Earlier in 2003, a new and highly innovative service hit the adult industry like wildfire: BoardTracker.com. If you haven’t heard about it or used this service yet, you are probably still manually doing something that was not possible to do otherwise until very recently, which is: Save valuable time from tracking all of your favorite adult message board Web sites and letting BoardTracker do it for you automatically 24/7.Earlier in 2003, a new and highly innovative service hit the adult industry like wildfire: BoardTracker.com. If you haven’t heard about it or used this service yet, you are probably still manually doing something that was not possible to do otherwise until very recently, which is: Save valuable time from tracking all of your favorite adult message board Web sites and letting BoardTracker do it for you automatically 24/7. BoardTracker is one of the most unique and handy Webmaster tools out there. This week In The Spotlight we have the pleasure of interviewing Ron Kass (XXXManager on the boards and Pidgin on ICQ) about BoardTracker’s hidden secrets!
LAJ: Great to have you here this week Ron and it was a pleasure meeting you and hanging out at Internext! Tell us a little about your sites before we jump into some BoardTracker discussion.
Ron: Nice meeting you too LAJ. My sites are BoardTracker.com – which is a free adult Webmaster message boards tracking service, XXXManager.com – which is a comprehensive traffic management service, and other smaller sites like XXXTech.com (an adult Techie board) and others. I also do technical and technological consulting for people and companies in need. Essentially I provide “Innovative and advanced technical services.”
LAJ: How does BoardTracker work from a technical standpoint?
Ron: BoardTracker does what people themselves do, basically. It “looks” at chat boards and searches for threads that it hasn’t “read” yet or ones with new replies. BoardTracker does this all the time blazingly fast on all the boards and all the threads, nonstop 24/7. Most importantly, BoardTracker “remembers” all the threads, both title and post. This enables the system to analyze its acquired knowledge and to do things like send user alerts (by email or ICQ) based on matches between the threads and the users’ fields of interest and alert keywords they have defined, eliminates spam messages (once the user enables that option) as well as allows users to view and search all the threads from all the boards in one place and much more. (Everything is described on the system’s website.)
The “looking” part is done by a spider mechanism (like your eyes), the “reading” part is done by a highly complex engine that processes the board’s content (like your brain and thinking process), the “remembering” part is done by a smart indexing mechanism and a database engine (like your memory and notebooks you might use) and the “analyzing” part is done by a special mechanism for processing the data stored in the “memory” and drawing conclusions and actions.
This is of course just the tip of the iceberg, but since many of the technical details might be boring at times (such as databases and clustering technology) and others might be a bit confidential (such as the tech behind how BoardTracker “reads” and “understands” the different boards and threads with their varying different structure) I would spare it from your readers.
LAJ: How long have you been in the adult Internet? Worked for any other companies?
Ron: I have been in the adult industry since 1999. I was mostly engaged in the technical side of it, infrastructure and hosting companies, as a CTO and VP R&D but in the last three years I have been busy with my own ventures, from the latest at BoardTracker.com to the earlier XXXManager.com, XXXTech.com and others. Before that I have been working for non-adult companies, something I am still heavily engaged in.
LAJ: What is your background?
Ron: Technical mainly, though on the creative side of it. Prior to BoardTracker and my other ventures and my dealings with adult industry companies, I was dealing purely with the mainstream industry. I was VP R&D (in a Web-based aptitude assessment company), CTO (in an Internet security company), a partner in a start-up company (IT Web technologies) and an architecture / programming team leader (in a digital arts and Internet company). That was almost right after three years in the military, dealing with technology of course. Prior to that, I was working for print and broadcast media as well as the gaming and graphics industry, which were my window to the technology world and the reason why I started and stayed in this industry.
I have been dealing with almost any side of computer technology (including electronics) whether it was Sinclair, Texas Instruments, Commador, Apple, Windows or Unix/Linux; PCs or mainframes; scripting or programming methodologies; mathematics and algorithms, databases or games and graphics; communications or “stuff I can’t tell you about.” 😉
LAJ: You must have gotten a pretty early start?
Ron: My fascination and practice with technology started very early (at the age of seven with my first computer!) I also have dealt with sound and graphics (art) in the offline world from those early years up until now. As a matter of fact I come from a family that is totally ignorant when it comes to technology but is very proficient in the arts (half of my family are artists while the other half deals with artistic creation of different kinds such as architecture, teaching art, etc.). In that sense I am the “black sheep” in my family. 🙂
While I never studied computers and technology officially (I actually studied business management and economics) there is little I do not know about “it” and very few fields in it that I have zero knowledge in.
LAJ: What’s a typical day like for you?
Ron: Shamefully I would have to say I wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 p.m., open my computer, realize I have more emails than I wanted to have in my inbox and seeing all the ICQ windows blinking at me, I decide to start by washing up and having a cold drink. Then I start working and stop for lunch at 10:00 p.m. and then go to sleep at 7:00 or 8:00 a.m.
LAJ: That’s pretty crazy! The funny thing is, for living in Israel, you are online around the same time everyone in the U.S. and Canada is, so that works to your advantage. What else do you do during your long day / night?
Ron: During the work hours I mainly try to plan, design and develop the system I own, I set and go to important meetings as well as work the emails and ICQs I receive, interrupted only by BoardTracker’s alert notification I get and the periodical BoardTracker view I do to be in touch with the industry. It’s otherwise very easy to drift into total seclusion if you are not in touch with the other people, forces and news in the industry – all of which you can find on the different boards out there (or in BoardTracker).
I try to break my cycle on the weekends when I concentrate on going out and having a private life.
LAJ: That’s always a good thing!
Well Ron, I just want to say thanks to you for your time this week and keep up the great work over there at BoardTracker. I love your service and use it every day.
And to everyone else, go check out BoardTracker.com! It’s a great tool and supplement to use for Webmasters who frequent chat board sites and perhaps don’t have the time to wade through all of the threads and do searches. You can use it for free and it will save you a great deal of time and open up business opportunities for you!
Do you know a Webmaster or company with a great story to tell? Someone innovative, unique or perhaps even entertaining? Tell us about this them for future consideration to be “In The Spotlight” here at YNOTNews!
