The Hopi Hari amusement park in São Paulo, Brazil hired the QG Propaganda agency to create a promotion for their roller-coasters.
They chose escalators as their medium and did a great job of grabbing people’s attention.
Have fun at Hopi Hari’s rollercoaster
EVERY schoolyard has a bully who uses his size to intimidate the other kids, or a rich brat who threatens to take his ball home if he doesn’t get his way. This month, Microsoft played both roles by claiming in a Fortune magazine article that open source programs violated 235 of its patents.
Microsoft claimed there were 42 such violations in the free Linux operating system, 65 in the way windows and menus look, 45 in OpenOffice, 15 in various e-mail programs and 68 more in other open source applications.
To address these alleged breaches, Microsoft wants to start collecting royalties from open source developers and users, a move that would jack up the cost of free software.
“We live in a world where we honor… intellectual property,” Fortune quotes Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer as saying. Users of free and open source software are going to have to “play by the same rules as the rest of the business,” he says. “What’s fair is fair.”
But how fair are software patents?
Originally, states granted patents to encourage innovation.
Under a patent system, inventors could enjoy the fruits of their discoveries exclusively for a limited number of years in exchange for sharing details of their inventions with the rest of the world. This system, so the argument goes, encouraged inventors by giving them a time-limited monopoly but also guaranteed that others could eventually be able to build on and improve those inventions.
For example, a patent on a new drug would give its holder exclusive rights to make and sell it for 20 years, in exchange for disclosing details of its composition. During this protected period, anyone else who wanted to manufacture the same drug would have to buy a license from the patent holder.
After the period expired, however, anyone would be free to manufacture the same drug, using the information provided in the patent filing.
This system works reasonably well for the pharmaceutical industry, but it actually hurts innovation when it is applied to software.
Creating a new drug requires huge amounts of capital for R&D, but a single, gifted programmer, or many such individuals working cooperatively over the Internet can develop superior software. We have seen this happen in operating systems (Linux versus Windows) and applications (Firefox versus Internet Explorer), and this trend will continue—if it is not stifled by misguided patent policies.
Software patents favor only large corporations such as Microsoft, who can afford to apply for them and to maintain a battery of lawyers to enforce them. Small developers cannot, and would be forced to pay license fees to develop the most basic of programs.
Microsoft does not provide specifics about the patents that it claims have been violated, but it says 65 of these deal with the way windows and menus look on the computer screen. But why should Microsoft or any one company have a legal, exclusive right to the way windows and menus look? All modern operating systems today that trace their origins back to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s use a windows (with a small “w”) metaphor and menu systems that certainly were not invented by Microsoft. In fact, Apple unsuccessfully sued Microsoft in 1988 for copying the look and feel of the Macintosh operating system. Must we really pay royalties for using a window with scroll bars?
Yet today, patents are being granted for commonplace notions such as selling goods online; electronic shopping carts; video distribution over the Web; credit-card payments on the Internet; and video streaming. None of these qualify as major innovations requiring state protection, so why give any one party monopoly rights over them?
Software has traditionally been protected by copyrights, which prevent others from copying a program’s underlying code. But software patents are much more restrictive and prevent all similar work from taking place, even if it is developed independently. Common sense tells us this does not encourage but inhibits innovation.
Software patents work against the open source community and countries would do well to resist any pressure from the United States and large software companies to introduce them through legislation. In the Philippines, the Intellectual Property Code specifically excludes computer programs from patent protection. All efforts to amend this must be blocked.
Few people expect Microsoft to sue open source developers, much less its own customers, over software patents. The threat of a suit, however, may be enough to convince some customers to use “authorized” versions of Linux that are already covered by cross-licensing deals, such as the one Novell signed with Microsoft. As one analyst observed, this would allow Microsoft to gain revenue from the burgeoning open source market in which it cannot play. Now why does that evoke images of a schoolyard bully shaking down smaller kids for lunch money? Because both are patently wrong, that’s why.
Microsoft introduces new oPhone (ofone). Check the vid below
It’s coming this summer
Watch the “Titanic 2″ trailer below 
http://web2.0forsale.com: … People are also invited to list programming code, prototypes, domain names, or other related products/services…
http://jobthread.com: … to allow employers to post jobs across a network of niche sites. The various options available to employers include TestReach which is free, and GoodReach and BestReach that are premium options to gain higher visibility on the websites that publish the JobThread jobs…
Other interesting article:
Paul Graham, a hacker turned entrepreneur turned Angel Investor has written an excellent essay on why he thinks Microsoft is Dead, and that no one who matters or cares for computing and web is now afraid of Microsoft. The four reasons he listed that led to Microsoft´s demise are:
Google, as their could only be one big man in town and for now its clearly Google and not Microsoft.
Google took the lead from Microsoft with the launch of Gmail, which showed us how much we could do with web software utilizing a technique called AJAX. This swiftly transitioned a rush to all things based on web, and some noted that Instant Messaging is now the last desktop app standing.A critical component of AJAX is Javascript, the programming language that runs in the browser, which ultimately started the era of gadgets and widgets.
Then came the broadband Internet, with which the bigger the pipe to the server, the less one need the desktop.
The last nail in the coffin being Apple OS X, which makes Windows a thing for grandmas.
Pual Graham then also suggests how Microsoft could be realized. His suggestion to Microsoft being “Buy all the good Web 2.0 startups put them in a building in Silicon Valley to shield them from Redmond.” This is achievable because a) Microsoft has tons of cash. b) Because dangerously brilliant hackers could be have for a million dollars. Yup thats the amount Larry and Sergey were willing to sell their search engine for.
Ever since Microsoft bought Tellme Networks, the big question is what would Google do in response? It became a little clearer today when Google announced a free 411 service, which is a fraction of what TellMe-Microsoft has to offer. See more:
http://gigaom.com/2007/04/06/google-to-launch-800goog411/
Google has been testing around with new look for ads for a while and has come to a conclusion that replacing the typical ‘Ads by Goooooogle’ to an image would be more “visually appealing to users” and “perform even better for publishers and advertisers” which means most likely means a higher CTR. Another change to the ads (which was not mentioned in Inside AdSesne blog) is that this label has been moved from the top left corner to bottom right corner for rectangles which means users will see the ads before know they are served by Google. It is a smart act for AdSense to constantly update the look of their ads as to attracts ad-blind users.
We are applying the Adsense but didn’t hear from them yet. Hope they will approve for my new company with arcade game sites, dating website, social networking website, etc.
Thailand has blocked Youtube, because of a video clip on the site that mocks the Thai King. According to Reuters, Mr Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom the Thai Communication Minister ordered the blockade after requesting Google in vain to take down the clip. The Thai people love their monarch and have a very sentimental feeling to it. According to Thai law criticism directed towards the royal family is a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Youtube also recently got blocked in Turkey after a video belittling the Turk revolution leader Ataturk were hosted on the site. The ban however got removed within two days after Youtube took the clips offline.
So from experience we could predict two things:
- Youtube will remove the clip and the ban will ultimately be removed
- Youtube´s nightmares will continue as people around the world will continue to submit clips, which some how will be offensive for some one. Such is the irony of User Generate Content.
What, if you decide to travel from Standford, California, US –> Stockholm, Sweden. I like the step 33: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean. Click on the image to view the detailed route.
