SMB IT | Curtis Franklin | TAG: SMB Tech & The Law

MORE ENTRIES

TAG: SMB Tech & The Law

May 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sometimes I really hate golf. I mean, just hate it. Ruins a perfectly good three-day weekend.

* The Penguin People fire back at Microsoft. In response to Microsoft hinting that it will be looking at patent litigation against Linux users soon (and Novell suddenly clamming up on the subject), BusinessWeek just pubbed an op-ed piece by Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin firing back at Microsoft. Zemlin reminds Redmond that Linux isn't with out huge patent pile of its own--and an enthusiastic community to stand behind it. We could wind up watching a real nerd war this year. Just make sure your SMB apps don't get caught in the middle. (Source: BusinessWeek)

* NY thinks Google-DoubleClick merger is hinky. Sure it's worth $3.1 billion, but before he clears it, Spitzer wants Google to come clean on exactly how it runs the usage-tracking part of its advert business. Now that's going to make the Googlers cranky. (Source: ZDNet)

* Avaya on the block? According to the NYT, Avaya has engaged Credit Suisse to manage the sale of part or all of the company. Possible buyers would be both Cisco and Nortel--which could really bite for customers of its SMB product lines. (Source: CNet)

* Toshiba snuggles up to AMD. Toshiba announced it was entering into a purchasing agreement with AMD for mobile CPUs. Looks like one or more lines of Toshiba notebooks will be running these CPUs, which means we might be looking at a new line of value machines for the SMB set...? (Source: PC Mag)

Posted by Oliver Rist on May 29, 2007 05:00 AM

April 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SMB Tech News Today; 4/11

* IBM and HP make new SMB plays. It's the final frontier and the big vendors are chasing it. IBM's introing a new server line, while HP is releasing a new storage platform. (Source: InfoWorld)

* Darwin launches online data loss calculator. Need to impress the suits with the potential financial pain of a data loss incident? The folks at Darwin Underwriters just launched an online calculator for just this purpose via Tech/404. (Source: Darwin)

* Microsoft not the only one with Patch Tuesday. Seems both Oracle and Symantec had/will have a patch release on Tuesday. Symantec was yesterday, and fixed a flaw that affects all Enterprise Security Manager installations. Oracle's is coming next Tuesday and will fix 37 little boo-boos ranging across all its product lines. (Source: InformationWeek, ZDNet)

* Retailers and FBI team up on crime database. They're calling it the Law Enforcement Retail Partnership Network (LERPnet), and it's a secure database that will let retailers nationwide share information on crimes, scams and other dangers not just with the FBI but with each other, too. For SMBs in retail, this is a must-look. (Source: Dark Reading)

Posted by Oliver Rist on April 11, 2007 04:46 AM

April 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SMB Tech News Today; 4/4

* The FBI's ongoing hunt for virtual crime. Seems the explosive growth in virtual worlds is prompting the FBI to check into gambling on Second Life. Maybe they'll check into illicit wagering on hobbit-tossing contests in World of Warcraft, too. (Source: CNET)

* Cisco oozing into Linksys brand. Seems Cisco is looking for new ways into the small biz market, so expect resellers to offer new 'synergies' between Linksys and Cisco-branded products aimed at SMBs real soon. (Source: InfoWorld)

* Microsoft expressing its love for Expressions. Seems the Redmondites originally decided to keep its Expressions Web dev tool from its mainstream developer community. And it further seems that the developers in that community expressed massive irateness at this obviously benighted move. So Microsoft has shifted back into the light and will offer Expressions to its MSDN developer community. Durn tootin'. (Source: ZDNet)

* Google debuts Mac tools. I should have reviewed this. Damn! Almost two years after releasing Google Desktop for Windows, the Googlers have just released the Google Desktop for the Mac. These guys do the hands-on I should have done. (Source: Ars Technica)

Posted by Oliver Rist on April 4, 2007 04:40 AM

April 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SMB Tech News Today; 4/2

* April Fools jokes from Google. Something about a free print-and-deliver service for GMail and a hi-speed Internet service being offered through your toilet, called Dark Porcelain. Hee hee. Ha ha. Couple more hee-hee's from Phonescoop (Samsung's switchblade phone) and ThinkGeek (the WiiHelm) (Source: San Jose Mercury News)

* Game not over for US Internet gambling. Congress may have passed its anti-Internet gambling law within the US, but the results haven't been as expected. Not only has this spawned an off-shore Web gambling boom, now the World Trade Organization has declared Congress' action illegal. Web gambling may be coming back to the US after all. (Source: BetaNews)

* PayPal wooing SMBs with new services. This is an April 1 story, so I'm hoping it's not a hoax, but if it is it's a pretty boring one. If it's not, then it's a good way for smaller businesses to manage payment processing with their own branding on the front and PayPal's processing services on the back. (Source: PC World)

* Could be an H1-B visa rush today. Today's the day that the US government begins accepting H1-B visa applications. Given the immigration boom, analysts are expecting a glut of applications. Get in line early. (Source: ComputerWorld)

Posted by Oliver Rist on April 2, 2007 06:47 AM

March 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SMB Tech News Today; 3/30

* 5 Coolest Gadgets from CTIA. In video form. Includes a couple of cool new cell phones from Pantech and Samsung, a new media player and more. (Source: NetworkWorld)

* ICANN shoots down .XXX again. The concept of a separate porno domain has been floated before...and shot down before. But ICANN just did it again at its 28th International Public Meeting in Lisbon. Again, the ICANNers said that because .XXX is a content-based domain, it would have set them up as a content-regulating body, which isn't their mandate. (Source: PC World)

* Online gambling booming...offshore. Last September, Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act--basically an anti-Internet gambling law. They figured that would kill online gambling, but apparently, all it's done is prompt the gambling entrepreneurs to move offshore. (Source: InformationWeek)

* New target for burgeoning game designers: retirees. Seems there's a new trend in the video game market and that's the over 50 and even the over 60 crowd. These folks have time on their hands, money in their pockets and a need to to maintain hand-eye coordination. And, again, it looks like the Wii is out front here. (Source: CNET)

Posted by Oliver Rist on March 30, 2007 08:42 AM

March 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Scary Article for Small IT Companies

The Washington Post (the only national daily in which I've ever had my byline) just ran a frightening and outrageous story, written anonymously, from the chief exec of a small US IT company. Seems this person received a "National Security Letter" from the FBI.

Over 140,000 of these letters have been sent out over the last few years, and they seem to follow the same pattern: (1) They want detailed and confidential information on one or more of the letter-recipient's clients. (2) They haven't be approved or even seen by a judge. (3) They carry a gag order saying the letter recipient can't discuss the client, the information request or even the fact that the they received the letter under penalty of criminal prosecution. Hence the anonymous publishing.

Whoever wrote this article took the gutsy road--didn't turn over the information and contacted the ACLU instead. The article details the years (still ongoing and the original letter was received three years ago) he/she has lived with this fight against a government behemoth that looks to be systematically abusing the powers it was granted under the Patriot Act.

See, this stuff tends to get worse before it gets better.

(via Slashdot)

Posted by Oliver Rist on March 23, 2007 07:59 AM

March 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

FreeConference vs. Evil Empire--Minor Spat or Net Neutrality Behemoth?

This has been making the rounds since late last week. Seems that there's a service in the mid-west called FreeConference.com. These guys are a rural-ISP free-calling operation. Their main sale was letting folks (especially small businesses) conduct conference calls for free--or at least only for the price of a typical long distance call.

Last week, Cingular/AT&T, Qwest and Sprint were accused of blocking FreeConference.com for their cell phone customers. (A Cingular/AT&T spokesperson actually confirmed it last Thursday (thanks Kap).) Callers who attempted to use the service received a message saying the service didn't function on that particular network and were then routed to customer service--presumably to be offered conference calling services from these major carriers for additional cost, of course.

Black & white case of evil empire on independent operator? Well let's see. The reason that FreeConference is in the mid-west (Iowa to be precise) is because they run an operation much like a 900 number operator. Rural phone companies tend to charge much-inflated termination fees for calls (that's the charge that the local phone company charges the long distance company for placing calls to wireless numbers in its purview). Usually, these are less than a penny per minute where I live near a major urban center. But in places like Iowa, they've been blown up to 7 cents per minute or more. Ouch.

So guys like FreeConference come in and take advantage of this price buffer to invent services that look free on the surface but still have plenty of money changing hands as long as they negotiate the right deals. So does this make FreeConference a legit target for Evil Empire nuking?

According to Cingular/AT&T, the answer is 'yes' because in the case of FreeConference, AT&T could be forced to pay the termination fees for multiple parties in a con call, while FreeConference and its customers skate. So they're justified in simply blocking the service in order to prevent this possible dent on their ever-precious bottom lines.

According to Oliver, however, the answer is "HELL, #$%@ING NO!" These price discrepancies are INVENTED by the phone companies, for crying out loud. As such, they've created these opportunities. Merely because FreeConference takes advantage of them doesn't give AT&T the right to block any service they happen to dislike.

There's a place where these types of grievances can be aired and resolved: It's called the FCC, and AT&T will no doubt get a much better reception there than FreeConference would.

The simple black and white fact is that this should have gone through the courts before the phone companies were allowed to take this kind of action. Allowing cell carriers, Internet backbone providers or similar resource providers carte blanche control over the content running on these networks is blatantly bad for the e-economy as a whole, hugely negative for millions of small businesses looking for the best deals available, a kick in the crotch for Internet as an independent international community and my ulcer specifically.

FCC: Where are you when we need you?!

'Nuff said.

Posted by Oliver Rist on March 20, 2007 02:15 PM

August 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Electronic Patent Filing Gets Facelift

If your SMB is about a new technology that's all your own, then patent filing is on your horizon. Unfortunately, for many smaller businesses, that's a real problem as a single filing can run as much as $20K depending on how it's applied. The US Patent Office put some electronic filing guidelines out there a few years back so that smaller organizations could avoid middlemen or lawyers, but for the most part these were so Byzantine as to be all but useless unless you hired a specialist anyway.

Until now. If you've tried electronic filing before and been turned off, take a minute and check it out again. The new USPTO guidelines include support for straight PDF files, there's a bunch of new electronic forms and you also get a filing receipt right away. Worth checking into.

Posted by Oliver Rist on August 25, 2006 08:36 PM

May 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

FCC Can Impose Net Neutrality Today

According to a story in Multichannel News by Ted Hearn, FCC commissioner Michael Copps has announced that he feels all this legal wrangling on the Hill is unnecessary. Copps says that the FCC has all the authority it needs under current law to impose a Net Neutrality policy that would ensure that cell carriers and Web broadband providers can't discriminate against Web content providers, Web application hosters and search engine services.

Unfortunately, while Copps is the FCC commissioner, the FCC's chairman, Kevin Martin, doesn't favor a regulatory approach to Net Neutrality. That genius wants to deregulate everything and see what happens even though it's become patently obvious what will happen -- tiered pricing and content restrictions aimed specifically at discriminating at a wide variety of Web businesses and even Web users.

I hope Copps gets his way and gets it soon, but the House Judiciary Committee is getting ready to vote tomorrow on the Sensenbrenner bill that would punish Net Neutrality violations. Not sure how that's going to work since no rules for Net Neutrality compliance have yet to be ratified, but I suppose it's a step in the right direction.

Maybe.

Posted by Oliver Rist on May 25, 2006 12:27 PM

March 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

FCC Messes Up...Big Time

Can't believe it. The Washington Post is reporting (oh, and so is InfoWorld) that the FCC voted to deregulate a big part of Verizon's high-speed data pipe portfolio. That means Verizon can now charge businesses anything it wants for these lines. Also lets them manage those lines however they see fit--that means you can forget about other providers renting them and you can probably expect blockages of certain kinds of traffic--or at the very least surcharges.

You just know I'm going to wind up having to explain the sudden price hikes to all my NYC customers.

And yeah, you can expect price hikes, because Verizon lobbied for the deregs based on their "needing this flexibility in order to more fully deploy fibre...". 'Course, they already had $200 billion for this backin 1996 and that got lost, but who's counting?

Posted by Oliver Rist on March 21, 2006 10:32 AM

September 07, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Reverse Engineering Software?

Don't know what business you're in, but if it's software development AND you're involved in reverse engineering a larger platform in order to present an add-on product, then you'll need to speak with a lawyer.

Sigh.

Seems some game developers and the EFF just lost such a case, which could have dire consequences for folks involved in similar technical projects, both inside the gaming market and out. Software SMBs beware.

Posted by Oliver Rist on September 7, 2005 01:14 PM

EMERGING ENTERPRISE PODCAST

Listen to the latest podcast:

MP3 •

•

• Archive •

Technology White Papers

InfoWorld Technology Marketplace

» Technology White Papers Library

Technology White Papers by Topic

Technology White Papers E-mail Alert