The Digital Mission companies have arrived in New York and are well into the first day's activities, which kicked off with the Master Class session at Winston & Strawn's offices.

It's amazing to think that a year has passed since the previous Digital Mission to New York, but the view across New York from the Met Life Building brought the memories back. New York is a unique city, with a very distinctive vibe and culture. Doing business here is both challenging and exhilarating.

The panels were a pleasant mix of new and familiar faces, kicking off with the basics of setting up in the US, including dealing with general legal issues, employment law, Intellectual property and tax. You might be a UK business, but US courts can claim jurisdiction over you. The US legal systems operates at a state level, which raises the spectre of 50 different courts reaching their long-arms out to you.

Note that this is a UK/EU perspective and laws do vary across territories.

1.  A trade mark is anything that identifies the goods and services of a business or distinguishes them from those of another.

2.  A registered trade mark gives statutory protection and an effective monopoly in respect of that mark for the goods or services it is registered for AND for similar marks with the same or similar goods where there is a likelihood of confusion. Well known registered trade marks have additional protection if used by others for different goods or services to those for which they are registered if that use takes unfair advantage of or is detrimental to the repute of the well known registered mark.

NSFW-ish: If a bit of swearing blaring from your speakers will raise eyebrows in your workplace.

Links to this video, from Irish journalist Markham Nolan, are working their way round Twitter faster than requests for invites to Google Wave.

PRESS RELEASE: London, UK, Wednesday 23rd September 2009.

The UK digital industry will once again get a boost when enterprise and expertise connect in the Digital Mission to Los Angeles and San Francisco, from 11th - 16th October 2009.

Organised by Chinwag and UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), the five day mission provides the perfect vehicle to make business connections, discover the logistics of setting up shop, build international profile and understand the US digital market.

14 UK-based companies have been selected to take part and they are:

• agency2
• Amaze
• Audioboo
• etv media group
• Great Fridays
• Ideonic Limited
• Littleloud
• MoviesThatRespond (Creative Works)
• NixonMcInnes Ltd
• Orangepanda Digital Media
• Plug-in Media Ltd
• Twofour
• Type3 Limited
• Videojuicer Ltd

Further information and contact details for each company is available on the Digital Mission website: http://digital-mission.org/lasf09-companies.

Our friends at The Glasshouse are running a competition in the run-up to their Pop Idols event on Thursday where Daniel EK, Spotify's CEO will talk about his experiences as an entrepreneur.

They have  thrown down the gauntlet to Chinwag's readers to send in questions that will help reveal the secret of Spotify's success. The best 5 questions will each win a pair of tickets worth £25 each.

The deadline to apply for a place on the Digital Mission to New York is this Friday (18th Sept).

If you've been putting off filling in the application form - don't worry I procrastinate with the best - then dive right in. It's a very short form that shouldn't take more than a few minutes to fill out.

After all, we just need to know what your company is about, and what you'd like to get out of going on the Digital Mission. Things you're thinking about every day, right?

The jury might be out on the success of Microsoft's Bing reports of modest rises in search traffic share and Google cage-rattling punditry aside, their TV spots hit the nail on the head about semantic search (see below).

The massive stimulus packages used by governments around the world to head off the financial crisis seem to be working their magic, with a light smattering of positive economic stories.

But what are the opportunities for digital SMEs? How does a small firm take advantage of the opportunities of global trade? A series of 12 free workshops across the UK will help firms understand the opportunities as well as provide insight on how to take advantage of them.

The latest offering from the big G will whet the appetites of marketers, analysts and stats head alike.

Google Internet Stats is a UK-only initiative that aggregates stats from 52 advertising and marketing sources that are 'carefully selected and reputable' according to a post on the Google Barometer blog.

Using a simplified GReader-style interface, the headline data is easily browsable and searchable (this is Google, after all) in five different categories:

• Technology
• Macro Economic Trends
• Media Landscape
• Media Consumption
• Consumer Trends

The application deadline for our NYC Digital Mission is fast approaching, September 18th to be precise, and here at Chinwag Towers we thought we’d give you a flash back to one of our most popular panel debates, Transatlantic Troubleshooting held during our Digital Mission at SXSWi 2009.

It’s bound to get those of you who’re waiting until next week to get your details over to us to get a wriggle on.