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Your institution is blocking Sync for the iPhone.

Doh.

I don’t know if this is a version mismatch – are we running the wrong version of Blackboard? – or if it’s just a new building block that needs to get rolled out on campus. Either way, frustration.

Patti tried contacting them 2 weeks ago for more information. She patiently filled out the form on their website, hoping to get some additional information about the product, maybe a demo, and perhaps a quote for deploying it on campus. No response.

So, I decided to see if maybe they were just blowing off peons, and only responding to “important” sounding people. So, I promoted myself to “Vice President, Educational Technology” here at UCalgary, and filled in the form myself. Several days later… No response. I guess I need to demote myself back down to “Lowly EdTech Geek”, but I kinda like the ring of VP-EdTech…

Anyway, here’s a clue for MyDropBox, who apparently don’t respond to the only communication channel they provide on their own website. When people are contacting you, asking for more information, probably trying to give you money, it’s a Good Idea™ to at least send an autoresponse email. It’s an Even Better Idea™ to actually, oh, I don’t know… RESPOND to the people who are most likely to give your company money.

What follows is a largely stream-of-consciousness rant about some of the issues involved.

I find it completely unfathomable that such a basic and well established classification of software could be summarily handed to a single company. I’m planning on taking some time to actually read the patent, to see if it’s as general as everyone says, or is it really (hopefully) a vaguely worded description of their particular implementation. A cursory glance at it suggests that they’ve managed to throw in utilities ranging from online storage of user data, to storing files on a server…

However, the greater problem isn’t this particular case, but rather the more general issue of software patents as a whole. These intentionally vaguely worded litigation factories only benefit one group of people – shareholders in the patent holding company.

Here’s what’s driving the whole patent engine – public companies are held legally responsible to maximize profit for their shareholders. To the extent that if they fail to generate profit (or acceptably sufficient profit) they can be sued by shareholders. The board of directors is liable. Which drives public companies to squeeze every possible gram of cash out of any possible revenue stream. If they failed to get the patent for a product, and someone else managed to get it – and then came after the company – shareholders would be pissed. So, software patents are conceptually an arms race. Companies are filing patent applications for anything they can think of in order to both protect themselves from others doing the same thing, and to maximize profit by handing the patent to their lawyers and owning a market segment as a result.

But – the patent office should be acting as a filter, preventing these blatant patent grabs as being invalid before getting rubber-stamped. If the patent office can’t properly vet applications, the office should be closed as ineffective or worse.

If Blackboard wants to recoup some karma, they should sign the patent(s) over to an impartial body, ensuring that the patent is used only as a first strike protection to prevent evildoers from obtaining said patent and obliterating an entire marketplace.

So… Who’s the best candidate to be handed the patent? IMS? IEEE? Creative Commons? UN?

Excellent news, Greg. I’d been keeping your old blog in my subscriptions Just In Case™ and have already subscribed to your new one.

Thanks to Scott and James for the heads-up on Ritter’s Return. Greg’s already hit the ground running with some great comments from Blackboard users about weblogs, wikis and podcasting.