SXSW 2010 
What’s the Big Idea? 
Programming
Snoop Dreams
We all know how great the World Wide Web is for snooping: In a few minutes online you learn Hollywood’s secrets from Harry Knowles’ site or get the latest dirt on the president from Matt Drudge. But did you ever consider that people could be looking over your shoulder when you’re surfing the Net? If they own a copy of Houston-based WatchSoft’s Disk Tracy, they might be. The recently released program stealthily keeps track of sites that have been visited by your computer, recording graphics that have been viewed and pinpointing specific language in several categories (sexually explicit, drugs/substance abuse, potentially harmful, illegal, and hacking); there’s even a version that lets bosses monitor their employees’ time and usage of the Net. It sounds like a combination of Big Brother and a tattletale little sister, but WatchSoft founder Bill Holbert says he created Disk Tracy as an alternative to wholesale censorship. “I’ve explained to my kids what they can and can’t do on the Internet, and they understand that it’s a privilege,” he says. “The sheer fact that they know I have that disk in my dresser has been a pretty good deterrent.” How good? Despite the fact that no one likes being watched, Disk Tracy looks to be as popular as its sober namesake was in his heyday: Holbert expects to sell a million copies this year.
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