A new business idea: take someone’s website for your own then ask them for the image files!!!

January 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Many of you may have read about how we came across a website that was basically a cut and paste from our website of all our imagery and web copy. Rather than take the website down, they have asked me to send me our original image files so that they do what they want – although they apparently ‘paid some Indian guy’ $500 for the website! The email was so funny that I thought I should post it here (I’ve taken out the email addresses and personal details though). Just in case you forgot, here’s a side by side of the real one (on the left) and the fake one (on the right).

 

  

 

If someone had sold me a fake website image for USD 500, I would have been fairly unimpressed and would have outed them, so I wonder if a new industry will get established for doing a “save website as” service – clearly quite lucrative as one of my guys said!

Anyway, sit back and enjoy the following for your reading pleasure!

 

Last Email From Them

On 24 January 2012 16:30, Websequel wrote:

Hello James,

The treating email that we are getting from you seems totally unreasonable. We are not okay providing the confidential detail about our company account to anyone outsiders. Please have a word with your employee who happened to sell us a copy of the website. Or if you can send us the full file we are ready to change the website banner (I’ve highlighted this as this is almost my favourite line). We contacted our lawyer with all the detail information we have done no wrong and we were not aware of the fact that it was your website copy, but still as a cooperation we did make few changes on the site, but you happened to misjudge the cooperation and you kept on threatening us in this regard.

If we have the complete file we will definitely change the website banner but since no PSD files were provided to us we cannot work on it. And we cannot pull the website down either as we paid $500 for this website.

We are willing to cooperate but we cannot as there is no detail information we can get for you.

I hope you would understand.

Regards,

Sukhjinder

 

From Me

Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 6:53 PM

Subject: Re: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

Hello Sukhjinder and Dave,

As you will be aware from previous emails, I have asked for you to rectify this situation by this date of using intellectual property which is essentially stolen. I presume by your lack of response that you are not planning to co-operate. I would ask that you reconsider this position as I really don’t think that it is either of our best interests for this situation to not be properly resolved. Please respond to this email by 25 Jan US time, or else I will need to look at what action I need to take to deal with this matter.

Thank you for your co-operation with this matter.

Sincerely,

James

 

From Me

On 18 January 2012 01:40, James Swanston wrote:

 

Hello Sukhjinder and Dave,

I must say that I am slightly disappointed by your response. There are actually a few things you can do as follows:

1. Please forward email correspondence with the person whom you USD 500 for the template and details of what freelancing website you purchased it from. I am sure that given that USD 500 is quite a bit to pay for a template, you will be able to easily find the records, and also, am sure that you would hate for other people to be defrauded in this manner. Given that I am sure that you are as unhappy with them as I am given that they have basically sold you something that was stolen, I hope you will be very supportive of this. In your first email, you said that you would deal with them, so this shouldn’t be a massive request from you.

2. Additionally, you could very easily take down the website or replace it with something that has other images. You may be particularly concerned with local taxi law compliance in Toronto/ Niagara Falls/ Buffalo as there is no such thing as the Public Carriage Office in the United States or ‘Transport for Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Toronto which you allude to in your FAQ – which is again almost directly copied from our website – and which again highlights that you can change the text. For your information, the Public Carriage Office is part of Transport for London and based in the United Kingdom.

I am sure as a reputable business, and Dave with a LinkedIn profile which you visited me from, you surely don’t want to be involved in such a blatant copying of someone else’s hard work. With that in mind, I would again ask you to reconsider and address this matter in an appropriate fashion.

Many thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

James

 

From Them

On 17 January 2012 19:07, web Sequel  wrote:

Sorry James but there is nothing there we can do as of now. Please investigate within the designer team who designed and sold the theme.

 

From Me

Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 8:56 AM 

Subject: Re: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

 

Hi Sukhjinder,

Thanks for your email. In the same way that Dave put images over the Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express logos, you can do the same for the main image files. We have invested a lot of time and effort in develop and building our brand profile and have trade mark protection in place.

It is not acceptable at all for our trademarked imagery and copyrighted materials to be blatantly used without our permission.

I would again ask that you look to immediately replace the imagery and other materials taken from our website, which surely you can do as a web design company, and have this achieved by 23 January.

Sincerely,

James

 

From them (I like how they ask for feedback on what they did)

On 16 January 2012 13:38, Web Sequel wrote:

 

hello james,

I was informed by my partner dave about the conversation you had with him regarding website. we bought this site from one of the freelancer in some freelancing website i don’t remember which one. he sold us the website in $500. while we bought the website we were told that he was from United Kingdom. There is nothing that we know more than that about the person. Regarding website we were not provided complete files of the website where we can make more changes.

we did not know that the website was copied, if we knew that the website was copied we would not have bought the website already. I am so sorry that we are not in a position to make changes on the website as we don’t have files. By the way out of curiosity did you do the website like we did?

Thanks,

Sukhjinder

 

From Me

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 6:14 PM, James Swanston wrote:

Dear Sukhjinder,

From Whois, I was able to get your email address as the registrant of aaashuttleny.com and also buffalosupershuttle.com. I am not certain whether you have seen the email chain below, however as you will not, these two websites are almost direct copies of our website, its imagery and web copy. As per my email below, I would ask that you immediately change the images and web copy that has been taken from our site, as well as provide the details of whomever provided you with this template.

Thank you for your assistance with this matter.

Sincerely,

James

From Me

Date: 9 January 2012 11:21

Dear Dave,

Thanks for your email

While I see that you have changed over the logos for Heathrow and Gatwick Express, the remaining imagery, which is trademarked is still there. Unfortunately we do have clients in North America and also do airport shuttles so it could easily be mistaken for us. In addition, as you can see from (I’ve taken out the two websites for client sites that I put in the original email), we built sites for our partners for which they pay us a considerable amount of money, so having something that fundamentally looks like our website is not appropriate. It is easy to change over graphics and the web copy that has been taken from our site, so I would ask that you do this immediately.

If you are willing, can you also provide the contact details of the person in the UK that you purchased the template from as we will need to find out what other sites this has been put up on.

Thank you for your co-operation with this.

Sincerely,

James

Response From Them

On 21 December 2011 13:43, web Sequel wrote:

Dear James,

This was a template we bought from a Indian guy in UK. We were charged $500 for this template. I can see website is same but since this is the template we cannot make further changes in it. Moreover the area we serve and you do is different in fact totally different country. As in regards to the logo I’ll make sure logo are changed by today. Thank you so much for informing us about the issue. We will deal with the Template provider.

Warm Regards,

Dave

 
Original Email From Me

 Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 6:30 AM

Subject: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

A request form has been submitted on the website on 12/20/2011 18:45:20, following is the result of the submission.”

First Name: James Swanston
   
Comments Hello, I was recently directed to this website from Google Analytics. I am not sure if you are aware, however the majority of the graphics, a lot of the web copy and the logos are a direct copy of ours (please see www.carbonvoyage.com). Additionally, there are two logos on your front page for Heathrow and Gatwick Express. Am not completely certain whether you have developed this inhouse or used a third party contractor to develop this, however a number of these things are either trademarked or copyrighted. Sincerely, James
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Spot the Difference: Someone ‘borrowed’ our website design and all the images and logos!!!!

December 15, 2011 by 2 Comments

I saw some weird search terms on Google Analytics last night about taxi journeys and then saw that there were some incoming links coming from a taxi site in the United States – and there was my website staring me back from my computer screen.  Perhaps my business was growing so fast that I didn’t even know that we’d launched in the United States. Check it out here and here which then link to here at the bottom of the page. And just to confuse you all, here is our website.

Unfortunately, this was not quite the case! Most people we chat to think we have a really nice website – clearly whoever did this thought so also!!!! I realise that imitation is the sincerest (or highest) form of flattery, but blatantly copying our imagery and logo really takes things to a new level – I particularly like that whomever did it even left in the imagery for Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express on the front page and a lot of the web copy remains the same!

Spot the difference – the real one is on the right, or is it the left – errrrr

         

The web copy is almost the same and I like how they’ve kept in some quick facts on the right hand side – perhaps it could include quick tips about the best ways to ‘borrow’ someone else’s website! Again, the real one is on the top (or left)…

         

And I like what they’ve done with our logo also!

     The real one is on the left!  

 

It was funny to read some posts on this such as webleeddesign and airbag and I did feel particularly sorry for Lingo24 who had something similar happen to them.

Am sure the DCMA and WIPO say something about this kind of stuff – it really is a bit naughty.

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IBM Sustainability Summit 2011

November 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Watching an empty train roll past yesterday morning while I waited to get on my way to a meeting gave me some pause for thought to consider the IBM Summit I attended on Tuesday in central London at 8 Northumberland. Unlike the event last year which was completely focused on transport, this had a wider series of topics being discussed, many linked to getting consumers to be more sustainable. There were a number of breakout sessions and workshops focused on questions around getting people to act in more sustainable ways, and some specifically linked to transport, for which the consensus was that it was crucial to challenge the norm of behaviour.

As with other more general sustainability events, it was a good opportunity to reflect on what we do and what some of the challenges are that we need to consider in overcoming in order to act/ be more sustainable. The key transport breakout session was around the topic of liberalising travel information to help people go greener. This is important, but at the very heart of the matter is the issue of pricing – until sustainability and pricing are linked, then it is going to be difficult to get the behaviour change necessary to really achieve great things with sustainable transport.

This morning, I attended an event put on by the Committee on Climate Change discussing UK shipping emissions, which was particularly interesting in terms of highlighting that transport-related emissions are going to become a greater problem over time as it is left behind energy in priority. It is clear, as they suggested, that this issue does need to be addressed, but it does not come without difficulty. I fear that a key stumbling block will of course relate to getting some form of international consensus on how to deal with this through the International Maritime Organization. It sort of reminded me of a Monty Python short video played on Tuesday by Mark Earls, one of the speakers at the IBM summit (shown below). Fortunately though, as one person highlighted today, it is in the best interests of the shipping community to reduce costs which will hopefully reduce carbon emissions anyway!

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A Night at Buckingham Palace

October 26, 2011 by 1 Comment

Running a startup can be a bit tough at times as any entrepreneur knows; but a number of us who are based in London recently received invitations to an event at Buckingham Palace, which is a pretty nice thing to get in the mail! The event was put on by the UKTI TechCity folk and was hosted by HRH Prince Andrew – Mike Butcher almost likened it to a dinner put on by President Obama for a bunch of major tech players in the US.

It was the latest in a number of things that I’d been to in the last month that were focused on the entrepreneurial world building up around Old Street Roundabout, including a round table discussion with Eric van der Kleij to discuss issues affecting startups. Not surprisingly, I mentioned public sector procurement and one or two other things – I think there is a lot that can happen here. I fully appreciate that startups come with particular risks, but risk aversion in the public sector is immensely expensive, and the kind of transformation that is needed to deliver cuts while retaining some element of government efficiency really needs to incorporate the innovation that can be delivered by enterprising startups. An amazing, but true example, is where a mate running a startup called Lucidica providing IT support in London is able to regularly source IT products for his clients for up to 40% less than major universities, who you would think had slightly more buying power – but clearly not!

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Startups Interviews: Carbon Voyage CEO James Swanston

September 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The following was an interview for the magazine Made in Shoreditch with …

James Swanston is the founder of Carbon Voyage, a startup dedicated to finding efficient transportation solutions. Prior to moving to the United Kingdom in 2007, James ran a number of small enterprises in Australia in the wine, property, and IT industries.

As well, James has served as an officer in the Australian and British Armies, including tours of duty in Malaysia, East Timor, Iraq, Falkland Islands and Afghanistan, and was awarded the United States Bronze Star Medal and the Australian Joint Operations Command Commendation for service in Iraq. James holds Bachelor degrees in Law, International Business and Modern Asian Studies, a diploma in Export Management and a Masters in International Relations and Asian Politics.

G: Tell us about your startup, Carbon Voyage

J: Transport is quite inefficient with lots of empty journeys and part loads, which creates unneeded costs, carbon, and congestion. We have built some software that can be used to book and manage transport journeys, and in doing so, find opportunities to share journeys and fill empty return loads. Over the last twelve months, we’ve been working with some fairly big organisations to build our credibility in the marketplace and also ensure that we’ve got our proposition and technology right.

G: What were the biggest obstacles in launching your company, and how did you overcome them?

J: Funding a new business is always a massive challenge. To date, we’ve been fairly fortunate to have been able to do this without any real external investment, although a point will come where we will need to consider this. As the business grows though, this challenge will remain, particularly in terms of managing cash flow.

G: What would you say has been your most memorable moment since launching Carbon Voyage?

J: I guess the most memorable thing is to see the technology when it has first been built. We’ve just finished building some new freight software that we’ve been working on for a very long time, and this is particularly exciting for us.

G: Can you give us a few ‘Do’s and Dont’s’ for setting up a new company?

DO

  • Get your product or service out there and iterate quickly based on customer feedback
  • Look at setting up strong partnerships
  • Keep fixed costs down as much as possible, and be careful about what you spend your money on

DON’T

  • Take your focus off sales and marketing
  • Let obstacles get in your way

G: Why did you choose Shoreditch in launching your startup?

J: Shoreditch is a pretty cool part of London, and it is great to have lots of other startups around you who relate to all the ups and downs of running a business and pursuing your dreams.

G: What does the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ have to do to compete with Silicon Valley?

J: We really need to ensure that the right talent can come to the UK and London to build great startups, and the Government could play an active role doing so.

G: Who/what are your favourite entrepreneurs/startups in Shoreditch?

J: I really like Moo and Tweetdeck, and there is also a great environmental business called AMEE. And of course, there are some great businesses in the Accelerator!

G: What does the future have in store for Shoreditch?

J: I hope it continues to draw in cool start-ups so that there is a vibrant community built up of start-ups form around the world. At the same time, I hope that it doesn’t completely lose the edgy, fun atmosphere that makes Shoreditch a special place.

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Carbon Voyage and Freight

August 14, 2011 by 2 Comments

So we’ve built a freight version of our software.

Ever since starting Carbon Voyage, we have been interested in understanding where inefficiencies existed across all parts of the transport industry given the impact on cost, carbon and congestion. Over the last twelve months in particular, we’ve been working with a few clients to fully understand this in terms of freight and develop a baseline understanding (mainly in London) of what some of these inefficiencies are. While it is a bit too premature to discuss the precise findings (other than say that they clearly demonstrate that there is a real mess that needs to be sorted out particularly in the lead up to the Olympics), it is quite instructive to understand that these inefficiencies are incredibly costly. Given that freight is sometimes empty up to 40-50% of the time (depending on mode and ‘shipping’ routes) and that fuel costs are potentially 30-40% of the total operating expenditure for a freight company, then anything that can be done to reduce inefficiency is very beneficial to freight companies. The London Freight Plan from TfL has some very useful statistics about the cost of congestion also.

The core of our software concept was all about making transport more efficient (i.e. optimisation) – find opportunities to share journeys, fill empty return journeys and find the right mode of transport based on what’s moving. As a basic concept, that applies to both people and things, so it was only a matter of time before we were ready to launch the freight side of things, which we are about to do. I think it’s great that there are already a few companies out there addressing parts of this market, and it is certainly clear that there are some great opportunities out there to make freight more efficient, given how critical it is to trade, and indeed the way we live.

If you would like some more info, please contact freight [a] carbonvoyage [dot] com or if you’re a freight company anywhere, visit here.

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Sustainable Mobility: Use transport in more efficient ways saving both money and carbon

April 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Sustainable Mobility: Use transport in more efficient ways saving both money and carbon.

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Collaborative Consumption

February 13, 2011 by 3 Comments

I went along to two events run by NESTA around the issue of collaborative consumption this week. There wasn’t a dedicated focus on sustainability, but it is clear that collaborative consumption is closely linked to sustainability. Both days were facilitated by Rachel Botsman, who wrote What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. It was really useful, particularly in allowing me to reflect on some of the behaviour related aspects of our business. There were some very cool stories of various things that were going on in this space, including Participle, the Good Gym and  Crashpadder (which I have now joined). I do sometimes wonder how financially sustainable some of these things are from a business perspective though, and there were actually very few ‘commercial’ entrepreneurs in the speaking lineup. Trust was the key thing I was interested in and there were some very useful comments made and critical mass came up as a key point by a number of speakers – both items important to us.

Here is an overview presentation of this by Rachel – if you want to see more of the event – check out here.

 

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Carbon Voyage gets some help from Rolls Royce

February 5, 2011 by 1 Comment

Through our link with Heropreneurs, we have recently become recipients of a grant from Rolls – Royce to assist us in building our business; we think it is really great that a start up focused on reducing the environmental impact of transport has been able to get this from a large company renowned for its work in the aerospace industry . We are also planning a trip out to their facility in Bristol to find out a bit more about their sustainability strategies and particularly look at some of the work they are doing with gas turbine engines to reduce their impact on the environment.

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Start Up Funding and Innovation

January 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Today, I attended an event run by the TGLP on the Digital Economy in the Thames Gateway – probably the most interesting items I heard were from Will Hutton during a question and answer session – and yet again, the issue of funding came up. It has certainly been mentioned in the press recently, with banks strongly resisting any efforts to meet lending targets for businesses. While I didn’t completely agree with some other points he made such as student loans (I did four degrees using student loans but see it as an investment rather than a major burden), he was bang on with this. He wrote an article covering this issue last week. In many respects I have no problem with the concept of things like bonuses, but they need to exist within a system that is transparent and that rewards performance, neither of which are features on the existing system. Loans to businesses (and start ups and SMEs) are another matter entirely; they are critical for job creation and stimulating economic growth. Every now and then, I have considered looking at debt as a means of expanding the business, and the banks have been horrendous in almost every respect (they are all happy to help out with factoring because our clients include both public sector organisations and FTSE companies). Elizabeth Varley (from TechHub) again highlighted a few points – it was quite funny seeing a few local government councillors madly scribble down some points when she mentioned issues around council tax for SMEs!

One great thing that has happened since I last wrote about this issue is the launch of some competitions for funding feasibility studies by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) in technology-inspired innovation and digital services; we will be submitting a number of proposals once we finalise who we will be collaborating with. This is just the kind of thing that is of great value in helping the start-up community develop ideas and indeed it is something that will help foster innovation. While no scheme is perfect (you need to submit your applications in Word for example), it is streets ahead of anything else in the UK!

A very interesting point (which brings the two themes of this blog post together) is around the issue of digital inclusion. At the TSB briefing days, there was a lot of great discussion around opportunities for the government to deliver services digitally (which has massive cost-savings implications), and there is some very exciting stuff going on. However, it is important to realise that broadband penetration rates in the UK are still pretty low, although you may not realise it which may have a massive impact on the ability to deliver these services successfully and thus get the potential savings. Terry Price from Novas Scarman highlighted some pretty crazy statistics where there are areas in the UK where broadband penetration is below 30% of all households! Thus, I guess in our quest for a more connected, digital world, we need to be careful about not disenfranchising a significant portion of the constituency.

 

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