Posts By John Gladstone

Wisdom of the Crowd

As a follow-up to my Patent Office use of the ‘wisdom-of-the-crowd’ post: I went to a Web 2.0 Conference in Virginia a while back. I hopped the ‘business’ freight. James Surowiecki, author of ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’, described the anecdotal evidence that forms the backbone of his book. The internet has enabled a method toRead… Read more »

YouTube and USDA

While helping my kids research algae as a method of carbon sequestration (this as a hyphen in their daily addiction to Halo3), I stumbled upon this video on YouTube. It was posted by the USDA/CSREES – Partners Video Magazine (that’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension for you acronym phobes). Partners goes back a decadeRead… Read more »

Anti-Social Networking

This is a cautionary post for those fearless space travelers who might venture too close to the unforgiving Black Hole of Social Networks. Some of us may have already found our atoms placed end-to-end as we’ve been MySpaced, Friendstered, Facebooked, Twittered, Twined, and LinkedIn. Just remember, there is nothing new under the stars. Social NetworkingRead… Read more »

The Patent Office’s Courageous Jump into the Wisdom-of-the-Crowd Mosh Pit.

Peer to Patent / Community Review BACKGROUND: Software and algorithms used to be unpatentable. Recent court decisions and patent-office rule-making has made software the fastest growing patent category. In 1991 the patent office was cut off from general tax revenues and required to subsist entirely on fees for its operating budget. The political argument wasRead… Read more »