1) As was said above, no one will mistakenly buy an iPad instead of one of these railway clocks -- typically the grounds around which these IP infringement cases revolve -- and I'm not even sure if you can even buy this clock anyway.
2) Apple isn't illegally distributing these preventing their creator from a source of revenue they previously had.
This is quite obviously a digital homage to an iconic physical product much like the Braun calculators.
I'm not saying this is a good approach for Apple, or that they're safe from more general copyright infringement, but you've twisted the logic here so badly it misrepresents the issue.
I know, I'm trolling. Sorry. But it's too similar. They should tweak it.
Moving on... for the most part it seems, big financial decisions like this are usually summed up as: "It depends." It's just hard to make reasonable recommendations since the answer is so dependent on each individual's situation.
For home buying decisions specifically, once you get beyond rent vs. buy calculations for X zip code, and into personal spending habits and discipline, work situations, family history, future plans, market trends, investment history and ability, and just general personal behavior, I can imagine it getting very tricky. (Not to mention how do you trust the information provided by the user without a personal relationship with that person or a decent history? Is it pulled from some source? Or are you just asking them?)
I'm curious to see how they handle that.
If they can give actual advice tailored to the individual based on all that supporting data, they have something. But if in the end it's just vague recommendations (essentially, "it depends") then it's just more of the same.
Not to mention the privacy challenges that would come with gathering all that data required to make solid recommendations.
Anyway, and interesting service worth keeping an eye on for sure. Tough nut to crack, but if they do it, they'll stand out.
That was our initial justification/rationalization too... They were public facts. It'd be like repurposing the current temperature. But apparently that's not the case here. They actually own the rights to these facts and they had court cases they won to back it up.
So the scraping was an issue too, yes. Thats probably always a legal grey area. But in this case, it was also just the basic reuse of those facts through any means, scraping or otherwise.
So much so that we couldn't even link to google movies if the URL had a zip code passed as a query. Thatd be illegal since google alone licensed the data, not us. It seems crazy but we didn't have the means to fight it. (Though I'm assuming a programmatic link like this in a commercial app is different than someone linking on their blog.)
The closest analogy I could think of is live sports broadcasts where technically even description or dissemination without consent is illegal. That's why live blogging for example isn't possible in many situations.
Good point. I should have mentioned we weren't scraping Fandango itself though (we were using another source). So more so, how did they know that we didnt have a license to display these showtimes. How did they know we were scraping and not just displaying legitimately. Sure they knew we didn't have a license to display their link, but I don't see how that alone would lead them to the other conclusion. If that makes sense...
TL;DR: You might get a cease and desist or worse for doing things like this. It can be a headache. Be careful.
First, I have no idea about all the legal intricacies or accepted uses in this space, so this obviously may not apply in every case -- especially considering our implementation of this was in commercial software (but if anyone has any plans to implement this approach in commercial software, beware).
Backstory: We built a CMS for small weekly newspapers. One of the features of that CMS was automatically generated real-time Movie Showtimes. This was handy since previously the newspapers would manually add this info to their websites and it'd quickly be out of date (showtimes change occasionally). And while they had this info for their papers, the means to get this data on their sites was painful. They weren't tech savvy number one, but even if they were, these API's from TMS (Tribune Media Services -- the big guys), CinemaNow, etc are all ridiculous. They don't charge based on API call and they are so poorly designed you end up creating wrappers for their APIs and its all a rats nest.
Anyway, our goal was to make this easier, so we did something very similar to the poster -- essentially scraping the web content and repurposing it on their sites. Admittedly its a bit of a grey area, but we figured it wasn't egregious. Especially since most of them already had the data legitimately for their printed papers. Like the poster we also left the Fandango link in there so users could just purchase a ticket online if they wanted. We didn't see the harm. Fandango still got the purchase whether the user got there from Yahoo, Google, or sites on our CMS.
What was the result of this? Cease and desists. First from Fandango. They saw the referrals from our sites, then saw that we were displaying showtimes without being licensed to do so (how they knew this I'm not sure). They told us they had to protect their licenses (they apparently licensed the showtimes from TMS so they felt they needed to act on their behalf or something) so they sent us a cease and desist. Obviously Fandango also passed this info along to TMS too, so next up was a cease and desist from them.
The final result was us just paying to use the API's. Which we probably would have done from the beginning if they made any sense at all. It took many phone calls and emails to get them to create a "special" package in place for us. We figured we could just pay X per API call for showtimes at theaters in Y zip codes. Nope. Their packages seemingly had no concept of modern web services and instead were structured based on strange market blocks each with a daily minimum of requests that had to be made and so on. Not to mention the fact that we needed to do all this for the multiple clients in multiple regions using our hosted CMS (these concepts of software as a service were foreign to them).
It was a while ago so maybe I'm embellishing the ridiculousness of their packages (I'm probably not) and maybe things have changed. But overall, I think it's safe to say, if you plan on scraping these showtime at least don't leave in the Fandango link (they'll find you!). And probably more so, just be careful doing things like this unless you're prepared to read some cease and desists and reacquaint yourself with a fax machine.
Exactly. I'm not sure what the lesson was in that article...
Most everyone has competition. The real task is determining and articulating (to your team and your customers) what makes you better. If you can't do that you're screwed.
Feel free to ignore this if it's something you can't talk about... but can you confirm if Yodlee works with startups concerning licensing costs? Do they do something where you pay based on the number of accounts? Or do they ask for equity?
I've seen a number of startups use Yodlee or CashEdge and I was always curious how they could afford this or how the setup worked. I can't imaging they pay what Mint was reported to have paid (about $2mil/yr) to license the software.
My company uses Bank of America Online Payroll. We are an S-Corp with no full-time employees other than the two founders/shareholders.
The Bank of America option is free if you are depositing directly to a BoA account. Being that both me and my business partner have BoA, this works for us.
The free version also allows you to file all the federal payroll tax forms, which is handy. It doesn't allow you to file the state payroll tax forms though, but if you live in NY (not sure about other states), you can do that all online directly through the states tax website.
You also need to remember to file with your state for unemployment insurance, which is a separate department from the tax department (at least in NY). And if you have other employees who aren't shareholders, you'll also need to register for workers comp insurance.
One trick I'll pass along -- with the disclaimer of talking to your accountant first -- is this:
If you need to minimize payroll costs, you can do some planning and pay yourself once per fiscal year, usually in Dec.
What you do is figure out what you think you need to make this year for a "reasonable salary" and pay that in one sum in Dec. The rest you can take as equity draws throughout the year, saving you the payroll processing expense each paycheck.
If you don't think you'll make enough to get a "reasonable salary", you can take your draws throughout the first 3 quarters, and then in the 4th quarter, try to have enough left in the back so that you pay yourself 1/2 of the total draws so far as payroll (Example: 18k yearly total > 12k over first 3 quarters, then final 6k through payroll in Q4).
This allows you to save some payroll processing costs, and make filing the forms easier -- it's just for one quarter, with the other 3 being zero-returns (which you still need to remember to do over the first 3 quarters).
No problem. I realize this is a start-up centric community, so I should have made my point a little clearer at first. And I do agree about this place. I haven't really participated in it until now, but the community seems really great. Much better attitude and more intelligence all around than others I've seen.
Charging for your application is a big step -- you are making a statement that what you are offering is of value.
I think that if you can offer some premium lever of your software for a price, do it.
My company created billQ (http://www.mybillq.com). Now this is a VERY specific and simple app, but it is very well done (biased?). At first we offered it completely free. This came partly from fear. Is this simple app really worth charging for? After a few months, and a bunch of feedback, people were actually offering to pay us even though we weren't charging. We learned from this, and the latest version now has a premium level that has more features and costs a small amount. And people pay for it.
Most people aren't not going to use your product because of the price, they are not going to use it because it a) isn't useful to them, or b) it sucks. The onus is on you to make the value match the price.
If at all possible, charge for your product. It will not only bring you better customers, but it will provide you with the resources to invest back into those customers. And this is something they are more than willing to pay for.
I would hope more companies put a value on their products. Web apps shouldn't be just commodities in the same way desktop software is not. If everyone relies solely on ad revenue, there will be a lot of cash-flow starved companies out there.
@edw519 - This isn't a start-up situation. As I said, this would be freelance, (i.e., we pay them). And this is for client work that comes along, not an internal project that would be relevant to an equity situation. I didn't think that hiring freelancers when work exceeded manpower was that ass backwards...
@lanej0 - My developer is to an extent, but I was also looking for more resources. Can't hurt to expand right? Also, on your other point, it's tough working with college students because of their schedules. But it is something we've explored.
@everyone - I want to stay away from elance and the like. I'm not looking for someone who can low-ball the best, I'm looking for someone who can do great work. Also, job boards aren't the best either. They are useful for AFTER you get the proposal. I'm looking for resources so that when client work comes in, I'll have some names on hand to contact to determine if I can take on the job. It's kind of a preemptive thing. Too many of these job boards focus on the specific job, not the talent pool.
@tmm - A good way to find designers is to check out design galleries and design communities. That way you will be able to judge the talent pretty easily by the work they've done. A simple email will get the ball rolling. Most designers say whether they are looking for freelance work right in their portfolio.
1) As was said above, no one will mistakenly buy an iPad instead of one of these railway clocks -- typically the grounds around which these IP infringement cases revolve -- and I'm not even sure if you can even buy this clock anyway.
2) Apple isn't illegally distributing these preventing their creator from a source of revenue they previously had.
This is quite obviously a digital homage to an iconic physical product much like the Braun calculators.
I'm not saying this is a good approach for Apple, or that they're safe from more general copyright infringement, but you've twisted the logic here so badly it misrepresents the issue.