You can click on the image to make it larger.

Original post/credit: Explicitly Me

The cartoon is an accurate description of the situation.

Michael is following through with legal action. So, he isn’t just whining, he’s serious, they stole his idea and are going to cut him entirely out of the picture.

If you buy the JooJoo, then your buying stolen property. What if I told you that the car your driving was stolen? That should change things.

Don’t buy it. Don’t buy it. Don’t buy it.

JooJoo is a stolen device. Outright stolen. By the time everything goes to court, you can have your hands on a device that was entirely stolen by Fusion Garage.

Take the higher road. Don’t steal it. Don’t pay for it.

And if your a blogger, link to this page with the following code (it will help aid the cause of trying to prevent the market from buying stolen property; click on the link below and copy that code onto your blog/website):

Click here

If you need additional context here is some:

Arrington provided office space for 6 months and “CrunchPad” is the owner to all it’s associated works

There is just no way to argue that TechCrunch is not the joint owner of all intellectual property of the CrunchPad, and outright owner of the CrunchPad trademark. The CEO of Fusion Garage has spent nearly six months this year working from Silicon Valley and our offices. Most of the Fusion Garage team has spent the last three months here working with our team on the project.

The investment of money by Arrington (when Fusion Garage/JooJoo couldn’t pay the bills)

We have also spent considerable amounts of money creating the device, paying the vendor and other bills that Fusion Garage wasn’t able to.

The last minute back-stab

Until November 17 we had every reason to believe that Fusion Garage was our trusted ally in creating the CrunchPad.

The last minute back-stab (cont.)

Raising funding for the project was a goal but wouldn’t have been necessary for some time; besides, we had U.S. investors lined up and ready to put money into the venture. Fusion Garage admitted to us on November 18 that the news of them pulling out of the partnership was “out of the blue.”

Arrington (the victim)’s thoughts on why legal action

There is quite simply no way we will allow this company to move forward on this project. The extent of their fraud is only now becoming clear to me. The audacity of their scheme is staggering.

Related articles:
Joojoo promises to launch this week (Venture Beat)

The End of the CrunchPad (from the victim)

CrunchPad Litigation Imminent (from the victim)

CrunchPad Federal Lawsuit (from the victim)

JooJoo and Fusion Garage plan media event (Business Times)

Best Buy Marketing Boss said “CrunchPad will be a hit” (Business Insider; Others said this device would be a real hit)

CrunchPad reborn as JooJoo (CNET News)

Other Side:

Arrington doesn’t have the rights to the CrunchPad (Business Insider)

At the end of the day, I’m not a scientist, I’ve never taken a science class more advanced than ‘Earth Space Science’ in the 9th grade (blame Florida school system, loopholes galore, high math grades meant I got to skip science classes). But I tend to be very logical in my thinking. I listen to both sides and ask questions to get the full context of each side and then weigh the consequences and options.

Shock: I’ve never even seen Al Gore’s movie. Mainly because Al Gore makes me fall asleep… Sorry but his monotone voice kills my attention span.

But I have listened. Listened to extremists on both sides. One side says Global Warming is man made (typically liberals) and the other side says the sun caused it (conservatives). I have no idea why things have been segmented that way (from my limited experience). Science is neither liberal nor conservative.

The global climate could be changing. I’ve heard, in the past, ‘experts’ said it was ‘global cooling’ then ‘global warming’ and now opinions have changed again…

Is the world warming? I’m not entirely sure.

But what I will say is this. We can’t afford to be wrong.

• If the liberals are correct and we do nothing, the entire world goes up in flames.
• If the conservatives are correct (sun causes the warming), well, we are SOL.
• If they are both wrong and there isn’t warming happening and we do nothing, we’ll be fine.

Aside from your view on being green. It would best serve our future generations to try something. To be more efficient in our energy consumption.

Now, I hear many of my friends saying “this is not letting the free market yadda yadda”. Umm, please stop embracing money over people…just stop. What will happen worst case scenario if we just “let the free market do what it wants to do?” Your children and grandchildren will have no place live, their legacy will end and YOUR legacy will end.

To the other side of the aisle. There needs to be more compassion in communicating your beliefs because a truth told in anger is never received.

SEO Is Green

Let’s switch gears. Your budget as a business isn’t going to just invest into new technologies like Solar or Wind power unless your willing to lose the money. We are in a recession folks, very few people have extra money to burn. Even if you get government incentives. You’re looking at your bottom line. Is there an ROI on your money? This is the question you ask yourself as a business owner.

As technology advances, being powered by Wind or Solar will be the route we all go because it will end up being the cheaper route. But right now, you’ll have to wait upward of 20 years to see a profit on buying solar panels or wind turbines. It’s just not rational for small businesses on a tight budget.

I propose that you, do your part, as a small business owner, stop spending your marketing budget in the Yellow Pages, billboards, magazines, and newspapers. Why? Because your not getting the ROI you deserve for your money and in spirit of October 15, 2009 (Blog Action Day) your spending your money on things that end up wasted and pollute our world.

Going digital will save thousands of dollars and keep our limited landfills clean of all that paper.

You can invest/market into radio and TV ads, which would be greener than paper, but you’ll achieve a greater ROI out of SEO, known as Search Engine Optimization.

Are you a lawyer in the Tampa, Florida area? Are you showing up in Google for “tampa lawyer”? Well, for the same budget you’d spend on billboards around your city, you can show up for something that your target market wants. Instead of interrupting your target market, you’ll be drawing them in from showing up on the first page for what your target market searches. Showing up for keyword terms is called Search Engine Optimization.

Instead of wasting your money on ineffective marketing and polluting the environment, spend your money wisely with SEO. We can enhance your local visibility for starting at $300 (flat fee), which we’ve never seen less than a 10x ROI. Or we can customize a campaign for you starting at a few thousand dollars.

There are simple things you can do for your business, like enhancing your business listings, which we only charge $300 currently (as of the date of this post). We could charge you $5,000 for our local SEO campaign but 90% of businesses have no clue about SEO and the power it has for building revenue to your company. So, we have a simple idea. Prove to you the power of SEO and how you can maximize the power of your marketing budget. Give us a call at (727) 366-6474.

The Story

Right now, Izeafest is going on but for those who don’t have the privilege of being there, the organizers of the festival made a Ustream channel.

I originally heard about the live stream via Twitter, so I went to Bing and searched. This is what Bing showed me. (Click on the 1st image for a larger view of Bing SERPs)

I was very frustrated. So, I went to Google. Google showed me a much more desirable result. (Click on the 2nd image for a larger view of Google SERPs)

Bam. Found it. Simple as that. Google understands the intent slightly better than Bing. Although I typed “ustreamtv” instead of “ustream tv” Google showed me to the correct place.

The space is very important. Bing needs to learn the intent of the searcher better. It’s behind about 5 years of data. That’s like light-years in the tech world.

I wish Bing the best of luck but come on. You can do better than that.

The officer also criticized and ridiculed “a number of senior politicians” and advised members of the public under police investigation to “complain about every officer . . . show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it”. His blog had close to half a million readers on some of the more salacious articles, but Justice Eady said that the mere fact that the blogger wanted to remain anonymous did not mean that he had a “reasonable expectation” of doing so or that The Times was under an enforceable obligation to him to maintain that anonymity.

Now what if this kind of a decision was to take place here in the United States? There are hundreds of thousands of blogs and opinion pages on the net and there is no way to maintain a constant government presence on all of them. This is why the net was to be, and remain neutral. It is a breeding ground of thoughts and ideas, if we are going to threaten the identity of some the most outspoken on the web, then we are going to lose a valuable part of the alternative media.

The net is not main stream for a reason, a lot of ideas that are put forth are out there and bizarre, and it is the readers choice to dig deeper, or to pass it up and look for another angle. This ruling in Britain is only the start of censorship in the US; if we as a people do not start standing up for the rights that are afforded us in the Constitution. The right to speak out without the right to anonymity will put many in jeopardy, and will be a very sad day indeed.

-Earl Sanchez

Sighting for this article was provided by:
technology.timesonline.co.uk

yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/17/1625215/British-Court-Rules-Against-Blogger-Anonymity?from=rss

The Story

Adam Savage (see in photo) is the Co-host of the show MythBusters on the Discovery Channel. He went on a vacation with his family, 5 days in Montreal, last month (in June 2009). Just like anyone else, he brought his cell phone and laptop with him with his mobile internet (you plug this into your laptop and you have the internet from wherever you are). He wanted to stay connected with other friends, who wouldn’t?

When he got back to the United States, AT&T turned OFF his cell phone and he finds out that he was slapped with a bill of $11,000 USD! How? With his Canadian roaming rates at $0.015 per kilobyte, he would have had to use about 750,000 kilobytes — or about 750 megabytes — worth of data transfers.

Adam thought this was totally off saying, “I have a hard time imagining that was the case…..[I surfed the web for] “[u]maybe two or three hours[/u]” [in total; not watching videos or looking at pictures.]……I feel like, quite honestly, it could be a missed decimal point.”

This is where Twitter comes in. He tweeted, “AT&T is attempting to charge me 11k for a few hours of web surfing in Canada.” [He had over 1,000 re-tweets/posts on twitter.] Guess what happened? AT&T took care of his issue.

Conclusion

You might not understand Twitter but it’s a nice Social Media website that shares information. If your receiving injustice from something/someone, build relationships on Twitter and ask for help. People will come to your aid. Just look at the Iranian outrage on Twitter. Create reputation management issue for the company/person that is screwing you over, I’m sure the issue will be resolved if that person/company is big enough.

Amazing huh? I think the main concept (excluding the self promo at the end) encapsulates how I view advertising and where it’s going. It’s not just about videos. It’s about content. What content? Your product and/or services.

Instead of telling people about your product and/or services, you need to SHARE your product and/or services. This concept is a new concept, it’s one of participation advertising. Youtube is losing money but companies that use it, are making money. Why? Simply because they (Youtube) aren’t participating with their users, they are being intrusive with their ads and not giving us choices nor options. But the companies that post videos, they get comments, they allow their (smaller) visitors to interact with their message.

Age Is A Factor

The older you get, the more difficult it is to change to new and innovative concepts. It’s not just because your “old”, on the contrary, it’s because your wise and you want to use what WORKS and your experience has shown that x, y, and z work very well. Why would you need to try A, B, and C? You don’t want to waste your time and money into a new medium that might not work. Guess what? Reports are showing that Social Media (participating in the conversation) has the highest ROI beating out every other form of new and traditional marketing. (I read an enterprise company say they see 615% ROI on Social Media. That should be enough to get your attention. I’ve also read other large companies touting some extremely high ROI’s… DO YOUR RESEARCH, you’ll be surprised on the findings!!)

Conclusion

You might be spending ~80%-100% of your marketing budget on traditional media (Direct Mail, Door Hangers, Telemarketing, etc) and your only getting ~10% average ROI for each campaign. I encourage you to experiment with 10-20% of your budget and migrate it to PPC, SEO, Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Video Marketing, Blogging, Networking Online, etc), Article Marketing, Webinars, White Papers, Sponsored Blogging (where you donate your product to a blogger and they review your product), etc. Take a small step. You’ll be surprised on the impact you’ll see. Ask a company [like us ] for some consultation on strategies for your specific industry/business. Good luck and step out of the water!

What is it, Joshua? Business evolution is the culture in which all businesses exist. It is survival of the fittest, evolve or die. It’s the School of Hard Knocks, as some call it. Others say it’s a “dog eat dog world out there” and many other proverbs we hear (at least in America). I’m sure you can add you own punch line (please do comment and share yours!) but you understand what it is.
(Photo Credit: Negotiations)
Examples of evidence of business evolution are:
- Everything is going digital (newspapers, tv, radio, etc)
- Car Companies are going out of business
- Twitter; is a new form of email and sharing
- iPhone; a fun easy to use small computer as a phone
- “Green Energy” is the latest trend in supplying the world with power
- Kindle and Apple’s Tablet

We at Refuge Design LLC (my company) have the privilege to work with the “latest and greatest” start-ups. Like a revolutionary case study that changes everything for an industry to creating a Craigslist like site (that makes money). All of the start-ups are very ambitious with a sea of passion. But reality is that 50% fail within the first 5 years. After that, it’s up the creek with no paddle! (Photo Credit: Implementing Scrum)

I read in a Harvard Business Article that less than 20% of Top 100 companies in 1920 are still in existence today. (I can’t find the link and I’ve searched for hours; so take that statement as a grain of salt.) Even without the source, it’s a believable find and is partly the basis for this post and also because newspapers won’t stop complaining and blaming people for their lack of innovation.

Reality is companies stop innovating and re-structuring their business models. They think in a very boxed manner. They say “but we are a CD company” or rebuttle with “but the Atari is our product.” They give reasons on why they can’t change, when they should be asking questions like “How should we change to expand our reach and continue our profits?” They become driven on what their literal product is today but don’t realize that they are selling a concept and evolving it’s model overtime.

Another example is Sony Pictures CEO. They are whining and crying all the way down the hole of recession. They are pointing fingers instead of taking actions. Sony Pictures CEO whined about the leaked release of Wolverine on the web because he said it “hurt profits”. The truth is, it helped them because it was a good movie, therefore Word of Mouth drove more people to the theaters to watch it. Also, newspapers are pointing their fingers at Google. I’m sure there are hundreds of additional examples of businesses failing to evolve (share them below, in the comment section).

At the end of the day, I wouldn’t be suing x company for my shortcomings but I guess that’s what happens when you think more about money than about people. Each of these large companies have large amounts of cash that they could fund innovative tech projects that benefit their company but they don’t want to take the risk. Therefore, they get no reward. So, they are going to waste their money on legal battles and court costs and get no return on their money.

So, a note to newspapers and anyone else that is complaining about the recession and their loss of revenue: CHANGE OR FILE FOR BANKRUPTCY!

Since we deal with a lot of new companies, a softer note to you (because you rarely complain): 3 years from now, your business will be different. If you own a restaurant, you won’t be able to market via newspapers because they will be out of print, nor magazines. Go online, use social media, think of new ways to reach your customers. If your a product company, throw money at R & D (research and development) or you’ll be extinct in a few years. If your company’s goal is to make the fastest car in the world, increase it’s speed by x miles per hour over x days, don’t stop improving. Move, shake, rattle and roll.

Times are tough. Businesses are shrinking because banks don’t want to lend. So, it’s forcing your company to weather this storm. Don’t complain, act! Act on your gut, take risks because in the end, the only one you can blame for failure, is yourself. Also, please note, when times get better, spend money on R & D (research and development) and innovate new ways to reach your customers.

What does this have to do with Bing and Yahoo? Everything. To those that are outside of the search industry, you need some context to the situation, so I hope the background helped to clarify what I’m about to say, before I candidly say exactly what the title says.

To clarify the history of the web: Netscape (web browser, now Firefox) opened the window to the web. AltaVista showed us the web was much bigger than we first imagined (window? try we entered a new galaxy). Then Yahoo became the catalyst to some of the rapid innovation of the web because it created some organization to finding things in this new galaxy. Then came Google where our desires are only a few keywords away (and we are still in Google-era).

Some say it wasn’t until Google that “search actually worked” but I’d say it just got better. In the past, Altavista produced a correct result 30% of the time, Yahoo was about 50%, but Google took the cake with 70-90% depending on who you asked. (Now, these percentages are my personal opinion and I have no data/case studies to support my claims but I’m sure many who have used each search engine over the past 15 years, would say “Yea, search was bad but now it has become very effective.”)

So, let me break it down for you, why I believe Bing will become the #2 search engine and Yahoo will fade away into the past, in 5 years:

1. Yahoo has thrown away it’s goal for regaining it’s search market share

Yahoo is no longer a search engine, it wants to be a massive affiliate/directory/content provider, in other words, it’s out of the search business. Yahoo’s mission is to maintain and grow it’s content reach. Yahoo wants to continue to be a vertical or the place where people go. It’s desire is to no longer be the platform which people search for information. Poor move for Yahoo but that’s the new CEO’s new direction.

2. CPA is the wave of the future of revenue and Yahoo has made no steps to be apart of it

We (Refuge Design) believe that CPA going to be the next wave of the internet. A model (pay-per-performance) that looks out for it’s advertisers and not just itself. Old media is dying because it’s ineffective and difficult to track. New media is here to stay and it’s next step in evolution is CPA.

3. Bing is making a solid brand for itself

One of the leaders, in the SEO Community, says that Bing can’t buy search but I think it can. Simply because Apple did it. Apple developed something nice and slick and told people that it’s cool. Marketing works. You just have to have a good story to tell.

4. Bing is listening to it’s users and modifying it’s tactics to win people over

Their Twitter accounts are deeply involved in the conversation about their service. I ranted on Twitter about how their ad platform sucked, about 4-5 tweets and Betsy replied back within moments of my outrage.

Another example of Microsoft (Bing) is listening is it’s new feature to show Twitter information within the search results. As techcrunch put it, “[They] keep their foot on the gas.”

Summary: Yahoo threw in the towel. They aren’t innovating ways to add revenue via their search engine. Google is working on book deals with publishers, Bing bought Jellyfish, Yahoo is nowhere to be seen in the CPA world of search marketing. I gave the 5 year timeline because the nature of the web seems to shift every 5 years in one aspect or another. The only way Yahoo could redeem itself is if it actually brings search back into their mission statement but it might already be too late for that. Twitter is emerging and Facebook is slowly learning how to advertise, the Internet is shifting again and we’ll probably look back 5 years from now and ask why we ever paid per click or where did Yahoo go, it stayed in the content industry but left the search market. #badabing

I’m not a blind Google lover but this seems very remarkable. It’s another level of web apps that we’ve never seen before. Some say it’s the current/new form of email.

We’ve highlighted the features based on the Keynote on May 28th, 2009 (also added timestamps within the [ ] brackets). Also, please note this is in HTML 5! Nothing fancy, other than the new HTML that is coming out! Wow! (The new HTML is fancy though, this showcases how powerful the new HTML 5 is.)

Highlight of it’s features

(from Keynote at I/O 2009)
- [8:00-8:30] Dynamic spell checker (without clicking spell check, it automatically checks spelling; video about semi-technical explanation about this feature).
- [10:19-12:08] Live replies (character by character (or you can choose to hide your live reply, if your a bad speller or need more thought behind your replies); semi-technical video [0.00-3:53] on “how” they do this)
- [12:08-14:35] If additional parties join email conversation and there is a ‘playback’ feature where it allows them to view the context of the conversation. ([3:53-6:55], for some more info)
- [14:35-15:25] Then your able to ‘private reply’ (similar to twitter dm or 1 to 1 email message).
- [15:25-16:35] Images show as thumbnails first to recipient but then almost instantaneous fully load on the receivers side. (But you need Google Gears for this).
- [16:35-18:08] Can easily make photo albums based off of attachments and then share with the rest of the contacts.
- [18:20-19:50;20:40-22:12] Adding “Bloggy” to the conversation, posts the conversation (images, text, etc). But it’s deeper than that, Wave embeds the “Wave Code” into the blog post and allows people to directly comment on the Wave. The person can then use the Wave Client to add an additional client and the blog will dynamically refresh the comment and/or the person can check his/her comment within the Wave Client (like if person A posts something, person B can respond in the blog Wave. Then person A can respond in Wave Client, which will show up on the blog, then person B can respond in his/her Wave Client.)
- [22:13-23:15] Can manage comments via Wave
- [23:16-25:10] Can manage contacts via Wave and can embed in Orkut (Google’s social media site).
- [25:40-26:45] Can reply via mobile phones.
- [26:46-31:28] Editing: Happens live on blog, allows others contribute to the Wave (shows others the edits, soon they will have “x person edited the message” but not available), if another joins, they don’t see the edits (unless they use the fancy playback feature) but they see who contributes to the Wave).
- [31:28-34:44] Collaborative: Playback works for even non-text waves , can hide and show comments, you have multiples waves under a head wave (like a way to manage projects).
- [35:50-37:14] Multiple live edits: When 2 or more people edit the same Wave.
- [37:14-37:47] Supports Hebrew and International Languages

Google Web Toolkit; It allows you to code a document in Java and it will translate it to HTML 5. This is the 100% basis for Google Wave.

Google Wave Default Screen ^^^

The next (7 minutes) is talking about how someone else can make a competitive Wave and how both are fluid (like you can easily send and receive things). Basically like how Gmail can email to a Hotmail client, the framework behind it is email protocol but in this case Wave is the underlying protocol.

The last part is something I’ve heard from Eric Schmidt about 3 months ago, in an Interview with Charlie Rose. Live translations. Rosy is the name of the gadget. If you type in x language and someone receiving it knows y language, Rosy will translate it for the receiver.

In Summary, it’s a mash-up of all communication on the web. Email + blog commenting + forum commenting + Facebook/Myspace (Social Media) messages + Instant Messaging = Google Wave. The nice thing about Google Wave is that it’s Open Source, so companies and create custom solutions for users/companies.

Our Criticism: At first, I was worried that Google would use this technology to monitor users, in a “Big Brother” way. So, I asked Matt Cutts (on Twitter) and he said that this isn’t the case. (I tried to find the tweets but I guess Twitter doesn’t keep all the tweets… . ) He said it’s Open Protocol.

In addition, if a company is dependent upon another (framework, or the like, in this cause framework) it can be dangerous to the company that is dependent. Dangerous meaning, in this case, Google might stop developing Google Wave and if you can’t scale your product/service on your own, then you’ll be out of luck as your product/service grows.

Finally, I’ve included a bunch of links I thought were valuable reads. Happy reading about this innovative solution.

Healthy Criticism:
5 Reasons to be Terrified of Google Wave (by Fast Company)
Why We Are Cautious About Google’s Wave (by Gigaom)

External Highlights of Wave:
The Complete Guide (by Mashable)
New Tool (By NyTimes)
What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today? (by O’Reilly)
A New Communication Platform For A New Web (by Tech Crunch)
Exclusive: Video Interview With The Google Wave Founders (by Tech Crunch)
Sergey Brin: Google Wave Will Set A New Benchmark For Interactivity (by Tech Crunch)
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build? (by Google)
Official Announcement of Google Wave (by Google)
Google Wave for Dummies (by WAT Blog) [Similar to our overview but written in a different format.]