April 7th 2009
Occasionally, one finds a website that does something a little different or a little better than everybody else. Recently, a friend pointed me towards a website whose Terms of Service (ToS ) makes a good-faith effort to explain in layman’s terms what the heck they are talking about. At Aviary.com, an online image editing service, […]
April 3rd 2009
Do you know what the domain is for Google Books? Those who’d guess the obvious, www.GoogleBooks.com, would unfortunately be wrong. Instead of finding the real Google Books, they’d arrive at a domain squatter selling tools for joining them in that business and using a Google’s good name in their domain to take revenue from Adwords and […]
April 2nd 2009
The EU has started an investigation into “customer profiling” on the internet. This is where online services and advertisers collect data on anything from preferences to behavior. From a recent article in the Financial Times: Officials say they will collect evidence from consumers and industry on the information commercial websites are collecting and how it […]
April 1st 2009
Can you separate the wheat of fact from the chaff of April First hokum? Some of these are true but foolish stories, and thank goodness others are pure fiction from the twisted minds of our writers. Stimulus Package Spends Millions on Microsoft Office With $20 billion in the bank, one would think that Microsoft could […]
March 31st 2009
You may recall that last year I wrote about how holiday e-cards are a window into brands and how companies think about customers. I spend much more time on e-newsletters, and just like holiday cards, there’s a difference that separates the few with vision from pointless marketing blather. Mark Brownlow illustrates this in his video […]
March 30th 2009
Siding with the American Civil Liberties Union, Judge James M. Munley has barred the Wyoming County District Attorney from pursuing threatened felony charges against teenage girls he has accused of sending explicit photographs over their cell phones. The controversial case over so-called “sexting” was filed by the ACLU, along with the parents of three girls, […]
March 30th 2009
While commenting on New Zealand copyright law, Google makes some interesting facts known about the DMCA. According to an article in New Zealand PCWorld: Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one […]
March 27th 2009
Around Inauguration Day I featured Pepsi’s logo aping the Obama brand, as well as some tasteless products, such as Yes We Can perfume and the Obama thong. Apparently, this enthusiasm and questionable judgment isn’t confined to Americans. Here are a spate of foreign ads, which are sure to get you thinking. Racist or Ridiculous? “Black in White” […]
March 26th 2009
Recently we’ve seen an employer charged with defamation for making true disclosures that would hurt a former employee, and Medical Justice which seeks to prevent online defamation by prohibiting patients from participating in social media. Now, a New York teenager has sued Facebook and a handful of its users for discussing her in a private […]
March 25th 2009
Though traffic accidents still rivet the attention of passers-by, most companys wouldn’t want to sponsor the carnage. Its bad for brand. That’s the basis of Wieneke’s First Law of Advertising: “Avoid associating your brand with death or terrible harm.” This seems like obvious advice, but during just the first quarter of the most recent Super […]
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