SOPA PIPA

It’s about the Internet. Our Internet. Your Internet.
The foundations of the Internet are at risk!

SOPA and PIPA legislation is about to construct a global firewall limiting free speech and putting websites at risk of shutdown for copyright infringement even if a person were to leave a comment on a page of the site that, in some way, breaches a copyright. In fact, even a search engine could face infringement charges and penalties for allowing links to sites that infringe copyrights.

If you don’t think this is right…
Call a US Senator today or visit http://stopthewall.us

The Internet is a thriving ecosystem that powers our economy and our society.

PIPA and SOPA threaten the web.

PIPA
PIPA is an acronym for the Protect IP Act, and was first introduced to the U.S. Senate on May 12, 2011 by Senators Patrick Leahy, Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley. It is also good to take note that PIPA is a re-written legislation, the original failed to pass and was called the ‘Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) of 2010′.

PIPA, if passed, would:

• Give U.S. corporations and the government the right to seek affirmative legal action with any website that they see as enabling copyright infringement whether of U.S. origin or not. Here is a breakdown of all that they will have the power to do.
• Force U.S. internet providers to block access to websites deemed as enablers of copyright infringement
• Seek legal action by suing search engines, blog sites, directories, or any site in general to have the black listed sites removed from their website
• Force advertising services on infringing websites, and those supporting of them, to remove them from their advertising accounts
• Give companies the power to sue any new websites that get started after this bill is passed, if they believe that they are not doing a good job of preventing infringement

SOPA

SOPA is an acronym for the Stop Online Piracy Act, and is a bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Lamar Smith on October 26, 2011.  SOPA is also built on previous legislation. This legislation was the PRO-IP Act of 2008.

SOPA, if passed, will work in conjunction with PIPA and is nothing more than a black list. Here is a breakdown of the power given to the US government and private corporations.

The U.S. Attorney General can now seek a court order that would force search engines, advertisers, DNS providers, server hosting firms, and payment processors from having any contact with allegedly infringing websites. You could lose your online business overnight!  You could lose your online business before even getting a date to defend your case in a court of law.

SOPA will allow private corporations to create their own personal hit lists composed of websites that they feel are infringing upon their copyrights. These companies would even be able to contact a website’s payment processor(s) directly and serve notice to cut off all payments involving the targeted website. The payment processors and website in question will have five days to act before the site is simply taken offline by the government authorities. Payment processors will have the power to cut off any website they work with as long as they can provide a reason why they believe a site is violating copyrights. Truth be told, payment processors can do this today too but SOPA forces them to be extra diligent and receptive after receiving correspondence from a corporate attorney who desires to attack using this broad brushstroke method of putting you and your site out of business.

If this isn’t scary enough, just imagine the internet becoming a hunting ground for any potential copyright violation. Of course the US government loves blogs and bloggers, so it is only natural to think that they will receive a lot of special attention. These acts make the blog owners responsible for everything that is displayed on their site, including comments left by visitors.

So say that an article is published on a blog featuring a logo, or trademark, of a given corporation and that given company doesn’t like that it is being put on display on the blogger’s site. Forget for a moment that the author of this article could have used the marks and logo as a teaching aid, critique, model of good design, or anything else, the author could be charged with copyright infringement and risk having the entire blog shut down within five days as they get added to the SOPA black list.   Think about it for a moment….The entire blog might not even belong to that author.  Is that a power that you want to put into the hands of corporations whose only interest is in discovering and shutting down cases of alleged copyright infringement online?  Please contact your Senator or or visit http://stopthewall.us today.

This is fabulous technology that one of our partners has come up with during the past years and now, it has reached a level of maturity where the start to finish cycle of initiation to delivery can be as tight as 3 weeks. The more desirable and considerably less stressful, planned implementation is a 5 to 6 week cycle. In order to deliver such a project, we need quite a bit of information, often local government approval and a firm commitment from each of our Clients and their sponsors but the end result is an audience gasping for breathe as they witness something 3D that defies explanation and gives fresh meaning to the phrase “you had to be there”. Today, not even Disney is doing this sort of thing but, we expect them to catch up very quickly.

Have a look for yourself,
It’s pretty amazing stuff.
Here is a collection of projects that our team Nuformer delivered.

My mentor wanted to put a ding in the universe. Whether or not you think he succeeded, there is no doubt that he put one in the universal consciousness of consumers.

Below are some of my most memorable Steve Job’s quotes.

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
~ Steve Jobs

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick, don’t lose faith.”
~ Steve Jobs

“stay hungry, stay foolish”
~ Steve Jobs

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose”
~ Steve Jobs

“Death Is The Destination We All Share”
~ Steve Jobs

Want an Android tablet this year? Head on into Switzerland or over to the Netherlands while supplies last. Apple has just scored a big victory in Europe thanks to a German court which granted a preliminary injunction against the distribution of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the EU. Oddly enough, The Netherlands still get to sell it and Switzerland too since it is not part of the EU.

Apple is suing Samsung on a worldwide scale over patent infringement related to the 10.1-inch tablet’s design. It is apparently too similar looking to the iPad.

Apparently Apple asked the Landesgericht in Düsseldorf, Germany, to order an injunction under which Samsung will be levied with fines of up to EUR 250,000 for each violation or imprisonment of Samsung’s management for up to 2 years in the event of continued infringement. Those are standard sanctions under German tort law for contempt of a preliminary injunction.

With Europe out of the game, at least for the foreseeable future, Samsung will have real difficulties making any kind of profit off this device. Add to that the Android patent infringements that were announced last week and it’s not likely that many developers will continue coding for the platform if they expect to earn money with their wares.

We are ready to build a few more Apps this week…
Have you got a publication that you’d like to see on the iPad? Do share your thoughts.

The big question has been out there for a while but now the German firm Axel Springer AG presented some interesting proof that a shift is taking place in Europe.

Check this out to read more about how their Online revenues now exceed Print revenues for this European publishing house.

Forrester has just released an independent report on competitive strategy in the age of the Customer. It’s a great way to learn about social media’s impact on firms with traditional, product push, top down hierarchy. Many of our Clients have very strong CEOs and a history of purchasing acumen that used to place their business at the top of the food chain. Today, consumers are tilting the scales in their favor and it looks like firms following the top down model are headed for the same fate as the dinosaurs but, I don’t want to steal any of Forrester’s thunder…

“Empowered Customers are disrupting every industry; competitive barriers like manufacturing strength, distribution power, and information mastery can’t save you. In this age of the Customer, the only sustainable competitive advantage is knowledge of and engagement with Customers. The successful companies will be Customer-obsessed. Those that master the Customer data flow and improve frontline Customer staff will have the edge.”

Click here to get the report:

Competitive Strategy in The Age Of The Customer

99.7% of Android smart phones are leaking login data for Google services!
German security researchers Bastian Könings, Jens Nickels, and Florian Schaub from the University of Ulm claim that this also allows access to information stored in the cloud!

Now, I don’t normally want to write about security issues on mobile devices, but this just captured my attention and I could not shake it loose.

The problem seems to be in the way that Android Apps request authentication tokens. These tokens eliminate the need for users to login to a particular service, but these tokens are sometimes sent in plaintext form over wireless networks and that means that anyone eavesdropping on the WiFi network could capture and use these tokens.

Even worse is that tokens are not specific to the handset, which means that a token destined for one handset could be used on another!

I don’t want to sound pessimistic but this wreaks of rushed technology architecture and extremely poor planning when it comes to probability and seriousness of risks inherent with the current Android OS processes that developers follow when delivering Apps to the growing Android user base.

The implications of this vulnerability go from simple disclosure to unwillingly sharing your calendar data. With regard to contact info (your address book on the mobile device), it means that the private information from your contacts is also affected – including phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses etc. If you were the malicious type or simply a corporate spy, you’d probably not consider stealing the info but rather changing it so that emails that the user thinks are being sent to a certain recipient would be sent to another email address instead (without the target knowing about it until it was too late)… given what we’ve seen in recent Wall street news… it would not take a rocket scientist to change a stored email address for the target’s business partners in the hopes of receiving confidential information that could be used for personal gain.

Many of these tokens are valid for 14 days, which means that someone stealing your Android App login token could have two weeks of access to your data!

Grabbing these tokens is child’s play.

Imagine, going to a place in a city where you gain access to a WIFI network called Starbucks or Freenet or MOBILENET etc and you find out that access is FREE and FAST. Would you use it? If you answered yes, you need to understand that with its default settings, Android phones automatically connect to a previously known network and many apps will attempt syncing as soon as the internet connection has been established. While syncing would likely fail (unless the operator of this fake hotspot forwards the requests), they would capture authTokens for each service on your device that attempted to sync. Then, this thief can make use of your tokens and gain access to your data (typically from a different location).

So, what can you do if you rely on your Android handset and Google services to get your work done?

1- Upgrade your handset to a version of Android that offers full HTTPS support for syncing with Google services such as calendar and contacts. If your telco doesn’t offer it… ask them specifically for help to protect your privacy. Some telcos force their users to remain with a particularly vulnerable version of Android , you may have to wait weeks or months for this update from your carrier, or worse still you may never see it.
2- Be suspicious of any free WiFi connection… it’s always a game of quid pro quo
3- Do not use Apps containing private data on WiFi connections that you do not trust.
4- Switch off automatic sync when using open WiFi hotspots (they are not to be trusted).

A lot of text has been written recently about the failings of the Android tablet in the market. The Motorola XOOM failed to come out of the closet with the new version of Google’s tablet optimized Android OS. Apparently, Google threw Android under the bus by stating that versions of the OS prior to Honeycomb were just not good enough to run on tablets.
Whatever you think about Honeycomb (the version of Android which is supposed to be optimized for tablets) in its current state, Google understands that having Apps optimized for the tablet form is critical to sway consumer acceptance. Apple understands this, and did a reasonably good job making sure that there were enough desirable Apps in the App Store on iPad launch day to get things rolling. Google, even with the advantage of having seen it done right, hasn’t emulated success. G clearly hasn’t done enough to get developers to produce Apps for Honeycomb, nor have they released the Honeycomb code so that developers can get to work. What’s worse is that the hacker robots are still out there actively laying in wait for overzealous developers to launch Android Apps so that they can quickly rip apart the code (after all that’s what open source is all about these days) and submit the App to the world’s torrent sites within 48 hours to the dismay of the bawling developer.
It’s no wonder that there are no significant tablet Apps for Android in the Market given the state of support by Google. Worse, even though Google has as much to lose as anyone due to a lack of Honeycomb Apps, it hasn’t produced any itself! Google writes a lot of software, so why haven’t they filled Honeycomb tablets with awesome and non evil Apps from their own camp?
This past week Google released an Android app for Google Docs. Sure, Android users can now be happy as clams to get this release but, it is a big missed opportunity for Google and the Honeycomb tablets. We wonder why Google Docs wasn’t rolled out on the new tablet OS first? After all, the larger form of the tablet is ideally suited for working with documents. If Google isn’t willing to put in the time and effort to promote its own services on its own mobile platforms then why should anyone else?
Right now there should be dozens of Apps for Honeycomb that make Android users drool with glee when they ponder their next tablet encounter with Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts. Sure, there is a decent Gmail app for Honeycomb, but not something amazing or cool. The calendar App on the XOOM is unfortunately one of the worst mobile calendar Apps that I have ever seen, on any platform. Either it is a total embarrassment to the platform or it indicates how much thought and planning went into the software design prior to coding. We wonder if there were any engineers above the age of 21 on that project given some of the UI decisions made. Google should have produced a suite of Honeycomb Apps that makes everyone who uses Google services rush out to buy a tablet just for the Apps. But that would mean that these Google-heads actually paid attention during Steve Job’s lectures on the topic over the past 18 months.
OK, I do not want to enter the realm of Google bashing but G has taken a very narrow view of what needs to be done to deliver Honeycomb, and has limited coding to the OS. The many reviews of Honeycomb to date, report that it is half-baked and sadly not ready for prime time. That failure is made apparent in the market for Android tablets, where there is not a single successful tablet either available or in the pipeline.
Given the state of Honeycomb as a platform, the propensity and consistency with which the hacker community has been able to turn a developer’s sweat and tears into freely downloadable wares combined with Google’s failure to produce decent Apps of its own, it is no wonder developers are not rushing to produce Honeycomb Apps.
There’s no indication that there will be a return for any serious efforts any time soon. Unfortunately, that doesn’t bode well for the viability of Honeycomb devices in the near future. It’s the classic chicken v. egg… you need Apps on the Android tablets for them to have a chance in the marketplace. In the meantime, all hail great Apps, the true king of tablets.

We are often asked about the definition of Marketing vs Sales.

I don’t know how the confusion started and you can look up the definitions in any dictionary if you are so inclined…  our preferred definition goes like this:

Good Marketing Is Like
Getting The Needle To Jump Out Of The Haystack
Sales Is The Fine Art Of Sewing

I just read the following and thought that it would be important to share with our readers… Even if things work differently at your place of business, remember that ‘things’ often change.

Before you dive into the details of event planning next year, be prepared to defend your decisions. One of our Clients now require the following input as a bare minimum in the process of event planning. I thought the instructions were worth sharing:

“Dear Business Development Executive,
If you wish to tap the marketing budget for your event in 2010, please answer the following questions and we will review your application in the order in which it was received:
1) which of our solutions can be sold (incremental business) by inviting people to this event?
2) exact cost (number of people and cost per person)?
3) how many leads / business opportunities can be generated with this event?
4) how much revenue do I expect to generate from these leads?

Each event planner needs to follow this procedure for each event in order to be eligible for funding. Should you feel that this process is a waste of time, we wish you the best of luck with your self-funded / sponsored event.”