AIM pages: Staci Kramer at PaidContent.org has the 411 on Phoneline and AIM Pages.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Fun with plagiarism: New York Magazine’s David Edestein wrote an essay on plagiarism that was 99% plagiarized (the first and last lines are the only original things in the entire piece.) The last paragraph gave away the gag: “In this world of Google and Nexis, in which you can pick and choose among so many words written on a given subject, you can’t be sure that anything you read is original. Even this.”

I feel certain he’ll be accused of stealing the idea from someone.

(via: Romenesko letters)

Loser pays: There’s something you may have missed in the heavily blogged decision by a London court against the Beatles record label, Apple Corps, in the lawsuit they filed against Apple Computer. As reported by the BBC, here is the aspect of the case to which I’m referring:

“Apple Corps must pay its rival’s legal bill, estimated at £2m, but the judge refused an interim payment of £1.5m pending further hearings.”

In the U.K. (and most of the world), in a civil lawsuit, the losing party pays the successful party’s attorney fees and other court costs. Sometimes referred to as “loser pays” or the “English rule,” it differs from the U.S. system (the “American rule”) in which both parties pay their own legal fees — no matter who wins or loses. Those who defend the U.S. system argue that “loser pays” would dissuade plaintiffs from bringing legitimate claims — and that would be a loss not only to the plaintiffs (and their attorneys), but to society, as well.

So, hypothetically speaking, let’s say Apple Computer used the U.S. courts to sue some bloggers who were accurately reporting upcoming product launch information. Win or lose, Apple can cause those bloggers to incur a mountain of legal expenses. Even if Apple loses, those expenses must be paid by the bloggers and groups that support them.

To me, the American rule makes about as much sense as the lyrics of I am a Walrus — goo goo g’joob.

2do.2: I may be wrong, but I think they’ve tapped out the whole “to-do” category of Web 2.0 apps. Which leads me to the following advice for Web 2.0 entrepreneurs: If the web application you are developing can be replaced by a 3×5 card, pick another web application to develop.

Technorati Tags: web2.0

Cat’s out of the bag: Kiplinger’s Personal Finance has developed a list of the “50 Smartest Places to Live” in the U.S. and, well, if you live in Nashville, you’re very smart, according to their criteria (factors related to being “fun, vibrant and affordable”). I agree.

Quote:

“Southern hospitality. Gently rolling hills with big, affordable homes.
A mild climate (albeit with occasional tornadoes). Oh, yes, and a
phenomenal entertainment scene that goes far beyond country.”

Technorati Tags: nashville

Please update your RSS feed of the rexblog: The most current feed is this one:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/rexblog_all

The old feed works, but when I was checking out Dave Winer’s new service, Share Your OPML, I noticed the rexblog feed was showing up in two ways: the RSS feed address above and the old one.

By the way, I’ve aggregated into one OPML file a list of lots of feeds I subscribe to (I use a topical folder approach in organizing my feeds that include personal and professional-related feeds, so I didn’t have one long list of feeds) and uploaded it to this page on Share Your OPML. Here is Mike Arrington’s review of Share Your OPML. Can’t wait to play with SYO more later. Steve Rubel has a rundown of what he thinks it can lead to. There  are lots of blog posts today on about SYO –  there are links to them at Techmeme.com, or, as we call it here, the website formerly known as tech.memeorandum.com.

Technorati Tags: blogging, syo, puppy