performs for you, consider joining our Beta testing program.

We're excited about the future of Network Magic and we hope you are too.

Thanks for your time,
Jeff

President & CEO
Pure Networks, Inc.

Posted by JeffE at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (196) | TrackBacks (0)