Techdirt. Stories about "3m" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories about "3m"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Alternatives To Time For Healing All Wounds... Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100110/2256387697/dailydirt-alternatives-to-time-healing-all-wounds.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100110/2256387697/dailydirt-alternatives-to-time-healing-all-wounds.shtml
  • Negative-pressure devices speed up the healing process for bandaged wounds by up to 300%. How it works isn't exactly known, but cheap and portable versions are being created and have been used on earthquake victims. [url]
  • 3M has created a silicone-based adhesive for bandages that could hopefully eliminate the question of whether to rip bandages off quickly or to pull them off slowly. And in some 3M employee's 15% dream time, post-it notes for skin are being developed to replace tattoos. [url]
  • A fluffy cottonball-like material made of glass fibers could help heal wounds faster. The glassy fibers actually dissolve into open wounds and provide medicines to stimulate healing, but this stuff has only been tried on a dozen people so far. [url]
  • To discover more interesting science-related stuff, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  
    • By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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    ]]>     urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100110/2256387697     Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:25:38 PST SOPA Supporters Learning (Slowly) That Pissing Off Reddit Is A Bad Idea Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111222/13292217173/sopa-supporters-learning-slowly-that-pissing-off-reddit-is-bad-idea.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111222/13292217173/sopa-supporters-learning-slowly-that-pissing-off-reddit-is-bad-idea.shtml big list of 439 organizations culled both from the Judiciary Committee's website and the letter sent by the US Chamber of Commerce in support of the law.

    We'd noted that there was some backlash towards companies supporting SOPA, but as more and more people recognize how bad these laws are, it's getting more attention. Add to that the awesome power of Reddit... and the whole thing has kicked into overdrive.

    Enemy number one on the list appears to be GoDaddy, with Redditor's organizing a day (Dec. 29th) for GoDaddy customers to transfer their domains away from the registrar. We've discussed GoDaddy's bizarre support for the law in the past -- including the fact that, under the original definitions of SOPA, GoDaddy itself qualified as a "rogue site" since it recommended people buy domains violating the trademarks of lots of big companies. Of course, it's also notable that GoDaddy recently hired a top lawyer... whose previous job was in "IP enforcement" for the federal government.

    GoDaddy doesn't quite seem to know how to deal with the rising backlash on Reddit, and has (somewhat bizarrely) reissued two previous statements about SOPA. The first was what it wrote when the bill first came out, and the second was its filing for the original (November 15th) Judiciary Committee hearings on SOPA. Neither of these statements address the concerns of the folks on Reddit and appear to be very much a "talk to the hand!" response to the Reddit community. I would suggest that this may not have been the keenest strategic move on the part of GoDaddy. And it's not just small domain holders. Ben Huh, CEO of the infamous (and awesome) Cheezburger network of sites is promising to move all 1,000+ of his domains off of GoDaddy unless it changes its position on SOPA.

    Others on the list of supporters are starting to feel the wrath of Reddit for supporting SOPA as well. 3M, who has been a strong supporter is discovering that their customers are not pleased:
    Others are starting to feel similar pressure. It wouldn't surprise me to see some of the companies start backing down. In fact, we're already hearing that some of the companies on the list (especially the law firms) have no idea how they got on the list in the first place. Some of the law firms may have clients who support the law, but that's a big difference from actually supporting the law themselves.

    On top of that, the backlash is coming out in other ways as well. Paul Graham, the founder/head of YCombinator (where Reddit was first incubated) has announced that he will bar employees from any of those companies from attending YCombinator's famed Demo Days. For those in the Silicon Valley/entrepreneurship/startup world, you know that YCombinator Demo Days are a big deal. It's where all sorts of amazing new stuff gets launched, and big deals are made. Barring SOPA supporters from that event can really hurt those companies. Graham made himself clear:
    Several of those companies send people to Demo Day, and when I saw the list I thought: we should stop inviting them. So yes, we’ll remove anyone from those companies from the Demo Day invite list.
    He's apparently told the people in charge of Demo Day invites not to allow anyone from those lists. "I don’t know exactly which companies had people on the list. But I know which will now: none of them." He furthermore told TechCrunch that he'll recommend YCombinator startups not take investment money from any of those companies too: "If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?"

    Either way, what's becoming clear is that even if some companies support the law, it's not because it's good for their customers. It's precisely the opposite. It's because it'll be useful as a protectionist law to stomp out competition or to protect against having to adapt to innovation. In the past, consumers might not have paid attention, but thanks to efforts like what Reddit and others (Tumblr, Wikipedia, etc.) are doing, it seems like those consumers are starting to speak up and make themselves heard. And the end result is going to be bad for business for the companies supporting SOPA.

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    ]]>     don't-mess-with-reddit http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111222/13292217173     Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:27:21 PDT Understanding The Backlash Cost In Copying Someone Else's Work Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080918/0158012301.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080918/0158012301.shtml tons of Post-It Notes. It wasn't clear if 3M, the makers of Post-It Notes was actually involved or not -- but it appears the company is busy at work on its own viral marketing campaign, though it's off to a poor start. As a bunch of folks have sent in, 3M apparently decided to make make its own car covered in Post-It Notes photo after the company failed to license the original photo that was made famous a few years ago.

    Now, I find the people who claim that 3M was "stealing" the concept just as (if not more) silly as those who claim that downloading an unauthorized song is "stealing." 3M tried to license the photo and couldn't agree on a price, so it made its own. It didn't "steal" the idea, it just found it more cost effective to do it on its own (the classic buy vs. build decision). However, it does appear that the company didn't take the backlash cost into account in figuring out that buy vs. build equation.

    This is actually quite important. Often, when we talk about things like plagiarism or copyright infringement, people insist that others will always "rip you off" and copy your work and there's absolutely no recourse. Yet, they fail to acknowledge the importance of reputation. If you are caught so uncreatively copying someone else, without doing anything new or innovative on top of that, it's not surprising that people will call you out, often vehemently, for your uncreative copying efforts. That can have quite a big cost in terms of reputation and credibility, probably a lot more than it would have cost to have reached an agreement with the original creator. So, before thinking it's so easy for big companies flat out "rip off" someone else's creative work, just remember that there are some pretty serious hidden reputation costs in them doing so.

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    ]]>     thinking-things-through http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080918/0158012301