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Day: September 26, 2006

IBM leading in Patent Reform

I posted a note on the JOMC490 class blog about IBM’s latest moves to clear up the global (and US) patent mess. Once again IBM leads the nations in not only pushing for but modeling best practices for patent reform.

A nice side story: IBM called on “[m]ore than 50 patent and policy experts from the United States, Europe, Japan and China [who] exchanged views for two months in May and June on a wiki, an online site that can be added to and edited collectively.” The policy can be found here.

Disclosure: IBM occassionally funds part of ibiblio.org through their Shared University Research grant program.

M$ hopes to Wallop MySpace

Just as FaceBook gets cocky and MySpace starts selling music, Microsoft decides that it needs to be in the social networking game. Just announced is Wallop – Get into Wallop, Make it Yours! The blurbs explain that Wallop is “Under your control. Socialize with the people you know — and want to know — in a safe, ad free environment where you control who has access to your personal account.”

You must be invited to join after submitting a little essay telling why you should belong to “the exclusive social experience where it’s easy to ‘be you’ and connect with the friends you choose.” (italics is theirs).

Yes it’s Beta.

Flash programmers are encourged to make mods and sell them on the site. This reveals the unique aspect of the site:

Wallop is a new type of social networking site combined with a marketplace for buying and selling graphical effects called Wallop Mods for your profile. At Wallop we believe the next wave is all about self expression online similar to the ways we express ourselves in the real world by purchasing clothes, decorating a room or wearing jewelry. While Wallop is great for communicating with your friends, it is also a rich platform for Flash designers and content creators to develop Mods and make money doing it. We make it easy for you to design and create Mods that allow people to express themselves!

FaceBook Expands, Fred Pans

I woke up this morning to the news that FaceBook was “opening up the gates” which means ditching the only thing that made FaceBook interesting and perhaps different from Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, Tribe, etc. You used to join your own special community online. You used to have to have a connection to enter a new community. Now you pile in with the rest of them. The rest of them being any of the tons of other choices out there as mentioned above plus various blogspheres like Xanga, Live Journal, Blogger, etc.

Fred lets loose on the opening in an intelligent new posting on his blog.

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