January 6th 2009
The RIAA has dumped one of its main enforcement units (and I mean “enforcement” as in “Frank Nitty“) by firing MediaSentry. MediaSentry was used by the RIAA to supposedly gather information on suspected illegal file sharers and report the data back to the RIAA. But the tactics used by MediaSentry have caused outrage from various […]
January 5th 2009
The sky is falling on ICANN’s ill-considered gTLD policy. I’ve been a skeptic of ICANN due to its incredibly slow response to fixing its own rules enable domain tasting.Also, last year its own domain was hacked, which didn’t increase anyone’s opinion of its chops as the world’s domain authority. I’ve read in disbelief as this […]
December 30th 2008
A quick look at our log shows which stories visitors viewed most in 2008 on Useful Arts. I had forgotten how important, and frequently bizarre, this year’s topics were. Three posts towered above the others: CAN-SPAM, teens behaving badly online, and Tiffany’s contributory infringement case against eBay. January: Catherine Douglas started the year off with […]
December 23rd 2008
Holiday cards are perhaps the purest opportunity for marketers to put brands on center stage without pesky offers or product data messing getting in the way. It lets us see pure branding and get some sense of how firms think of their clients and themselves. Here are three examples from internet marketing companies, the very people who […]
December 22nd 2008
In what could have been a last-second shakedown effort, the RIAA has seen fit to ignore a judge’s order preventing the use of names determined through the discovery phase of Motown Record Company vs. John Doe from being used for anything beyond simple discovery. “The disclosure of such information is ordered pursuant to 20 U.S.C. […]
December 21st 2008
Software as a Service (SaaS) market leader and service provider Salesforce.com recently hosted a presentation by Bessemer Venture Partners, which has funded many of my favorite SaaS enterprises, including LinkedIn, Postini, Keynote, Eloqua, Skype, Force.com, and PTC. Since this presentation is locked up in a hard-to-search format, I’m republishing its insights for your enjoyment here, […]
December 19th 2008
The Wall Street Journal reports that the RIAA has decided to shift an ISP-focused enforcement approach, which would result in prosecution of individual P2P sharers only in extraordinary circumstances. Since 2003, the recording industry has opened legal proceedings against 35,000 people, including children, single mothers, and a dead person. It’s been a PR nightmare, inspired animosity […]
December 17th 2008
According to an article in The Register, Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, observed that editorial judgments may play a key role in Google searches in the near future. Mayer made her comments at the Le Web conference in Paris on December 10th. If this change does materialize, the editorial […]
December 15th 2008
My take on brands (which I hope someone will just once call “the Wieneke proposition“) is that brands are vessels that hold the good feelings generated by experiences created by staff or products. The implication is that those experiences have to be placed in front of the brand. Brands don’t create their own love; experiences do. […]
December 13th 2008
The core palette of my firm’s new website has changed to white and a medium soft gray. That sounds pretty light. But these soft elements help create a canvas for the site’s accents: the use of stronger photo elements and the introduction of orange as a highlight color. Here’s an example of how an image […]
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