August 25th 2008
As state real estate and income tax collections head downward, tax collectors have turned their gaze toward online commerce. At the same time, a few states are emerging as havens from taxation. New York Goes After Affiliate Marketers with the Amazon Tax New York implemented the so-called Amazon tax. It seeks to change the common […]
August 23rd 2008
Is there any magazine cover Barak Obama isn’t on? Time has had him on its cover seven times this year alone. Perhaps a bigger accomplishment, though, is the candidate making the September/October cover of MIT’s Tech Review. Politics is increasingly driven by online technology, and as this blog often notes, the Web is increasingly defined […]
August 22nd 2008
Valuing brands is the alchemy of advanced financial theory, but now one company is valuing domains—and you can take it to the bank. Thirty-three-year-old Rick Latona and his partner, attorney Matt Collins, may be the first ever digital pawnbrokers. Latona, in fact, was a real-world pawnbroker who now owns 11,000 domains. The guys loan up to […]
August 21st 2008
A 23-year-old man who worked at a church in Wabash, Indiana, has been charged with felony stalking and misdemeanor harrassment. MSNBC all but convicts him in its coverage, and complains that because he hasn’t been charged with a sexual crime, his Internet use will not be restricted. Bad journalism aside, when he appears in court to answer these charges […]
August 20th 2008
Most of the time, students who go to court are objecting to punishment for stunts such as making fake Facebook profiles about their principal. In this case it is the principal, Anna Draker, who went after offensive students in court. Benjamin Schreiber and Ryan Todd, two 16-year-old Clark High School students, posted a false MySpace page […]
August 19th 2008
Judge George O’Toole Jr has lifted the gag order preventing three MIT students from publicly discussing MTBA security flaws. As noted here, the MBTA made the student’s report public in their petition to gain the restraining order in question. The MBTA, which had earlier denied that security flaws existed, had asked the judge to prevent […]
August 18th 2008
The Wall Street Journal‘s law blog covers the remarkable online obscenity case of 56-year-old Karen Fletcher. A reclusive abuse survivor, she is a sympathetic publisher of stories involving the rape, murder, and torture of children. The comments generated by this blog post voice our societies desire both for freedom and for various imperfect schemes for […]
August 17th 2008
FCC Commissioner McDowell Proposed Crackpot Threat to Bloggers While addressing the conservative Heritage Foundation, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell made a lame attempt to suggest this election is about preventing Democrats from using the FCC to regulate content on Internet blogs. Of course, there’s no legal basis for the FCC to regulate content on personal servers, and […]
August 16th 2008
I’d encourage you to steal Girl Talk’s breakthrough fourth album, but you can’t. It’s pay-what-you-like, so if you like, pay $0.00 to start listening and return to toss in a payment later. Start your download during this golden time before DMCA takedown notices and TROs make this a coveted, though still free, file. Under the name Girl Talk, Greg Gillis creates […]
August 15th 2008
All Your Websites Belong to Us The Christian Science Monitor analyzes the network vulnerabilities that placed Georgia, and over 100 other nations which have a network topography which puts them at risk for online attack. “The lesson here for Washington is that any modern conflict will include a cyberwarfare component, simply because it’s too inexpensive […]
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.