Category: ripoff

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The ‘Iphone looking Mp4 player’

I just got a bit if junk email with a Word document attached showing a Taiwanese rip-off of the iPhone. It’s not a Phone but is an MP4 player, or in the words of the email, it is an "Iphone looking Mp4 player"! Basically the email was looking for me to place a bulk order of a minimum 1000!

I’d read on the web the other day about a Chinese company working on creating a rip off of the iPhone but obviously the photocopiers have been hard at work! Interesting to see what Apple Legal department make of this!

The email:

Email about "Iphone looking Mp4 player"

"Iphone looking Mp4 player" Images

Picture of "Iphone looking Mp4 player"

Various angles of "Iphone looking Mp4 player"

"Iphone looking Mp4 player" Specifications

The email lists the specifications as:

CY?IP4 Iphone looking Mp4 player

  • Real touch screen mp4
  • Iphone looking
  • 2.8-inch real touch screen mp4 player2>Multi music formats as MP3, WMA and WAV, good timber and real audio frequency display
  • MPEG-4(AVI) video format play, full-screen play display
  • two earphones;
  • Built-in hi-fi 8 Ohm speaker
  • Support card-inserting function: MINI SD card, 128M/256M/512M/1GB/2GB/4GB
  • High-definition JPEG picture browse function
  • Digital record, A-B replay function
  • Energy-saving setting, brightness adjustable, customerized power off time
  • Good timber, support 3D EQ surrounding effect, customerized EQ
  • Support multi languages
  • High Speed USB2.0 port
  • Listen to music while reading E-book, with bookmark function
  • Listen to music while playing games
  • FM radio
  • 128MB/256MB/512MB/1GB/2G
  • User?s Manual, earphone, CD drive
  • Dimension: 85X21X16 mm (W*H*D

Crazy!

~Rick

Posted on

BlogoMaid – Truly Original Blog Templates

The recent SimpleBits LogoMaid logo debacle made me imagine what kind of blog template ripoffs might be out there so I started to make a few just for fun!

If I was on the ball then this would have made a good opportunity for an April fools gag but unfortunately I didn’t think about it until later on!

BlogoMaid company logo

BlogoMaid Logo

Sample Blog template #1

CARING FURBALL

Sample Blog template #2

LIVEDOGGIES

I hope Dan Benjamin and John Gruber don’t mind me using their sites for this little bit of fun!

~Rick

Posted on

LogoMaid: This kind of flattery will get you nowhere…

There’s been a bit of a storm going on recently on the net due to the disregard for intellectual property shown by various companies. First there was the ripping off of both the Joyent website and Corkd (see Dan Benjamin’s Flickr picture for the resulting hybrid ripoff!), now there is a big stir about LogoMaid and their use of several well known logos amongst some of their logos for sale.

The main stir at the moment relates to Dan Cederholm’s SimpleBits logo and this one by LogoMaid:

Simplebits logo and logomaid ripoff side by side

In an ongoing Flickr discussion thread LogoMaid insist that they’ve done nothing wrong (they even hinted that they’d consider suing Dan Cederholm for his use of his logo!), overall it’s pretty crazy.

Here’s a few other dubious examples from LogoMaid’s catalogue:

I agree with the sentiment of the article I just mentioned, so I’ve written this post to help raise some attention to this kind of abuse of ideas and images. If you’re planning on purchasing logos from somewhere like LogoMaid then it’s worth being wary. LogoMaid claim “Over 3600 unique and non-unique logos to choose from”, the problem is some of those logos truly are “non-unique” and were created by someone else. You may find that you get an unexpected surprise when the rightful creator of your new logo takes action to protect their creation from being abused.

Caveat emptor

~Rick