Month: September 2003

September 3, 2003

• 

  Thought

  Up2Speed provided commentary on amazon.com’s latest patent in “Amazon Patents Order Forms”:

  “Amazon.com Tuesday received a patent for using existing customer records to accelerate the purchase of something online by filling in details, like billing information.”

  Maybe I’m not reading this and the original CNET story correctly, but it seems that Amazon has patented pre-filling forms on websites with known user information. Can this be? This is standard operating procedure for websites that follow best practices — must we all start paying royalties to Amazon?

September 2, 2003

• 

  Thought

  Great response by Ross Mayfield to a Jimmy Guterman article in B2 on blogs:

  “I believe what Jimmy is saying is that there isn’t a consumer market for blogging and that it isn’t essential for businesses to address it. The problem is we are at the very beginning of a technology adoption lifecycle. Some serious companies have forecasted this market to grow and made their bets accordingly. Every time a journalist tries to wrap themselves around the existing market, what’s visible are early adopters. What stands out are the leaders in using blogs for publishing, who benefit from preferential attachment as the earliest entrants. And if you take the innovator dialogue too seriously it looks like a one-ring circus.”