Litigation wrangling has been brewing for some years now as the competition steps up in the smartphone war.

Apple has already had to patch things up with Nokia in a patent-dispute that was launched back in 2009. Their dispute was over patent infringement that included touch interfaces, caller ID, display illumination, and 3G and wi-fi technology. Apple counter-sued Nokia, but ultimately the whole shebang was resolved with an undisclosed paycheck to Nokia in June of 2011.

But the latest round of litigation focuses on internet giant Google, and its alleged infringement of patent protected technology. The litigation also affects the mobile platforms on which Android is served: HTC, Samsung and Motorola.

HTC Excluded from US Imports

Apple scored a victory in December against Android phonemaker company, HTC, when the US International Trade Commission (ITC) agreed that the company had infringed upon two of Apple’s patents relating to “detecting structures in data and performing actions on detected structures”. This ostensibly refers to the technology employed when, for example, a user taps a phone number in a contact list and the phone then calls the number.

The ITC ruling currently excludes future HTC phones that violate the patent from being imported into the US. However, it is not yet known if Apple will pursue the ruling to include other Android smartphones currently sold in the US. Needless to say, the effects of that on Google’s share of the market could be huge.

BT have also weighed in to the fray with a billion dollar lawsuit against Google Android that covers patent infringement for functionality including “a navigation system which includes a fixed part and at least one mobile part to provide guidance information to a user” ie Google Maps.

IBM Patent Buyout

So how has Google responded?

Well, if you thought someone might take the high road in all of this, think again. The digital land grab continues unabated as Google has now acquired 217 patents from IBM.

The patents cover wide-ranging technologies such as transferring web apps between devices and using semantic networks to develop a social network (hinting at Google’s continued development of Google+).

However, the more cynical of observers note that mass patent buying isn’t primarily creatively focused but a pre-emptive strike against future litigation, bought with the intention of slowing down their competition.

How Can the Smartphone War be Resolved?

Ultimately, if the heavyweights continue to focus on stifling each other with lawsuits and countersuits than it will be the consumer who loses out.

But shouldn’t they have a right to protect the technology they have invested in?

And how much is the patent system to blame in what they do and don’t choose to rubber stamp?

We’d love to hear your views, so leave a comment below and tell us what you think.

Beadazzle run two jewellery sites online. One site www.beadazzle.co.uk sells official Pandora Jewellery and the www.beadazzle-boutique.co.uk site sells all other non Pandora Jewellery products. Due to Pandora’s strict selling guidelines, they cannot sell any other products apart from Pandora on a single site.

This meant that if they wanted to buy item Pandora and non Pandora products they would need to place two separate transactions. To make it easier to find products I implemented a Search Suggest feature which is licensed from Code Canyon and modified it to work on Digishop. Then wrote a php script to pull product information from Beadazzle Boutique into the Search suggest script.

Customers can now type in the search box and products from both sites will be suggested to them, and click on a non Pandora product will result in a new window opening for beadazzle boutique. This will hopefully show loyal Pandora customers that Beadazzle sell more than just Pandora.

This script can also be implemented in X-Cart which is what I will be implementing in Beadazzle Boutique.

John and Ginger are official stockists of Dermalogica, Dermalogica Clean Start and Decleor

John and Ginger

John and Ginger 4 Teens

John and Ginger Beauty

]]> http://www.zone1creative.co.uk/blog/web-design/christmas-theme-john-and-ginge/feed 0 http://www.zone1creative.co.uk/blog/seo/why-does-the-page-title-not-appear-in-the-google-serp http://www.zone1creative.co.uk/blog/seo/why-does-the-page-title-not-appear-in-the-google-serp#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:44:30 +0000 Pinakin Patel http://www.zone1creative.co.uk/blog/?p=423 Here’s a little tidbit for webmasters worrying about on site SEO. We have noticed lately that google can override the title tag on your web page and use it’s own title tag in the search engine results (SERP). So if your title tag is non existent or says ‘untitled’ then google will choose a title for you. Or if you have a long complicated title tag, then it will show a simplified title instead. It does still use the title tag for ranking the page. Here what Google’s SEO guru has to say on the matter below:

What is Groupon?

Groupon is a localised daily deal site, that is to say you choose your city and each day a new deal appears on the site, maybe a hotel break offered at a very low rate or a great discount at a particular restaurant. You buy the deal at the price offered, but the deal is only “on” and your card only debited when enough people go for the deal, a number specified by the business seller. The deal is cancelled if at the end of the time frame not enough people have gone for it.

What’s in it for My Business?

The power of voucher sites like Groupon lie in their reach. Groupon itself is a slickly run and marketed operation, with a huge number of users and access via the web and phone apps. As a business, you are getting exposure to a huge audience. In addition Groupon claims that not only do they send new customers business’s way fast, but these usually turn into repeat customers.

But be warned! While Groupon may draw you in with their promise of “you don’t have to send us a penny” -they will take a sizeable chunk out of whatever you take on your deal, sometimes as much as 60% of the money you make. So you’ll need to check and recheck your figures before diving in with your monster offer.

The Guardian recently wrote a pretty unfavourable article -no change there – concerning users’ experiences of Groupon. A lot of their feedback concerned customers having bad experiences with the retailers themselves rather than the site, but some businesses were also none to pleased with the response:

A company that runs boat tours described what it was like to partner with Groupon. The firm said it had received just £6 per person from a two-person voucher for £30. With a boat full of Groupon customers, the firm soon realised it was costing them money to put on the trip. “Groupon would work much better for everyone concerned if they lowered the commission that they take – 50% plus VAT is just pure greed,” the boat company claimed. “Additionally, Groupon holds on to all the funds until the voucher has been used and redeemed. Thousands of vouchers do not get redeemed, and if the use-by date has passed we understand Groupon retains the funds.”

Why use Open Deals?

So we’ve discussed why businesses and customers use voucher sites like Groupon, but why would you build your own site? Isn’t this just reinventing the wheel?

Well, not exactly. Clearly there’s a market for daily deal sites, but the Open Deal module for Drupal seems to be making some pretty big claims. Number one being, as is the norm with the open source platform, the module is free! But perhaps the quick and easy set-up is what’ll prove the biggest draw for developers and entrepreneurs alike.

Have a gander at some of these points and see if you fancy starting your own Groupon style empire! And if you have any feedback on using the module, or indeed Groupon, we’d love to hear from you.

• Easy and Quick Start of a full featured Deals site.
• Based on Drupal 7 and Drupal Commerce
• SEO Friendly
• Loading speed optimized
• Google Analytics E-Commerce integrated
• Free and Open-Source

Just come across an impressive jquery slider on the code canyon website. It does animation and look ideal for an online store.

Try it out here : http://codecanyon.net/item/jquery-onebyone-slider-plugin/full_screen_preview/684613

Full product Information : http://codecanyon.net/item/jquery-onebyone-slider-plugin/684613