May 16th 2008
Who controls the software you use: you, or the software’s producer? That’s the question at the heart of a lawsuit by Blizzard, creator of World of Warcraft (WoW), against MDY Industries. Apparently, MDY has developed software called Glider that allows a WoW player to cheat by having their computer play for them in their stead. […]
May 15th 2008
Wendy Davis posts that the FBI has been persuaded by privacy rights organizations to back down from a National Security Letter they had served to gain intelligence about a user of the nonprofit digital library Internet Archive. This extends a pattern of recent privacy victories noted in recent posts. You’ll recall the Internet Archive is […]
May 14th 2008
China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and the China Patent Information Center (CPIC) have developed a Chinese-to-English translation engine. China’s patent office is the fifth largest in the world in terms of volume, processing about a half million requests for invention patents, utility models, and design patents in 2006. The Japan and Korean offices have […]
May 13th 2008
It seems the RIAA is trying a surge of their own by increasing the number of take-down notices to universities, estimated to be up by a factor of 20. According to Wired.com: University of California at Berkeley’s chief information officer Shel Waggener confirmed he’d heard of the spikes and suggested there was a political purpose […]
May 12th 2008
Are virtual worlds a technology distraction, or the next frontier for major brands? That’s the question I took on in Thomson CompuMark’s most recent client newsletter. If you’d like some concrete examples of how brands are experimenting in virtual worlds, and to find out about the array of legal issues being taken on by early […]
May 11th 2008
The still-controversial Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (or PRO-IP) Act has passed the House of Representatives by a 410-10 margin. The proposed legislation would allow the government to seize personal property, such as computers, that are allegedly used in copyright infringement. In addition, it creates a new position within the Executive Office of […]
May 9th 2008
The way your competitors acquire, protect, and promote their intellectual assets can inadvertently signal their next moves. Increasingly savvy marketers are following how competitors manage their intellectual assets to get a sense of what they’re preparing to do next. The intellectual assets we’re discussing here include the rights conferred by intellectual property, human knowledge secured […]
May 8th 2008
Last year, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company launched a virtual ventures contest in Second Life. Now the firm has published an outlook report on how established businesses are reaching consumers in virtual worlds, and notes that many companies are”ignoring them at their peril.” Current business uses of virtual worlds extend beyond marketing to training, […]
May 6th 2008
Colorado has passed new anti-spam legislation, which establishes violations of federal CAN-SPAM law as also being fraud under state law. It then extends the law to those who knowingly falsify routing of point-of-origin information, while establishing protections for plaintiffs, and a statutory penalty of $1,000 per email with a ceiling of $10 million. You can find […]
May 6th 2008
In the court case of Atlantic v. Howell, the judge denied a request of summary judgment against the Howells. The court decision was surprisingly incisive, rejecting the RIAA’s argument that merely leaving copies of copyrighted works in a place where someone might copy them, without any evidence that they did, is a violation. This so-called […]
The future of digital experiences will be built by strategists who grasp the full array of emerging business, social, and technical models. Specialties in user experience, branding, application design, and data science are laying the foundation for richer user experiences and business models breakthrough products and revenue based marketing.
UsefulArts is a soapbox to discuss the front line of digital experience, and the agencies and platforms that enable it. Digital business needs a cadre of leaders who can connect c-level enterprise thinking with the ways these new interaction models can help organizations to matter more to their most important stakeholders.