WTF Archive

From the What The Fu** department, RedHat has sent a cease and desist (c&d for you home gamers) to the DataPortability workgroup for logo infringement. You see, RedHat uses a symbol that looks like the one to the left. The Data Portability logo is a dark D plus a light P combined to look like "infinity".  You can read the entire complaint here.

My opinion: the logos look nothing alike to me.

Marshall Kirkpatrick shows a picture of a pretzel in the shape of the RedHat logo. I just went to Times Square and food cart operators were closing up due to fear of a C&D on the pretzels they sell. No one wanted to speak on camera in fear of their safety.

Former attorney and Techcrunch owner Mike Arrington notes, "The ideas are what’s important – the logo is irrelevant…Have a contest and let fans create a new logo for you." I agree with Mike and would hope that the contest would allow anyone to enter and the judging would be fair and wouldn’t just pick a "friend of DP". Could be a good way to get the word out about DP past the geek bloggers.

Maybe RedHat is just pissed after today’s Microsoft announcement? We’ve seen how pissy bloggers handle things – they attack. Maybe this is the way pissy operating systems companies handle things.

In all seriousness, c’mon RedHat, let’s make more great products, not worry about a logo. Here are the logos for reference:

Update Wednesday – David Karp tells Silicon Alley Insider that he has no idea what this Norbum is. David’s statement: "I’m not involved with Norbum, I don’t know what it is, and I would never make fun of homeless people."

Update – Thursday – Jakob Lodwick notes that this .org site is not his either.

Here is the title from the press release that the Lemonade widget monetization company put out today, "Finally—a Way to get your ‘Facebook Addicted’ Teenager to earn some Money this Holiday Season". I had to laugh. When I was a teenager, I shoveled snow and worked at the supermarket to make money for gifts. Today teens can just spam market to their friends online and make cash from their homes. Smooth!

Lemonade has created an army of youngsters willing to market anything to their friends to make some dough. Of course Lemonade wants you to only sell your friends on products you love but c’mon, we all know the Sprint phone is going to pay tons more cash than selling your friend on a tube of lipstick. Let’s get real here folks.

“I just made $80 because one of my friends purchased his subscription to SIRIUS radio from my stand,” said stand owner Peter Briggs, a sixteen year old who lives in Fairfield, CT. “It’s so cool to get paid for doing something I would be doing anyway—and it sure beats setting up a traditional lemonade stand, especially in the middle of winter!”

Lemonade widgets can be inserted into MySpace, Facebook, and basically anywhere that can accept the script.

The idea is great and I am sure Lemonade will do very well. Getting teens to market products for free is great. I say for free because the purchase conversion is probably quite low. As I noted this morning, I strongly believe that 2008 is the year of widget monetization and companies including Lemonade will benefit.

Ok, as I sit here eating breakfast watching all of the other people in the "breakfast room" and wondering which are here for SXSW, I checked my Yahoo Mail. I saw the following when I opened the app:

So somehow you can have NEGATIVE inbox mails. Now that is pretty groovy!

Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

Since my first web site in 1995, error messages have always been a frustration for me. Working with hundreds of developers over the years, the error messages can really put egg on your face when you go live. Many times there are swear words in them, they are not properly formatted, the non-english speaking coders show through. I have debated several times as to whose responsibility it is to make sure that they are verified before a launch.

And I completely understand that web sites have errors. We can't always test everything, sometimes in the real world, issues arise that we couldn't plan for. But the key is to get them fixed as soon as possible so that others are not frustrated. What's interesting to me is that small sub-10 people startups get issues fixed quickly while large mega corporations tend to take longer to get problems resolved.

Over the past six months or so, there are reports on Flyertalk that using the Delta web site produces "null" errors. I had my first run-in with a null error about 3 months ago when booking a ticket. Since we know Delta checks the Flyertalk board, you would think someone would get information to the developers to get this fixed and create something that makes more sense. What's worse is that when you call support for help (either in Lithuania or India), they don't understand the word "null" – at least that was what happened the last two times for me.

Today, I am trying to confirm an award ticket. I click "confirm award" and it goes to the page below. A page that is completely blank that says NOTHING but "null". I have tried 3 computers, 6 browsers, same thing.

So off to call Delta support I go. Hold for 27 minutes (phone has a timer) and I get India support who seems to not understand how to get it confirmed. She fixes the "issue" and tells me to try again. I do and now it tells me I must call support "immediately" or the ticket will be cancelled. But she can't help me she says and I now wait on hold another 12 minutes for technical web site support. And now it is fixed. 40 minutes and a lot of frustration later.

Had the error message been clearer about what I need to do, I could have saved time and frustration.  And Delta – I will help you – the errors appear to come (most times from my research) when there is a schedule change.

Here is an image of the error message I received:

This afternoon CNNMoney had a segment discussing their column in Business 2.0 this month (they are partners). The reporter who appears to be one of the anchors of CNNMoney, Allen Wastler (no relation!), reviewed the top 101 Dumbest Moments of 2006 for businesses.

Normally I probably wouldn't post an item like this, but what makes it interesting is that Allen noted that this was the highest hit page for CNNMoney ever. So I had a look to see why. I would say that 1006 Diggs that should help. And this is just on the main URL, there are also Digg's and other social tools for all of the individual 101 pages as well!

• Digg – 1006 Diggs
• Del.icio.us – about 100 favorites

Check out the list as it's worth a look to see what not to do. I particularly enjoy:

• Northwest Airlines
• Vonage
• Starbucks
• Radio Shack

Which ones are your faves? What moments did they leave off?

Looks like we continue the weird but true posts today. I was just browsing through some of the reviews on CN to check for updates. When I clicked onto the Digg review, the Amazon affiliate box down on the left menu showed some interesting products.

The products include: Hellboy volume 2, an Adobe CS book, NY Giants Book, and a Calvin Klein thong. Wait a minute. A THONG. What in the bloody heck is a THONG doing on a content site about Web 2.0 and Social Networking?

Amazon states that the Omakase links are based on the following:

Your page will now display Omakase Links and after a short learning period, the ads will be optimized based on what the Associate has been successful with in the past; what that user has been interested in; and what the site is about.

Now, I have been an affiliate since the beginning of their program and I don't believe I have ever sold a thong. This user has never been interested in a thong (never at my size) nor have I ever looked at one on Amazon. And clearly the site has nothing to do with thongs unless somehow Digg is associated with Calvin Klein or if Jay or Kevin wear them? LOL! Anyway, just shows that matching technology is not perfected yet.