DFW is full of some of the most innovative and creative individuals and the most amazing ideas.  Come celebrate those people and ideas as we hear from those who are making DFW more vibrant and creative for all of us.

The idea is simple, 5-6 leaders and leading entrepreneurs from one of the most vibrant communities in the nation will come together and share from their hearts- not about their individual accomplishments- but about topics that speak to all of us.  They’ll each have 5 minutes to talk and you’ll have a lifetime of connections to make. Connect with your friends- new and old- and enjoy a great atmosphere with DJ Jason Esquire and great drinks at one of the coolest venues in DFW.

Still not enough?  Ok, how about this- join us and be entered in a drawing to win a brand new iPad.  Yeah, we thought that would get your attention.  To top it off, all of the proceeds from Un-Plugged will go to benefit charities right here in DFW!

Featuring:

Gabriella Draney- Tech Wildcatters (@techwildcatters)

Mike Merrill- Social Media Club of Dallas (@smcdallas)

John Pozadzides- OpenCamp DFW (@ocdfw)

Brian Sullivan- DFW UPA (@dfwupa)

Chris Walters- Ignite Dallas (@IgniteDallas)

Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door.

Who is harmed by Paul’s legal actions? First, you and me (assuming you have a 401K). Second, any startup (like ours) who uses web technologies. We need more innovation in the United States, not less. Software patents, like Paul’s, are bad for business, America and the planet. They simply don’t make any sense for software. When the government grants a monopoly for 20 years it should be for something unique or novel – i.e. a machine, a manufacturing process or pharmaceuticals – not an essential programming technique. Brad Feld has been a long time critic of software patents and he does a pretty good job of explaining why they are a bad idea:

• The financial cost of defending yourself against a software patent claim are impossible to overcome. Just to analyze whether the claims being made against you are justified will incur legal fees in excess of $50,000.00, and more than $1 million in legal fees before trial. Yet it costs the price of a postage stamp for a software patent holder to make a legal claim against you. (http://www.wsgr.com/PDFSearch/09202004_patentpirates.pdf)
• Economic research demonstrates that software patents are acting as a drag on the US economy. (http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Studies_on_economics_and_innovation)
• Programmers – those skilled in the art of writing software, would be expected to benefit from, and support the patenting of software. They do not. They uniformly despise them as a limitation on their art.(http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/comp/analyses_en.htm)
• Venture capitalist like me, who work with new innovative start-ups can testify that software patents have a chilling effect on the market. (http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Statements_from_venture_capitalists)
• With well over 200,000 software patents having been issued, non practicing entities and hedge funds are buying up tens of thousands of these trash patents and using them to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from US companies. This activity takes the form of a protection racket. (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1853298215.shtml)

The WSJ explained how broad Paul’s patent claims are:

Patent Claim: Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented by Audiovisual Data

Implication: “The specific example in the patent might be for a news aggregator, but the patent could have applications far beyond news. The suit says the defendants are infringing the patent “by making and using websites, hardware and software to categorize, compare and display segments of a body of information.” That quote describes a lot of websites.“

Patent Claim: Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device

Implication: “AOL, Apple, Google and Yahoo are the only companies alleged in the suit to have violated these patents. But again, the patent is for a tool that is ubiquitous online, particularly on websites that give users real-time news updates.

Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest

Implication: “Theoretically it could apply to anything that uses technology to alert you to something you’re interested in. It’s important not only for news but for e-commerce — think about notices when an item you like is on sale or when a bid has been placed on something you’re watching. This patent is the only one in the suit that all the companies are alleged to have violated.”

Brad should add Paul to the list of folks who should see Patent Absurdity.

This week, after I wrote the post, D&B has ‘updated’ our “Supplier Evaluation Risk” from an 8 to a to a 4. Here is what our potential customers see today:

D&B still suggests we pose a “Moderate risk of severe financial stress over the next 12 months”, but at least we are almost in the ‘green’ section of the chart.

Again, I stand by my previous post when I explained, “I think there is a potential for a massive class action against D&B on several counts – but most importantly their propensity to offer credit advice without sufficient data. D&B should have to disclose that on accounts, like ours, they simply don’t have enough data one way or another. They can’t possibly know whether or not our company is likely to fail based on the data they have collected. Their data is used by our potential clients to hire us. How many clients have looked at this data and decided that since we are ‘likely to fail in the next 12 months’ they will choose another vendor? How many other clients have low PAYDEX scores and ‘High Risk of Failure’ warnings where there is little or no data available? I would be happy to sign our company up as a lead plaintiff. I can show a loss of at least $1,000,000 in billings as a result of their 66 Paydex report on our company. Let me know if you want to join by filling out this form: D&B Class Action Sign Up“

The company pays out around $250,000 in payables each month to more than 100 vendors. Additionally we have credit lines ranging from $1,000 to $500,000. Out of these vendors D&B only had four. Our controller added more than 100 vendors and we were surprised how many would not agree to report payments to D&B. Companies like AMEX, Chase and Ingram Micro were unwilling to share credit history with D&B – later I learned they didn’t want to pay D&B a fee for the pleasure. Evidently, D&B is collecting fees from the companies that report and from the companies that are reported on. Wow.

One week later we were able to raise our ‘PAYDEX’ score from 66 to 77 by just adding a few additional vendors to the system. This morning I got an alert from D&B explaining that they had INCREASED our companies financial risk number from 7 to 8 – meaning they estimated that there was a HIGH risk of our company’s failure in the next 12 months. Our ‘PayDex’ score was improving, but D&B is now reporting that we are likely to fail. This company is ten years old and has been profitable since 2002 – why would D&B suggest we were likely to fail? What data are they using to come to this conclusion. Here is the chart the D&B account rep showed me:

Just a week after we opened out account with D&B and began helping them build our credit someone in the computer manufacturing business suggests that we have a payment 61-90+ old that is less than $1,000. I talked to our controller and she has no record of any late invoice – much less one for less than $1,000. I asked the D&B rep who was reporting the 61-90+ day late payment, but they would not release the name of the vendor. I assume the vendor who reported the late payment wants to get paid – why wouldn’t they want me to be able to contact them to get paid? The D&B rep couldn’t explain why the policy was this way. I then asked the D&B rep why they would issue a public report that we were likely to fail despite the fact that 99% of our vendors are reporting we pay within terms? I reiterated that we spend about $250,000 a month in payables – it seems crazy that a company would publicly report that we were likely to fail because an anonymous company reported that we were late on an invoice less than $1,000. She could not explain why.

I think there is a potential for a massive class action against D&B on several counts – but most importantly their propensity to offer credit advice without sufficient data. D&B should have to disclose that on accounts, like ours, they simply don’t have enough data one way or another. They can’t possibly know whether or not our company is likely to fail based on the data they have collected. Their data is used by our potential clients to hire us. How many clients have looked at this data and decided that since we are ‘likely to fail in the next 12 months’ they will choose another vendor? How many other clients have low PAYDEX scores and ‘High Risk of Failure’ warnings where there is little or no data available? I would be happy to sign our company up as a lead plaintiff. I can show a loss of at least $1,000,000 in billings as a result of their 66 Paydex report on our company. Let me know if you want to join by filling out this form: D&B Class Action Sign Up

• Hurricane Party – a location-based social networking application that helps users create, manage and discover events that are relevant to them.
• RecycleMatch – an online market for transforming commercial waste Into value.
• Smackages – a makeup counter in your web browser.
• Ripplefunction – a social media tool to track, manage and promote events online.
• Keepstream  – a social media curation tool for saving and repurposing the best content from Twitter, Facebook, and sites across the web.

In addition to each of the 8-minute live presentations, Naval Ravikant, of Venture Hacks/AngelList, and Dave McClure, of 500 Startups, are confirmed speakers at the event. Be there, or be square…

NEW – (Friday July 30th, 2010) – Version 4.0.0

• Complete overhaul of underlying barcode scanning and camera frame grabbing logic.
• Vastly improved performance and API enhancements
• Full compatibility with iOS 4.0 and Apple’s App Store policies and guidelines. (No more “UIGetScreenImage()”)
• Full compatibility with iPhone 4, 3GS and 3G devices

Download the Scanner Kit SDK for iPhone today!

Anil Dash wrote a pretty good post titled, “One more time: No NDAs“. Anil points out that a lot of people feel the same way. His reasons were pretty good and worth repeating:

• When you ask me to sign your NDA, you’re basically saying, in writing, that you don’t trust me. It’s your prerogative to say that, but it’s a pretty lousy context in which to ask for a favor.
• I have to pay a lawyer to review a document without having any idea why I’m making that investment. No, I won’t “just sign it” without having a lawyer look it over, because it’s a legally binding document whether a lawyer reads it or not.
• If your idea’s that good, it’s probably not that rare. I hate to be the one to point it out, but protecting your idea in general is a fool’s errand — good execution is hard to find, but good ideas are cheap.
• I could get screwed through no fault of my own if some other random person walks up to me and blurts out the same idea that you’ve had. Being exposed to the risk of a lawsuit even if I haven’t done anything wrong sucks.
• If I couldn’t be trusted with your idea, you’d already know about it. There are folks who don’t like me, or who are annoyed by me, but if I’d broken somebody’s trust in regard to their work, I guarantee it’d be just about the first thing you’d find when you Google my name.
• The biggest value I can probably offer you is that I would talk about what you’re working on. If I honor your NDA, and I meet a great investor or potential employee or valuable partner for your new venture, I wouldn’t be able to tell them about it.