Marketing blog for Houston web marketing. Strategic marketing and sales promotions.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Further marketing responses on intellectual property rights

http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/10/03/software-patents-a-personal-story/comment-page-1/#comment-4541

Speaking of 20 year patents, let’s also talk about 99 year copyrights and unlimited time trademarks. I’m really disappointed at that there are individuals here who want to remove patents that protect individuals and small companies.

If a developer doesn’t like software patents, the best thing he can do is to upload all his code with complete explanations to the web. This way, anyone trying to patent will run into an enormous wall of software developers’ prior art.

And, it seems only fair, if inventors can’t have software patent rights, developers shouldn’t have software copyrights either. And no trademark rights, which means, anyone downloading the code should be able to put his name on it, and sell it. And no open source licensing copyright. I should be able to copy your code, call it my own. I guarantee I can always sell your code for a lower price such that it better benefits the public and other coders at a lower price. If the developer has employees, as for example Google, and the employee makes a copy of their code, I guess he owns another Google. (Goldman-Sachs just caught a developer stealing their financial market timing code—I guess that’s OK, according to postings here, because they shouldn’t have any copyrights either.)

Programming skills are becoming cheaper, especially with international outsourcing. Your ideas, patents, copyrights, and trademarks may benefit you someday. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks are usually designed to help the smaller guys. Because they are rights, they can be used by larger firms too.

But, the way some developers talk about them, they want to destroy the very few rights that individuals and smaller firms can use to fight against the larger firms.

Labels: ,

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Instant Turnaround

Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard
By: Harry Paul, Ross Reck

I was surprised that I actually like this book. Usually small, motivational books like these, I consider junk.

Anyhow, this is really a book about company culture, not really about turnaround. It tells through an easy-to-read story of how to motivate by being nice, being trustworthy. Getting employees to like going to work.

This is a fun, fast read. It’s a fun read because it captures the essence of a positive-happy culture by telling an easy-to-read story.

The problem with this type of book, typically written by consultants rather than management, is that it assumes all employees prefer to be productive and like their work and are trustworthy. These are factors that are ingrained within the individual well before their first day at work. And employees are wanting; which means some employees want more than others and are willing to take more. It’s not so easy.

Basically, a leader will be able to motivate if he originally has staff that has potential and wants to be motivated. Alexander the Great wouldn’t have been, except he had a great army his father gave to him. Lou Gerstner (of IBM turnaround) wouldn’t have his turnaround in culture success, except, as he states in his book, he already had top people. Part of the hard part of how to do turnaround is knowing whether one has good staff to begin with and who to keep.

Nevertheless, because this book is a charming read, it’s easy to remember its material, which is why I give it a 5 star.

Labels: ,

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Web coupons, used in strategic integrated marketing

Coupons are one of the easiest ways to gain sales, primarily because coupons are easy to understand. But how do these work on the web? Coupons can be very effectie for small businesses with direct marketing force.

WebAndNet's coupons' are text modifiable, emailable, and graphics changeable. Ask how these are different!

Labels: ,