Inxpress, Internet Express, Cease and Desist situation

It may be an April fool joke but I can't see any hints in the text. One of the websites I just about maintain is www.inxpress.co.uk . This started as Internet Express, the first internet cafe in Exeter some time in the last century. I have extended the site to cover not just local web history but projects such as Rougemont Global Broadcasting, an attempt at local televison in the form of YouTube experiments.

I have had a letter from the General Counsel for InXpress Global Pte Ltd informing me that they are the registered proprieter of the trade marks numbers 2548401 and 2550918 being INXPRESS , InXpress and Inxpress. Apparently they think the archive website will lead to confusion on the part of the public who presumably may try to place freight orders in Queen Street where Internet Express last had a site anything could be delivered to.

Strangely they previously tried to buy the domain - http://www.inxpress.co.uk - from me. This may imply some recognition of my right to the domain. I don't wish to sellit as it has a historic value. I think the internet cafes - Internet Express, Hyperactive and Life Bytes - have made a major contribution to local society and have a history that should be recorded in the same way as the local printing industry. There are many links that relate to inxpress.co.uk for this purpose.

What a court would make of this I don't know but it is disturbing that something like this might be considered credible. There has been very little support for local web media and a lot of concern for copyright claims by international companies. Unfortunately I found the legislation supported by Ben Bradshaw MP during the previous government to show little understanding of how social media could operate. Perhaps Jeremy Hunt MP has a genuine interest in local television but he is also concerned with large newspaper groups and existing TV companies.  Vince Cable is no longer responsible for media but perhaps the Liberal Democrats have a view on copyright, web culture etc.

I think there could be more tolerance of ambiguity and crossover in the use of words. Very rarely is there a single search result. inxpressuk.com seems clear enough as a specific route. I have never met anybody confused enough to think an archived internet cafe is competing in the freight business but am happy to make any statement that would clarify this.

Maybe it was just an April 1 joke but there may be "an injunction, delivery up or destruction of all documents containing the infringing signs, damages or an account of profits, legal costs and interest." This is not very funny. 

Tina Brown still has a point re Murdoch Press etc.

I think I am allowed to lift several words in the interest of getting more attention for this story

Did Murdoch's Hacks Bug Diana, Too?

by 

 

Tina Brown

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  • BS Top - Brown Murdoch HacksTim Graham / Getty Images; Nick Ut / AP PhotoThe New York Times’ revelations about phone-tapping at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World sound eerily reminiscent of a phone scandal involving Princess Di.

    I’m shocked, shocked to learn from yesterday's New York Times Sunday magazine that the voice mail messages of celebrities have been bugged for tidbits of gossip—can you believe it?—by the Murdoch press in London. And that the bugging wasn’t, as previously thought, the activity of one lone hack, Clive Goodman, the royal snoop for Murdoch’s scandal sheet, the News of the World. Goodman, known by his colleagues as The Eternal Flame because he never left the office, went to jail in January 2007 for hacking into Prince Harry’s voice mail. The NOW’s congenial editor at the time, Andy Coulson, who insisted he knew nothing of his reporter’s disgraceful tactics, resigned in January 2007 but is currently riding high as PM David Cameron’s communications director. For how long?

    Thanks to The New York Times, a stone has been lifted on a whole squirming zoo of low life in the News of the Screws.

    Thanks to The New York Times sending in a heavy mob of Pulitzer Prize-winners for their story, a stone has been lifted on a whole squirming zoo of low life in the News of the Screws (as it is known in the U.K.). The Times story tallies with the outrageous antics chronicled in one of my favorite memoirs of Fleet Street, the 2005 Piers Morgan diaries covering his era as editor of the News of the World from 1994 to 1995. Piers, soon to take Larry King’s seat as CNN’s prime-time celebrity interviewer, recalls dispatching a reporter, Rebekah Wade, disguised as a cleaning lady in a uniform white hat, to steal for the News of the World all of the scoops in the serial extract of Jonathan Dimbleby’s 1994 biography of Prince Charles appearing in that Sunday's more respectable sister paper, The Sunday Times. “She headed down to the room where the Sunday Times inserts their sections into the main paper," Morgan wrote, "and hid in the loo for two hours waiting for the presses to start.

    that is only the start of it

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-05/news-of-the-world-scandal-did-murdochs-hacks-bug-dianas-phone/

    It is a very fair statement that the New York Times has had a lot to do with this story. The UK press are sometimes reluctant to comment on each other. I think the daily beast blog is well worth following.


    Text culture and new media, Spacex reviews on Landings and Tourist

    I have started to contribute to a review group based at Spacex gallery in Exeter. This is a form of social media. They have a Facebook page but not always much happening on it. The reviews site seems more active at the moment. But it is mostly text. It seems related to academic writing I think. When on the site for Networked Learning I found it difficult to add photos. A sandpit was started for me to try stuff out but i ended up linking to somewhere else. I can understand that text is useful for sociology and learning. But response to an art gallery could include images fairly often i would think.

    Have a look and also try to contribute something with a graphic. The site is based on Tumblr, quite different in look and feel.

    Meanwhile Adobe is not promoting much software that is unrelated to Flash. As if previous forms of communication are about to go away. Scope for discussion here. 

    Tourist take on Spacex starts with taking photos

    Last night I discovered from the Review Group that it is ok to take photos of the Tourist exhibition at Spacex. I had thought that it could be difficult so started with these from the edges.

    Plan A is to play with collage on Photoshop. Next week I will go back for ones by Tim Ellis. Continues till 30th April.

    Why is there so little play provision for older people?

    Like Minds Exeter, will phone video be sorted by October? #likeminds

    Dates are announced for the return of LikeMinds to Exeter in October

    Four days this time so plenty of space for film and music.

    Last year the hardware shown was mostly cameras, from Kodak and Nokia. By October there could be a Nokia model with the new operating system. I think there could be doubts about buying current models given the changes. I am very happy with my Kodak Zi8. I put the card in a desktop some time later. The file sizes are some hundreds of megs. I don't think it is very usual to move this sort of file size from a phone. But I am told that some wifi can cope.

    For the purposes of this blog I am going to assume that by October there will be enough wifi in Exeter to assume such things are possible. A bit vague with details to follow.

    Quality Circles, cqimoso #cqimoso Is the UK on another planet to Asia?

    Recently a video was posted to YouTube that explains the Model of a Sustainable Organisation developed by the Deming SIG of the CQI.

    There has been discussion on the reference to quality circles as some other words may be easier to accept in the UK. There are a couple of discussions on the CQI LinkedIn pages. Not sure how to link to them, you have to log in first. One on the main CQI page - Quality Circles & Suggestion Schemes and one on the MoSO group. 

    I wrote a story for OhmyNews in 2005

    still much the same situation I think. Quality Circles working well in Asia while ignored in UK.

    More later as there is comment on LinkedIn. Briefly what I think is that Deming may have learnt quite a lot in Japan but this is not what you read in the books.

    Printweek in print could do more to promote Jo Francis as blogger

    Thinking about the Guardian support for blogging I had another look at the Printweek blog page. I don't find it easy to follow and it is hard to relate it to the print version. It seems the promotion of the website is now a major aim for the print. there are many links to news stories.   But it is rarely mentioned that Jo Francis writes a regular blog. Sometimes the content is similar to the print but often not. 

    http://community.printweek.com/blogs/printers_devil__its_in_the_detail/default.aspx

    As the Guardian and Haymarket move online and report the changing media scene, the nature of the blog format could be more transparent.

    Guardian discovers blogging too late to link to Talk

    I still buy the Guardian on a Saturday, Monday and Tuesday. Just to see what they write about books, media and education. The coverage of Guardian Talk was so misleading, ie there was none, that I doubt them as a source most of the time. Today there is quite a lot about blogging. It is ok for the public to add comments to a blog apparently and this could be a new form of journalism. I still think that Guardian Talk was closer to getting a reader view. If aggregation is ok then why not just put everyone on Facebook and Twitter? Why have a "news organisation" as newspaper?

    On Saturday in the Review there were a few authors writing about how they have to spend more time now on book promotion. Not very welcome as they may move on to another book and each one should exist in itself as cased pages. No mention of the web or social media. Should they have a look?

    The Guide continues as "random notes on pop culture" so the web coverage tends towards the trivial.

    #Greenmancoming YouTube Zi8 ok for Exeter High Street greenmancoming

    Both the sound and vision are ok for video interviews and the cathedral yard. So the Green Man signifies the start of the time when lighting outside is good enough. the Kodak Zi8 will get some valid results over the next few months.

    This is the finale. The interviews should turn up also. If not try "greenmancoming" , about half the search results are from Exeter. And it is possible there is more than one Green Man.