david hyatt is a very funny man. in a very geeky kind of way :

" So here you are, a multi-billion dollar corporation with a sagging stock price that has spent hundreds of man-years and millions of dollars on a layout engine and a Web browser. You've thrown all this money into the support of this cool "standards-compliant" layout engine, and you don't even know what that means! You're out all this money, and you have to find some way to make it back."

"The first monetizing technique I'll show you is called "Stealth Infection." Under the principle of stealth infection, you must insert ties to your Web properties in seemingly innocuous locations. The idea is to rely on the user's poor hand-eye coordination. They'll be shooting for Open File.. and they'll end up buying furniture instead! It's brilliant! It cannot fail!"

somehow, it seems appropriate to juxtapose this with scott rosenberg's piece on why the the media titans still don't get it :

"In one embarrassing anecdote culled from an Industry Standard article about the aftermath of the winter 2000 Time Warner/AOL merger, Time Warner CFO Richard Bressler hears about plans to promote Time magazines on AOL and asks, "What are these pop-ups? How big are they? Can you send me some information on them?" AOL's legendary deal-maker, David Colburn, responds, "Rich, why don't you invest $21.95 in an AOL subscription and consider it due diligence?" Ouch.

What might have been due diligence for a corporate exec was already a way of life for tens of millions of people. Motavalli contrasts the New York media honchos' cluelessness with the insight of AOL's Ted Leonsis that, online, it's "user experience" that counts."