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Review of etendi BRIDGE: a family distance communication product

I have some friends who recently launched etendi BRIDGE, a product aimed at making family communication easier, especially when the family is divided by distance.  You can view a slightly heavy handed video that gives a good overview of the feature set (though not the best sound).  Features include calendaring, email (which they call ‘Thinking of You’ messages), a shared whiteboard, video messages, and notes.  All the action happens in a pretty slick Flash interface.  It also sends all traffic over SSL, which is the same standard that banks use, etc.

In addition to clicking around this myself, I set etendi up with my girlfriend and mother (yes, yes, perhaps they shouldn’t be in communication, but what can you do?).  I ended up kicking the tires on the video chat with my girlfriend; video chat seems to be the killer feature.  I was able to fairly easily set up the sound.  I did have an issue with the microphone–at its default setting, the software couldn’t hear me, and kept giving me an error message.  This happened even though I’d had no trouble using the mic at that level with skype.  Video chat didn’t work for me, as I had no video camera.  But my girlfriend also had issues with it; we didn’t have time to dive in, but it may be her system, as she has had webcam issues before.

One final note about usability–in general it is great, but when you are adding a user to your etendi house, no cues are given if the password isn’t long enough; the save button is just disabled.

From a web application developer’s point of view, it’s a very cool app that feels much like a desktop app.  I’m not sure what it means for our society that there’s a niche for this type of remote communication application with children, but it’s a very cool app.

I’m not going to pretend to have done a wide survey of solutions in this space, but here are some other options that solve some of the same problems:

  • roll your own solution with youtube/email/im/netmeeting/phpbb/phpgallery/etc: You can do this, but security is an issue–never put anything in an email that you wouldn’t put on the back of a postcard!  However, make sure you read and understand the etendi terms of service.  The amount of work to bring this together would be substantial to be feature complete with etendi.  On the other hand, you can customize it as you like, and it is free except for your time.
  • Facebook/other social networks: Facebook, and myspace and friendster, etc, solve some of the same issues. As far as I know, there’s no video messaging service that integrates with FB, but it does have most everything else (email, whiteboard, photo gallery ).  However, with facebook, your child has to have an email address and there are as far as I know, no parental controls.  Also, every bit of content you upload to Facebook grants them a right to use that content for any purpose as long at is up there (see the user content section of their TOS for more).  But, it is prevalent, easy to use, and free.
  • Ning: Ning lets you create your own private social network, solving some of the control issues.  You can share videos, photos, blog posts and events.  You can invite your friends, but again they have to have an email address to be invited.  You have some pretty granular control over what members can do (you can choose to approve photos before they appear, etc).  They don’t have quite as nice an interface as etendi does, but they do have 141 widgets you can add (and a nice API).  You also have to deal with advertisements, or you can pay $25/month to remove them.  Ning seems like a nice alternative to etendi, but is definitely aimed at more sophisticated (read, adult) users (users under 13 are explicitly asked to avoid Ning networks) and doesn’t have the tight focus on families.
  • Obscurity.

etendi has been live for a few months, so I’m glad they are starting to get some press, and I hope they continue to update the blog.  If you need to keep in touch with family over long distance and both ends have high speed internet and webcams, you should give etendi BRIDGE a try.

Disclaimer: I have worked with these FOLKS in the past, way back when I was concerned about testing Korean content, and have had a beer or two at their office.

[tags]zia,etendi,telepresence,children of divorce[/tags]

RIA Technology and Society Web Applications | moore |

A web presence in two hours

Being a computer guy is a bit like being a doctor.  Not in the vast amount of learning (I don’t even have a degree in CS), nor in the paycheck (no mid six figure salary here).  Rather, on finding out that you have some job associated with computers, people will ping you with questions:

  • Why is my computer running slow?
  • How do I send video with my email?
  • Can you make me a website?

I usually beg off the first two questions claiming lack of expertise.  The third question always perks up my ears–building websites and web applications is my area of expertise.

However, many times, I find that people don’t need a website, they need a web presence.  This is entirely different–websites imply a level of maintenance that is often more than is needed.  A web presence is perfect for a offline business that simply wants to establish a beachhead on the internet, but likely won’t interact with users via the web (more likely via phone or email).  In other words, a web presence is like a brochure for the company–designed once, changed rarely, and read many times.

(A quick note: I believe most small businesses will benefit by using the internet to enable new ways of interacting with customers, but such applications can be a big leap–starting out with a web presence can be a great first step.)

A friend of mine often recommends leveraging other websites, like myspace or facebook, to provide a web presence for small companies and independent operators.  I prefer blogs.

Here are the steps to set up a web presence in two hours.  I assume you can create a word document, have an email address, and have access to a web browser.

  1. Gather your page content together.  Typically, you should have a home page explaining what you do and what you offer.  You should have a contact page, explaining how people can get in touch with you, including phone number, maps, etc.  Any other pages are optional, but other useful ones may include how to donate to your organization, a portfolio of your services, or a links page pointing to other useful information about your niche.
  2. Choose a blogging site.  Two main ones are wordpress.com and blogspot.com.  WordPress has a better post editor and handles pages more gracefully; it will in general be easier for neophytes to use, but does not allow advertising.  It also is easier to migrate to a full featured website.   Blogspot gives you more options, in terms of layout control and look and feel.  I’ve heard that content on blogspot is easier found by google.  Either one of these is a fine place to start.
  3. Sign up for your blog.  Make sure you get a name that makes sense: joesmithesquire.wordpress.com, for example.
  4. Work through a tutorial/faq: Here’s one for blogspot (called blogger in this tutorial–they’re the same).  Here’s one for wordpress.
  5. Add your content in pages via cut and paste.  If you are using blogspot, you will need to set up the ‘Blog Posts’ section of the layout to only show the last post, and then make sure to have your home page is the last page you add.  If you are using wordpress.com, you should just create pages.  Set your homepage by going to ‘settings’ then ‘reading’ and set ‘Front page displays’ to ‘a static page’.
  6. Choose a theme from one of the many options provided by the blogging sites.  It won’t be perfect, but it will be free.  You can always spend money to customize the look and feel later (to re-do your brochure).
  7. If you want, you can register a domain name, like joesmithesquire.com, (GoDaddy will be happy to help with this for about $10/year) and point it to the blog.  wordpress.com charges $10/year for this feature, blogspot is free.

That should be it.  It’s not perfect, but setting up a web presence lets you get your organization world wide publicity for the cost of a few hours of learning.  You can now maintain it; if any information changes, you can make those modifications without paying expensive people like me 🙂 .

[tags]web presence[/tags]

Technology and Society Useful Tools | moore |

Interview: SEO basics for web developers with Ashley Rader

I just recently did an interview with an old high school friend, Ashley Rader, who is now in the SEO business.  Since I build custom web applications and websites, but know next to nothing about SEO, I took the opportunity to ask questions that I think web developers of my background would appreciate.  The interview follows.

Dan Moore: My understanding of SEO is that it is how you show up on the first page in search engine results.  How is that understanding incorrect?

Ashley Rader: That is mostly correct, yes.   Although if you were to ask Google that question, their aim is to deliver sites at the top of the search engines that are most relevant to the search.   They like quality sites, with unique content, and with a level of “authority” where google has found other sites to reinforce that relevance.   SEO is the process by which webmasters and site owners can attempt to increase the likelihood that Google thinks their site is relevant to a particular search. Sites can still rank at the top of google for particular results without SEO techniques, but it is a lot harder to do so.

Dan Moore: Why is it harder?

Ashley Rader: Without SEO you would have to have some other form of publicity working in your favor.   For example a new movie comes out.   There are commercials on TV and buzz amongst movie gurus.   They might naturally begin linking their websites and blogs to the movies website which in turn yields higher search engine results for that website.    The webmaster of the site probably doesn’t have to do anything “unnatural” to enhance their search engine rankings because other forms of marketing are working on their behalf to enhance their search ranking for a particular phrase.   Most ordinary website owners and business owners don’t have that kind of marketing available to them so in those cases, they would need to use SEO techniques to get the same result.

Dan Moore: So, if I understand you correctly, SEO is a form of marketing, just like TV ads?

Ashley Rader: Not exactly, there are forms of marketing that you can use as a part of an SEO or SEM campaign.   Buying text or banner links and advertising on a page might be part of an SEM campaign.   However even when it comes to marketing your site in other mediums online, there are different goals for purchasing an ad.   For our network of sites we sometimes purchase ads in order to gain traffic from a particular site, and in other cases we might purchase advertising for the sole purpose of search engine optimization and having google see a link from a particular site to our site. SEM (search engine marketing) could be considered a form of marketing, that is the broader name for it.   SEO is the process of in a sense manipulating the way google (or the other search engines) might view your site and the topics or search phrases that it might deem it relevant for.

Dan Moore: Is it worth targeting anyone other than Google?

Ashley Rader: Not worth spending a lot of time on anyone but Google, no. That’s why I keep mentioning google.   Some of the things you do will enhance the results for Yahoo, Live, etc, but not worth spending hours and hours trying to rank for both.

Dan Moore: Can you elaborate a bit on how you started out in the SEO field?

Ashley Rader: I started my website back in 2005 and really started researching online, how do all these sites get to the top of the search engine results.   I didn’t have a lot of money for advertising my website so I was more interested in finding out how to do it for FREE (or with the only cost being my own sweat and labor).   There are a million ebooks out there on how to do SEO and I was lucky enough to find one from a guy who really knew what he was talking about, and is one of the experts in the industry.

Dan Moore: How many ebooks/methods did you try before you found the one that worked?  And how did you know it worked?

Ashley Rader: Actually just the one.  As I started to implement some of the things I was reading about, my first site started moving up the search results pretty quickly.    Since then the author of the original ebook that I read started an SEO/SEM membership organization (called Stompernet) of which I’ve been a faithful member since 2006.   SEO has changed completely even since I started in 2005 so it is really important to stay current on the kinds of things that work today.   The things that I did SEO wise for my site back in 2005 might get me banned from Google today, so its always changing and definitely keeps things interesting.

Dan Moore: So even now, you are constantly overhauling your website(s) to take advantage of new techniques that you read about or discover?

Ashley Rader: Not exactly overhauling, but tweaking – yes, I’m constantly tweaking.   If you start off the bat by implementing good structure you likely won’t need to completely overhaul it, but there are always little tweaks and things that tomorrow might require a different kind of title tag, or a different linking structure.

Dan Moore: A different kind of title tag?  What do you mean–different phrasing, or what?

Ashley Rader: Changing up the keywords, changing the way it is written, changing the “call to action”.    Since title tags control what appears on the primary line of the search results, its important that they are optimized not only for SEO purposes – so including your main keyword(s) for the page.   You also need to balance that with the fact that it is your main line of advertising in the search results so you want it to be compelling for people to click on. Title tags written without keywords or with a bunch of extraneous unrelated text are often not clicked on.

Dan Moore: You mentioned implementing good structure at the beginning of website development–what does that typically look like?

Ashley Rader: Title tags – those are probably the most important on page factors related to SEO results.   You want them to be unique (unique from other pages as duplication in the title tags can lead to penalties), and keyword rich.    You should think of each page of a site not as a subpage of the entire website, but as a single page that has the potential to rank on its own.   Keyword and Description tags should be filled as best as possible (and not left blank), but they don’t affect SEO nearly as much as they used to.   Beyond that, the internal linking on the page.  Your most important pages should be no more than 2 links away from the homepage if possible.   Having good navigation that google can follow (so no javascript) is critical to the ability for google to index and revisit your site. Also using nofollow tags for links that point to pages that you don’t care about being indexed or ranking should be used when possible to boost the link authority of the other links on your page.

Dan Moore: There are ‘validation’ programs to show malformed HTML on websites; are there any analogous SEO programs?

Ashley Rader: Yes, there are a TON of programs out there that can look at many of the factors that influence ranking.   All should be taken with a grain of salt as the ultimate determining factor is how you actually rank.  The one that I use is iBusinessPromoter.   They will analyze many of the onpage factors and tell you if you are over or under optimizing in comparison to the sites that are top ranking for your particular keyword.  I have a number of colleagues who focus SO much on tweaking their on page factors and aren’t looking at the big picture of their overall SEO campaign, and they are just spinning their wheels wondering why their site is still not ranking well.   These tools can help, but are not the end all be all. Also Google Webmaster Tools provides some fantastic information as to why a site might not be ranking well whether it be the site layout, lack of incoming links, or if maybe a penalty has been imposed.

Dan Moore: I always tell people that the best way to get better placement in search results is to produce regular, interesting content about whatever niche they are in.  You have been talking about some techniques that can produce better results, so is my advice incorrect?  If so, do you have a similar (or better!) short capsule of advice?

Ashley Rader: Your advice is 100% correct.   There are other things you can do to reinforce that, but google LOVES regularly updated, unique, quality content. Google loves blogs for that very reason.

Dan Moore: Do you blog?

Ashley Rader: I have a number of blogs (I think maybe 6 or 7 for some of the niches that my websites are in), although at this time I have so many fires in the pot that I am not contributing to them as much as I should.   That is one of the areas I’m working on consolidating and improving on.

Dan Moore: 6 or 7, that’s quite a few.  How do you mean “consolidating”?  Generating more multipurpose content?  Getting other contributors?

Ashley Rader: Other contributors.  Many of them are set up right now with RSS feeds from different sources but that is not ideal.  Matt Cutts from google says that RSS feeds are ok to include, but blogs still need original content.   I have a writer from Odesk who does daily posts for 2 of my blogs.

Dan Moore: Ahh, ok.  Can you talk about the future of SEO–what developments on the horizon excite you?

Ashley Rader: Well I’m not 100% sure what lies in the future, SEO is kind of an “in the moment” type of science.   Since we don’t know what changes Google is going to make tomorrow to their ranking algorithm it is hard to say.   But since I have started, they are moving more and more towards rewarding sites that provide really unique, valuable content to their users.   Actually, one thing they are beta testing right now is the concept of “social search”.   Search results that are different for every user based upon their surfing patterns and sites they visit and elect to come up higher.   I can log into my google account and all of my websites (even my brand new ones) are all #1 on google for their search terms!   🙂   Right now google says these voted results aren’t affecting the current algorithm, but I would guess in the future they will.  Social networks seem to be the way that google is moving so out are the days where you could put crappy, scraped content on your site and spam it to rank well.   You need to provide a valuable experience for your website visitors and in turn google will begin to reward you for that with higher rankings.

Dan Moore: Are there any SEO campaigns that you are particularly proud of and/or would point to as proof of your expertise?

Ashley Rader: My main website is www.momentsofelegance.com.   Currently (just checked) #4 on google for “wedding favors” which is a very popular and competitive search phrase. During the summer months which is the height of wedding season, we get about 3500 hits a day and 98% of those are from organic google search results. Sorry it’s #5 on google not #4.

Dan Moore: Cool, well, thank you very much for your time. This was very helpful; any parting thoughts?

Ashley Rader: The most important factors I would say are make sure you know and understand your industry, the search phrases that people are using to find the times of products or services that you offer (and to research this as what you “think” people might not be searching for is not always what people are actually looking for).  Use those keywords in your site design – not in a spammy way but a natural way.   Then if you are providing good, quality content that appeals and attracts visitors, your site will gain relevant links and will be rewarded by google with better rankings.  You’ve got the right idea, content is king and with good content you will have more returning visitors and better rankings.

One other small point I should make is not to ignore the “long tail” or more specific keyword searches for a site.  We get about 25% of our traffic from our main search phrase “wedding favors”, but the majority of the traffic comes into our product pages using very specific keywords.   Those are actually the “money phrases” as people who are looking for “wedding favors” are usually just researching, people searching for “hot pink favor boxes with personalized ribbon” are usually ready to buy.   Just an important distinction to make to not ignore the more specific search phrases.

Dan Moore: That’s actually how the search keywords for my blog work out–the majority of the search terms are unique and I get maybe 1 hit a month on them.

Ashley Rader: Thats the good thing about blogs, there are a few basic plugins you can use and your site is pretty much SEO optimized and your internal blog pages can rank very well for the longer tail search phrases.

Dan Moore: Thanks again!

[tags]seo,interview,ashley rader[/tags]

Interview Technology and Society Useful Tools Web Applications | moore |

Why aren’t you using Google Website Optimizer?

I’ve been using Google Website Optimizer (GWO) in one form or another for over a year now, and I am quite impressed.  I wish everyone would take a look at this technology.

The short version of this post is: if you have a website that gets some traffic, and actions that you want a user to take, such as buying something, you should use GWO.

OK?

Let’s talk about GWO a bit more for everyone who didn’t leave after the executive summary.

First, what is GWO? 

It is a free add in to your website that lets you test the effect of content changes on desired user actions.  For example, you can test the impact of different headlines (‘Sign up for more information’ or ‘Free Newsletter!’, etc) on a newsletter signup page to see how it affects how many users sign up.

I could try to write about it more, but instead, here’s a video that explains how to set up a test; you can watch the first 45 seconds to get a good overview of what GWO helps you test, but the whole video is worth viewing.

It’s important to note that GWO is javascript based (as opposed to some other tools like SiteSpect, which uses DNS proxying, according to a conversation I had with someone who worked there).  There are other tools out there which may be better fits for your needs.

Now, how should GWO be used? 

This tool should be used to optimize a specific action that you want the user to take, and that action should be something on the web.  Examples of actions that GWO can help optimize include:

  • sign up for a newsletter
  • visit a specific page
  • order something
  • give you their contact info
  • watch a video
  • download a file

GWO is capable of handling more complicated scenarios too.  You can, with a bit of javascript hackery, test button click conversions, or any other javascript event.  I’ve worked on systems that tested various form elements (requiring different fields to register, for example).  The requirement for that is a flexible back end, and a javascript front end that can handle re-filling form elements on error.

Next, why would you avoid GWO?  There are a number of scenarios where using this tool just doesn’t make sense.

No actions that you want the user to take on the web

This is the biggest set of sites for which GWO does not make sense, and my blog falls into it.  My end goal is really to talk to someone, on the phone or over coffee, to ascertain whether or not I can help them with my services.  That’s a hard conversion to track.  If you really want to get people talking on the phone, that is a conversion that GWO doesn’t help track either (though it’s possible you could do something with VOIP or different phone numbers and cobble some kind of conversion tracking together).

That’s not to say that sites in this category can’t use GWO.  For instance, I wrote an article long ago about a java technology called JAAS, and it’s still pretty popular.  I’ve been doing some testing on that page to try to drive traffic to this blog, where a big chunk of my current writing is happening.  I was able to increase conversion about 2.5 times (granted, from a small base–0.7% to 1.73%).  I could definitely try to do some optimizations around ad placement or contact calls to action.  The main reason I haven’t is that I still believe my best chance at conversion is referral or word of mouth, not better text on a website.

Javascript free site

If you need a javascript free site, or focus on users who don’t have javascript capabilities (those who use screen readers, for example) or browsers that don’t support javascript, then GWO isn’t a good fit.  That doesn’t mean you should give up on optimization, it just means that GWO isn’t the solution.

Google trust issues

For providing this valuable service, Google could get a look at a lot of interesting data including how many websites optimize, what site admins are tracking, and what URLs those admins consider important.  I have no idea what Google actually does with the data–the company may not track the data at all.  I did a bit of looking on the GWO forum, but didn’t find anything useful.  However, if you don’t want Google having access to this data, then you shouldn’t use GWO.  I don’t use Google Analytics for this very reason.

Speed is essential

Since this is a javascript download, it will affect page load time.  From Firebug, I see that it is a small download (7KB total, over 3 requests–for the test page).  This is not significant, but if you’re aiming for the fastest website, or you’re aiming at users on a slow connection, you might steer away from GWO.

Not enough traffic to your site

If you don’t have much traffic, your effort will be better spent driving more people to your website.  Whether you use search engine optimization, TV advertising, pay per click campaigns, or my favorite, regularly posted organic content, traffic is a prerequisite to using GWO effectively.  How much traffic?  Well, I was able to get conclusive results in my JAAS experiment with 3466 views and 48 conversions in just about 3 months.  That’s about 40 views a day.  I was not testing a ton of variations in my content (only 3).

Your site doesn’t let you put custom javascript on pages

This is the case with wordpress.com blogs (wordpress.com doesn’t allow any custom javascript, due to WordPressMU’s architecture), and I’m sure is common among other ‘build a website easily’ systems.  Not much to say about this, other than that if you’re really using the web as a channel, and not just an online brochure, it might be worth moving to a more flexible site.

Not enough time

I don’t believe this is a valid excuse–spend 7 minutes and watch the video; I believe you’ll see that this is worth a bit of investigating if the above scenarios don’t apply to you.

I can’t think of any other reasons not to use GWO.  Feel free to leave a comment if you feel I missed something.

What are your next steps?

Well, if I’ve convinced you that GWO is worth looking at, you might want to do a bit of further research. Here’s the website optimizer homepage.  Here’s the official GWO blog.  Here’s a great article full of tips for GWO.  There’s a book called Always Be Testing that seems pretty well received that you might want to check out.  I have not read it.

Disclaimer: I’d love to help you out with this (if interested, contact me), but firmly believe that almost anyone can take 30-45 minutes and implement this on their website.  I think GWO is great, cool, useful technology and want to see it used more to make the web a better place.

Business Technology and Society Web Applications | moore |

Learn Chinese Characters on the web

I don’t know the first thing about ideograms, but here is a very cool flash application that helps you learn to write Chinese characters.  It’s free for now (no private beta, just beta). According to my friend who posted the link:

It is simple to use and it teaches people how to write characters using spaced-repetition learning system which seems to be quite similiar to the method that Peter Pimsleur used to develop a system to learn to speak foreign languages easily (see Simon & Schuster for spoken language learning).

If that is your thing, it’s worth a look.

Technology and Society Web Applications | moore |

Google Apps For Your Domain Site Launch

One of the fascinating things about business is how ecosystems are created around big technologies. Think of car manufacturers. One of the big reasons that there is fear regarding letting GM go bankrupt right now is the knock on effect–all the suppliers, big and small, that would not get paid while the bankruptcy judge was reorganizing the business. They wouldn’t be able to pay their employees, and that would affect the employees’ ability to buy goods and services from others in the area, which would cause other business to have issues, etc. The point I’m making above is not an argument in favor of bailing out the big auto companies, but rather a bemused look at how complex business ecosystems get.

Software is no different–every big company (HP, Sun, IBM, Microsoft) has multiple channels for getting its technology products out in the market. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are crucial for platforms. Consultants, both those employed by the company and those outside it familiar with its technolooges, serve as wells of expertise that can be drawn on by clients for the short or long term. Value Added Resellers (VARs) are important for re-selling company products and technology.

A few months ago I had a conversation with a fellow who was building a VAR for the Google suite of products. It looks like it went live in October. I have not used it, but certainly the idea has power. It is similar to the Office Suite, including outlook, but brings in chat, calendaring, and HTML authoring, all with the simplicity of remote hosting on Google’s infrastructure. Check out Google Apps for Your Domain if you think it might be a good fit for you.

Technology Technology and Society Web Applications | moore |

IP Crash Course For Entrepreneurs

This past Wednesday, I went to an interesting talk sponsored by Silicon Flatirons (an organization worth knowing about). Jason Haislmaier gave the talk, and the subject was intellectual property (IP); it was titled ‘Intellectual Property “Crash Course” for Entrepreneurs’ and was packed! I got there 10 minutes late (parking on the CU campus is no fun at all) and sat in the back on a heater. Good thing the fire department didn’t come by, as I’m sure we were over capacity. (Incidentally, I heard about this via the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup mailing list but it was also on the Colorado Startups Events calendar.)

Jason said the presentation and possibly a recording of it would be available, but I was unable to find it by looking around his blog or the Silicon Flatirons site. I took some notes, but his presentation, if and when it becomes available, will be a great introduction to what entrepreneurs need to know about IP. (Note that all mistakes herein are mine, and I am most definitely not a lawyer. Consult your friendly attorney for serious advice. I marked things I thought I remembered with a ‘?’.)

There are 4 kinds of IP: patents, which are ideas or inventions, trademarks, which are about branding, copyright, which deals with creative expression, and trade secrets, which is know how. The overall emphasis on his talk was that you may not need protection from one or any of these forms of property, but that you, as an entrepreneur should be aware of all of them and make a conscious choice to pursue or not to pursue them. Which makes a lot of sense to me! (Incidentally, he repeatedly mentioned that the US was different in IP than the rest of the world, in a lot of ways, so if you plan to do business internationally, you should definitely think about that sooner rather than later.)

Trade secrets are pretty much anything–data, methods, software, etc. The protection is dependent on keeping them secret. Jason was working with a $10-20 million company that had only one patent; its valuation was almost entirely based on trade secrets. NDAs and employment contracts are the front line of trade secrets. He emphasized that you need to read NDAs and think about how they affect you and your relationship with the NDA signer. In particular, you can’t expect a signer to forget everything they’ve learned after a relationship ends, but you can expect them to return all the tangible forms of information. NDAs should have remedies (injunctions). If the other side won’t sign an NDA, that’s fine, just don’t tell them anything that you wouldn’t want to see posted on the Internet.

Copyright is protection for an original work or authorship in a tangible form from which the work can be perceived, not an idea. Apparently, there was a famous case (Feist) which basically outlined the limits of copyright–anything more creative than the White Pages qualifies for copyright protection. There are five rights, which I didn’t note because I thought the presentation would be up. Copyright can be unregistered (just about anything–these notes and this blog post are unregistered copyright) or registered. Registering costs something, but means you can sue folks. Under the DMCA, the copyright owner no longer has to show infringement–the possibility of infringement is enough (?). There are safe harbors though, one of which is the service provider harbor(?). You have to register with the Library of Congress and take things down if notified, but if you are providing any service with user generated content, you should pursue this safe harbor.

Trademarks (or service marks) are about branding. They’re easier to file for than patents. Use in commerce generates rights. He had a great slide showing the protection levels of trademarks from the fantastic (Kodak, Exxon) to the arbitrary (Apple) to the suggestive to the descriptive (World Poker Tour) to the generic (aspirin, escalator). The more the trademark describes what it represents, the less protectable it is, and trademarks can be lost (as escalator was).

Patents–the big one! Patents are the right to excludes others from making, using and selling a new, useful and non-obvious invention. There are a number of reasons to patent–defensive, offensive, ego, source of revenue (a secondary market is developing for patents. Offensive patents are getting riskier recently (courts are narrowing down patent infringement). But, investors are starting to ask why patents weren’t filed, and “we didn’t think to do so” is a poor answer. The answer to the question “Is it patentable?” for almost any value of “it” is yes, but you need to think about why–the better question is “How relevant and valuable will a patent be for the business?”. Lack of knowledge or independent development is not a defense against patent infringement.

All in all, it was a lot of ground to cover. Jason did a good job making things very applicable to the audience he was talking to. It kinda sucks that you have to think about such things, when all you want to do is develop killer software. (Brian made an offhand comment about patents and long running servlets almost 4 years ago, incidentally.) As Jason said in closing, if you don’t have an intellectual property strategy, your competitors will give you one (and, I inferred, you probably won’t like that one very much).

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