The Beat

Information security and data privacy: Breaches, securing enterprise data, regulations and legislation. While security used to be "virus and worms," the focus today has changed to an information risk and operational risk standpoint, says Jai.

Today it's all about the blog.

Webware, Crave, & Alpha

Webware.com is focused on web apps (or as the enterprise calls it, software-as-a-service) for SMB & consumers and is Job #1 for Rafe these days. Believing that Web 2.0 and SaaS were too much jargon for the average user, the term "Webware" was born and poses the question: "What can I do with this net connection I have?" Rafe and a researcher make up the full-time staff with the rest coming in as contributions from across CNET's editorial teams.

"Not a 20-minute conversation with founders, but a commitment." Ideally, he "wanted to get them out of the office." What he got was two full days "just talking about Zillow and real estate entrepreneurs etc.," with a trip to a Seahawks game, family, dinner and drinks included. The corporate PR director "was great … accessible and bright … a sounding board…" and not just for Zillow, but for the real estate market in general.

Ashlee Vance - Editor, U.S. Edition, The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/

Audience

Based in UK, The Register enjoys 4.4 million uniques a month, with 1.4 million impressions daily - half of those are from U.S. It started out as a "newsletter for chip heads" with lots of microprocessor coverage that "catered to engineers," Ashlee says. From there it began to draw more industry watchers and CEOs. He says they also get "plenty of emails from execs," adding that recent studies have shown a healthy IT buyer crowd.