Hasta La Gadget!

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if its name ended in "pod," it might attract the ire of Apple’s shark-like legal team.

Apple’s obsession with the blockbuster success of its iPod has
driven the corporation to chase
down many companies attempting to use the media player’s three-letter suffix
in their product
or business names. Names that have come under fire include MyPodder, TightPod, PodShow, and even Podium. On Monday, Sector Labs, a small business whose Video Pod trademark has been blocked by Apple, took legal action to fight
back.

"It
appears that Apple is not only trying to put an iPod in everybody’s
hands and white earbuds in everyone’s ears but to control the use of
our language and most particularly the word ‘Pod,’" Sector Labs’
lawyers wrote in a 239-page response to Apple’s trademark opposition,
which has blocked Video Pod’s development. "If we are not careful, in
Apple’s quest for dominance, they will soon attempt to take over the
words ‘Phone’ and ‘Tunes’ — let us hope they do not attempt a coup over
the exclusive rights to the letter ‘i’."

Apple’s trademark scuffle with Sector Labs is not unique. The corporation began cracking down
on businesses attempting to use the word "pod" as far back as 2006. One
of the earliest examples involved Podcast Ready, which developed a
podcast-downloading application called MyPodder. Apple sent a cease-and-desist
to Podcast Ready, claiming that "pod" has become commonly associated
with Apple’s famous iPod, and using the three-letter word could cause
consumer confusion. Apple subsequently took the same action
against several other companies, including TightPod, an independent
business that sold protective covers for notebooks, which later renamed itself to TightJacket.

A low-profile example involved a start-up called PodShow, a social networking web site for video podcasters. Though the start-up later renamed itself to Mevio
to coincide with a site redesign, it’s worth noting that Apple in June
2008 filed an opposition to the company’s usage of PodShow. Seven
months later, Apple withdrew that opposition [pdf]. 

A Hoovers search query turns up about 600 companies that use the word "pod" in their name, including Peapod and PODS International. But clearly, Apple hasn’t given up on the battle for this word. Just last week, Apple sent a cease-and-desist letter to Pivotal,
a company marketing an iPhone stand called Podium. In that letter,
Apple cited the same reasons — consumer confusion and protecting its
intellectual property. Pivotal told Wired.com
that it plans to file a formal response to Apple on Wednesday.

"I absolutely understand a company
protecting their intellectual property," said Scott Baumann, president
of Pivotal, in a phone interview. "But to start taking ownership of the
letters P-O-D — a word that’s in the dictionary — certainly seems
far-reaching to me. It certainly seems like a stretch."

Though
Sector Labs’ response to Apple was published only Monday, the
start-up’s trademark scuffle with Apple over Video Pod began March 6,
2007, when Apple filed an opposition to the registration of the Video
Pod trademark. In the face of that opposition, Sector Labs halted development and funding of the product. Apple then filed a motion for summary judgment — asking for a ruling to be made without going to trial.

But rather than throw in the towel, Sector Labs owner Daniel Kokin filed a response to Apple’s motion for summary judgment, continuing the fight. In its response, Sector Labs claims the Video
Pod, a video projector designed to work with a DVD player and other
input devices (not the iPod), has been in development since 2000 — a
year before Apple launched its first iPod. Sector Labs’ legal team added that Apple has the burden to prove that a probability of consumer confusion exists.

"The
ordinary reasonable consumer must be confused about the source of the
Video Pod itself," Sector Labs’ response reads [pdf]. "Apple’s opposition
falls far short of establishing that it is probable that consumers
would actually be confused."

Pinnacle Law Group principal Eric
Farber, who is representing Sector Labs, said Apple’s intention is
clearly to intimidate smaller companies who would more easily fold under the
pressure of a corporation as large as Apple.

"Apple is using
their power and strength to attempt to knock out very legitimate marks
at a stage for start-ups that is very critical, where a great many of
them don’t have the money to fight a behemoth like Apple," Farber said
in a phone interview.

Apple’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Apple’s fans typically leap to defend the corporation, but Wired.com
readers commenting on last week’s story about Podium unanimously
disapproved of Apple’s actions.

"Apple’s got a good point about such flagrant use of the syllable ‘pod,’" commented Max Beta.
"Why, just last week I was tricked into going into the office of
someone who claimed to be some kind of ‘doctor.’ The guy didn’t know
anything about music or iPods®, and he had some kind of weird foot
fetish. You shouldn’t be able to call yourself a podiatrist unless you
are associated with Apple in some way!"

Apple must file a
response to Sector Labs by April 1, and then Sector Labs will have the opportunity to respond as well.

Photo: Gaetan Lee/Flickr

If you shrug off Terminator and Battlestar Galactica as never-gonna-happen impossibilities, PW Singer has news for you. His spine-tingling book, Wired For War, carefully explains the robotics revolution that’s gripped our military since 9/11.

If you believe Singer (shown at left with an unarmed robot), the biggest revolution happening in the world today is the one taking place in military robotics, unmanned fighting systems, which were next to non-existent before 9/11, and have multiplied exponentially since the Iraq invasion of 2003.

You don’t have to read Wired for War (or Gizmodo) to know why military robots are awesome: On the battlefield, they won’t hesitate to take a bullet for you, and when they bite it, you don’t have to go and tell their mama how sorry you are. But robots are no longer just an extra layer of protection for our flesh-and-blood warriors, they are a new fighting force—the US has 12,000 on the ground and 7,000 in the air—that are changing the way the generals see the battlefield, and the way soldiers define what it means to fight.

I got in touch with Singer after Wired for War was published, and the cool, calm way he explains how different the world will be from now on—how the extended conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned robots from novelty items to autonomous killing machines, how cute dormroom debates over Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics have morphed into heated arguments at the Pentagon—has really got me convinced.

This week we’re celebrating the book with a series of posts on topics it covers, but at first, it’s time for you to hear from Singer himself, and drink in some of that truth. As he himself would say, citing The Matrix, it’s time to swallow the red pill:

Giz: One of the biggest purposes of your book is to make, for the first time, a compelling argument for the reality of the scary sci-fi future, right?

PWS: There are a couple of points of the book. One, to sell lots of books. Two, to get our heads out of the sand when it comes to the massive changes happening in war, to say this is not science fiction but battlefield reality. Next, this is not the revolution that Rumsfeld and his people thought would happen. You may be getting incredible new capabilities, but you’re also getting incredible new human dilemmas to figure out. The fog of war is not being lifted. Moore’s law may be in operation, but so is Murphy’s law. Mistakes still happen. The final aspect is to give people a way to look at the ripple effects that are coming out of this, on our politics, the warrior’s experience, our laws, our ethics.

We’re experiencing something incredibly historic right now, and yet no one is talking about it. Think about the phrase “going to war.” That has meant the same thing for five thousand years. It meant going to a place where there was such danger that they may never come home again, may never see their family again. Whether you were talking about my grandfather’s experience in World War II or Achilles going off to fight the Trojans.

Compare that to what it means in a world of Predator drones, already. One of the pilots I interviewed says you’re going to war—for 12 hours. You’re shooting weapons at targets, killing enemy combatants. And then you get back in your car and you drive home. And 20 minutes later, you’re sitting at the dinner table, talking to your kids about their homework. So we have an absolute change in the meaning of going to war, in our lifetime right now, and nobody was talking about it.

Giz: That’s mind blowing. The thing you’re hitting on here is the role of humans in war. Many argue that you can’t take the human being out of war, but will there be a time when robots just fight robots? And what’s the point? Doesn’t there have to be a human target? If robots fight robots, who cares?

PWS: Basically you’re asking the question that’s the famous Star Trek episode [“A Taste of Armageddon,” TOS 1967], where two machines fight each other, they calculate what would happen, and then a set number of humans are killed based on the computer calculations. That’s how they do the wars.

If we do get to that scenario, is it war anymore? We’d have to reconfigure our definitions. This is something we do. Some people back in the day thought that the use of guns was not an act of war, it was murder. It was a crime to use guns. Only cowards used guns. Well, we changed our definitions.

Giz: But the human has always been in the target of whatever murderous weapon—I’m asking what happens when Predator drones on our side go after Predator drones on their side over the Pacific Ocean.

PWS: It’s not a theoretical thing. Is that war anymore? Or does it take away the valor and heroism that we use to justify war, and just turn it into a question of productivity? Maybe that’s where war is headed.

But things don’t always turn out as you described. Every action has a counter-reaction. You develop these systems that give you this incredible advantage. But as one of the insurgents in Iraq says, you’re showing you’re not man enough to fight us [in person]. You’re showing your cowardice. You’ve also shown us that all we have to do is kill a few of your soldiers to defeat you.

Another one says that you are forcing my hand to become a terrorist. Say you get to drones vs. drones. Someone else will say, “A ha! That’s not the way to win. The way to win is to strike at their homeland.”

And with drones on drones, this very sophisticated technology, you’re also taking war in a whole ‘nother direction. Because now the most effective way of defeating drones may not be destruction, it may be wars of persuasion. That is, how do I hack into your drones and make them do what I want? That may be better than shooting them down.

Or, if they’re dependent on communication back to home, I’ve just pointed out a new vulnerability. The high tech strategy may be to hack them, and disrupt those communications, but of course there’s a low-tech response. What’s an incredibly effective device against the SWORDS system, a machine-gun-armed robot? It’s a six year old with a can of spray paint [says one military journalist]. You either have to be bloody minded to kill an unarmed six year old. Which of course will have all sorts of ripple effects, such as who else will join the war and how it’s covered. Or you just let that little six year old walk up and put spray paint on the camera, and suddenly your robot is basically defused.

Of course, in a meeting with officers from Joint Forces Command, one of them responded, “We’ll just load the system up with non-lethal weapons, and we’ll tase that little six year old.” The point is, robotics are not the end of the story, they’re the start of the new story.

Giz: Okay, so if everyone can get their hands on a crate of AK-47s these days, will robots be traded like that, on the black market? How can countries without technological sophistication make use of robots?

PWS: There is a rule in technology as well as war: There’s no such thing as a permanent first-mover advantage. How many of your readers are reading this on a Wang computer? How many are playing video games on an Atari or Commodore 64? Same thing in war: The British are the ones who invented the tank, but the Germans are the ones who figured out how to use the tank better.

The US is definitely ahead in military robotics today, but we should not be so arrogant as to assume it will always be the case. There are 43 other countries working on military robotics, and they range from well-off countries like Great Britain, to Russia, to China, to Pakistan, to Iran. Just three days ago, we shot down an Iranian drone over Iraq.

The thing we have to ask ourselves is, where does the state of American manufacturing, and the state of our science and mathematics education in our schools take us in this revolution? Another way to phrase this is, what does it mean to use more and more “soldiers” whose hardware is made in China, and whose software is written in India?

A lot of the technology is commercial, off the shelf. A lot of it is do-it-yourself. For about $1,000, you can build your own version of a Raven drone, one of the hand-tossed drones [which you launch it by throwing in the air, shown at left] our soldiers use in Iraq and Afghanistan. What we have is the phenomena that software is not the only thing that has gone open source. So has warfare. It’s not just the big boys that can access these technologies, and even change and approve upon them. Hezbollah may not be a state, may not have a military, but in its war with Israel, it flew four drones.

Just as terrorism may not be small groups but just one lone-wolf individual, you have the same thing with robotics and terrorism. Robotics makes people a lot more lethal. It also eliminates the culling power of suicide bombing. You don’t have to convince a robot that it’s going to be received by 70 virgins in heaven.

And about not being able to get it like an AK-47. Actually, two things. One, there’s a bit in the book about cloned robots. One of the companies was at an arms fair and saw a robot being displayed by a certain nation in their booth. And they’re like, “That’s our robot, and we never sold it to them. What the hell?” It’s because it was a cloned robot.

And two, there’s a quote, “A robot gone missing today will end up in the marketplace tomorrow.” We’ve actually had robots that have been captured. We actually had one loaded up with explosives and turned into a mobile IED.

Giz: So, in other words, only a few years after being deployed, they’re already being turned against us.

PWS: This is war, so of course it’s going to happen. It doesn’t mean the AK-47 is disappearing from war. War in the 21st century is this dark mix of more and more machines, but fights against warlords and insurgents in the slums. Those players are going to be using everything from high-tech to low-tech.

[Wired for War website; Wired for War at Amazon]

Best Buy, like many other stores, has a public “price matching” policy. But HD Guru reports that according to internal docs, personnel are trained to deny price-matches and even paid bonuses for shutting them down.

This all comes out of a lawsuit that was just granted class action status. Internal documents, plus depositions from past and current Best Buy employees reveal just how evil Best Buy is. A price match is when, say, Circuit City advertised a Sharp HDTV for cheaper than Best Buy, Best Buy’s public policy is to match that price.

But Best Buy actually trains employees in New York how to deny legitimate price match requests, and the average Best Buy store denies 100 price matches a week. You even get paid bonuses based on how many price matches you deny!

Here’s how it works, according to Phil Britton, a member of Best Buy’s Competitive Strategies Group:

What is the first thing we do when a customer comes in to our humble box brandishing a competitor’s ad asking for a price match? We attempt to build a case against the price match. (Trust me, I’ve done it too). Let’s walk through the “Refused Price Match Greatest Hits:

“Not same model? Not in stock at the competitor? Do we have free widget with purchase? Is it from a warehouse club (they have membership fees, you know)? Limited Quantities? That competitor is across town? We’ve got financing! Is it an internet price? It’s below cost!…..”

If you live in NY state, and you’ve been screwed by Best Buy’s anti-price matching, HD Guru has further info on the attorney to contact so you can take a piece out of Best Buy. What a bunch of scum.

Update: Giz reader Jake reveals how they scam you on model numbers to avoid price matching:

Example: A few months ago my wife and I were looking at a Frigidaire Washer. The model we were interested was the ATF8000FS. At Best Buy, we found the washer there however it was displayed as the ATF8000FSL. At first I figured “Oh this must be some variation on the original model number, like how manufacturers sometimes add a letter to the end of the model to indicate the product color.” Anyways, to make a long story short, this ATF8000FSL was not available from the manufacturer.

The “L” was added on by Best Buy in order for them to skirt around price matching. This is so no one can come to Best Buy and claim to have found a lower price of this product because no one else sells the product under the model number ATF8000FSL. It’s ATF8000FS everywhere else. Best Buy will tell people that its simply a different product, so therefore, no price matching. Even on the manufacturer’s sticker on the washer, it said ATF8000FS, as it was supposed to. Upon further investigation I could see that Best Buy’s internal computers even listed the model as ATF8000FSL.

Pretty scammy. [HD Guru, Image: bdjsb7/Flickr]

Want to save a little money and have a little scientific fun by making your own ice cream? If you normally spend more than $35,000 on a tub, then you could do both with the N2-G4 NitroCream, a rather startlingly priced ice cream machine which pumps liquid nitrogen into cream or yoghurt to create delicious, smooth and crystal-free helados.

The NitroCream isn’t really aimed at the home user, but that hasn’t stopped the company making this odd claim on its site: “The New NitroCream brand N2-G4 is geared not only for the experienced ice cream or gelato connoisseur, but for the novice as well." [emphasis added].

The operation is simple. Mix up your creme anglaise or cream and fruit combo of choice and the 110v machine adds liquid nitrogen. That’s pretty much it. The machine is clearly aimed at commercial concerns, and the site touts the advantages of instant, on demand cones with no freezer storage required, along with the obvious customer-luring qualities of the spectacular show.

If you really do want to makke this at home, you can. Just get ahold of some N2 and stir it into your mixture. Just remember to wear some thick gloves.

Product page [NitroCream via Uncrate

Popular fashion festival the Tokyo Girls Collection (TGC) has released a chilled cup beverage called Collaboration Blend: Royal Milk Tea. The special edition beverage is available exclusively at Lawson convenience stores and went on sale March 10th, just a few days after the latest successful edition of the event.

While the TGC is produced by influential fashion and lifestyle portal site Girlswalker.com, it is the recognizable pink logo of the TGC that is displayed more prominently on the packaging and in-store promotional material. According to the press release, the executive committee of the TGC selected the blend of Assam tea and fresh cream and the ladylike pink stripe of the package design.

What’s more, on the back of the package and above the requisite nutrition information, is a QR code that links to the TGC mobile website where consumers can check out photos and reports from the recent show. This feature works to reinforce the link between the product and the event.

Trend Potential
CScout covered the fashion show in-depth, but for us the most interesting aspect is the e-commerce integration and collaborations that have made Tokyo Girls Collection such as hit. Our mini reports on collaborations, including lots of descriptions and photos, are available in the Mobile Trendpool.