Thu, 13 Mar 08
DamnINeedAJob.com
Here’s the quirkiest job hunting idea I have seen since OddTodd. No word on whether the site actually worked for him.
Via the Ask a Headhunter blog.
Mon, 03 Mar 08
IP Crash Course Slides Available
A few weeks ago, Jason Haislmaier posted the slides that I referenced. (The audio is still unavailable.)
Two of my favorite slides are below (click to see them in all their Powerpointy glory).
But there are plenty of other good ones, so take a look if the topic interests you.
Technorati Tags: intellectual property, presentations
Fri, 25 Jan 08
IP Crash Course For Entrepreneurs
This past Wednesday, I went to an interesting talk sponsored by Silicon Flatirons (an organization worth knowing about). Jason Haislmaier gave the talk, and the subject was intellectual property (IP); it was titled ‘Intellectual Property “Crash Course†for Entrepreneurs’ and was packed! I got there 10 minutes late (parking on the CU campus is no fun at all) and sat in the back on a heater. Good thing the fire department didn’t come by, as I’m sure we were over capacity. (Incidentally, I heard about this via the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup mailing list but it was also on the Colorado Startups Events calendar.)
Jason said the presentation and possibly a recording of it would be available, but I was unable to find it by looking around his blog or the Silicon Flatirons site. I took some notes, but his presentation, if and when it becomes available, will be a great introduction to what entrepreneurs need to know about IP. (Note that all mistakes herein are mine, and I am most definitely not a lawyer. Consult your friendly attorney for serious advice. I marked things I thought I remembered with a ‘?’.)
There are 4 kinds of IP: patents, which are ideas or inventions, trademarks, which are about branding, copyright, which deals with creative expression, and trade secrets, which is know how. The overall emphasis on his talk was that you may not need protection from one or any of these forms of property, but that you, as an entrepreneur should be aware of all of them and make a conscious choice to pursue or not to pursue them. Which makes a lot of sense to me! (Incidentally, he repeatedly mentioned that the US was different in IP than the rest of the world, in a lot of ways, so if you plan to do business internationally, you should definitely think about that sooner rather than later.)
Trade secrets are pretty much anything–data, methods, software, etc. The protection is dependent on keeping them secret. Jason was working with a $10-20 million company that had only one patent; its valuation was almost entirely based on trade secrets. NDAs and employment contracts are the front line of trade secrets. He emphasized that you need to read NDAs and think about how they affect you and your relationship with the NDA signer. In particular, you can’t expect a signer to forget everything they’ve learned after a relationship ends, but you can expect them to return all the tangible forms of information. NDAs should have remedies (injunctions). If the other side won’t sign an NDA, that’s fine, just don’t tell them anything that you wouldn’t want to see posted on the Internet.
Copyright is protection for an original work or authorship in a tangible form from which the work can be perceived, not an idea. Apparently, there was a famous case (Feist) which basically outlined the limits of copyright–anything more creative than the White Pages qualifies for copyright protection. There are five rights, which I didn’t note because I thought the presentation would be up. Copyright can be unregistered (just about anything–these notes and this blog post are unregistered copyright) or registered. Registering costs something, but means you can sue folks. Under the DMCA, the copyright owner no longer has to show infringement–the possibility of infringement is enough (?). There are safe harbors though, one of which is the service provider harbor(?). You have to register with the Library of Congress and take things down if notified, but if you are providing any service with user generated content, you should pursue this safe harbor.
Trademarks (or service marks) are about branding. They’re easier to file for than patents. Use in commerce generates rights. He had a great slide showing the protection levels of trademarks from the fantastic (Kodak, Exxon) to the arbitrary (Apple) to the suggestive to the descriptive (World Poker Tour) to the generic (aspirin, escalator). The more the trademark describes what it represents, the less protectable it is, and trademarks can be lost (as escalator was).
Patents–the big one! Patents are the right to excludes others from making, using and selling a new, useful and non-obvious invention. There are a number of reasons to patent–defensive, offensive, ego, source of revenue (a secondary market is developing for patents. Offensive patents are getting riskier recently (courts are narrowing down patent infringement). But, investors are starting to ask why patents weren’t filed, and “we didn’t think to do so” is a poor answer. The answer to the question “Is it patentable?” for almost any value of “it” is yes, but you need to think about why–the better question is “How relevant and valuable will a patent be for the business?”. Lack of knowledge or independent development is not a defense against patent infringement.
All in all, it was a lot of ground to cover. Jason did a good job making things very applicable to the audience he was talking to. It kinda sucks that you have to think about such things, when all you want to do is develop killer software. (Brian made an offhand comment about patents and long running servlets almost 4 years ago, incidentally.) As Jason said in closing, if you don’t have an intellectual property strategy, your competitors will give you one (and, I inferred, you probably won’t like that one very much).
Thu, 20 Dec 07
Video: Here Comes Another Bubble
From the Richter Scales, on Youtube. (Sorry, I didn’t bother to take the time to get the plugin to embed youtube videos.)
Technorati Tags: funny ha ha, tech bubble, newspapers + friendship bracelets
Thu, 18 Oct 07
In Jokes of the Internet
Here’s a nice flash presentation showing many of the in jokes of the internet (in anecdotes? in content? whatever it is, if you know these ‘people’, you’ve spent some time surfing online, mostly around video content). It’s a nice trip down memory lane, or a jumping off place if you want to ‘investigate’ more.
Mon, 18 Jun 07
Film On The Rocks 2007 ICal file available
I’ve thought for a long time that venues should publish event information in a more computer friendly format. I’m not alone. At barcamp a few months ago, Tom Tromey mentioned the same idea. I believe he’s approached KGNU, but I don’t see any evidence that the concert calendar is available via ICal or RSS.
Making your event information computer parseable allows people to access your event information data and use it in different forms. The win is big for event venues because, unlike some other data providers (like magazines), the business model is robust and built in–people buying tickets to a show. Event venues should want their calendar data spread far and wide!
Since I’ve started using Thurnderbird and in particular the Lightning plugin, I’ve been loving the calendar. I used to have a paper calendar that would be occasionally updated. But since I’m in front of my email all the time, I can use Lightning for todos, reminders and sundry other items that would have ended up on a note card or back of an envelope before.
That’s why I’m making the Film On The Rocks ICal file available–purely for selfish reasons. If you’ve never been to Film On The Rocks, it’s a good time.
If you are a event venue and would like advice on making your events even more noticable, feel free to contact me. If you’ve got your events in a database of almost any kind, it shouldn’t be hard to do.
Technorati Tags: film on the rocks, red rocks, events, ical
Sun, 21 Jan 07
Article on information security
This article views the software insecurity problem from an economics perspective. Makes sense to me, except he totally ignores the other costs that come along with liability–lawyers, lost productivity, insurance costs. However, these costs seem reasonable. I have a friend who is a general contractor and builds houses. He was astonished to find that computer consultants don’t have to carry liability insurance. Perhaps it’s time for that.
Technorati Tags: security, software liability
Tue, 16 Jan 07
Best Popular Tech Writing of 2006
Here’s an interesting collection of technology articles. From the introduction:
[w]hen it came time to pull together the present collection of technology writing, I vowed to keep an eye peeled for … stories that may ostensibly be about bits or motherboards but never lose sight of the human element at their core.
Good stuff. Via Infectious Greed.
Sun, 07 Jan 07
Article on web searching techniques
Searching the web is a crucial skill nowadays. I have tech friends who don’t buy technology books anymore because the quality of content for developers is so high. I still buy the occasional book documenting technology, but I also spend a lot of time searching the web for answers to tech questions. (Still using Google, though I’ve tried Yahoo! and IceRocket). One of the reaons I write this blog is to document answers I’ve found; another is to try to provide answers for others.
In that vein, here’s a great post on advanced Internet searching techniques. These tips seem especially useful when searching for terms that might be obnubilated (there’s my 5 dollar word for the day!) by ecommerce sites.
Technorati Tags: oblique search techniques
Tue, 05 Dec 06
Social networking paper on First Monday
There’s a fantastic paper up on First Monday, an online journal I’ve written about before, “Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites”. It’s an interesting look at how social networking sites affect and are affected by their users. I’ve touch on this before in “Will you be my Friendster”.
Some interesting quotes from the paper:
Investigating Friendship in LiveJournal, Kate Raynes-Goldie and Fono (2005) found that there was tremendous inconsistency in why people Friended others. They primarily found that Friendship stood for: content, offline facilitator, online community, trust, courtesy, declaration, or nothing.
Or nothing! I wonder if this applies to business networking sites such as Linked In?
Talking about the early users:
Much to the chagrin of the developers, the early adopters of Friendster framed the social norms, not the system’s designers. Taking advantage of the technological affordances, early adopters used the site to meet their needs. In turn, because of the networked structure of Friendster, they passed on their norms to their friends. Their Profiles signaled what type of people belonged and their communication practices conveyed what types of behavior one could expect.
See Social Software and the Politics of Groups for more on how groups bend social software as they wish.
And from the conclusion:
Part of what makes the negotiation of Friendship on social network sites tricky is that it’s deeply connected to participant’s offline social life. Their choice of Friends online is not a set of arbitrary personal decisions; each choice has the potential to complicate relationships with friends, colleagues, schoolmates, and lovers. Social network sites are not digital spaces disconnected from other social venues — it is a modeling of one aspect of participants’ social worlds and that model is evaluated in other social contexts. In thinking about Friendship practices on social network sites, it is crucial to evaluate them on their own terms, recognizing the role of technology and social navigation rather than simply viewing them as an extension of offline friendship.
The paper is long but well worth a read.
Technorati Tags: social networks, friendster, myspace
