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Attempts by eBay to sell Skype could be in jeopardy

One of the hot topics on Twitter at the moment may hit a snag about ownership of technology. Attempts by eBay to sell Skype could be in jeopardy because of legal dispute with founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.

Attempts by eBay to float its Skype internet telephone business in 2010 could be in trouble because of a legal dispute surrounding the technology that makes the system work. eBay is suing Joltid, run by Skype’s founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, to prevent them from pulling the licence to the technology that runs Skype. For its part, Joltid alleges that eBay does not have the legal rights to certain part of its code.

The disagreement occurred after discussions between eBay and Joltid over returning ownership to the founders stalled on the issue of price.

For more details click here to see the Telegraph article

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New York Court Orders Google to Reveal Blogger’s Identity

A New York state supreme court judge has ordered Google to reveal the name of an anonymous blogger who maligned Liskula Cohen, a New York fashion model. The case could restrict Americans’ ability to slag off enemies from behind a veil of Internet secrecy.

The Vogue cover girl has now confronted and forgiven the anonymous blogger who trashed her on a special Web site. Steven Wagner, the attorney for Cohen said the decision would send a message to bloggers about the limits of permissible Internet speech.

Anne Salisbury, a lawyer for the blogger, argued that the raunchy digs at the model were nothing more than “youthful, jocular, slangy” terms – like “sleazebag,” “slime” and “pimp” – that are protected by the courts.

You can read more about this at the following links:
Google ordered to reveal blogger’s identity
Google reveals blogger’s identity to model

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Getting Started With WordPress

Sometimes we get so used to using all the latest tools and tips that it is easy to forget that not everyone uses the Internet or a blogging tool like WordPress every day. Continuing our support series, we are publishing a few tips and tricks for getting started blogging with WordPress.

First of, in the Codex try

A question we often get asked is “What is the difference between a post and a page?”. There are a few key differences between a post and a page, which you should consider before setting out on your first site:
Pages are static entities that you create and edit, and then ere displayed using the Sidebar Widget. On the other hand posts are dynamic and listed in reverse chronological order on the blog home page. You can access posts by using Categories, Recent Posts or Archives and the RSS feed of the blog.

As a rule of thumb, use pages for content which you do not expect to change much, and posts for your daily news and fast changing information.

For example, if you are a startup business and sell a small number of products, you might have a page describing each product. However, to increase your coverage of keywords, you could produce a number of posts describing the products in different ways. Each of these landing posts should be optimized for a different keyword. As a result of doing this,

  • Your search traffic will increase because you’re targeting more keywords.
  • Your conversion rates will increase because your posts have relevant content related to the keywords.

Happy Blogging!

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Join the Perseids tweetup on Twitter

Continuing our current series of posts on Twitter, Newbury Astronomical Society is organising a Perseids tweetup to mark the annual meteor display as the Earth passes through debris from the Swift-Tuttle comet. The visual display occurs every August, as the Earth passes through debris from the Swift-Tuttle comet, creating a spectacular meteor shower known as the Perseids.

The peak viewing time is Tuesday 11th August, but you should be able to watch over several nights if conditions permit. If you want to participate, add the hashtag #meteorwatch to your tweets, to share your observations and ask questions of other stargazers.

Hashtags are a Twitter community convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets, which you add in your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

For more info on the event click here to see Guardian: Tweet a falling star

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Whitehall Publishes A Guide To Twitter

The government has published a 20-page guide to explain how Whitehall departments should use Twitter as part of their communications strategy. The Power of Information taskforce set up by the Cabinet Office has recommended greater use of social networking tools to help broaden government communications beyond traditional routes. Now Whitehall can Twitter away even when they are on holiday!

However, even its author admits that a 20-page strategy paper for government departments on how to use Twitter might be regarded as “a bit of over the top” for a microblogging tool with a limit of 140 characters a message.

If you want to check out a guest post on the subject by Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, on Cabinet Office blog, Click here to read the Template Twitter strategy for Government Departments

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Twitter Hit by Denial-Of-Service Attack

The popular social networking site Twitter has been hit by a denial of service attack, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. In an e-mail to CNN.com, Stone said this morning’s attack is not related to a recent incident in which a hacker stole internal documents from the site.

“There’s no indication that this attack is related to any previous activities. We are currently the target of a denial of service attack,” Stone said in the e-mail. Approximately 45 million people worldwide now rely on Twitter as a communication platform, and a number of them will be greatly inconvenienced.

Denial-of-service attacks are a common weapon employed by cyber criminals to disrupt the working of Web sites. Perpetrators enlist millions of computers to attempt to access a particular site. The site cannot handle the massive increase in traffic, and is rendered inaccessible.

While disruptive and hard to trace, this type of cyber attack is considered by experts to be a relatively unsophisticated technique. The attack itself doesn’t attempt to infiltrate the internal operations of a company’s computer infrastructure. It simply renders its Web site inactive.

Twitter’s status update said: “We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.” The millions of Twitter fans who have been disrupted by this attack will no doubt give vent over the next few days. I confidently expect to see Twitter and Denial-Of-Service at the top of the Google hit chart shortly!

For more on the CNN story Click Here to visit CNN Money

To follow me on Twitter when it is back up, Click on BGT666

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Twitter May face lawsuit in US Court

The popular Social Networking site Twitter is being sued by TechRadium, a Texas-based firm that developed a mass notification and emergency response service that delivers messages to multiple contacts simultaneously. TechRadium has filed a lawsuit in a US district court against Twitter for infringing three of its patents, alleging that the patent it holds for its IRIS (Immediate Response Information System) emergency notification system is being infringed upon by Twitter.

The IRIS system seems to be capable of notifying large numbers of people simultaneously, via different media in a way similar to microblogging sites. Micro blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web. Twitter are not the only site capable of doing this, so perhaps the defence lawyers will be able to cite common practice or public domain.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, seeks among other things unspecified damages, recovery of attorneys’ fees and a permanent injunction against Twitter. Is it me, or does it seem that when ever something really obvious gets to be successful, and have mass market appeal, then the lawyers start lining up for a piece of the action. I confidently predict that someone who has patented a content management system will be filing against WordPress shortly.

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Bidding for Lower Value Public Sector Contracts

Selling to the public sector is often considered too difficult for many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and such opportunities too remote by many companies that could and should be considering the public sector as a key potential customer.

Public sector organisations are good customers because they:

  • have to be fair, honest and professional in the way they choose suppliers and in any dealings with them
  • are less likely to be subject to fluctuations in the market
  • pay promptly and in line with agreed contract terms
  • pay accounts within 30 days (or any other agreed credit period) of receiving a valid bill or invoice

Trading successfully with the public sector will also give you added credibility when dealing with private sector customers.

If you are interested in looking at selling to the public sector, but have no idea how to start, you should visit supply2.gov.uk and fill in the registration form. It will take you about ten minutes, so what have you got to lose?

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Are you a South West Fast Tracker?

Are you one of the elite group, known as the South West Fast Trackers?

The South West Fast Trackers are a highly motivated group of business leaders, visionaries and philanthropists who have achieved a common standard of excellence by completing the Christopher Howard Fast Track to Success. While you are as likely to find them in Maui and Cannes as in the boardroom, you will no doubt recognise their solution focused approach whether it is at a Billionaire Bootcamp in St Andrews, or pounding the corridors of power in London or New York.

TechCo Systems are pleased to be providing IT support for South West Fast Trackers and are looking forward to an invitation to the next reunion. Will that be in Portugal or Fiji? Check out their website by clicking on The South West Fast Trackers