Tech News Today

So in 2008, a company called Integra Communications filed for a “Nexus” trademark having something to do with voice and data telecommunications. Along comes Google a year later and files for “Nexus One.” Trademark office says no go. I’m not really surprised at this; it’s not really their job to determine which is the better or more popular product, but rather whether it is possible for the two trademarks to be mistaken for one another. Oh god! Will you have to scribble out the name of your phone now and write something else?

Nah. I mean, Cisco had a legitimate product out there called the iPhone for years, which was actually in use and still being sold when Apple dropped the iBombshell. They buried the hatchet, probably for an undisclosed sum, but nominally so they could “explore interoperability.” Whatever that means. So I think it likely that Google will call up Integra, say “name the next one something else and there’s a hundred thou in it for you” and in the meantime they’ll just leave the ™ off the Nexus One name.

HTC just hit us up with an official response to Apple’s patent lawsuit filed against them. In short, HTC is sticking up for themselves, naming the innovations they’ve been to market with, and listing some of the industry-wide reckognition they’ve received. Look, we’re not arguing for either side, like whether Apple is wrong for filing suit for whatever reason, or whether HTC actually did violate some of Apple’s patents, but this press release is more of a slight of hand movement than an actual response. Though they do say pretty clearly that they will defend themselves. What do you think? It’s after the break…

Seattle – March 17, 2010 – HTC Corporation today outlined its disagreement with Apple’s legal actions and reiterated its commitment to creating a portfolio of innovative smartphones that gives consumers a variety of choices. Founded in 1997 with a passion for innovation and a vision for how smartphones would change people’s lives, HTC has continually driven this vision by consistently introducing award-winning smartphones with U.S. mobile operators.

“HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions and will fully defend itself. HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation. “From day one, HTC has focused on creating cutting-edge innovations that deliver unique value for people looking for a smartphone. In 1999 we started designing the XDA

The O2 XDA by HTC was the first 3.5-inch color touch screen smartphone in the world in 2002. and T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition The T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition by HTC was the first 3.5-inch color touch screen smartphone in the United States in 2002., our first touch-screen smartphones, and they both shipped in 2002 with more than 50 additional HTC smartphone models shipping since then.”

The industry has recognized HTC’s contributions through a variety of awards including Fast Company’s 2010 Top 50 Most Innovative Companies and MIT Technology Review’s 2010 50 Most Innovative Companies. The GSMA also recently awarded the HTC Hero as the “Best Phone of 2009.” Some of HTC’s technology firsts include:

• First Windows PDA (1998)

• First Windows Phone (June 2002)

• First 3G CDMA EVDO smartphone (October 2005)

• First gesture-based smartphone (June 2007)

• First Google Android smartphone (October 2008)

• First 4G WIMAX smartphone (November 2008)

In 2009, HTC launched its branded user experience, HTC Sense. HTC Sense is focused on putting people at the center by making phones work in a more simple and natural way. This experience was fundamentally based on listening and observing how people live and communicate.

“HTC has always taken a partnership-oriented, collaborative approach to business. This has led to long-standing strategic partnerships with the top software, Internet and wireless technology companies in the industry as well as the top U.S., European and Asian mobile operators,” said Jason Mackenzie, vice president of HTC America. “It is through these relationships that we have been able to deliver the world’s most diverse series of smartphones to an even more diverse group of people around the world, recognizing that customers have very different needs.”

For more information on HTC’s history of innovation, please visit: www.htc.com/history.

• What is it? The first major update to the Scion xB since 2007 • The basics: High-rev V- 10 and rear-wheel drive fun • On sale: Now • Price: From $16,000 Toyota’s youth brand Scion has updated its boxy xB wagon for the 2011 model year, giving it an aggressive new look on the outside and adding more comfort and…

photo via flickr

In a surprising but welcome move, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers today sent a letter to House and Senate leadership stating its opposition to Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s efforts to take away the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA has the ability, known as the Endangerment Finding, to set strict emissions reduction stand…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Every few weeks (and sometimes even more often than that), dozens of techies gather together for regional Startup Weekends —  fast-paced code writing frenzies where entrepreneurs and developers conceive of and build a new application in less than 60 hours (and lose quite a bit of sleep in the process). Many of the apps die off soon thereafter, but some of them live on. And now they’re becoming acquisition targets: Learn That Name, a game that uses your LinkedIn contacts to help you remember the names of your business acquaintances, has been acquired by Gist. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but the LTN guys say they’re “very, very happy” with the result.

Learn That Name was built last August at a Microsoft-sponsored Startup Weekend and won top prize (which was amusing, because it was built for the decidedly non-Microsoft iPhone). The app’s idea came from layer Eric Koester, who was inspired to create it after he failed to remember someone’s name earlier during the event. A team of 14 people came together to build the app that weekend, and since then, a subset of the original LTN team has continued working on it, releasing an updated iPhone version, Palm WebOS app, and Flash app.

The deal is for LTN’s tech assets, and the proceeds are being split among the 14 original team members. Going forward, the standalone iPhone and Palm applications will still be available, and the game is also integrated into Gist’s own iPhone application, which you can find here.  The Gist version will tap into Gist’s database of contacts (the original uses LinkedIn).

For those that haven’t used it, Gist offers services that help you keep tabs on the people in your professional network. The service’s web interface allows you to see past messages and attachments from each contact, news about their company, and their recent messages on services like Twitter. Gist also offers an Outlook plugin that shares similarities with Xobni. Given the business oriented nature of Learn That Name, this seems like a good (and fun) fit.

Given the success of the Learn That Name team, it will be interesting to see if more Startup Weekend teams continue working together following the conclusion of their events.

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Today a report surfaced of an alleged affair between West Coast Choppers‘ Jesse James, and tattoo model Michelle “Bombshell” McGee while wife Sandra Bullock was in Texas filming The Blind Side. Now his Twitter page’s down. His show still sucks. More »

Despite the proverbial “the customer is always right,” the relationship between the customer and the company has long been organized for the benefit of the latter. But the ability for companies to completely control this relationship has disappeared.

Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management, a report from the Altimeter Group released earlier this month, serves to help companies and organizations understand the changing territory. The report offers a thorough framework with which companies can strategize their adoption of social CRM projects.

Sponsor

Based on research with companies who have pioneered an embrace of social technologies for relationship management, the report lists 18 use cases that serve as entry points for social CRM efforts. These include social customer insights (tracking customers’ preferences via social media sites like Facebook), rapid social marketing response (defending the brand in real-time), and crowdsourced R&D (eliciting real-time feedback to enhance innovation).

The report rates each use case by its market demand and tech maturity, indiced to help organizations see which might be the most expedient and appropriate entry points for their social CRM endeavors. It also lists vendors to watch, pointing out that there is currently no single tool to help organizations track customer data and customer conversations in a world of rapidly changing social technologies.

The report has six recommendations for organizations: Breathe social. Complement existing CRM processes. Measure social CRM projects on business goals rather than solely on engagement. Be prepared for rapid change. Find other social CRM pioneers.

The most important, perhaps: Act now. The report cautions companies against falling even further out of step with customers by not engaging with social technologies to expand their CRM processes. Well-researched and with clear definitions, the report could also help companies avoid undertaking social CRM projects merely for the buzz.

Discuss

Update: It’s back!

Twitter has gone down for the count, and nobody knows why yet. Fail whales now dominate the microblogging site.

Twitter is aware of the situation and posted the following update:

“We’re investigating a general site outage since about 8:03pm PDT.”

Not much of an update, but at least the Twitter team is aware and communicating about the situation. While we anxiously wait until we can tweet again, feel free to start your own Twitter conversation in the comments.

Tags: twitter

HTC hasn’t filed its official reply to Apple’s patent lawsuit in court yet, but the company just gave us an updated and expanded statement on the case, saying that while it “strongly advocates intellectual property protection,” it disagrees with Apple’s actions and will “fully defend itself.” Natch. HTC obviously wasn’t eager to divulge whether or not that means it’s going to countersue Apple with its own patents, but we’re sort of expecting it — we’ll find out more when lawyers do their thing in a few weeks. Oh, and
we also asked HTC if and when Google would get involved, but didn’t get an answer — we’ll let you know if we hear anything. Full statement after the break.

Continue reading HTC responds to Apple’s patent lawsuit, will ‘fully defend itself’

HTC responds to Apple’s patent lawsuit, will ‘fully defend itself’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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