June 30th 2008
China’s announcement that it is not preparing to investigate Microsoft seems more like a warning shot than reassurance. Hats off to Computerworld’s Preston Gralla, who points out the strangeness of communist governments complaining about monopolies. Hypocrisy and gamesmanship are likely to be reoccuring themes in the two giants’ relationship.
June 29th 2008
Nike has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS) in the Federal District Court for the District of Oregon over the use of the term “Dri-FIT.” Dri-FIT is a trademark of Nike.
June 28th 2008
On Thursday the board of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the biggest ever expansion of the scheme for having Generic Top Level Domains (GTLDs). So instead of being limited to gTLDs which describe the purpose of traffic on the domain, such as .gov, .edu, end users could apply for their own […]
June 26th 2008
NPR suspended its skepticism and asked Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, how can Twitter change the presidential debate? Well gosh. Here’s a short list of ways Twitter might change political debate in America. It will delay the real political change that only debate in Haiku can provide. Twitter abbreviations such as “They […]
June 25th 2008
This week, ICANN waded into the issue of providing Internet addresses in non-roman characters. BusinessWeek has detailed coverage of the politics and complexity of countries with multiple languages and dialects who want Internet addressing translated to their native characters and words. The BBC calls this “the biggest Internet shake-up in decades.” Ask a Dumb Question, […]
June 24th 2008
Tom Regan of The Christian Science Monitor provides some perspective on the Web’s influence on the US presidential race. In January, Obama raised a record $32 million, a previously unimaginable amount. All but 12% of it came through the Web. And then there’s Ron Paul, who had $5 million single-night online fundraisers. About ten years […]
June 23rd 2008
Once you’ve read the federal CAN-SPAM legislation, you’ll see it does little to stop the sending of unsolicited messages. One might in fact call it the “Yes, you CAN spam” act. Yet even if you can spam, there are good reasons not to. Recently, James B. Zagel of the U.S. District Court in Northern Illinois rulled […]
June 22nd 2008
I’m delighted to be speaking at Exact Target’s 1:1 marketing tour as it comes to Boston to discuss two of my favorite topics. 1:1 Marketing: Today, prospective customers spend much more time on the web researching their purchases before they ever speak to your sales staff. That means marketing needs to communicate more individually to prospects, […]
June 21st 2008
The Christian Science Monitor reports that as blogging has become more popular, so has the oppression of bloggers by governments. Bloggers seem particularly susceptible to political imprisonment: The vigilante tone of many citizen journalists sends them down a prickly path with government censors; and they are often one-man operations, meaning there’s no editors or company […]
June 20th 2008
The USPTO faces a backlog of over one million patent applications. To keep up, patent examiners have less than 20 hours per application to determine if a 20-year monopoly should be issued, which can determine the future of entire industries or the direction of basic research. Over the last year, the USPTO has cooperated with […]
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