Here’s a simple fact: no matter what the industry, there are few things quite as nice as a lifelong customer. Here’s another: while attending college, students often establish patterns that they’ll follow for the rest of their days. Now, Microsoft and Google seem to be acknowledging both issues as they promote school-oriented software suites.
Fair Use Battle Gets Weird, Kind of Stupid
These are rough times for the concept of fair use, especially when lawyers citing fair use as a defense don’t seem to quite understand it much more than those sending out cease and desist letters. The latest fair use kafuffle stems from the already ridiculous spat between Miss California, Carrie Prejean, and Perez Hilton.
Please don’t make me sum up what that was about; read about it at Wikipedia and come back.
The AP’s Battle For Relevance In A Decentralized Universe
What’s the biggest threat to a centralized organization? Decentralization, of course. Like antimatter to the AP’s matter, the populous Web built a new publishing reality Old Media would rather not face: they’ve lost control of the news.
Online-Only Newspapers Face Uphill Battle
Newspapers that make the move to online-only risk losing 75 percent of their revenue and a decline in Web traffic, according to researchers from City University in London.
Their study focused on the Finnish financial newspaper Taloussanomat, which stopped its print version and went online- only in December 2007. The move was made after the paper had suffered significant losses.
By going online-only the papers costs were reduced by 50 percent but its online traffic decreased by 22 percent and revenues fell by more than 75 percent.
Bloggers Battle Over Sponsored Conversations
A Forrester report released yesterday kicked off once again the debate over paying bloggers to write about products and companies. Blogging purists, new media marketing experts, and Google’s Matt Cutts have all weighed in, indicating this is hardly a debate that will soon be put to rest.
Politicians Battle For Narrative Control On The Web
There was a time, if your only source of information was the Internet, when it seemed Ron Paul was a shoe-in for the Republican nominee. Internet reality is not always true reality—then again, what’s reality matter in politics? What really matters is narrative, and in that sense, the Internet is a mirror of the brick-and-mortar world, and there are lessons in political campaigns for businesses about controlling your online story.
Microsoft, Google Battle On Capitol Hill
One might suppose it’s due diligence to listen to the arguments of companies enormously invested in the outcome of regulatory decisions, so the onus of coming to a reasonable conclusion rests solely on Congress whether to believe Microsoft or Google in two hearings today in the Senate and the House.
Legal Battle Over Narnia Domain Name
A Scottish father has become entangled in a legal battle with the estate of author C.S. Lewis after purchasing a Narnia Internet domain name for his 10-year-old son as a birthday present.Richard and Gillian Saville-Smith, of Edinburgh, paid $140 to buy the domain name Narnia.mobi from the Internet registration company Fasthosts in 2006 so their son could use it as an email address.
The Battle For “SEO Trademark” Wages On
Just when you thought it was over: May 19 was the deadline for the man who would be SEO trademark holder to respond to notices of opposition to his trademark application (which were filed by SEOmoz, Arteworks, Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, SEO.com, Jonathan Hochman, and Rhea Drysdale). Sarah Bird, Esq., of SEOmoz filed for default judgment in the case on Tuesday.
Amazon And New York’s Battle On Sales Tax
For years I have been paying sales tax (VAT) on purchases I make online through services such as Clickbank. It is inconvenient but it is much easier for Clickbank to work this way then to have to monitor the location of a seller and buyer. The general rule in the US, as far as I can determine is that if you have a business presence in a state, you have to pay tax there. This applies if you own your own servers in the sate, or if you have employees.