Apple Loses Mighty Mouse Trademark, Probably Shouldn't Have Used It In First Place...Paramount Asks Moviegoers to RSVP In Advance...AT&T Is #1 In Customer Service?...Scary Google Results with Sergey Brin

You may have heard by now that Apple no longer has claim to the name Mighty Mouse, since small-volume mouse maker Man & Machine, who had labeled its own pointer "Mighty Mouse," managed to wiggle its way through all the red tape to a successful trademark application. There's a lot of messiness involved, but the truth of the matter is a) it was dumb for Apple to borrow a name from a cartoon character in the first place, and b) the Mighty Mouse was one of Apple's worst products to date. In the end, I'm thinking there's a hint of karma in this reversal of fortune. Hopefully Apple's next mouse will be mightier in deed than in name. [Engadget]

Even though movie-poster regulars such as Owen Gleiberman and Peter Travers have labeled it "freaky and terrifying" and "a potent frightfest" respectively, studio execs seem skittish about releasing Paramount's Paranormal Activity. Instead of manning up and giving it a nationwide release, the studio has asked potential ticket buyers to declare their intentions here. I'm all for crowdsourcing experiments, but this just seems like studio cowardice at its most yeller. They call it "the first-ever major film release decided by you"—it sure won't be the last. [Movie Site]

iPhone owners love to crap all over AT&T customer service whenever they get near a JD Power & Associates survey, but apparently, for the 1.5 million who get TV programming from the T, service couldn't be sweeter. Good ole JD released the results, naming AT&T best in the west and south, Verizon tops in the east, and WOW! numero uno in the north central region. (No, World of Warcraft didn't start a cable company... or did it?) It might not startle you to learn that none of the cable and satellite carriers who actually provide TV service to the majority of the nation appear in the (positive) results. Just wait till you serve as many people with TV as you serve with cellphones, AT&T. Then let's see where you stand. [JD Power]

Danny Sullivan, king of the search engine watchers, pinned down Sergey Brin after a Google event and showed him some bad results. Like if you type "car rental," all the major agencies are there, but when you type "california car rental," many companies disappear (including my personal favorite, Hertz). He also asked why searching "search engines" brought up discussion of search engines, but "search engine" just brought up many older search sites—notably excluding Google itself. Brin said people probably don't search for Google on Google, but Sullivan disagreed. I was actually under the impression that if you go to Google and type "google," you break the internet, so in either case, I'm just glad to be enlightened. [Search Engine Land]