Over on my Clique Communications weblog, I’ve been following the current TechCrunch trademark issues.

I’ll be investigating trademarks in relation to Web2Thing shortly (now that we’ve finalised the actual service name), and it’s prompted several thoughts on my part.

Obviously we need to protect our business. So trademarking a logo and name makes a great deal of sense. In this instance it’s an original name, so it’s not like we’ll be encumbering a generic term (like “web 2.0″ or “real estate 2.0″).

However, we’d obviously love to encourage the people who enjoy the service to extend the use of the site, or use it in interesting ways, like mash-ups, remixes, or reusing the term in ways that don’t actually damage us. So my question is, like Creative Commons in terms of copyright, is there a way to protect a logo or business name, without restricting interesting or fun uses by others?

Over the last few weeks we’ve been speaking with a local development house about assisting in adding a few key features to our service. There seems to be plenty of synergy between our companies, and lucky for us they have a python developer. As Graeme mentioned a couple of months back, that’s his code of choice for the system. We’re in the final stages of ironing out a contract, and then we’ll be full steam ahead.

Last night I was invited to an internal presentation by their python expert. We’ve all chosen to use TurboGears as the framework, and it was a meeting to outline the advantages of using the environment. It was great to get a feel for what we’ll be using over the next few weeks, and it also gave me a chance to meet a bunch of their other team members. An hour really well spent.

Today I’ve also had a look for a few TurboGears screencasts that provide a visual demo of how quickly a simple web based application can be built, like this one, showing the creation of a simple iTunes look-a-like.

Thanks guys for the presentation (and the beer), and I’m looking forward to seeing what we build!

I met with a couple of patent lawyers a couple of weeks ago.

Amongst the “web 2.0″ crowd, patents are a dirty word, and in all honesty we’ve belayed looking into the matter here at web2thing headquarters because it’s such a controversial topic. Patents hinder innovation, because it takes a serious amount of money to not only apply for one, but also to ensure that you’re not breaching others. However, investors love them because it shows you’re invested, and you own some IP.

The meeting set us on a path of investigation, where we’ve spent many hours searching online databases for patents that may relate to our system. Luckily part of our system deals with a concept that isn’t so new, so a bunch of those patents are old. We’re also innovating in the space, so we believe we’ll be improving a few other areas as well.

The long and the short of it is that any company that is dealing in the technology space, and creating a new product, should do their homework with respect to patents. At the very least you’ll expand you’re knowledge of the particular area. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on potential competition, because I know who holds what patents.

For anyone that is keen, you can search for U.S. patents using the USPTO search engine.

It has come time for us to look at opening a bank account for the business. Given that Graeme and I live on opposite ends of the planet, potential international investors, and we aim to service a global market, I figured we should look for a global bank.

A little googling turned up Citibank and HSBC as potential corporations. So I set about checking their site for business account details and paid a visit to their local branches. However, as it turns out, neither are really global banks. They both are local operations that happen to be branded the same as international banks. Given that HSBC tout themselves as “the world’s local bank,” I was extremely disappointed to find that this means there is really little benefit to go with either, and raises the question of who should we bank with.

Anyone have an suggestions?

My daughter loves popcorn. She had her first try a few months back when I took her to see the Pixar movie “Cars.” Since then, with every visit to the cinema (usually with her grandmother), she’ll bring back half a bucket and play with it for hours in her toy kitchen.

I love this analogy, from Start-up CEO.

Popping popcorn the old fashion way consisted of dumping the kernels in the pot, turning on the stove and waiting, waiting some more and waiting a little bit more. Just when you waited so long that you felt like it was time to just do without popcorn, you hear a pop, and then another, and another and another, until the entire kitchen comes alive with popping sounds.

I think it is the perfect analogy for a start-up. You put in so much time into getting the business ready, and aside from a few very lucky companies, results don’t happen soon or fast afterwards. Rather you wait, and you keep chugging along, until you cant wait any longer, and all of a sudden one good thing happens, followed by another, which leads to another, and before you know it things have picked up.

Here at Web2Thing, we’re loading the kernals into the pot.