[Sigia-l] "best bets": trademarked? other names?

[Mary Wisnewski]

>Yeah, right. Pretend having held an obscure conference in some forsaken 
>place nobody's ever heard of and claim prior art. That's not gonna fly. 
>This is yet another attempt of Microsoft-bashing. They innovate all the 
>time, and then people steal their ideas.
>:-)
>
>Best,
>
>Ziya

As covered in our previous thread on this topic...

I designed a system to do Quick Links/Hot Topics/Best Bets at Apple before I
left there in September 1998.  Lloyd Vancil coded it.  I'm pretty sure it
was up & running by late 1997. 

The system was reviewd in Computer World, March 9, 1998 issue, p87, "Search
for the stars?" - a roundup review of corporate web site search engines.
The review says:
"One of the best overall search engines we found was at Apple's site. The
impressive, unique "area match" featgure guided visitors to general sections
of interest as well as specific pages.  For example, a search for "laptop"
provided a link to the PowerBook areea of the site, as well as individual
pages for specific PowerBook models."

I do fully understand that any work I might have done, especially at a
company called "Apple", can never equal the greatness of Microsoft's power
to innovate.  And please... no comparisons between Apple and Sasketoon.  It
hurts too much.

And sorry, I know this doesn't answer the question of whether this is
actually patented and/or trademarked.  Only that it was done before, has
many names, and is about the most useful feature you can add to your site
search.

-mary
--
Mary Wisnewski			Information Architect
mwisnews at nortelnetworks.com	Nortel Networks