|
Sorry, Boys and Girls, This Fruit is TakenOctober 7th, 2008 at 11:35 amSource:Mashable! Company Name 20-Word Description TalentTrove is a global online talent community created to help individuals share their talents with the world. CEO’s Pitch TalentTrove not only provides aspiring artists and performers with the opportunity to be discovered, but also offers a virtual community for like-minded individuals to discuss their passions, share mutual opportunities, seek advice, and stay connected. Users can create, upload, and broadcast their skills and talents in the form of audio and video files, images, or text. The site even provides artists and musicians from around the world with the opportunity to collaborate with one another. The motivation to showcase talent specifically on TalentTrove is fueled by our promise— be seen, be appreciated, be recognized and be discovered. Mashable’s Take If you didn’t make it to “American Idol” or “America’s Got Talent” or any number of other well-televised auditions and competitions, and yet you’d still like to prove your showman’s mettle, TalentTrove seems like an interesting place to strut your stuff. It wouldn’t have grabbed our attention if it were solely a place to post visual renditions of pop standards or juggling feats or whathaveyou. Much of the content displayed is quite amateurish, so visitors will need to spend some time traveling around the place to get a solid grasp of what it is that makes TalentTrove tick. It’s YouTube, but with an exclusively creative spin. Which some aren’t likely to enjoy very much. On the other hand, some may well benefit from the casual environs. What is especially inviting about the website is its breadth of categories. Acting, comedy, music, dance, food, craft making, and even things featuring animals and writing are all welcome. Again, you may not be entirely thrilled with what’s currently shown, either at the main archive or at TalentTrove.TV and radio.talenttrove. But the service itself offers users many options with which to portray themselves and their work. Which is really half the battle, development-wise. Now, you may have to forgive TalentTrove’s visual presentation. It’s not the prettiest platform on the Web. Not even close. And it can behave somewhat sluggishly. There’s some waiting to go along with a basic browse around the place. But it feels relatively thorough insofar as features are concerned. Again, it can take a few moments to learn what everything is and where it is located. But if you’re intent on producing an upload or two, exploration is simply part of the process. It’s hard to say one way or another whether TalentTrove is qualitatively worthwhile. For truly promising aspirants in fields demanding of excellence, I would peg TalentTrove as a venue ideal only for tossing up bits and pieces in order to see what sticks. But as TalentTrove’s creator states above, it’s a community. And that’s an important point to keep in mind here. It’s nothing to take too seriously. Just somewhere to share material and get some easy feedback. For that alone, TalentTrove is worth the registration. Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials
With the Presidential Debates receiving historic levels of interest, both old and new media are looking to cash in. The latest is Hulu with the launch of Election ’08 Hub, a new site that will stream the remaining two debates live over the Web. The site – which is backed by NBC and News Corp – also includes clips from the previous debates, as well as some of the sketches relating to the candidates that have been aired by the likes of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Daily Show, and Saturday Night Live. The site has already attracted significant buzz for its videos featuring Tina Fey as Republican VP Candidate Sarah Palin, which, like other Hulu videos, can also be embedded elsewhere. Hulu joins the debate action a bit late – we’ve already seen Twitter launch its own election site, C-SPAN offer an impressive interactive video repository, and CurrentTV integrate Twitter into its live coverage. However, Hulu does have the advantage of lots of related, exclusive content from its parent companies, so by luring additional visitors to the site to see the debates, they will have an opportunity to show off what Hulu is all about. The first of the remaining Presidential Debates airs tonight, with the finale coming on October 15h. —Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Hulu: News Corp’s YouTube Rival Gets a NameSuper Bowl Ads on Hulu. Why Not the Game?YouTube to Sponsor Official Democratic DebateHulu - Still Not That Fun If You’re In EuropeLive Talks for Readers & Presidential Candidates at Washington PostFacebook and ABC Debate Showdown: Presidential Popularity Contest?Bloggers Calling for Republican Debate on YouTube
Gizmodo reports that Apple, a company known for being trigger happy when it comes to lawsuits of all kinds, has sued a school for using an apple in their logo. It’s hard to imagine that anyone will ever confuse Victoria School of Business and Technology in Canada with the company that makes iThings. One could say that this is just how intellectual property laws are set up at the moment (in short: if you don’t sue, your trademark is devalued), but I’m not really sure about it. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the criteria for the possibility of confusion between two trademarks, in order of importance (this is just one example, US courts can set up their own criteria): # Strength of the mark # Proximity of the goods # Similarity of the marks # Evidence of actual confusion # Marketing channels used # Type of goods and the degree of care likely to be exercised by the purchaser # Defendant’s intent in selecting the mark # Likelihood of expansion of the product lines Now, I’m not an expert, but besides possibly “similarity of the mark” and “strength of the mark,” I don’t really see much evidence that anyone will ever confuse Victoria School’s apple with Apple’s apple. And I doubt that the school will start producing consumer electronics any time soon. Plus, as Gizmodo notes, you can never look good if you sue a school. Oh well, maybe Apple’s lawyers have to fill some kind of monthly quota and this came in handy. —Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:1 Million iPhones. 74 Days.Apple Lands Deal with MGMApple Tops $200 Per ShareIndependent Labels Added to iTunes Plus DRM-Free TracksApple’s 3G iPhone on its Way?Apple May Soon Offer Movie RentalsIs Apple Re-Entering the PDA Market?
|
Source:
Source:
