Category: News and Views

Spotify For Magazines Comes To The US | PSFK.com

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Paris-based startup, LeKiosk, has taken the concept of a physical newsstand and transferred it online. Offering a variety of publishers across genres, ‘a Spotify of the magazine world’ if you will,  they have already been touted as the top Apple app for 2011.  “The world’s first 3-D newsstand” is designed to offer users the chance to peruse content in a visual and simplified manner, eliminating ownership of physical versions yet still offering the chance to save the content. The UK version of the app actually provides a version of a British-style newsstand with a virtual way to scroll through available titles in a simulated version of the real life experience

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Pinterest’s New Business Tools ( Read The Fine Print) | MarketingVOX.com

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Pinterest took a giant step yesterday toward attracting business users when it unveiled a slew of business tools and resources. First among them, a set of “Business Terms of Service.”

Among them, a warning that you pretty much surrender your rights to anything you post there. “Pinterest and its users a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, store, display, reproduce…” (it goes on).

Second that, unlike most business arrangements, this is not a contract: Pinterest may terminate or suspend this license at any time “with our without cause or notice to you.” Third, an indemnity clause. They don’t summarize it on the Business Terms as they do for the personal terms, but the short story is that if Pinterest gets sued over your post, you pay for it.

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Liberty, Undeterred | El Cipayo

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To minimize coverage of an anti government protest in Argentina, the government banned access to the airspace around the event to limit images that could lead a viewer to estimate the size of the crowd, or the actions of the authorities.

El Cipayo simply used a radio controlled model helicopter to get the job done, posting the videos on YouTube.

Big Brother may be here, but the common man is sharing the technology.

Google Android Now Powers 3 in 4 Smartphones | searchenginewatch.com

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Google’s Android platform has reached record worldwide sales numbers, according to analysts. Research firm IDC said that the Google mobile OS is the first to surpass 100 million quarterly shipments in a single quarter.

The platform powered some 136 million handsets, giving Android a 75 percent market share of all shipments. The company noted that Android also saw its shipments rise by 91.5 percent over the previous year’s quarter, a growth rate roughly double that of the smartphone market as a whole.

Analysts credit the soaring sales in part to Google’s ability to build and maintain a large ecosystem for the platform.

“Google has a thriving, multi-faceted product portfolio. Many of its competitors, with weaker tie-ins to the mobile OS, do not,” explained IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo. “This factor and others have led to loss of share for competitors with few exceptions.”

Second in the quarter was Apple’s iPhone.

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Canadian Supreme Court Invalidates Viagra Patent | Wired.com

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The Supreme Court of Canada is invalidating Pfizer’s patent on the popular erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra for failing to openly disclose the drug’s active ingredient, as required by Canadian intellectual property law.

The 7-0 decision Thursday to open Viagra to competition ahead of its 2014 patent expiration underscores a major difference in how the Canadian and United States courts are interpreting patent laws.

Both nations have so-called “patent bargains” that require the disclosure of a drug’s chemical compounds in enough detail so that scientists can replicate it and learn from the invention, thus benefiting society. In exchange, the inventor, in this case Pfizer, gets the exclusive rights to market the invention for a limited period.

But “sufficiency of disclosure lies at the very heart of the patent system,” the Canadian high court ruled Thursday, and “adequate disclosure in the specification is a precondition for the granting of a patent.”

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Frankfurt Turns Offices to Homes | Bloomberg.com

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Vijay Vankadari, who has renovated Frankfurt apartment buildings for more than a decade, used a cheap and plentiful resource for his latest residential project in the city: old office buildings that businesses won’t touch.

Office-to-apartment conversions like Vankadari’s Grand- Westend 24 in the city center are growing in Germany’s financial capital, providing opportunities for landlords hard pressed to find corporate tenants for outdated buildings. Such projects will account for more than a fifth of the homes coming onto the market this year, city government data shows.

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Client Focus | Sent Her Way

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Bryn Jurkins has come up with an idea she thinks will be a hit with busy women. Sent Her Way is a service that ships women their feminine hygiene products monthly, taking away that sometimes last minute trip to the store.   Women can customize their tampon orders eliminating or increasing the quantity for a particular size, something not available when purchasing off the shelf. Add to this the convenience of having the product delivered to their door for a dollar more than they would pay in a CVS or Walgreens.

She came up with the idea while working in sales for a garment manufacturer in New York City. “Whatever you buy in the City you have to carry,” she explains, “So I would have my dry cleaning delivered, my dog food delivered. It’s amazing the things that you can get delivered to you.”

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