Complete with “The Mapple Store,” a “MyPod,” a $1200 “MyBill,” and a Bart voice-over of a “Steve Mobs” keynote, the animated series completely nails the stereotypes of Apple products, employees, and users. Check it out in the video below:

---
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Stephen Colbert Parodies on YouTube = Legal
SimpsonizeMe: Make Your Own Homer
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1 Million iPhones. 74 Days.
MySpace Meets The OC
800 Apple Employees Lose their iEmployment
5 Very Simple Ways to Create an Avatar

American Airlines (AMR) says so, and last year sued Google (GOOG) over the ads. The two parties quietly settled, so when AA (AMR) turned on Yahoo (YHOO) next, we thought Yahoo would settle as well. But as Law Prof Eric Goldman notes, Yahoo is fighting back.

It's hard to see the sense in Yahoo duking this one out. On one hand, if Yahoo really feels they have the legal high ground, slapping down the American Airlines lawsuit protects the company from copycat complaints that could eat into Yahoo's business. But as Goldman notes, the law is very murky here: Do "nominative fair use" rules apply, "commercial referential trademark use," or something else? When even the law school professors aren't sure, Yahoo can't be sure either. If AA makes a court figure this all out and Yahoo loses, then new lawsuits seem all but certain.

Meanwhile, it seems Yahoo isn't even running the offending advertisements any more. The above graphic comes from an October screenshot when we first reported on the AA case. Search Yahoo for "american airlines" today and get the following:

See Also: American Airlines Wants More Search-Settlement Money, Targets Yahoo

Required: Adobe Flash 9+, High Speed Internet Connection

See Related Blog Article

Creating PDFs

• Basics for PDF Creation
  Understanding the differences between printing to PDF and the PDF Makers installed by Acrobat.
• Creating Custom PDF Settings in Word
• Email Archiving
• Web Capture
• Scanning Paper Documents to PDF with Acrobat

Combining PDF

• Creating a PDF Binder
  A single, multiple-page PDF from many sources
• Creating a PDF Portfolio
  Create a Deal Binder using a PDF Portfolio
• Creating an eBrief
  Combine a word processing file and cites into a well-organized, hyperlinked and bookmarked eBrief

Working with PDFs

• Creating and working with Bookmarks
• Creating and working with Links
• Compare Two PDFs
• Making Edits to PDFs with the Touchup Text Tool
• Changing the version of a PDF
  • Check versions, change versions, change multiple PDFs
• Splitting a PDF by file size, pages or bookmarks
• Exporting a PDF to Word (and other word processors)
• Removing hard line endings from copied text
  (for citing and easier re-use)
• Extracting a Non-sequential range of pages from a PDF
• Replacing pages in a PDF

OCR

• ClearScan vs Image+Text OCR
• OCR multiple files at once using the OCR Multiple feature

Search

• Find and Search: Understanding the differences
• Creating a Full-Text Index for faster searching

Security

• Checking and Removing Security on a PDF
• Password Security: Applying Passwords, Security Policies

Legal-specific Features

• Redaction
• Bates Numbering
• Metadata Removal

Forms

• Understanding Form Field types
• Creating a Form with the Forms Wizard
• Set font and wrap for Text fields
• Field formatting and validation
• Duplicating fields, Creating Calculations
• Reader-enabling a Form
• Form Data Collection
• Flattening Forms
  Make form fields a non-editable part of the document layer

Collaboration and Commenting

• Add Comments to a PDF (basic)
• Exploring Comments Types
• Working with the Comment Panel
• Create a Comments Summary
• Document Co-Navigation
• Using the Typewriter tool to type on a PDF
• Understanding Email Review
• Understanding Shared Review
• Creating a Custom Stamp
• Flattening Annotations
  Make comments a non-editable part of the document layer
  

]]> Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:14:50 +0000 pdf multiple-page pdf pdf makers pdf binder custom pdf settings pdf ocr pdf portfolio fields text fields Acrobat Legal Training Movies http://www.softratty.com/article/2a98ece096fd27baa1f5ae740b81fb80 http://www.softratty.com/article/2a98ece096fd27baa1f5ae740b81fb80

January 2008

With the start of 2008 came a handy “how-to” guide for moving Netscape 9 users to Firefox 2. Recall, AOL had announced they would discontinue support for Netscape 9 (based off of Firefox 2) in February 2008.

While the below “We Remove Vista…” photo was taken back in October 2007 at A&D Computer in Milford, NH it appeared in Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog (now The Microsoft Blog) in late January.

Included in January were three Add-Ons Reviews.

• Organize Search Engines, allowed Firefox users with lots of search engines a better management system to keep their search engines organized. Think of the Manage Bookmarks functionality, except for search engines. 
• Tab Effect, was a bit of a ‘novelty’ extension that I didn’t keep loaded for very long.
• URL Link, a powerful and highly customizable add-on which allows you to add options to the context (right-click) menu for handling URL links

January 22, 2008 marked Ten Years of Mozilla, a celebration that would last most of the year.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (January 22, 1998 ) — Netscape Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: NSCP) today announced bold plans to make the source code for the next generation of its highly popular Netscape Communicator client software available for free licensing on the Internet. The company plans to post the source code beginning with the first Netscape Communicator 5.0 developer release, expected by the end of the first quarter of 1998.

Also in Mozilla news, John Lily was announced as New Mozilla Corp CEO succeeding Mitchell Baker. Mitchell would remain as Mozilla Foundation’s Chairman.

2008 also brought some much needed good news about Thunderbird. David Ascher head of MaiCo (now Mozilla Messaging) had posted an extensive article Thoughts on Thunderbird’s Evolution on his blog. At the end of January came Thunderbird 3 Plans for 2008. The plan included both purposed features and time lines.

Due to the increasing popularity of the Get a Mac ads we added a Get a Mac Category. Released during the NFL playoffs and in response to a Wall Street Journal report, Get a Mac: Referee. Also this month was a the slightly annoying Get a Mac: Time Machine ad.

A great photo of Canadian Firefoxen by Rick MacWilliam/Edmonton Journal:

February 2008

The Future of Yahoo! was being questioned with an unsolicited offer from Microsoft at the end of January. Little did we know that this would become a wild and confusing roller-coaster ride that even today has yet to end (though Steve Ballmer thinks it has).

Big news for Add-ons this month with 600-Million Add-Ons Downloaded. A sneak preview of the new AMO 3.0 gave us a glimpse of the new and improved AMO engine. Also came news FoxyTunes was Acquired by Yahoo Music.

Firefox hit the 500 Million Downloads milestone on February 22nd. During the month of February, Firefox 2.0.0.12 and Firefox 3.0b3 were released.

On February 7th, the Mozilla CEO John Lilly was interviewed on The GigaOM Show. Part of the year long 10-years of Mozilla celebration was the Launch of mozilla.org on February 23, 1998.

On February 19th, David Ascher announced the official creation of Mozilla Messaging (has unofficially been called MailCo for the past few months). This is a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, focused on email and internet communications. While on Thunderbird news, Febuary 26th, Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 was Released.

March 2008

Lots of Firefox news in March. Firefox 3 Beta 5 Announced and later on the release was delayed. Meanwhile on March 10th, Firefox 3 Beta 4 Released. On March 27th came news Firefox 3 to be Released In June:

Mozilla VP of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer, has confirmed that the final release of Firefox 3, currently in Beta 4 stage, is expected for June, a full quarter later than the latest estimate and some nine months past the original.

The Guru made his intentions know he was going to be making the Switch to Fx 3.0 later that month. Finally, on March 25th Mozilla released Firefox 2.0.0.13.

Also in March was some much needed news about Thunderbird. Starting March 4th and every Tuesday thereafter are the new Thunderbird Status Meeting. Notes from this first meeting include an updated list of Thunderbird 3 Features. In mid March David Ascher announced New Thunderbird Engineers had joined the Mozilla Messaging team.

The end of March marked the New AMO Launch. An alert reader pointed out a couple things I had managed to overlook which I touched on in a quick addendum post.

Mozilla’s 10th Birthday was celebrated on March 31st, 10-years from the date when Mozilla (then Netscape Communication Corp) released the first developer release of Netscape Communication 5.0.

Microsoft is no stranger to legal action, usually against them. Back in May 2007, publicly claimed Free Software Violates Patents! Nearly a year later Microsoft Mum on Alleged Patents Violated, meaning they will not disclose which patents they claim free software violates. Only Microsoft…

While on the topic of Illegal Operations, installing Safari For Windows is an Illegal Operation. At least according to the Safari EULA:

While on the subject of Apple, how about some QuickTime Quirkiness! My dealings, frustration and general disapproval with the install and resulting mess left by Apple QucikTime and iTunes.

Then there was the Get a Mac: Bad Vista reviews ad. This was another website based ad and also was called misleading as the ‘reviews’ were article titles and the articles were not entirely about Vista.

After its failure to bag in some cash and come into the limelight on accusing an elderly couple of pirating their game, Atari has decided to save its honor and has put an end to its Anti Piracy drive. This anti piracy drive has become a norm with these companies readily threatening users of dragging them to the court if they don’t pay a certain amount for their corrupt acts (a.k.a downloading music, movies, etc). Many users haven’t paid much heed to this, given that they might have to pay amounts many a times more if they are proven guilty, but still they have managed to bag payments from around 50% of these alleged pirates. Talk about easy money. But for Atari at least this cat and mouse game is over as the Register reported:

In relation to file sharing, our position is that we always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy. Whilst we are no longer working with Davenport Lyons, we continue to work with legal advisers to protect our rights.

---
Related Articles at Startup Meme:

In 1953, someone at Swanson severely overestimated the amount of turkey Americans would consume that Thanksgiving. With 260 tons of frozen birds to get rid of, a company salesman named Gerry Thomas ordered 5,000 aluminum trays, recruited an assembly line of women armed with spatulas and ice-cream scoops and began creating mini-feasts of turkey, corn-bread dressing, peas and sweet potatoes — creating the first-ever TV dinner. Thomas later said he got the idea from neatly packaged airplane food.

Football & Feastin’

Thanksgiving is ruled by two very powerful f-words: “food” and “football.” Nearly as old as the sport itself, the tradition of watching football on Thanksgiving began in 1876, when the newly formed American Intercollegiate Football Association held its first championship game. Less than a decade later, more than 5,000 club, college and high school football teams held games on Thanksgiving, with match-ups between Princeton and Yale drawing more than 40,000 fans out from their dining rooms. 1934 marked the first NFL game held on Thanksgiving when the Detroit Lions took on the Chicago Bears. The Lions have played on Thanksgiving ever since — except, of course, when the team was called away to serve during World War II.

Franksgiving

FDR learned the hard way not to mess with some traditions. In 1939, the President declared that Americans should celebrate the annual feast one week early, hoping the decision would spur retail sales during the Great Depression. But Americans did not react kindly to the New Deal meal. Some took to the streets while others took to name-calling; the mayor of Atlantic City solved the controversy by declaring his residents would simply enjoy two meals — Thanksgiving and “Franksgiving.” After two years of squabbling (or gobbling, as it were), Congress adopted a resolution in 1941 setting the fourth Thursday of November as the legal holiday

Mary Had a Little Thanksgiving Obession

The woman who wrote the classic nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” also played an integral role in making Thanksgiving a national holiday. After a 17-year letter-writing campaign, magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale finally convinced President Abraham Lincoln to issue an 1863 decree recognizing the historic tradition.

Americans at the Abbey

In 1942, London’s Westminster Abbey held Thanksgiving services for U.S. troops stationed in England. More than 3,500 soldiers filled the church’s pews to sing America, the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner — the first time in the church’s 900-year history that a foreign army was invited to take over the grounds. It was an ironic gesture given the holiday’s origins as a festival for pilgrims fleeing religious tyranny in Britain.

Read more by clicking above. Happy Thanksgiving!

One legal case I’ve been watching unfold whilst chronicling it here at Mashable and elsewhere has been the case against Lori Drew. Drew was accused of driving a young school girl named Megan Meier to suicide through a fake MySpace profile.

Cyber-bullying, as I’ve re-iterated every time the story has come up, is reprehensible, but not illegal. That’s why federal prosecutors, hungry for some way to exact legal vengeance against Drew, charged her with felony computer hacking for the creation of the fake profile.

Despite the emotionally riveting case presented by prosecutors and what I saw as a fairly weak defense, jurors today found Drew innocent of all felony charges.

Jury deliberation took just over a day, and they also found Drew guilty of found guilty of misdemeanor computer fraud. This is a potentially dangerous precedent.  If it were a lower profile case, I wouldn’t imagine that this would be of much consequence, but the way the judgment is applied can spell serious legal trouble for virtually everyone who is a frequent user of Web 2.0 services.

Tina Meier, mother of Megan Meier, after the verdict was rendered said at the press conference that she was not pleased with the results of the trial.

“As a mom, I absolutely think she should be punished,” Meier said. Meier might get her wish.  For each of the three counts Drew was convicted of, she can face up to one year in prison.

As I said when I spoke to the on-air suicide of Abraham Biggs, I can’t pretend to know the family’s grief. That said, Tina Meier’s quest for justice and punishment shouldn’t come at the expense of all of us.

You Could Now Be a Criminal

Terms of Service contracts are rarely reasonable, and just from my own patterns of behavior in the due course of my job, I know I must enter into at least two or three a day. Terms of Service contracts are also notoriously self-contradictory, convoluted, and thus unread.

Do you know if you’re currently violating any Terms of Service contracts for the myriad of services you belong to? If the ruling in the Lori Drew case stands, for every shady Digg you beg for and each bit of content your hosting provider finds objectionable, you could be liable not for account deletion or even simple civil suit, but misdemeanor computer fraud.

That means Drama 2.0 could be extradited to the United States from his “mystery home country” for that two or three weeks he spent on Twitter under his assumed online identity (I’m assuming he wasn’t legally named Drama 2.0). That means Fake Steve Jobs/ the Real Dan Lyons could be prosecuted for misdemeanor computer fraud for satirically posing as Steve Jobs on the Blogspot hosting platform.

Kevin Rose could be jailed for simply creating a fake Twitter profile for his cold. Heck, breaking the rules of copyright on YouTube is a violation of Terms of Service (as it is on most services). Using this ruling, any media rights holder could press criminal charges against offenders (won’t Prince have a heyday against toddlers, then?). Enter the listener license.

I can only hope that this ruling will be overturned on appeal. We may have dodged the mortar shell – these simple acts could have been construed as felonies. That the jury saw reason on that, I’m glad. In an always-on world, though, where creating fake social media profiles becomes a criminal offense, everyone is a criminal.

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

MySpace Bullies: These People are Scum
Lori Drew Indicted over Megan Meier Cyberbullying
Should There Be a Law Against Asshats Like Me? [smcb]
eBay Wins Round in Court over ‘Buy It Now’ Patent
In Case You Can’t Catch Drew Carey on Daytime TV, The Price Is Right Now Has a Social Network
Yahoo! China Found Guilty of Copyright Infringement
Photo.com To Launch 3-in-1 Commerce & Social Network

One legal case I’ve been watching unfold whilst chronicling it here at Mashable and elsewhere has been the case against Lori Drew. Drew was accused of driving a young school girl named Megan Meier to suicide through a fake MySpace profile.

Cyber-bullying, as I’ve re-iterated every time the story has come up, is reprehensible, but not illegal. That’s why federal prosecutors, hungry for some way to exact legal vengeance against Drew, charged her with felony computer hacking for the creation of the fake profile.

Despite the emotionally riveting case presented by prosecutors and what I saw as a fairly weak defense, jurors today found Drew innocent of all felony charges.

Jury deliberation took just over a day, and they also found Drew guilty of found guilty of misdemeanor computer fraud. This is a potentially dangerous precedent.  If it were a lower profile case, I wouldn’t imagine that this would be of much consequence, but the way the judgment is applied can spell serious legal trouble for virtually everyone who is a frequent user of Web 2.0 services.

Tina Meier, mother of Megan Meier, after the verdict was rendered said at the press conference that she was not pleased with the results of the trial.

“As a mom, I absolutely think she should be punished,” Meier said. Meier might get her wish.  For each of the three counts Drew was convicted of, she can face up to one year in prison.

As I said when I spoke to the on-air suicide of Abraham Biggs, I can’t pretend to know the family’s grief. That said, Tina Meier’s quest for justice and punishment shouldn’t come at the expense of all of us.

You Could Now Be a Criminal

Terms of Service contracts are rarely reasonable, and just from my own patterns of behavior in the due course of my job, I know I must enter into at least two or three a day. Terms of Service contracts are also notoriously self-contradictory, convoluted, and thus unread.

Do you know if you’re currently violating any Terms of Service contracts for the myriad of services you belong to? If the ruling in the Lori Drew case stands, for every shady Digg you beg for and each bit of content your hosting provider finds objectionable, you could be liable not for account deletion or even simple civil suit, but misdemeanor computer fraud.

That means Drama 2.0 could be extradited to the United States from his “mystery home country” for that two or three weeks he spent on Twitter under his assumed online identity (I’m assuming he wasn’t legally named Drama 2.0). That means Fake Steve Jobs/ the Real Dan Lyons could be prosecuted for misdemeanor computer fraud for satirically posing as Steve Jobs on the Blogspot hosting platform.

Kevin Rose could be jailed for simply creating a fake Twitter profile for his cold. Heck, breaking the rules of copyright on YouTube is a violation of Terms of Service (as it is on most services). Using this ruling, any media rights holder could press criminal charges against offenders (won’t Prince have a heyday against toddlers, then?). Enter the listener license.

I can only hope that this ruling will be overturned on appeal. We may have dodged the mortar shell – these simple acts could have been construed as felonies. That the jury saw reason on that, I’m glad. In an always-on world, though, where creating fake social media profiles becomes a criminal offense, everyone is a criminal.

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

MySpace Bullies: These People are Scum
Lori Drew Indicted over Megan Meier Cyberbullying
Should There Be a Law Against Asshats Like Me? [smcb]
Craigslist Cleared Of Discrimination Charges In Listings
In Case You Can’t Catch Drew Carey on Daytime TV, The Price Is Right Now Has a Social Network
Photo.com To Launch 3-in-1 Commerce & Social Network
Connecticut Attorney General Calls Out Craigslist For Selling Sex

Apple’s retention policy may be under the eyes of law making agencies. The reason being that Apple is yet to integrate a systematic approach to its document and email retention; part and parcel of policies that form a vital part of many a companies. The company presently has no rule at maintaining and archiving emails, documentation of its employees. The same issues have cost many a companies dearly and lawmakers think that the same may come to Apple and create a lot of problems.

The issue that needs attention here is that in case some mishap is to happen within the ranks, the concerned person may have his/her mails deleted and the company left with nothing to base a case from internal documentation. An e-discovery lawyer highlighted the legal requirement regarding the retention policy.

An employee retention program with no organization or coordination is effectively incapable of compliance, barring an act of God, or luck akin to picking every game right in an NCAA pool. Apple’s retention policy is negligent.

---
Related Articles at Startup Meme:

Fortunately, we talked to HR lawyer Kirk Nemer of Career Protection and he told us how to pull off cutting your workforce without getting sued:

• Bone up on employment laws. It's a good idea to ask laid-off employees to sign a waiver or release promising not to sue, but be careful giving them deadlines. The OWBPA Act stipulates that if an employee is over 40, they get a minimum of 21 days to consider signing the release and another 7 days to change their mind after they do. If a company cuts a group of employees, each employee gets 45 days to consider the release. Force them to sign any sooner, and the waiver's no good. A reminder: In California there's the WARN Act, which requires companies laying off more than 50 employees to give them 60 days notice.
  
  
• Pay out severance according to title and length of service. Only. Don't play favorites. Be objective and use length of service and title as your guide. One of Nemer's clients was a director, but his company only prepared severance packages for vice presidents and regional managers. When the company canned Nemer's guy, it gave him a regional manager's severance because it was cheaper. Now he's suing.
  
  
• Don't treat laid off employees like criminals. Laid-off employees do not all need to be escorted from the building by burly, armed guards before 3 p.m. or else. That kind of confrontational stance "sets up a battle," says Nemer -- a legal battle.
  
  
• Don't set layoff traps. Nemer tells us that one easy way to drive laid-off employees to their lawyers is to lie to them. One of his clients who'd been with her company 14 years got a note one day from her supervisor asking her to attend a new project meeting. When she did, she found the meeting room vacant but for her boss and an HR rep. They canned her on the spot and then security escorted her out of the building as a part of a general layoff. Now she's one of Nemer's clients, suing her old employer just months after getting a standing ovation during an all hands meeting.
  
  
• Be clear to blame the economy, not the employee. Admit that the company has hit hard times and that the layoff has nothing to do with the employee's performance. Do not lie or make excuses. Laying off one of Nemer's clients, one company HR rep asked for her resignation. She refused and asked what she'd done wrong. "Nothing" said the rep, who then admitted Nemer's client was part of a general layoff. Another of Nemer's client's only joined a company after months of recruiting. Then, just yet a few more months later, they told him the company didn't have a role for him anymore. "You recruited me for this role!" Nemer's client told the CEO. Lies, damned lies. They'll get your name at the top of a double-spaced PDF.

See Also:
Think You're Going To Be Laid Off? Sign Up For A Class NOW