More and more Web-enabled gadgets collect data on customers. That makes privacy advocates mad, but the resulting furor doesn't last long. During the annual Computers Freedom and Privacy 2001 conference last March, privacy activist Richard Smith held up the SportBrain exercise . . .
More and more Web-enabled gadgets collect data on customers. That makes privacy advocates mad, but the resulting furor doesn't last long. During the annual Computers Freedom and Privacy 2001 conference last March, privacy activist Richard Smith held up the SportBrain exercise monitoring device and condemned it as a "direct marketing data pump." Its real purpose, he sniffed, is to sell people "more stuff."

But Michele Hickford, co-founder and chief marketing officer for SportBrain, was unfazed; in fact she was thrilled when she got a call from a reporter asking her to defend the product. "I'm very flattered that he picked up SportBrain," she says. "It's nice to be noticed."