My friend, artist John T Unger - creator of copyrighted sculptural Artisanal Firebowls - is getting an unwanted education in copyright law, and is appealing to the online community to help him raise funds to win a federal court case that could have far-reaching intellectual property implications for the original work created by other artists and creative entrepreneurs.

Far-reaching implications
If you make a living as a creative artist or in other creative endeavors, you could easily find yourself in Unger's shoes one day. He is holding a fundraising sale of his most popular artwork to finance a defense in court. You can read all the details of the situation on John's website.

Unger says Rick Wittrig, owner of FirePitArt.com, is not only manufacturing and selling products which are extremely similar to Unger's, but also has brought a federal lawsuit to have the copyrights for Unger's original artwork over-turned.

A one-stop source for everything related to the workings of mobile advertising, this Classic Guide targets executives from brands, ad agencies, media planning and buying shops, publishers, mobile marketing firms, wireless carriers and other marketers interested in reaching out to busy consumers on the go.

MillerCoors LLC is being sued for running a mobile sweepstakes promotion in which it allegedly printed invalid promotional codes on packages of Coors Light.

For this research, we identified 13 parameters that play a role in determining the ROI of Social Media.  It is not necessary to include all parameters in a ROI calculation – pick the parameters that make sense.

The general idea is that for each parameter and calculation, we need to determine the offline cost.  Then, comparing the offline cost with the estimated cost of gaining the same results (increased revenue, decreased cost, more customers etc) using online Social Media, we can determine the ROI (re-read post Social Media ROI – Part 2 for more info).  Note that this spread sheet does not estimate the offline cost. If you, the reader, know these values, I will be happy to add them into the spreadsheet as additional calculations.

Dag Holmboe's three-part series and spreadsheet for measuring social media ROI

Facebook now accounts for almost 60 percent of U.S. traffic to social networking sites, having increased its share of audience by 194 percent in September 2009 compared with September 2008. During the same period, the once dominant MySpace slumped to just 30 percent of overall visits, less than half of the 67 percent share it enjoyed in 2008.

Additionally, Facebook saw its audience grow by around three percent month-on-month from August to September 2009, while MySpace experienced a drop of around three percent, suggesting its audience decline could continue.

Twitter's meteoric growth has resulted in its share of visits increasing by a whopping 1170 percent year-on-year, but it still accounts for just 1.8 percent of social networking traffic, thereby dwarfed by both Facebook and MySpace. It's important to note, however, that Hitwise only records traffic through the Twitter.com Web site, and does not include access through popular third-party applications, such as TweetDeck, which are likely to account for a large portion of Twitter's use.

Tagged received the third largest amount of visits during September 2009 with around 2 percent, and myYearbook rounded out the top five with around 1 percent.

Surprised to see how much traffic MyYearbook is getting.

another wonderful post from Ann Handley. this one's about the dangers of having one's eyes on the slats and not the fence. Who among us can't relate to that!

Brilliant, social, addictive. great promo for the studio

Bombing the moon is going to have consequences. NASA did a really bad thing this morning.