One of my favorite comment threads was the speculation about who was behind the Hide-a-Pod Web site. Someone suggested that it might actually be Apple in disguise! After all, they looked up the domain record and the information was hidden.

Come on, Apple has a great product and doesn’t doesn’t need my help to take down the Zune. After all, the Zune is self-bashing.

Well, let me introduce myself. My name is Doug Smith and I’m not associated with Apple or any other big company. It’s right there in the footer of the site and it really is true.

I’ve been around the ‘Net for a long time — way before there even was a Web. Although I’ve been active in many online communities over the years, I tend to just blend in by having such a common name.

I’m currently involved in a number of small Web sites in a variety of capacities. If you care, you can have a look at my very outdated recently updated personal Web site. It was originally created as a place to post some of my home automation articles and whatever else I found interesting. One of these days I’ll convert it all to WordPress and start blogging some of the articles and ideas I have queued up.

So why the hidden domain record? No big secret here. Many domain registrars have a hiding feature to reduce the scams and spam you would normally receive by having a public record. I highly recommend the practice as it saves many a headache.

See you next time. I’ll explain the motivation for creating an entire site just for a joke. My intention is to post weekly occasionally with all the behind the scenes information as long as there is interest.

I just wanted to post a quick note to let everyone know that I will be doing a series of blog posts answering some of the questions about Hide-a-Pod. I’ll cover who’s behind this (not Apple), the motivation for building a whole site for a joke, why I used WordPress, weathering a digg storm, ideas on why this did well on digg, mistakes I wish I’d done differently, and things I’ve learned.

I’ll probably wait to post until the beginning of August when I get a fresh batch of bandwidth from my provider. My allocation for this month has been fully dugg out. This will also give a little time see how long the traffic impact lasts so I can report on that too.

Subscribe to the feed now or subscribe by e-mail through FeedBlitz and you’ll be all set for when the articles are posted.