Nolo mojo. Lulu.com is suing Hulu.com for trade name infringement, alleging the new site will cause marketplace confusion. For those of you not paying close attention, Lulu is a site that lets you publish and sell your own books; Hulu is the NBC/Fox site for distributing video. (Or, to put it another way, Lulu is a site for people who know how to read.) No word yet on whether LaLa, PuPu or JuJu will join the suit.
Three months after opening its APIs to the world and inviting developers to build applications for the surging social network, Facebook has decided to close those doors just a wee bit.
When Skype went AWOL for 48 hours last week, it came back smelling of cheap perfume and rotgut gin. Some 220 million users waited in their doorways wearing curlers and holding rolling pins, demanding to know where Skype had been. Naturally, Skype had a good excuse at the ready.
Last week, a judge ruled that Novell, not SCO, owns the rights to Unix code and that SCO can't sue IBM for violating rights it doesn't own, signaling that the endless, US$5 billion legal battle over Linux may soon be at an end.
It's been a good week for Microsoft and surveys. The Redmond reprobates own the most valuable technology brand in the world, according to a survey by Interbrand and Business Week magazine. The Windows wonks are second overall to Coca-Cola (I see a new slogan coming on: "Our software may suck, but it won't rot your teeth").
Is it just me, or did we all miss something truly big in the recent Google-FCC fandango?
Well, it's been six months since the second biggest tech debut of the year, Windows Vista. (OK, five months and 12 days, for those of you who are counting). How's has it gone?
The dust has settled, the news crews filming the crowds camped on the sidewalks outside Apple Stores have gone home, the iOrgy is over. And now it's time for the body count.
"People-ready business." That's Microsoft's latest slogan from hell, and it probably would have passed quietly into the dustbin of marketing history had it not been for a recent blowup in the blogosphere.
Privacy International has released preliminary findings of its <a href="http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd347=x-347-553961" target="_blank">study</a> of privacy practices at 20 major Net companies, and has named Google the worst of a generally bad lot.
Last week, Microsoft sent certified letters to its OEM partners regarding Vista's anti-piracy technology -- or, more accurately, what happens if they dare ship a system with a "non-genuine" copy of Vista.
Warren Buffet: Massively successful investor, friend of Bill Gates, often seen at bridge tournaments.
<b>Goocha libre:</b> Google and SalesForce have announced that they are joining up to battle Microsoft, but the deal is going to look less like a merger and more like tag team wrestling. Look for Marc "Boogeyman" Benioff and Eric "the Undertaker" Schmidt to take on "Stone Cold" Steve Ballmer in a three-way smackdown. Viewer discretion is advised.
Remember spoon-bending psychic Uri Geller? The cutlery-abusing 70's icon got bent out of shape recently after a video clip debunking his paranormal abilities surfaced on YouTube. Geller sent a DMCA take-down notice to YouTube, claiming the clip infringed his copyright. YouTube removed the clip and suspended the poster's account. (It's back, though -- and you can <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo" target="_blank">watch it here</a>.)
It's like the movie The 300, only instead of Spartan warriors and whizzy effects, we get open source geeks and wiki threads. At the Tipping Point wiki, more than 600 700 ticked-off Linux Lovers have added their names to the "Sue Me First, Microsoft" list -- taunting the Redmond army to come down and crush them.