May 06 2008
The number of patents awarded to the top 200 research universities increased more than 45% from 1995 to 2005, but I’m not sure what to make of that. Are universities waking up to the potential for commercialization of their work? Are they changing the focus of their research? Are their tech transfer teams bulking up? Data from the U.S. Patent Office.
May 06 2008
It’s illegal to sue the University of California for patent infringements because the school is protected under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
I’ve been hearing how frustrating this can be from entrepreneurs who have dealt with the school first hand.
I’m no strict constructionist, but I have to agree with this assessment of the silly protection, excerpted from the WSJ:
Stanford Law School professor Mark Lemley: “The underlying problem is that the Supreme Court is applying an antiquated doctrine — the 11th Amendment — to circumstances in which it was never intended to apply,” he says. “The Framers never contemplated states suing people for patent infringement.”
May 06 2008
The Venture Capital Journal is a finalist in the prestigious Maggie Awards for 2008, given out by the Western Publishing Association. Stories by Joanna Glasner and I were finalists in four categories.
The best part of the experience was traveling to Los Angeles to get the awards with Joanna and our editor, Larry Aragon. The presentation ceremony was a blast!
Apr 10 2008
There’s a neat article in the April 14 Fortune by Elizabeth Spires that lays out a case for the government consistently under-estimating inflation by focusing on “core” inflation instead of increases in the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) as a means of screwing Social security recipients.
It’s a fun column, that tackles the complexities of inflation measurement with aplomb and wit, while explaining the great importance of knowing exactly how much more we pay for various goods and services. Spires compares the use of the core inflation rate–which she says ignores increases in food and energy prices–to the government saying that aside from the casualties, fighting and troops deployed in Iraq, there really is no war.
We wrote about government inflation reports some months ago.
Apr 01 2008
I’m struck again by the profusion of news items surrounding an industry of interest. I’m writing about green vehicles and trying to give some perspective on the market.
The words are flowing out of my Internet connection like endless rain into a paper cup. Just in this small niche of the world there are dedicated newswire style blogs such as AutoblogGreen, a quarterly journal and online portal called the Green Car Journal and ample coverage in venture-related blogs such as the extensive list of electric vehicle startups listed in VentureBeat.
How can the “Renaissance Journalist” compete with these focused outlets? Is this even the proper role for a journalist or editor? I recently wrote on this, but am starting to wonder about it.
Mar 30 2008
No, it’s not a zen koan, it’s a trick of the mind. I wonder what this does to your liver?
Yay for the British, a magical people. All educated at Hogwarts.
Mar 29 2008
Will news reporters have a job in the future? Professor Steve Boriss, who teaches a class called “The Future of News” at Washington University in St. Louis and writes on the subject at Pajamas Media: “We will continue to have news middlemen, but those that survive must create real value for their audiences. Editors can create value by aggregating, analyzing, adding opinions, and gathering like-minded audiences for advertisers. Bloggers do the same. But, reporters are repeaters. They, not bloggers, are unnecessary recyclers of news.”
Maybe Boriss knows better bloggers than I do. But I think the premise of his argument is flawed: namely that a journalist’s job is to transfer a record of an event to an audience that cares about it.
It assumes that there is too little information in the world and that a journalist’s job is to be the one that witnesses it. That may have been true thirty years ago, but let’s face it. There’s often too much information available today.
Let’s say you wanted to know if batteries were a good place to invest today. Where would you go for information on that? Going to Google is like sitting down in front of a fire hose and blasting yourself in the face. You could spend days and days sorting through all the different types of investment (public, private, mutual funds, etc…) then what type of battery (lithium-ion, nickel-cadmium, led-acid, lithium-polymer, thin-film, kinetic, etc…), or maybe what sort of company (developer, producer, distributor, integrator) then maybe which of the 100+ companies that do some sort of battery-related thing.
Moving from information to action requires throwing things out as you go along, getting from the fire hose to a nice drinking fountain. This is what journalists may be best at in the future.
Mar 27 2008
40 Years ago today Russia lost the hero Yuri Gagarin to an airplane accident. Gagarin, the first man in space, is commemorated across Russia, perhaps most notably with the huge titanium statue in Moscow measuring 40 meters high.
Some mystery still surrounds the pioneer’s death. A 1986 report on the accident that cost Gagarin his life suggested the crash was the result of poor weather conditions and the wake of a nearby jet plane hitting its afterburners.
A 2005 investigation suggested the cockpit of Gagarin’s plane may not have been adequately sealed before take off. The loose seal would have lead to oxygen deprivation.
A bill to reopen the case and examine the sealed remains of Gagarin’s training plane was vetoed by the Kremlin in 2007.
Conspiracy theorists have had a field day with the incident, as RIA points out. Some say Gagarin was killed at the order of Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader they say was jealous of Gagarin’s popularity. A Finnish source reports that he was abducted by aliens.
Whatever the cause of his death, Gargarin should be remembered for his bravery in making aviation history.
Mar 27 2008
Google announced it would add tracking software to its YouTube video product, a move that will give users a raft of data on who sees their videos, when they watch, and from where. The NYT has the story. Tracking software is a big deal to site designers, and will likely be just as important to video uploaders looking to test their marketing message or develop a clearer sense of their audience.
Mar 27 2008
Nintendo released “The Legend of Zelda” in 1987 with a marketing flourish that any five-year-old might appreciate: a gold cartridge casing.
I got the game for Christmas in the late eighties and remember how cool it made me feel. The other kids on my street came to my house to play it and I felt like I had friends. It later became an object lesson in childhood fickleness when those “friends” left as fast as they had come.
The game has simple rules that lead to wide array of complex outcomes. The simple version is this: your elfin character tromps through a kingdom and beats monsters to eventually save a princess. Wikipedia has a lengthy discussion of the game’s plot, history and other intricacies.
Reviewer Dave Warmington has a theory on why people like the game and it certainly rings true with me. Most games of the time had a “quest” that directed you from one point to another and required certain actions be performed to advance. The quest was what you did in the game.
But Zelda was different. It has a quest, to be sure, but it also gives the game player a lot of freedom to roam around the digital world and explore its ins and outs undirected. It felt more like play than work.
Programmers caught on and have expanded the variety of potential interactions a player may have with the virtual world of a game.
If a little freedom is a good thing, than more of it must be better…but somehow it isn’t when it comes to an environment such as Second Life: a virtual world people participate in for reasons unknown to me.
I found a service that hosted a java-based emulator of the original Legend of Zelda game. The site hosting the service has since been taken down, but not before I beat the Second Quest–a feat that any player of the game will recognize as noteworthy.
I found something interesting in the experience. I wanted more of the game. I wanted a Third Quest in the same Legend of Zelda world with new challenges, puzzles and maybe even a new map to explore. Consider it an open challenge to any programmer/gamer out there. I’d pay $75 for a Third Quest.
[Image thanks to VideoGamesBlogger.com and Wikipedia]
Mar 27 2008
Brian Caulfield, a mentor and friend, let me in on a secret to good magazine journalism: stories should be surprising and have a point of view.
There are two ways to come up with a surprising story. One may “break” news by getting a scoop, or unveil some hidden insight. Scoops are pretty straight forward and the providence of the best magazines and newspapers. Insight is a little trickier to grasp, however.
When we worked together at a business magazine, Brian and I came up with several basic flavors of insight that might be applied to any news story:
I particularly like the “Reality Inversion” principle for coming up with interesting stories and like to use it to test out various theories and try to use it as frequently as possible. In a recent conversation with one of my coworkers, I started off by saying: “Well known investor X isn’t really that good.” Which lead to a very interesting discussion of what makes a good investor based on a very different point of view. Even if you end up throwing out the inversion, it forces you to think in creative and different ways.
