not sure you pay attention to such things, but apple sent a 'cease and desist' letter to podcastready.com, claiming trademark infringement of the word 'podcast.'
wired.com's listening post blog reports the story here.
three thoughts:
1. this is silly. not just a bad pr decision. not just misguided or off-base. it's silly. apple should be ecstatic that 'podcast' has become such a ubiquitous term. IT'S HELPING THEM SELL IPODS!!!!! not to recognize this is unbelievably naive, and it's incredibly silly of them to make an issue out of this.
2. um, didn't we already go through this with apple about 25 years ago??? they refused to license their o/s. microsoft licensed it to everyone. and we didn't hear from them again until they released the ipod. this obviously isn't nearly as bad a decision as the o/s decision, but it's the same control freak mentality.
3. apple is much like starbucks in that they work REALLY, REALLY hard to keep a young, hip vibe. but maintaining that vibe as a multi-billion dollar company is ridiculously difficult. every once in a while something like this happens and 'the corporation' slips out. unfortunate. makes me a bit sad to see the curtain pulled back to reveal the machine.
brings up an interesting point though: since american culture is in many ways defined by the corporation/the institution and since that often entails that people feel like account numbers rather than people, the church has a great opportunity to set itself apart by offering not an institution but a community.
