Daily Archives: September 25, 2007

Harnessing collective IQ for reviewing patent applications

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Interesting Technology Review report on “Opening Up the Patent Process”…

A new website called Peer-to-Patent intends to harness the power of online collaboration to streamline patent review. By creating a community around each application, the site facilitates public discussion and lets people upload relevant information. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is currently involved in a limited trial of Peer-to-Patent, with the hope that it will bring openness and transparency to a review process that was previously limited to communication between the applicant and the examiner vetting the patent.

“There’s never been a bridge built between the information available in these expert communities and the government institutions that make these important policy decisions,” says Peer-to-Patent founder Beth Noveck. Noveck is a professor at New York Law School and the director of the school’s Institute for Information Law and Policy. She is also the director of the Democracy Design Workshop, which is running an experiment, called Do Tank, to encourage research into projects that foster community and encourage citizens to take action.

Peer-to-Patent could benefit an overloaded government organization. The USPTO faces mounting difficulties stemming from large numbers of patent applications of increasing complexity. According to the USPTO, 173,771 patent applications were approved in 2006. The government agency claims that it is currently backlogged with more than 800,000 patents. This means that new submissions have a pendency, or time from filing to first action, of up to 52 months…

The market for blather

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Jeff Jarvis wrote the definitive judgement on the New York Times decision to drop its paywall. It’s a good read, but what struck me most was this passage:

TimesSelect’s brilliant cynicism was that, when forced to find something to put behind a pay wall, they came up with content that was, indeed, uniquely valuable — the columnists and archives. But this was also content for which there was no significant ad revenue at the time (advertisers buy ads in food and travel but not opinion sections; there is essentially no endemic advertising for blather).

This explains why I’ve never earned anything from putting Google Adsense on this blog!* The Google engine has always struggled to find appropriate ads to go alongside my bla.., er, deathless prose!

*Footnote: I’ve just checked, and so far I’ve earned $47.55 in over a year!

PC users still prefer Windows to Vista – Telegraph

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According to the Daily Telegraph,

It took took five years and $6bn (£3bn) to develop, but Microsoft’s Vista operating system, which was launched early this year, has been shunned by consumers – with computer manufacturers taking the bizarre step of offering downgrades to the old XP version of Windows.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates speaking during the press conference at the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system launch
Microsoft launched the Vista operating system to great fanfare in January, at least a year late

A note on the electronics retailer website Dabs.com reads: “If you’re not ready for Vista, you can downgrade to Windows XP without affecting your Sony VAIO warranty and switch back to Vista at any time.”

Dell took a similar line earlier this year when it brought back XP on a range of computers for its US customers in response to a deluge of online complaints.

Argument 2.0

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Martin Weller has started something interesting:

I am starting something of an experiment today for the rest of this week.

I am going to construct an article by structuring a debate across four blogs. The article is around the future of content and starts in my next post.

The plan is:

Monday – I post a piece on where I think digital content is going, arguing that it is moving towards being free and widely distributed.

Tuesday – Ray Corrigan is going to post a piece responding to mine which looks at how digital rights may make it a more, not less, controlled future for content.

Wednesday – Patrick McAndrew will focus it on education by bringing in the perspective from open educational resources.

Thursday – Will Woods will look at some of the relevant technologies and how these might impact.

Friday – we’ll draw some conclusions.

It’s an intriguing idea. The only problem is the timescale. Martin’s opening contribution covers a lot of ground and begs many questions. If Ray can respond effectively in 24 hours, then he’s a quicker thinker than I am.

TechBubble 2.0 coming along nicely

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According to today’s New York Times,

Some people laughed at Mark E. Zuckerberg when he reportedly turned down a $900 million offer last year for Facebook, the social networking Web site he founded three and a half years ago.

But Microsoft, Google and several funds are considering investments in the fast-growing site, according to people with knowledge of the talks, that could give the start-up a value of more than $10 billion.

While discussions were still in the early stage, these people said that Microsoft was considering an investment of $300 million to $500 million for a 5 percent stake of the company. Google is also said to be interested in an investment.

Facebook’s valuation could go even higher as the two rivals create the kind of competitive bidding situation that has recently driven the acquisition prices of other start-ups into the stratosphere.

Representatives from Facebook, Microsoft and Google all declined to comment on the talks.

Er, that’s $10 billion for an outfit that, according to one analyst quoted in the Times story, brought in $60 million to $96 million in annual revenue, with no real profit.

Later: It’s interesting to see the rationalisations being offered for this valuation — and why Microsoft and Google might want Facebook. Here’s one for example:

“There’s a lot of strategic value beyond the pure financial value in an investment like this,” said Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, who closely watches Web investments. Liew, a former executive at AOL, said social networks like Facebook and MySpace are encroaching on the turf of portals like Microsoft’s MSN to serve as users’ home page.

“There’s not a lot of a zero-sum games, but there’s only one home page,” Liew said. “There’s only one thing that is the first thing you see” when signing on to the Internet. “That’s what I think is the strategic value, and I think Microsoft needs it more than Google.”