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Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

usecanvas.com

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Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#61

Post by palehose »

spdustin wrote: post #18

Instructure, the company behind Canvas LMS, is a pretty big company, and their software is used by many, many companies/educational institutions. It could be argued that Canvas (the notes app here) is confusingly similar to Canvas LMS wiki pages. I hate being the guy to suggest a name change, but it may be something to consider before you get a lot of traction. I definitely understand the instinctive "fuck no" respon…

There is another company that uses the name "Canvas" as their brand at http://www.gocanvas.com

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#62

Post by fuzionmonkey »

This is awesome! Just today I was looking for collaborative Markdown editor with nice previews/rendering.

There needs to be the ability to ability to add comments to documents, though. Without commenting, the "collaborative" aspect is severely limited.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#63

Post by joelrunyon »

jenseng wrote: post #55
spdustin wrote: post #18

Instructure, the company behind Canvas LMS, is a pretty big company, and their software is used by many, many companies/educational institutions. It could be argued that Canvas (the notes app here) is confusingly similar to Canvas LMS wiki pages. I hate being the guy to suggest a name change, but it may be something to consider before you get a lot of traction. I definitely understand the instinctive "fuck no" respon…

Does the trademark office just rubber stamp anything they get and let the lawyers fight it out? IANAL, but these look pretty similar: 85632326 (Instructure): IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Application service provider (ASP) featuring software to enable uploading, posting, showing, displaying, tagging, blogging, sharing or otherwise providing electronic media or information over the Internet or other communications networ…

The trademark office will catch it sometimes but the onus is typically on the trademark holder to monitor & object to any trademark filings that might conflict with ones they've registered.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#64

Post by amelius »

khedoros wrote: post #60
amelius wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The service they provide is essentially a canvas. They go through great lengths to provide to the user the abstraction of a canvas. So this would be analogous to a chainsaw company selling a product named "Chainsaw".

Crucially, the USPTO disagrees with you (although, who knows? That could change in the future). Is the company providing a canvas, or a collaboration tool that uses an abstraction of a canvas to operate? I think that you're conflating what a thing is with how that thing is constructed. It is a collaboration tool. It uses a canvas. "Canvas" isn't a generic word within the realm of SaaS collaboration tools, so a tradem…

> It uses a canvas.

The users are using the canvas, not the company.

Would you say that a chainsaw renting company could call itself "Chainsaw" (because it "uses" chainsaws as a means to provide the user with sawing capabilities)?

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#65

Post by gmfawcett »

Is there some place I've never been where technical workers enjoy being called nerds? If someone called me a nerd, I'd tell them where to shove it -- and I certainly wouldn't buy into their product! The Canvas people should seriously rethink their branding.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#66

Post by cwb71 »

gmfawcett wrote: post #65

Is there some place I've never been where technical workers enjoy being called nerds? If someone called me a nerd, I'd tell them where to shove it -- and I certainly wouldn't buy into their product! The Canvas people should seriously rethink their branding.

Have you been to San Francisco or the Silicon Valley?

It has been my experience in tech companies and social circles that the term nerd is often considered a badge of honor and is even used to refer to one's self and friends.

See also https://vimeo.com/73589975

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#67

Post by tenpies »

cwb71 wrote: post #66
gmfawcett wrote: post #65

Is there some place I've never been where technical workers enjoy being called nerds? If someone called me a nerd, I'd tell them where to shove it -- and I certainly wouldn't buy into their product! The Canvas people should seriously rethink their branding.

Have you been to San Francisco or the Silicon Valley? It has been my experience in tech companies and social circles that the term nerd is often considered a badge of honor and is even used to refer to one's self and friends. See also https://vimeo.com/73589975

> the term nerd is often considered a badge of honor

N = 1, but in my experience this stopped being the case when being nerdy was deemed cool and anyone with glasses started proclaiming "I'm so nerdy".

I suppose this sort of makes me a hipster.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#68

Post by cwb71 »

tenpies wrote: post #67
cwb71 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been to San Francisco or the Silicon Valley? It has been my experience in tech companies and social circles that the term nerd is often considered a badge of honor and is even used to refer to one's self and friends. See also https://vimeo.com/73589975

> the term nerd is often considered a badge of honor N = 1, but in my experience this stopped being the case when being nerdy was deemed cool and anyone with glasses started proclaiming "I'm so nerdy". I suppose this sort of makes me a hipster.

No, it makes you a second-wave nerd with hipster tendencies.

(I of course just made that up.)

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#69

Post by ggggtez »

a3n wrote: post #26
spdustin wrote: post #18

Instructure, the company behind Canvas LMS, is a pretty big company, and their software is used by many, many companies/educational institutions. It could be argued that Canvas (the notes app here) is confusingly similar to Canvas LMS wiki pages. I hate being the guy to suggest a name change, but it may be something to consider before you get a lot of traction. I definitely understand the instinctive "fuck no" respon…

Not to mention Canvas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_X

Or canv.as

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#70

Post by moron4hire »

waldrews wrote: post #48

I just wish some notetaking program besides OneNote had the feature that inserts the source URL when you paste text from the browser. Some Firefox extensions will add the URL when you're copying, but I haven't seen that on Chrome yet...

That's a hack from the site from which you're copying, not OneNote.
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