The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- From The TC50 DemoPit, Trademarkia (TM) Simplifies Trademark Search
- WITN?: In sort-of defence of Britain’s ridiculous libel laws
- Hello, And Welcome To Moviefone. Now Leave And Try ShowtimeFu.
- Your Guide to Music on the Web, Part II
- Wine.com Uncorks Its API
- The coming tablet wars
| From The TC50 DemoPit, Trademarkia (TM) Simplifies Trademark Search Posted: 27 Sep 2009 07:10 AM PDT On the Web there are easy ways to search patents, but trademarks are still lost in government websites that are not particularly search-friendly. One of the DemoPit companies that launched at TechCrunch50 is addressing this problem with a website that makes trademark search a breeze. Trademarkia let’s you search all U.S. trademarks filed since 1870, including dead marks. The company has scans of all the marks and returns results in a very appealing visual grid. You can search by company, theme, product category, or even filing attorney. Companies can also file a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office through the site. Trademarkia is a great resource for anyone researching trademarks, companies getting ready to file a trademark, or even product and brand logo designers. It operates much like a domain registrar like GoDaddy. Instead of searching for available domain URLs, you search for trademarks, and if they are available, you can register them for a fee. Let’s say you want to use a Pegasus for your company’s new logo. On Trademarkia, you can search all trademarks with a pegasus to make sure you are not duplicating someone else’s mark. You can search for dead marks, and if you like one, you can register it for $159. You can also can look at all 408 trademarks registered to Apple, or sort them to see just the 85 marks Apple has allowed to expire. Some of Apple’s toss-aways include “Mactel,” “iMusic,” “Vingle,” “Xray,” and something called the “Graphulator.” At one point Apple also trademarked “Cougar” and “Lynx” for its Mac OS series, but it let them die. Those are currently available. Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco           |
| WITN?: In sort-of defence of Britain’s ridiculous libel laws Posted: 26 Sep 2009 07:26 PM PDT
I mention all of this for two reasons. First, I hope it will make you understand why my column this week reads like it’s been written by a man distracted by the fear of at any minute being beaned by a baseball, and second so you’ll appreciate all of the efforts I’m making to Love America. You see, over the past weeks I’ve realised how sensitive you former colonials are to foreigners opining on any aspect of your country, particularly if we compare it to our own. Almost two weeks after Techcrunch 50, I’m still getting hate mail over my post suggesting that your flag be moved two feet from the stage to the main floor. Much of the abuse glosses over the issue at hand and focusses instead on the indisputable fact that I am a freedom-hating socialist who would gladly see the American flag used to mop up the blood of terrorist martyrs. (Weirdly this is an accusation that I’ve heard far more frequently since joining TechCrunch than when I worked at the Manchester Socialist Guardian of Kabul.) So again, then, let me clarify that I love America. If there were a baseball game between the Terrorists and America, I would be as crestfallen as the next man were the Terrorists to win. Ok? Are we cool, America? Good. Now hopefully I can safely and rationally talk about the differences between the British and American systems of libel law. In particular the fact that, whatever Michael Arrington might say, Yours might not be better than Ours. More than enough has been written about Techcrunch’s – and Arrington’s – run in with UK defamation law, but I’ll sum it up in a nut for newbies. Back in July a former TechCrunch UK editor called Sam Sethi sued TechCrunch, and Arrington, over a Crunchnotes post titled ‘The Fact And Fiction Of Sam Sethi‘. In the post, Arrington recounted the sorry tale of Sam’s departure from TechCrunch and subsequent founding of a rival blog network called BlogNation. It’s a story of lies, money, spectacular mismanagement and ultimately abysmal failure – a story eerily close to my own, but without the scorned women and prison cells. But whereas my story ended with pseudo redemption, and an – ahem – bestselling book, Sam’s ended with denial, rage and him bringing a ridiculous libel suit – brought in the English courts – against TechCrunch. Advised by lawyers that it would cost upwards of half a million pounds ($750,000) to defend the case in the UK, Arrington and Techcrunch declined to participate, leading – ridiculously – to a default judgment in Sethi’s favour. You can understand then, why, Michael might have issue with the libel system in the country of my birth. And it gets worse: shortly after the judgment, documents came to light which showed that Sethi should never have been running BlogNation in the first place. Following the collapse of a previous business, he had been barred from being a director in England and Wales but due to an administrative fuck-up, this ban hadn’t been entered onto the statutory database. The situation has now been remedied and yet, despite the ban and the fact that Sam has apologised to Arrington and admitted fault, the judgment stands, effectively preventing Michael from visiting the UK. And yet, and yet… Reading Arrington’s post on the subject – entitled ‘UK Libel Law Is Out Of Control. We Know From Experience‘ – I can’t quite bring myself to entirely agree with him. Not about the Sethi stuff – Sam lied repeatedly to me and everyone else about being struck off as a director, and so deserves every bad word Michael says about him – but rather with the wider argument that libel law in the UK is in complete disarray because it allowed a UK litigant to sue an American citizen and website over something published online from the US. Libel tourism gone mad! Wither freedom of speech?! Hmmmm. Like most legal issues, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Sethi is a British citizen who was – in his deluded mind at least – libeled by a website published in the US, but available to read – obviously – in the UK. For that reason there is, prima facie, absolutely nothing wrong with his bringing his ridiculous and pointless action in the UK courts. After all, thanks to the Internet, he was defamed (in his mind), on British soil where he has a (I’m trying here to channel my laughter through my keyboard as I write these words) reputation to defend. Libel tourism – where a foreign litigant can sue a foreign publication on British soil because one copy of the publications was sold there – is evil, but that’s not what’s happened here. This is an unpopular point of view, even amongst my own countrymen, but I actually quite like the harshness of British libel law. For a start it puts the burden of proof on the person making the libelous statement. If you accuse me of being a bad guy then it’s up to you to prove it’s true. If you can’t, you lose. And the penalties for losing are harsh: really harsh, which is how it probably should be. Unlike me, most Brits care about their reputation and standing in the community, and it’s hard to put a value on its loss. Really, when it comes to freedom of speech, it’s America that has the more ridiculous system. Thanks to the First Amendment and a presumption in the US that public figures are fair game, I am free to make up almost any bullshit I like about an American in the public eye without him being able to sue. “Michael Arrington fucks swans!” See, there you go. It’s actually kinda fun! And thanks to the Internet, Arrington’s fictitious swan-molesting ways will soon be known to the world. Hell, if TechCrunch is a credible source, they might even make it to Wikipedia. God Bless America. Really the Sethi vs Techcrunch case has nothing to do with freedom of speech and everything to do with how ridiculously cheap and easy it is for a delusional litigant to bring a nuisance lawsuit in the UK against a journalist who is telling the truth. A journalist who then has to spend a small fortune defending the action. If the defendant is from outside the UK then their only real choice in these circumstances is to decline to participate, leading to a criminally unfair judgment against them. If they’re from the UK, their best hope is to settle and hope to keep their house. Either way, the delusional litigant wins, and the truth loses. Again, though, we’d struggle to look to America and find a better system. It was you people, after all, who gave the world the idea of no-win-no-fee lawyers: bloodsucking ambulance chasers who will gladly help me sue McDonalds for making their coffee with boiling water, rendering it unsafe for me to pour over my baby’s head. In most cases outside of libel, defending a nuisance lawsuit in the US is just as expensive, and just as pointless as it is in the UK. If our system is a mess then so is yours. Also, it’s all too easy for Americans to criticise our system without suggesting a better one. It’s like those people who stand on street corners yelling “stop the war” or “free healthcare for all” or “swans don’t put out” without demonstrating how they would solve the problem if they were in charge. Those who suggest that Britain would be better off with a US First Amendment style system are just plain wrong. Particularly in the Internet age, lies can get halfway around the world before the truth has found a decent WiFi connection. For that reason we need a system whereby liars are scared shitless from posting untruths in the UK, lest they find themselves in front of a bewigged judge capable of handing down an almost unlimited fine. It’s the only language these people understand. So what is the solution to improving the UK libel system? As always, I have the answers… First, we needs an immediate ban on no win no fee lawyers in all but means-tested personal injury claims. If a litigant really thinks they have a claim against a publication – foreign or domestic – then they need to put their money where their reputations is. If they can’t do that then you might ask what value they put on their reputation in the first place. Second, it’s ridiculous that litigants can sue individual journalists when their work appears in professionally edited publications. In Arrington’s post, he referred to the case of Simon Singh, a British journalist who was sued personally by the British Chiropractic Association for an article he wrote in the Guardian. The BCA chose to sue Singh personally rather than the Guardian, thus exposing the reporter to personal ruin no matter whether he successfully defends the action or not. Only a mentally retarded chimp would think that’s fair. Third, libel tourism could be wiped out at a stroke if there was a requirement for litigants bringing action under English law to actually be British citizens. This wouldn’t have helped in Sethi vs Arrington, but it would certainly deal with the vast majority of outrageous abuses of jurisdiction. But by far the most important change that needs to be made to English libel law is to scrap the so-called ‘multiple publication rule‘. This is the decision, made by the English courts in 1849, that every time a publisher makes a new copy of a libelous article, they are considered to have republished – and repeated – the libel. Which is important because English law imposes a statutory limitation of one year after publication for someone to bring a defamation action. With the advent of the Internet, the multiple publication rule has caused havoc. In the eyes of the law, every time a user accesses a copy of an article published online, the act of the publisher’s web server delivering it is considered to be a republication. In other words, as long as something remains in an online archive, it is constantly being republished and there is no time restriction on someone suing over it. This is how Sethi was able to dither for well over a year after Arrington’s ‘Fact and Fiction’ post was first published before taking action, and it’s why the UK remains such an attractive place to bring a libel suit. Without the multiple publication rule, his suit against TechCrunch would have come too late, and been thrown out before it even started. The good news is that the English justice system is already – forgive the pun – on the case. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Justice began a consultation over scrapping the multiple publication rule. In its place they are considering a single publication rule – where the clock begins ticking when the libel is first published, and stops either one or three years (they haven’t decide yet) later. After that, publishers who keep articles archived electronically would have what’s called a ‘qualified privilege’ defence where they couldn’t be sued for leaving what they believe to be accurate statements online after that time. If the consultation results in a change of law then it won’t solve the problem entirely – the UK still needs to get rid of no-win, no-fee lawyers and to clamp down on no-British litigants and the suing of individual journalists – but it would be a major leap forward. One which would have stopped Sethi in its tracks and move the British libel system closer to being The Best In The World. And this, America, is where you come in. If like Arrington, you think the English system is screwed, I urge you to get involved in repairing it. The Ministry of Justice has published a list of questions that it wants your answers on here. Go answer them; pretend you’re British if you have to. I’ve already sent in my answers and I’m going to do my best to convince Arrington to do the same when he gets back from vacation in Hawaii. Or at least he claims he’s on vacation. Do they have swans in Hawaii? Just saying. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Hello, And Welcome To Moviefone. Now Leave And Try ShowtimeFu. Posted: 26 Sep 2009 04:36 PM PDT
That’s what a new site, ShowtimeFu offers. And it’s so much better than Moviefone You simply visit the site, put in your city (or it may remember it if you’ve been there before), and you get a full listing of every movie playing around you, at what time, and at what theater. On the left side navigation, you can deselect certain movies, as well as rule out theaters. You can also deselect certain ratings, and filter the time. In the main column, you simply have a list of the movies and the showtimes. If you click on one you’re interested in, it loads a new page in this main column which contains a description of the movie (along with links to its IMDb and Rotten Tomato pages), a map of where the theater showing it is, and the play times (including a beginning and end time). Unfortunately, one thing you cannot do is purchase tickets from the site. But it seems like that would be an easy enough feature to add. And to be honest, I never buy tickets over the web anyway, I just want the showtimes then head to the theater to get the actual tickets. So this option is perfect for me. I long ago gave up on Moviefone. Fandango is slightly better in terms of easy access to movie times, but it’s even more cluttered. Recently, to find movie times, I’ve been using Google Search with queries like “movies ZIP CODE”. But that leave a bit to be desired if I do actually want to know a little more about the movie. ShowtimeFu is a simple site, that won’t lead to any Seinfeld spoofs (that would be hard considering the show has been off the air for a decade), but it works — at least when I’m at my computer, otherwise there are plenty of good iPhone apps for finding movie times. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Your Guide to Music on the Web, Part II Posted: 26 Sep 2009 10:48 AM PDT Last month, I published Part 1 of my Guide To Music On The Web, which covered music recommendation sites, Web radio, independent music sites, playlists, and music visualizations. Today, in Part II we’ll take a tour of music search engines, Web players, ways to share music on Twitter, and music mixing apps. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading all of your comments and insights on my previous post and of course, took them under consideration while creating this second part. Please bear in mind that I can’t list ALL the music applications out there. I really tried to find the best and the most used applications that will probably still be here to serve you tomorrow too. So readers’ main concern was the companies’ business model. You are right. A few of the services might make an exit, and most of them are probably not going to have one, and some are just for fun. I think music services can make money by being innovative enough to get it. Anyway, I don’t want to get into the business model stuff too much, but I will tell you this: The Internet is too competitive, you may be succeed by just being simple, but you may also need to be sophisticated. The era where creating an application first, then two years later thinking how to make money from it, is bygone now, and companies will need to think how to make money sooner than later if they aim for it – This is where innovation comes in and usually wins. Music Search Engine:
Worth mentioning: Wearehunted, which is a playable chart of the most popular songs on the Web.. Web Players:
Post Music on Twitter:
Worth mentioning: Listento.fm, and Twones. Mix & Share:
Conclusion: For now, I suggest you try the services above and enjoy them as long as they last. For some reason, music services don’t stay around very long but I guess that’s the way they roll. Since I can’t list them all, please feel free to add services that I’ve missed in your comments and make them handy for everyone.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Posted: 26 Sep 2009 10:37 AM PDT Wine.com, a popular wine retailer with a fantastic domain name, is releasing its API for third-party developers to create and enhance wine applications connecting to the site’s e-commerce and wine database platform. Wine.com's database has detailed information on over 40,000 wines, including labels, wine maker notes, professional ratings, customer reviews, geographical information, flavor profiles and more. The API will offer access to Wine.com’s "Wine Basics" content, which includes information about the world’s major wine growing regions and grape varietals. The online wine industry is steadily growing with wine-related startups raising significant amounts of funding. Online wine store and community Vinfolio got a $4.5 million infusion recently and social wine review site and retailer Snooth raised $1 million earlier this year. And the newly re-launched Corkd has added a social stream and a new business model. While many of these more established sites (and competitors) may not present opportunities for the integration of Wine.com’s API, the site may find interest from smaller blogs, or sites that want to create wine applications that connect with the wine retailer’s database and e-commerce platform. Photo credit: Flickr/Warrenski Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Posted: 26 Sep 2009 09:05 AM PDT
Come back with me to 2001. A young man got up on stage one afternoon in November to announce something new and amazing: an operating system dedicated to tablet computing. That young man was Microsoft’s Bill Gates and that operating system was Windows XP Tablet PC edition. Chances are that is the first and last time you saw a working tablet computer. Laptops, then, were monsters. They were heavy – 10 pounds or more – had small, bad batteries, and WiFi was just a dream for most people. It seemed, in those dark years, that laptop manufacturers could shave off pounds and complexity by removing the keyboard and offer a pen-based OS. After all, this was a post-PalmOS era when handwriting recognition was an input option we all knew and understood. The thinking was this: if you can streamline appellations – data entry applications being the target here – you could sell smaller, more expensive computers to medical and business clients. It didn’t work and Windows Tablet PC has been little more than a clever solution to a nonexistent problem. So what’s with all the tablet talk lately? We have entered an era of the thin and light computer and, rather than worrying about power we’ve become obsessed with the concept of thinness. This is why Apple, in their wisdom, created the MacBook Air and the iPod Touch. This is the same reason we are all salivating over the thought of tablets thinner than an issue of BusinessWeek and this is why laptop manufacturers – and Michael Arrington – are rushing to make them.
Note this new focus. Rather than trying to create a business machine, manufacturers understand people want bigger screens on which to consume web and media content. So what can we expect in the next year? Well, first we have the CrunchPad. When all the bugs are worked out, it will be an amazing device – I’ve seen it. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve been intimately involved in the design process, because I wasn’t – that gives me a bit of perspective. Expect the CrunchPad to be a excellent device for blogging – that’s what Mike made it for – and for web apps. Don’t expect much in the way of media. Then there’s the iPad. This will eclipse the industry and for the rest of the year that’s all you’ll hear about. Trust me. Apple could require you to give this device three drops of blood every morning in order to satisfy the demonic hell-beast soul trapped inside it and we would, gladly. The release will be on par with the iPhone release and they’ll sell a million of them.
As for the rest of the devices, expect slow uptake by price conscious consumers and folks who don’t think it’s “cool” to own “name brand” technology and are real “hackers” (read: teenagers and European students). Archos, As for connectivity most of these will have a 3G option – although I doubt the iPad will have 3G built-in. WiFi is an obvious second-best. As for size, tablets, at least with capacitive screens, are weighed down by a huge hunk of metal that shields the electronics from the screen. This hunk of metal – and the glass – prevents us from getting a bigger iPod Touch and is what is keeping the iPad from coming out sooner. Once the world’s (i.e. China’s) scientists solve this problem we’ll get what we want. Until then it’s resistive all the way. So prepare yourselves for the coming tablet wars and sock away a little cash because things are going to get interesting in 2010. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
I’m writing this from the ‘club section’ (whatever that is) of San Francisco’s AT&T Park where, if I understand the scoring correctly (I don’t), the Cubs are leading the Giants 4-1. I’ve just eaten my second hot dog and I’m debating whether to buy a baseball cap emblazoned with the words ‘Go Giants’. I also just turned to my British friend 
At one time, 
From your Desktop to the Web, 
The 
Then you have Microsoft’s 
for example, is doing a lot of good work in the tablet space but they’re an also-ran. They are going the Tablet OS route, which is no good. Creative has some devices planned and it’s also clear that ChromeOS could power a nice device – provided | You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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