EFF - Patent Busting project

Tired of bogus software patents? So are we! To combat these annoying and often dangerous legal weapons, EFF has launched the Patent Busting Project to take down some of worst offenders.
http://www.eff.org/patent/index.php



I. The Problem
Every year numerous illegitimate patent applications make their way through the United States patent examination process without adequate review. The problem is particularly acute in the software and Internet fields where the history of prior inventions (often called “prior art”) is widely distributed and poorly documented. As a result, we have seen patents asserted on such simple technologies as:

One-click online shopping (U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.)
Online shopping carts (U.S. Patent No. 5,715,314.)
The hyperlink (U.S. Patent No. 4,873,662.)
Video streaming (U.S. Patent No. 5,132,992.)
Internationalizing domain names (U.S. Patent No. 6,182,148.)
Pop-up windows (U.S. Patent No. 6,389,458.)
Targeted banner ads (U.S. Patent No. 6,026,368.)
Paying with a credit card online (U.S. Patent No. 6,289,319.)
Framed browsing; (U.S. Patent Nos. 5,933,841 & 6,442,574.) and
Affiliate linking (U.S. Patent No. 6,029,141.)

II. The Harm
The harm these patents cause the public is profound.
Unlike most technologies, software and the Internet have attracted a vast number of small business, non-profit, and individual users each of whom has adopted and built upon these resources as part of their daily interaction with computers and the online world. From open source programming to online journaling to political campaigning, the average citizen is using new technology online and on her desktop as often as any traditional company.

The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments:

Got to make you smile first thing on a Monday morning :)


What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It's amazing and completely insane.The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get. Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes.It's a hysterical and spectacular mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas, brought to you by the mad scientists at EepyBird.com.

http://eepybird.com/dcm1.html


and not to spoil the fun but in case you are wondering; copied from slashdot is the answer.

Not chemical, so it should work just as well with other sodas/nucleation devices:
"These chemists are saying that the primary cause is physical, not chemical. Their explanation: nucleation sites. If you have a liquid that is supersaturated with gas (like soda, which is pumped full of carbon dioxide), a nucleation site is a place where the gas is able to form bubbles. Nucleation sites can be scratches on a surface or specks of dust - anywhere that you have a high surface area in a very small volume. That's where bubbles can form.
Mentos seem to be loaded with nucleation sites. In other words, there are so many microscopic nooks and crannies on the surface of a Mento that an incredible number of bubbles will form when you drop it in a bottle of soda. Since the Mentos are also heavy enough to sink, they react with the soda all the way to the bottom. The escaping bubbles quickly turn into a raging foam, and the pressure builds dramatically. Before you know it, you've got a big geyser happening!"


Cheers,
Dean

11th Circuit to Webmasters: Telling Someone To Go Away Doesn't Make Them

There currently is a very interesting and very confusing (read political) court case going on at the moment that the 11th Circuit has just ruled on (which in my mind has to be inevitably overturned in the Supreme Court).

A good summary is located here at the

http://www.acsblog.org/ip-and-tech-law-2883-11th-circuit-to-webmasters-telling-someone-to-go-away-doesn't-make-them.html
The Eleventh Circuit in the case of Snow v. DirecTV, a "private support group website for individuals who have been, are being, or will be sued by any Corporate entity".

In order to access Snow's site, a user was required to register a username and password, and to agree to a statement affirming that the user was not associated with DirecTV, inc.

He claimed that several agents of DirecTV ignored this warning and accessed his site. According to Snow, such unauthorized access violated the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which forbids accessing an electronic communication "without authorization".

The Eleventh Circuit rejected this claim. According to the court, the SCA does not apply to communications which are "readily accessible to the general public". On Snow's site, any member of the general public could access the site by merely registering with a username and password and clicking on the words "I Agree to these terms."

Such an easily surmountable barrier to access is, according to the court, insufficient to make a site not "readily accessible to the general public".

While the court did not explain just what sort of security measures would invoke the SCA, it did hint that a webmaster who "screens the registrants before granting access" would have a stronger claim than one who merely asks his registrants to "self screen".

Now this goes against all contrary law that I'm aware of eg: If I break into a website I can go to jail-

What about Benjamin Smith III who was arrested and charged with unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony in the state of Florida. For merely using an unsecured access point to connect to the internet
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050707-5068.html

Or Adrian Lamo who was prosecuted for accessing web site databases, not hacking, or "breaking and entering" but just accessing poorly configured websites built by people who should have known better http://news.com.com/2100-1023-846215.html

This is the same as posting a no tresspassing sign. The 11th circuit court says because it's easy to ignore and walk right past the owner cannot kick you off his property. I think NOT! This will be reversed.

If it doesn't what happens to the legal protection of webmasters who offer adult content but allow you to self certify by clicking a box saying you are over 18.

When I sell certain cryptography software outside of the USA my only protection is that I know that on installation the end user has to agree not to export to certain countries, does this mean that all EULA (you know...the I agree box when you install software) is no longer valid, does this mean that because the general public is easily able to bypass this process on pirate software that EULA's are no longer enforcable.

You cant have one law for the big business and one law for the public.

Whats even more disconcerting is that the EFF an organisation I fully support... actually filed a friends of the court statement for the DirectTV side of the case, (though I think this had to do with the legal mistake in the ruling of the lower court than the actual "vibe" of the case.
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/Snow_v_DirecTV/

I'm off to do more research but I think this one needs to kept an eye on because if it's not overturned there are going to be far wider implications.


Cheers,
Dean

Weak Spot Guerilla Marketing

I haven't seen any of these in person but I wanted to post about it because this is a perfect example of weak spot marketing (the best was Universals attack on Disney's stranglehold of the theme park holiday - read about it in Michael Eisners autobiography).

Marketing so often comes down to speeds and feeds and whilst there is a place for it, real marketing is striking a sweet spot with your target audience that is emotive and cannot be refuted by your competitor in any way without changing their base position.

Apple is in such a strong position with their iPod that there is no way they can reposition themselves to compete against this type of guerilla marketing.

I'd like to know who came up with this for SanDisk and buy them a beer.

Cheers,
Dean



SanDisk goes after the iPod iPuppets



If you've been on public transport this past week, you'll have noticed what looks like a counter-culture uprising against the iPod. Posters and stickers have appeared showing chimps, donkeys and sheep listening to music on iPods. Underneath the images there are taglines like 'are you an iChimp?' and, 'Don't follow the iPack'. One advert shows a man strung up by iPod headphones, like Pinocchio, beneath him the tagline reads, 'have you become an iPuppet?'

The adverts have a pseudo-street graffiti style. The stencilled graphics and ancient typewriter font give the impression of an underground movement against cultural homogenisation. But visit the idont.com Web site espoused by the ads and you'll uncover a different story. Far from a triumph of AdBusters or a campaign financed by Naomi Klein converts, these posters are actually SanDisk's new marketing campaign.

SanDisk is Apple's archrival. Since May 2006 SanDisk has been the world's second most popular MP3 player manufacturer, behind Apple. Its e200 player looks very much like the nano, but unlike many other iPod clones it sells well.

This anti-iPod advertising campaign represents a spark of genuine retaliation against Apple. It's a relief to see a rival bring out its guns, in what had become a landscape devoid of any major competition for the iPod.

SanDisk is the first company to market its player as an ideological rather than technological alternative to the iPod. To do so is to fight Apple on their own terms. The SanDisk e200 is not being touted as more advanced than the iPod, it doesn't claim to have longer battery life or a larger capacity. Instead the e200 is being marketed simply as what it is not. It's not an iPod.

The SanDisk assault doesn't end there. SanDisk is reported to have quietly approached the open source developers behind Rockbox, a free operating system for MP3 players. The company is said to be interested in porting the Rockbox software to its e200 player. Rockbox was first conceived as an alternative to the flawed software provided with an Archos MP3 player, but it has evolved into a multi-platform alternative interface supported by many different players. The latest version supports everything from an iPod to an iRiver MP3 player.

Not only would a Rockbox port earn SanDisk credibility with grassroot geeks, but the software offers a number of appealing features, including support for nearly every codec going.

It looks like Apple may finally have a fight on its hands. iPod critics are quick to bemoan Apple's reliance on marketing over the player's technical advantages, now SanDisk will be putting this to the test. If Apple really won the west by manipulating the iPod to the point where it became a lifestyle necessity for any self-respecting music lover, can SanDisk unseat it by turning the iPod's ubiquity against it?

In many ways, SanDisk's advertising campaign has the phony ring of Sony's heavily criticised faux-graffiti campaign for the PSP. Sony hired graffiti artists to paint what looked like street art on city walls, but the characters depicted suspiciously clasped PSPs. Critics on some forums said Sony was "shamelessly appropriating a culture". Effectively that is what SanDisk is doing here. The adverts may use the graphic vocabulary of anti-capitalist campaigns, but the object of the exercise is to sell SanDisk MP3 players. Still, competition is exactly what Apple needs right now, and this is an ingenious attack. Now get back to your iPods, chimps! -CS

cd costs breakdown

I've always been curious about this myself so when I saw it posted I wanted to pass this info on.

Cheers,
Dean


From http://daviswiki.org/MP3s :

According to Moses Avalon's 1998 Book, Confessions of a Record
Producer, the proceeds of a then-$17 CD would typically be distributed
as follows:
Retailer: $5 (29.4%),
Record label: $4.92 (28.9%),
Distributor: $2.40 (14.1%),
Giveaways: $1.80 (10.6%),
Duplication/recording: $1.10 (5.8%),
Artist royalty: 83 cents (4.9%),
Songwriter license: 60 cents (3.5%),
Producer royalty: 27 cents (1.6%),
Musicians union: 8 cents (0.4%).

These figures show two things: How little is spent on production and the artist, and how much
goes to the retailer and the record label, since the book was released,
the cost of physical CD production has plummeted due to advances in CD
mastering technology, as well as decreases in prices of the materials
used in CDs themselves. Indeed, a common CD package may cost somewhere
between six and 50 cents to produce, depending mostly on the amount
and quality of liner-material.



P.S. Just had someone email me this link, worth the read
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

JavaOne

As some of you might already know JavaOne will be happening in San Francisco in 2 weeks time http://javaone/sf

I wanted to draw your attention to an interesting company that will be exhibiting there called Savaje more details here http://exhibitor_id=5051


In summary Savaje is a brand new Java mobile phone OS that is highly programmable and customizable it has been awarded device of the show
http://www.savaje.com/show_device.html

There are a number of undisclosed hardware manufacturers who have signed on to offer hardware and undisclosed carriers will announce their involvement at the show launch.

Now what does this have to do with you; lots.

Basically at the show Savaje will be offering the first JavaOS handsets and appropriate SDK’s for developers who want to build their own Java applications to run on these handsets.

You can now write an application that will run on your mobile phone and be able to communicate over the data channel to external devices and applications.

I think with the wealth of development talent in the community we should be able to build some interesting apps that operate with Savaje.

For far too long mobile functionality has been a walled garden without the ability to implement perfectly beneficial custom applications – I think that this company might be able to offer us something interesting and exciting.

Important point to note – I don’t work for Savaje – I cant provide any more information than I already have.

I will however be working on the Savaje stand for the 3 days of the exhibition.

I cant say who yet but I’m working with an as yet un-nameable Savaje development partner exhibiting on the stand.

If you are going to the show please feel free to come up and say hi when you visit the Savaje stand. Hope to see you there.



Regards,


Dean Collins
www.Cognation.net

Smart Improv

It's stuff like this that I love living in NY for;

http://improveverywhere.com/mission55

People here are so creative and intelligent (in a fun way).

Last Spring I received an email from someone who had heard about us on This American Life. He wrote:There's a scene I've been wanting to pull off, but I don't have the manpower. Feel like helping?This is the gist: you know The Strand? (I work there). Know the bag check? As you can imagine, with all those bags and coats and things, people leave their cell phones with the guy. Occasionally they go off.What I'm thinking is, you get a group of people, thirty or so, who all come into the shop and check their bags with their phones in 'em. At some later point, every single phone checked into the bag check starts to ring at the same time. It'd be bedlam.Like to help?

Now you would think why do this....because you can, because it beats staying at home watching tv, because...well because.


The participants didn't know ahead of time what they would be doing; they were just told to bring a backpack and a cell phone. After everyone had arrived, I explained the mission to the group.














The first step was to divide everyone up by cell phone brand. In addition to creating a cacophony of 60 phones going off at once, I also wanted to have different sections play at different times, like a symphony. Instead of the "string section", we would have the "Samsung section".















It sounds like it was all good fun and no one got hurt.

I know that there are a lot of these things also called "Flash Mobs" happening all over the world these days - you should check it out......you might enjoy yourself and lets face it what are you going to miss apart from some Law & Order reruns.


Dean

Reach Out While You Can

Vale
Goran Markovski
1969 - 2006

You were a good friend. You will be missed.


I have just received a call from a friend of mine in Australia that a schoolhood friend of ours named Goran Markovski died in a car accident yesterday.

His car left the Appin Road at Picton in NSW at high speed, he died instantly on impact.

Goran and I walked home from high school each day for about 3 years, an accidental friendship of nothing more than time and geography.

I learnt a lot from him. A lot was discussed between us over those years.

There was a weird turn of events about 5 years later. Those of us who know us both well know what happened. We didn't really talk much after that, I moved away - he moved overseas, I moved back and got married and was busy with 'life'.

Years had gone past but if I saw him standing on the street tomorrow I would still count him as my friend.

Some of you know that I was back in Australia recently. I wasn't there for long. Just over a week and I was busy with friends and work appointments as I hadn't been home in 2 years.

Goran lived less than a 5 minute walk from my house.

I knew where he lived.

I knew from mutual friends that not everything was ok with Goran.

I knew he could use some help.

You'll read this and you'll do whatever it is that you were going to do. One piece of advice, pick up a phone and call someone, it's not important who.

Call someone who's not expecting it - call someone where things have been left unsaid.

Call them now. They wont be there tomorrow, and if they are there tomorrow - you might not be.


Dean

Always-On Awards Top 100 of 2006

http://alwayson-network.com/Top100

Well it's just been announced for another year.....I guess my company will make it next year :)

In case you dont know what it is, they are kind of like the academy awards for tech companies. It's recognition by their peers that they have achieved something beyond the extraordinary.

It's a long list but it's worth spending some time looking at these companies as they will be changing how you do business this year (and next).

Cheers,
Dean


2Wire
Ageia Technologies
Agile TV
Airgo Networks
Akimbo
Ampd Mobile
Arroyo Video Solutions
Atom Entertainment
Audioblog
Avvenu
Big Fish Games
BigBand Networks
BioWare (VG Holdings)
BitTorrent
Blinkx
Blue Frog Mobile
Boonty
Brightcove
Cellmania
Celltick
CinemaNow
Coding Technologies
Cornice
Danger
Digital Chocolate
DivX Networks
DoubleFusion
eCast
eMeta
Entone
Exent Technologies
FeedBurner
Festoon
Frontier Silicon
Glu Mobile
GoTV
GraceNote
Groove Mobile
GUBA
Handango
Havok
Helio
iBiquity Digital
IGA Worldwide
iLoop Mobile
Innotive
isilon Systems
Linden Lab
ManiaTV!
Massive Incorporated
mBlox
Mediabolic
Melodeo
Mental Images
Mforma
Midasplayer.com
Mobile Media
Mobilitec
MobiTV
MobuzzTV
Modulus Video
Motricity
MovieBeam
Music Gremlin
Navio
Newport Media
Orb Networks
Oregan Networks
Phonebites
PodShow
Qpass
Reactrix Systems
Revver
Ruckus Network
Ruckus Wireless
Schematic
Sennari Entertainment
Shutterfly
SightSpeed
Silicon Optix
Simple Star
Sling Media
SnoCap
Sonos
SoonR
Spot Runner
Streaming21
Technorati
The NewsMarket
thePlatform
Turbine Entertainment
Umbria Communications
Valista
VideoEgg
VoiceIndigo
Volantis Systems
Wild Tangent
Xfire
YouTube
Zinio Systems

Google Summer Of Code

This is one of those projects that can only be done by companies that have money, lots and lots of glorious money.

So once again it's the time of year where Google run their Summer Of Code mentoring program.

Basically it's this super cool concept where Google offer $4,500 to students who want to develop code over their summer break.

The great part about it is that the code is then released for free to the Open Source community as code that anyone can use/implement.

The kids get work experience and real world coding knowledge, the mentoring managers get code developed for free (lol - and $500 for incidental expenses) and everyone benefits.

In case you are an applicable student (and it's not just US students - over 29 countries participated last year), then the FAQ is here http://studentfaq.html and there are a list of suggested projects here http://summerofcode.html

One of my favourite open source projects MythTV is participating and have a number of suggested ideas that they are looking for development on http://mythtv/SoC2006

Also in case you are wondering, here are some of the results from last years SOC 2005
http://soc-results.html
It's pretty much what you expect, some fail miserably, some results are average but more often than not some work out great and provide new thinking and ideas for future development.

Get coding......


Dean