The criticisms are absolutely fair. The contact management (which in our tool is the "My Projects" functionality) is a bit quirky and cumbersome. We're in the midst of re-examining that work flow and trying to figure out a more elegant approach.

On the point about author contact information, we do put in a considerable effort to maintain the integrity of that data. We all know how much author contact info has changed over the last ten years. It used to be that the vast majority of authors had publicly- available email address, if not a direct phone # as well. Today, some authors have ALL info publicly available (email address, phone, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook). But increasingly authors may ONLY have a Twitter handle listed as a contact method. Or in some cases, only a form field that must be submitted. In any case, the two main points where we dive into collection of publicly available author info are (1) upon our initial discovery of the author; or (2) when they have started to write for a new / additional sources.

My personal take on our tool is that in current form, it's the cleanest / easiest way to hone in on the volume of tech authors that write about whatever you search about. There is no other tool out there (Google News or paid "media directories" some of which you mentioned) that allow you to find precise lists of authors, with # counts on their matching content. You can go as granular as you want in your search - a specific product name, a specific company / competitor name, a specific analyst name, whatever you can dream up.

We thrashed a lot over the past few years just figuring out how to index that data cleanly and accurately. Most of the competing products out there just point their service at the web and suck in a ton of crappy data (that the user must then go through and interpret). We're trying to keep the content clean and focused purely on real opportunities. We're wearing the user hat and have built this thing to help a tech PR person get from point A research to point B analysis of data - so that they can spend more time on their actual outreach and relationships.

Anyway - appreciate the compliments and big picture about how we stack up to what you've previously used. We are still far from the ultimate vision of where we're taking this thing, but we feel like the underlying data is outstanding compared to other options on the market, and now we're in an excellent position to build intriguing new functionality (just hired a very talented new lead developer too, btw, so the next six months will be interesting).

Thanks!

Travis Van
Founder, ITDatabase

We have no way of knowing if that's what Scott Adams was doing or not, unless he were to tell us.

Personally, I need the exercise, so handicap parking isn't much of an incentive for me.

I have been reading your articles during my lunch break, and I have to admit the whole article has been very valuable and very well written.I also found a lot of stuff in your pages especially it’s discussion.I think I will come back soon.

I do like that reality show on Southwest Airlines. Somehow they always make the airline look good and the passengers look like idiots.