A funny thing happened in the Blogosphere last week: Dave Winer came out in defence of Australian based blogger Dr Elwyn Jenkins of Microdoc news after an attack from the UK based The Register. In an article on a Google bug, the UK e-mag that touts itself as “biting the hand that feeds IT” labelled Dr Jenkins a spammer in a seemingly targeted way, in a story that was essentially unrelated to Dr Jenkins. Always interested in the opinion of Dave Winer, we also discovered Google-watch accusing Dr Jenkins of flawed research techniques and implying that he was responsible for the down fall of Standard Reserve, a failed online currency experiment. We contacted Dr Jenkins for comment, and in an Exclusive, unedited interview he responds to his high profile critics.
Blog Herald (BH): Your involvement with Standard Reserve; some have accused you of being behind the downfall of Standard Reserve, your thoughts?
Dr Jenkins (DJ): The failure of Standard Reserve is due entirely, in my opinion and in most other people in the know, to an investor, Mr Jack Jones, a retired Delta pilot who passed himself off as a businessman but was little more than a slick conman. Through Jack Jones Standard Reserve was to have received a USD2m investment. There was a signed contract to that effect and there was a definite date for its payment into Standard Reserve. We always knew that the major investment of Standard Reserve was an investment in software development of which we obtained quotes and knew exactly the cost. We began investing in software development on the strength of a signed investment contract.
It was solely Mr Jack Jones who, having previous investments made in the British Virgin Islands, who induced the management and staff of Standard Reserve to move to the British Virgin Islands. It was Jack Jones who arranged an insurance deal that bled Standard Reserve dry of funds, and it was Jack Jones who arranged to have his buddy in the British Virgin Islands to receive a monthly fee which Standard Reserve could never afford. We were badly advised by Jack Jones, on the strength that a $2m investment was there to be had on moving to the British Virgin Islands from Atlanta Georgia. The investment never came. Jack Jones paid into the business a mere couple of hundred thousand, and we believe he pocketed the $2m himself.
As far as cons go, this one deserves to have its own film — like the latest film Matchstick Men and Catch Me If You Can. Everything we did was in the full knowledge of Mr Jack Jones — and that was where the problem lay. The authorities in the British Virgin Islands questioned the insurance deal which was in fact illegal according to British Virgin Island laws — in my opinion, one of the reasons Jack Jones locked the doors on Standard Reserve, stole my personal belongings, and chased us off the Island of Tortola was because we exposed his illegal activities on the Island. We have been physically scared because of the actions that Mr Jack Jones silenced us with including the orchestrated death threats we received by phone, the orchestrated email spamming of my personal email box, bogus court cases and other activities that we believe to be the work of Jack Jones. In the last meeting of Directors, Mr Jack Jones personally threatened me, which we believe was to silence us from telling the real story.
BH: The Register has accused you of being a spammer, soon to be an illegal activity here is Australia, do you use email marketing, to what extent, and what do you say to those allegations?
DJ: I detest email marketing and will not use it for any purpose for any business or activity in my control. You will not find an email in my name or any other business name that has been generated by an automated machine. I do not buy email lists, and I do not send out unwanted emails. Any email people receive from me is personally written, and personally delivered.
BH: Google-watch accuses you of propagating link farms and criticises your research techniques, would you say this was fair, and if not, why?
DJ: Google-watch has never contacted me, nor has he done his homework. A reading of the articles on Microdoc News clearly states the reasons for each and every activity of Microdoc News. I do not have link farms. Second, you cannot construe that there are links farms on any of my domains. Third, I am on record clearly in several forums where as soon as I discover an action of mine is against common online decency to turn it off. Search through http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/ and see for yourself. True, I have tested the edges of what enables people to get listed in Google easily and quickly, and yes, I have tested to see where the point of getting on the wrong side of Google is, and yes, I have tested to see how one can recover from that. I now have a very good practical understanding of exactly where the boundaries are and how to best get a business up and running online using paid and unpaid advertising methods which actually work. I have always been up-front with everything that Microdoc News is doing and have come up with some excellent scoops over the time and have gained a good deal of attention to the cause of building good quality content for the Internet.
BH: Tell us more about what your goals are and what it is you are aiming to achieve with Microdoc, and blogging in general
DJ: Microdoc News is about building good quality content for and about the Internet. I have advocated a strong philosophy of online activity. A good quality blogging site, or a good quality website, is one that has fresh material each day, is quality information for which there is an online market, and which adds to the value people can obtain from obtaining information for real living through the Internet. I am personally encouraging people to build real sites that have real information to add to the value of the Internet. Ultimately, good quality information costs money to produce and so there is a need to build models of supporting that content creation. Thus my interest in nano publishing. There are perhaps more than ten different nano publishing activities on the Internet today that have been influenced and built their sites with quality information through the studies of Microdoc News.
