Courtland Allen, co-founder of Taskforce (YC W11)

And he is the technical guy of the pair.

Apple is here making an ultra-aggressive attempt at a land grab in the world of application software.

The mark granted to it is for "App Store". Under relevant trademark law, a mark cannot be registered if it consists solely of a generic or purely descriptive term. "Store" is generic. So too is the word "application" - which is commonly thought of as being what the word "app" refers to. Therefore, no trademark could ever be registered for the word "store" or for the word "application" and certainly not for "application store" (no trademark can be registered when all of its constituent elements are generic). A trademark identifies the origin of goods or services and no one vendor can claim that a whole generic category of goods or services can be set out as a domain for which it and it alone is the origin. The question is, does any of this change because Apple's claim is for the word "app" as opposed to "application."

Apple claims that "app" in this context is a word that refers uniquely to Apple in the public mind - that is, when a typical consumer hears of an "app," that person immediately associates that word with "Apple app" and not with the generic term "application." In legal parlance, then, Apple is arguing that the word "app" here has an "arbitrary" meaning and is therefore registrable to Apple alone. If Apple prevails on this claim, it will be able to sue anyone in the future who tries to sell "apps" through any form of "app store."

Of course, many other vendors are using the "app" designation for selling online applications and there is thus vigorous opposition to Apple's application. Indeed, once the trademark examiner granted the application, Amazon immediately filed a proceeding contesting it. To date, then, Apple does not have any definitive determination in its favor on this issue. By continuing to push the trademark application, and by filing this lawsuit, Apple hopes to pave the way to have exclusive use going forward of "App Store" as against all competitors.

I think Apple is overstepping it on this one. If it should be granted what it seeks, how will other vendors be able to refer even generically to what they are offering? Trademark law is intended to protect a company's distinct offerings and to prevent others from pawning off a vendor's good will by passing their goods or services off as that of their real owner. I doubt that anyboday will believe that what Amazon or Google or any of a number of other vendors offer is an attempt to trade on Apple's goodwill. On the other hand, trademark law is not intended to give anybody any form of exclusivity in describing generic categories of goods or services. That appears to be precisely what Apple is here attempting to do.

Apple has one more obstacle to overcome as well. A term that is at some point a distinctive identifier of a vendor's goods or services can become generic over time (consider "yo-yo,"aspirin," "escalator," and many others that have suffered this fate). If "app" was at one time distinctive to Apple a few years back, I seriously doubt that the public today thinks of it as anything other than a generic indicator of what you can download from a wide variety of sources.

Github makes the best damn pickaxes in the industry.

This is creeping Redditization: it's based on it being a boys' club in here, it isn't particularly funny, and we can expect to hear it and variations repeated in every thread forever if this behavior is rewarded.

Clothes shopping has remained one of those areas dominated by brick-and-mortar stores. I see three reasons for this:

1. Looking at photos is not the same as looking at the real thing;

2. Clothes are more than just the look. How they feel is also important;

3. You obviously can't try clothes on online. You can (and really need to) in a store. I have clothes that fit ranging from M to XL depending on the brand and style.

So there are those barriers to overcome. There are additional issues.

First, I read the dress.me blurb and it says that when you signup it asks you several "this or that" questions. A theoretically reasonable approach but one doomed to failure.

The reason is that people (men in particular) don't know what suits them. When someone says they like something, it means they're accustomed to it. This is a key point service providers like this need to understand.

It's why you see people seemingly trapped 10, 20, 30+ years ago with their haircuts, shoes and clothes. Typically this is how they looked and what they wore when they were teenagers and in their 20s. That sort of thing sticks because it's what they knew growing up (much like musical tastes tend to be) or even it's just the nostalgic angle: that style takes them back to probably what were more easygoing days.

Second, there are an awful lot of men--we geeks are particularly guilty of this--who have a completely utilitarian view to pretty much everything, including clothes. There's a reason the programmer stereotype is t-shirts and jeans. These clothes are comfortable, require very little maintenance, are cheap and require very little thought.

Clothes, like many things, are a statement about who you are as a person. Pretty much everything we do is some form of expression of who we are. This is even true of things like programming language choice.

So the problem we geeks have in particular is that we don't generally care about what kind of statement our clothes make, which in and of itself is a statement.

Anyway, watch any of the makeover shows that are on TV. Whether they be for men or women you will see the first thing the self-appointed style gurus will do is beat them out of their old habits into things that actually suit them. Asking them what they like would get you nowhere.

This is also why the cliche exists of women shopping for men. I think women are probably more naturally inclined to the "group" aspect of pretty much all forms of self-expression, clothes being just one. Just watch a woman--particularly a young woman--get dressed for anything and you'll quickly realize it's a group not a solo activity deciding what to wear.

Sites like this I think are seductive to those who start them, much like dating sites are. It seems like it should be easy, right? I think the reality has proven and will continue to prove otherwise, at least until these fundamental problems are somehow addressed.

The true meaning of "I hate shopping" is more likely to be "I hate making decisions about things I don't know about, care about or both." The "knowing" part can probably be fixed. The "caring" part is a much bigger problem.

nope, you've just got an expensive one. that's standard issue. =)