Wow, this discussion flared a lot since the time I originally posted.
RE: Inklineglobal - haha, I didn’t actually click the banner at the top, so I didn’t know that that was it…I thought it was for another iTV site, for some reason…
RE: company kept - I have had to defend more than one site to people who just don’t see the value of the site because they can’t see past the rating assigned to it by some arbitrary site somewhere on the net - and McAfee is getting worse and worse every day. They rate your site a red for one link, but I just ran across a site that they prove posted their email address on the web, making it easy for phishers and scammers and spammers to get a hold of it, and that site was yellow. Another site, (also yellow) Sent out 5.9 emails per day - so obviously their rating system is flawed, and most likely, when someone reported that you linked to inklineglobal, they simply reinstated your previous rating without bothering to verify the rating schema used.
I should be the last person to have posted a review (using my real name) and am now registered to be a tester for them - however, (and this is a complete non requitals, as, for right now, I have no proof otherwise) it is interesting to note that all of a sudden my PW is not working there - and it is not a dictionary password, but one that I generated using my KeePass PW Safe program - so it is stored in a file, not having been altered, and the program works in every other website flawlessly, and worked at the siteadvisor site for 2 days as well…so…
Donna Bonaventura, MS MVP, author of Donna’s Security Flash, told me she used to use WW until the bundled version came out - and even though she knew that she could avoid the bundled version and avoid any of the headaches that came with installing the bundle, she didn’t want to be associated with it. Me, on the other hand, I have no problem associating myself with software that is written correctly but an author who would rather provide it for free to the majority of his users and provide for modest income generation with bundled software - hence my use of WW and MessengerPlus.
Besides, in my eyes, what you do is not nearly as bad as what some software, like Real Player, does - adds the Firefox with Google Toolbar as a ‘bundle’ *with the check mark already checked - I prefer not to use the Google Toolbar, not because of any privacy issues (I have 3 GMail accounts, my website is hosted through Google Apps and I am working on getting Google Adsense up on my page) but because I have no use for the damn thing - but Real it is a pre-selected option - say I have a mouse that has a bad left click button, and sometimes it double clicks when I want to single click - I can easily never see that option to remove it, and all of a sudden I’ll have Fx being -re-installed on my system, with the Google Toolbar, overwriting my Community Edition version of Fx that is tailored for my P4 processor - and if that were to happen I’d be madder than a cat thrown in the bathtub. Claws Extended. Ready to shred.
At least with your software I had to make a choice before I even began downloading - and with others, if there is not a separate bundled version, then at the very least there is a non selected option to install the bundle - or, the way that M+ does it - no option is selected, forcing the user to make the choice - no way to automatically skip the step.
As far as iTV is concerned, I already use it - in the form of Joomba and various networks’ .com sites (Fox and TBS particularly). It is the wave of the future, but I also say it will lead to yet another .com bust, particularly when people start addressing Internet addiction more stringently.