Patent Wars - Real and Fake

To start with, let me say something anti-tech to you, guys. Namely, I’d love to send you my sincere congrats on Christmas and upcoming New Year holidays and wish you all to be healthy, happy, loving and loved, wealthy, and always optimistic!

Now to the point.

I’ve been perusing the patent wars topic for quite a long time, much because of Apple vs. Samsung War both in technological and design aspects of their products, and at one point I got completely stunned with how many infringement cases we can now find within the whole IT industry.

It’s true, that the possibility to produce something utterly unique is more, than hard. It’s also pretty hard to handle the fast tempo of market development and expansion to resist the growing competition with the rivals. What else can you do to let your business survive and, moreover, prosper? Of course, you can copy the technology, or the designs, or the marketing moves, or anything else. Obviously, the morality or professional ethics have nothing to do with this situation; it’s the money, which turns out decisive.

In this respect, the amazement at the patent wars is no longer this big, as you understand, that as much as everyone in the IT business wishes to earn, it’s highly essential not to let your competitor earn more, especially at your cost.

Nonetheless, the matter of patent wars has one more essential aspect, which is even trickier, than everything lying on the surface. That is the fake patent wars. They are not, in fact, fake, rather – as real as it’s only possible, but the essence of the claims is frequently groundless. “One small company” formulates the reason for suing “the large company”, and the story begins. The thing is that there’s always the notion of luck, which can be helfpul in court, and there’s always the company’s image put on stake, when the enterprise is sued. These 2 factors are what can make such a patent war, even if the case is totally fake, really profitable for “one small company” owners.

Fortunately, the positive side with the story about fake patent wars is that these are mostly unsuccessful for those, who start the fight. Otherwise, we’d probably witness hundreds of “real” patent wars being begun each and every day. For large companies, like Twitter, or Facebook or 4shared, having millions of users, this would be really bothersome.

In a whole, at least, it’s good that patent justice works properly for now, right?

Stay cool)
Andy

SOPA – Good Intentions vs. Abusage of Power

I’ll be perhaps one of the thousands, if not millions to speak about SOPA, which, in fact, has all chances to become the most dangerous Act in the recent years.

In case you somehow missed what SOPA is about, while preparing for Christmas and New Year holidays, I’ll try to explain it in brief. Stop Online Piracy Act, or as it’s mostly called SOPA (almost SOPE, lol)) is the US Congress Act, according to which the government authorities and private corporations (what a surprise!) receive a magical right to censor websites, and consequently cut the “unwanted ones” both from search on Google and a number of payment providers, like Visa, for example.

To say that SOPA is ridiculous, from my point of view, is to say nothing. First of all, it hides the danger for the fresh start-up social media sites, or, in a whole, the whole array of startups, and will, undoubtedly, slow their development down. Moreover, it also hides the incredibly vast area for abuse and corruption, and might be easily used as a tool to eliminate fresh rivals and gain monopoly in specific niches of the IT market.

My concerns are a just a small drop in the sea of worries and irritation, already expressed by almost 50 large and middle-sized reputable companies, like Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, not to mention TechCrunch and a great deal of others, and hopefully, their efforts won’t be vain, otherwise the consequences can be truly horrible.

I won’t be dwelling on the political underwater stones of SOPA, as I’ve never been involved in any party or something, but on the surface the good intentions to eliminate content infrigement have turned into a total scam, from my perspective.

They haven’t felt enough after removing large and (as I’d like to emphasize) trustworthy file-sharing sites, e.g. RapidShare or 4shared, from isnstant Google search with no auto prompts available. They want more, more power to manipulate the whole Internet community.

I won’t name who They are, let’s everyone have our own personal understanding, the only thing to add is that the proverb “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” has got one more proof of being right. We only need to add “so-called” before “good”, probably.

Stay cool & stay strong

Andy

FB Timeline & Twistory: Everything about Log History

Do you know what Timelines Are? I bet you do, but just in case – these are the brief story outlines of a certain brand, company, business, or virtually anything else. Do you often take a look at the companies’ timelines? Well, I do. At least, as far as I’m interested in the story of a success or the paste, in which the success has become a reality.

In fact, timelines are definitely beneficial both for your general vision and knowledge and your personal experience (you might turn out to implement some of the useful moves, who knows).

At the same time, notion of the log history is pretty much the same as the timeline for the company, but it mainly concerns your usage of a certain service: what you’ve done and when you’ve done it. Here, we’re more, than acquainted with checking log history in syncing our files (I double check if I’ve synced my data with 4Sync, for instance, not to miss anything essential), and even our “Sent” box in Gmail, or any other e-mail service to make sure, that all important letters have been definitely written and, what is more, sent.

As for now, the time has, perhaps, come for the social networks to upgrade their log history options to a certain extent. At least, this is the only obvious conclusion that can be made when you’re offered to try the “Timeline” feature at FB, or check the Twistory app in guess where…. Twitter.

In this respect, whereas FB Timeline hasn’t impressed me much in terms of its functionality (the only innovation is the background pic you can upload, and the more chaotic structure of your Profile page); Twistory founders have moved forward, as the app supports Google Calendar and the user’s Twitter log history can be exported, if needed.

Moreover, creative and, at the same time, adventurous Twistory founders even offer both free and prepaid app modes, the former enabling you to save only 30-day Twitlog history.

In a whole, God knows, if social networking modified log history features are useful enough to pay so much attention to their upgrade. The only benefit I might find in them is keeping the sites’ design attractive (FB Timeline) at least and offering us ONE MORE way (Twistory) (in addition to N ways)to check and backup our social media activity.


Stay cool)
Andy

SocialFolders - One More Tool to Confuse the Users

Are you yet accustomed to syncing your files, photos, docs, or contact lists? If not, I’d say, you’re too conservative, too old-fashioned, or too light-headed. The thing is that the whole modern IT industry is all about backing up, syncing and integrating all data you have got at one place.

We’re already using a great deal of web and mobile cloud services, some of them being presented in both modes for our convenience (like 4shared with its special apps for all mobile OS’s, for example). Yet, some of app developers still believe that we need one more, as they say, the only truly convenient application to gather our files. At least, these, as I can presume, were the thoughts of SocialFolders’ creators, as their app is aimed at gathering and syncing your files from different social media on your PC.

As for the pros of SocialFolders, these lie in the app functionality, without any doubt, even though this very functionality doesn’t differ from the one of other similar services to a considerable extent.

As for the cons, here are the major ones:

• Mediocrity. As I have already mentioned, I don’t see any special functions in SocialFolders.

• Lack of mobility. The app requires being downloaded on the user’s computer, which, in fact means, that you find yourself tied to this device to access the sort of integrated data.

Of course, I wish nothing, but the years of prosperity to SocialFolders’ authors, but to be honest, I’d, perhaps, avoid using the app itself. The reason is that its developers couldn’t avoid the common mistake, that is, they’ve offered the same-old functionality aka one more tool, which copies the usable one’s features, whereas the users are hungry for more.


Stay cool)
Andy

From Minute to Global: What Do Decreased Intel Sales Mean?

I’ve actually been thinking of dedicating this post to reviewing one of the latest app releases, but have changed my mind eventually.

Much because of the fact that today Mr. Robert Norton Noyce would celebrate his 84th birthday, if he were alive, I can’t but write about one of his utterly successful projects, Intel.

Undoubtedly, the company is one of the largest ones even if to take the huge steps in the development of modern IT industry in the recent years, still the latest news about the expected rapid decrease of sales in the 4th quarter of 2011 has made me wonder about the cloudless future of the corporation.

Since the explained major reason for negative revenue expectations of Intel is the descrease of PC supply, and consequently, the lowered demand for chips, produced by the company, this news raises even more global questions, like: Is PC’s future cloudless either?

To be honest, it’s still hard to imagine our lives without computers in their classic mode, but, at the same time, the paste of life dictates its laws, namely, the necessity to keep all our data at hand, even in case we aren’t near the PC.

It’s actually the consequence of this quick-paste rhythm that we have already become much more accustomed to using file-sharing services (otherwise the grandees as RapidShare or 4shared wouldn’t get so many users), file-syncing tools, powerful smartphones, tablets, external hard-drives, and extra-thin laptops. It’s also the cause of our frequent exchanging the wired provides for Wi-Fi (I wonder if people even use the wired Internet for personal needs now).

Getting back to the question about the future of PC’s, no matter how much we’re gonna miss the oldies, the current trends reveal that they won’t be able to last long from now. There might be left the large and incredibly functional computers, used in a number of specific industries (the defense, for instance), but these will also vanish with time, as from my point of view.

Thus, the future of Intel sales (and the whole company as well) seems also doubtful, in case the company won’t turn to the production of innovative chips, which will sooner or later replace the ones that are being used in PC’s at the moment.

Just because the times change, the laws change, and we’ve gotta change as well.


Stay cool)
Andy

Podio.com: Online Project Management and More

With all the haste about PayPal service losing its trust from the side of its corporate partners, and consequently, even regular clients, I don’t actually see the point in writing the whole post about the current problem with frozen accounts.

Yet, I wouldn’t dare keep silent and not express my opinion in short: the only obvious thing PayPal should do now is to expain themselves and change the politics, regarding freezing their partners’ accounts. Otherwise, the consequences for their business might be disastrous, I’m afraid.

Now, what I really found worthy of writing about is the separate, enterprise-oriented niche of the software market, which I haven’t even mentioned before – the enterpise services, aimed at managing and planning versatile projects within the company in a fast and convenient way.

In particular, one of the reliable players in the field is Podio.com, which is, by the way, among the winners in this year’s The Europas and is currently participating in The Crunchies 2011. I haven’t yet used this service myself (due to the obvious reason, that is my NOT having a company yet))), Still, according to what I have checked in terms of its features, and a short survey, that I’ve made among my few busy businessmen-friends, the service is seemingly providing high-quality assistance to every manager.

To start with, I’d like to say a few words about the official Podio.com site interface, which is absolutely perfect, as from my point of view. The design is minimalistic with pale backdround colours and the readable fonts. As for the structure of the site, every feature is explained in a very detailed way + there’s a short video-tutorial how it should be used at the same page, so the user won’t need to check the whitepapers to learn about Podio’s benefits.

As for the functionality, Podio.com is also impressive in number of options, available for clients, from Project and Event Management solutions to CRM and Lead Management tools, not to mention convenient Social Intranet, Product Development, etc.

What I’ve personally found especially useful is that Podio’s features (offered separately or in a package) appear to combine the functionality, which we accustomed to in JIRA, for instance, as far as task and project management is considered, in addition to CRM and budget calculation option. This is, obviously, a great Podio’s advantage over other services, as an array of different tasks can be resolved within the unified interface with specified dashboards.

Furthermore, you can also access the necessary data via user-friendly Podio mobile apps for iPone and Android (haha, seems like Windows Mobile and Blackberry users are unwelcome)), which makes it simpler to browse and manage the dashboards on the go.

The only question that is still bothering me is the possibility to maintain the work of the whole large corporation with a great number of employees all around the world (like Twitter, or 4shared staff, for example), or is it yet more suitable for middle-sized enterprises, like the ones, my friends have got?

This question remains open for now, but the overall impression of Podio is, nonetheless, absolutely positive!


Stay cool)
Andy)

Online Ad-Management Platfroms: Epom vs. AdSpeed

To start with, I should, probably, justify my selection of this post’s topic, namely, online ad-management platforms. It all started when my friends asked me why the hell I haven’t yet done anything to monetize my blog, offering me to find a couple of advertisers to place their banners at my site for money.

At first, I was surely taken aback, but then, well, I actually thought it might be a good idea to try. Yet, as I don’t have any experience in this field I started surfing for convenient online ads-management platforms that could make it simpler and faster to cooperate with my future advertisers, control & manage ad placements, impressions, etc.

To be honest, I’ve checked yet a few services that provide the publishers (that’s how they call the site owners) with a set of tools for online ads-management, so for now, I can only speak about the 2 of them (mainly because the other 3 ones out of 5 checked aren’t even worth mentioning), these are Epom and AdSpeed.

I’ve checked the range of aspects which I find essential for me: design (sorry for that, but I need the site to look well-designed, it’s like one more trustmark for me), simplicity and convenience of usage, functionality, guidelines.

Let’s start with Epom: I haven’t heard much of this service, but the overall ratings seemed ok, so I have decided to take a closer look at this platform.

1. Design. The interface has the light coloursheme in orange, blue and white with decent font solutions, the comprehensive sectioning of the index page and the available tabs for different groups of clients.

2. Simplicity of Convenience of Usage. Having opened the publishers tab, I found the full range of available features and the precise info of which technology is being used to maintain the platform, which is, fortunately, formulated in a simple way (for dummies like me, as well, who aren’t professionals in the sphere and aren’t fully aware of the terminology).

The bright button “Get started now” is a good way to show where you should click to start working with Epom. Moreover, the service is free, which is, as you probably, remember, I value Very much).

Having registed as a publisher I was provided with my login and password (password can be changed anytime) and the direct link access to the publishers guide at once, so that, perhaps, I could find the answers to all my questions, before contacting the client support.

3. Functionality. The range of available services fulfilled my expectations, as although the account looks very plain at first glance, it allows the user to manage all ad-campaigns, set capping settings, manage ad zones, select preferable numbers of impressions, and even calculate the ad-campaign budget.

In addition to that you are also enabled to check the whole analytics and reports in versatile ways (including diagrams, graphics, etc.) and share the access to these analytics with your clients. Not bad, I should say.

4. Guides.

What I liked about Epom is that you’re shown what to do and where to go directly, so any info can be found in seconds. As for the offered guide for publishers, it’s quite intelligible to grasp, and you learn how to use all options in the right way.

Now about another online ad-management platform AdSpeed.com.

I’ve also heard a bit about the service before, but haven’t checked it closely yet.

To be more, or less objective, let’s stick to the afore-mentioned criteria.

1. Design. We-ee-elll…I generally liked the yellow-black colour scheme (somehow reminding of the one MegaUpload has got, but whatever)) but the fonts and the structure of the site aren’t impressive at all. Moreover, the sectioning doesn’t actually give you an idea of what to do when you enter the site.

2. Simplicity and Convenience of Usage.

I had an option to sign up at once, but eventually decided to read more about the service. This is how the complications started. On the one hand, the explanation why I need AdSpeed was clear. On the other hand, the page also contained more than 10 links (awfully plain and blue-cloured (why blue, not black at least) to a tutorial, related posts, a link to a PDF brochure without any icon or explanation what it is about, an array of materials for advertisers and networks, and even some testimonials, saying that the service is amazing.

I had to open all the main menu tabs and peruse them all to find out the info I really needed, e.g. how to work with the service and which features were available for me.

3. Functionality. This is perhaps one of the positive aspects of AdSpeed, as the offered options are really versatile with vast targeting opportunities, capping options, ads-management and analytics features that are aimed at making the usage simpler.

At least that’s how the guide and glossary tell you.
Having started registering I entered my credentials and was almost ready to sign up for AdSpeed, when I reached up to the Subscribtion bar. It turns out that you’re only given a 10-day free trial with the necessity to pay after that for the number of impressions you wish to get.

Frankly speaking, I was almost furious, because the service, in which you’re like the blindman searching for the paths, as there’s too much chaotically organized info all around, you also have to pay to be taken into its community.

4. Guides. Well, there’re a lot of guides at the site, some of them can’t be accessed directly, and some of them are placed in unrelated sections. The chaotic structure of AdSpeed.com makes it really hard to find what you need to do.

In a whole, what I should admit is that AdSpeed couldn’t resist any competition against Epom. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Those people, who know me well, would prove my being always as much objective as possible, sometimes a bit too picky, but still objective.

Anyway, this is just my perspective, hope, you find it useful. For now, I’m staying with Epom, but I’ll surely continue my research in this area.


Stay cool)
Andy