July 20th 2008
About twenty years ago. I was fortunate to study the social psychology theory of Lay Epistemology with a student of its developer, Arie Kruglanski. Thirty or so social media experts joined me for a discussion at Podcamp, taking place at Harvard Medical School, to introduce this remarkably durable theory as one way to assess and plan influential marketing communications. […]
July 19th 2008
I’m a believer that innovation is driven by communities. The friendships we make with smart creative people can do more to drive our success in business and life than any new technology or tactic. Wow, this is such a theme in my life, and I bet yours too. Read about it as it happens So, […]
July 19th 2008
Do you remember last month’s post about the toy designer who wiped his laptop with Evidence Eliminator before providing it for discovery? That didn’t help enough. The jury’s back; Mattel won. MGA Entertainment, the maker of the Bratz, is liable for copyright infringement and contract interference. Now the penalty phase of the trial begins. The […]
July 18th 2008
American Airlines has privately settled its trademark suit with Google. Case number 4:07-cv-00487, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, is history. Both companies are tight-lipped about the confidential settlement. The timing of this settlement is so close to the related Tiffany v. eBay trademark ruling that it suggests a causative […]
July 18th 2008
Terry Childs was a system administrator for the city of San Francisco’s high-speed network. According to reports, last week the disgruntled employee created a super password for the network and removed his follow administrators, effectively making himself the only person who can maintain the network. Now officials are stuck, since Mr. Childs is locked up […]
July 18th 2008
Judge Richard Sullivan’s ruling against Tiffany’s varied claims of trademark infringement is fairly absolute. When word of the ruling reached the MIT Media Lab where I was speaking this week, the audience there was delighted. The unambiguous ruling for the right of efficient commercial speech and immunization for intermediaries who take good-faith precautions and adhere to DMCA […]
July 17th 2008
You have about a 1 in 5,000 chance of hitting a hole in one in golf. That’s not a very good chance, especially when we’re talking about my game. But that’s about the same odds as being on the US terror list. From an AFP article: The Center “had over 700,000 names in its database […]
July 16th 2008
The Iranian parliament is moving toward enforcing the death penalty as a punishment for blogging that encourages “corruption, prostitution or apostasy.” As I wrote last month, there are about 40 bloggers imprisoned worldwide. Blogs are filtered, and bloggers are deterred, but this is the first law that would try to eliminate bloggers altogether. Iranian President […]
July 15th 2008
There’s an Internet rumor circulating that Devo is suing McDonald’s for using their unique appearance in an American Idol co-branded Happy Meal. Devo bass player Gerald Casale fueled the rumor by providing this compelling quote: “We don’t like McDonald’s, and we don’t like American Idol, so we’re doubly offended.” But in fact-checking the story I […]
July 14th 2008
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin says he wants to rule against Comcast for violating federal guidelines when it blocked and degraded Web traffic to peer-to-peer sites. Comcast reluctantly admitted to degrading peer-to-peer service after its efforts were documented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. When the FCC scheduled a hearing to discuss this, Comcast paid people to […]
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