There are some huge issues with the patent system in the United States right now, resulting in increase in lawsuits and huge backlogs and delays. Many feel (including yours truly) that with all the new highly technical fields out there, the system needs to be reevaluated. Well, the change might be coming. According to Economist, The United States Patent and Trademark Office is looking into going social.

Remember the whole “wisdom of the crowd” idea behind websites like digg? USPTO is trying to do the same with patent examination by opening the process up to online collaboration. The project is called Peer to Patent and they are starting with 250 patent applications in the technology sector.

Patent examination process is a tedious work and requires a lot of research on the part of a single examiner. The results often leave more to be desired with patents granted for ideas that are not novel or are painfully obvious. And with so much innovation in the software and Internet areas, patent examiners simply cannot keep up.

That’s where the idea of peer review comes in. By having more people participating in the review process (many specializing in those very fields), the research becomes easier and the USPTO can make a more informed decision. Economist writes:

Peer to Patent builds on…the notion that practitioners and researchers within a particular field collectively have all the relevant prior art at their fingertips already. All the patent office needs to do, therefore, is to get that community to tell it what it already knows.

So if you are one of those people constantly complaining about the patent system, here is your chance to do something about it. Sign up process is quick and easy and you can get started collaborating on pending patents right away.

So what are your thoughts on collaborative patent examination? We’ve seen some drawbacks to the social nature of sites like digg (remember digg revolt?). Could this system give start to a whole new set of problems, like biased patent reviews by competitors?

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Nature was surprisingly open about how poorly the trial had gone. “The intention was to explore the interest of researchers in a particular model of open peer review, whether as authors or as reviewers,” a Nature article stated. “It was also intended to provide Nature’s editors and publishers with a test of the practicalities of a potential extension to the traditional procedures of peer review.”

It turns out, however, that it might not be practical at all. Nature “sent out a total of 1,369 papers for review during the trial period,” but only “the authors of 71 (or 5%) of these agreed to their papers being displayed for open comment. Of the displayed papers, 33 received no comments, while 38 (54%) received a total of 92 technical comments. Of these comments, 49 were to 8 papers.”

A Techdirt reader raised an objection that seemed valid: “It’s because NO ONE KNEW ABOUT IT!!” “Posterlogo” then wrote that “this had nothing to do with the scientific community failing to embrace open access peer review. It had EVERYTHING to do with not getting the word out well enough.”

The Nature article addressed that issue, though, saying, “The trial received a healthy volume of online traffic: an average of 5,600 html page views per week and about the same for RSS feeds. However, this reader interest did not convert into significant numbers of comments.”

The failed experiment at Nature does not mean that wikis (and/or the peer review model) are “bad,” of course, but it’s a clear indicator that this trend may not be well-suited to act as a bandwagon.

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The concern was how, where, and with whom to discuss issues relating to operating a business. Their feeling was one of isolation and being alone in the world. They were unable to find other business owners who could relate and identify with their short and long term challenges.

Enter the entrepreneur peer support concept.

Independent business owners need the opportunity to discuss their business problems with others who share the same concerns. At the same time, the entrepreneur must be free to go into some detail without a competitor using the information to their advantage. In the past, most business owners were left to their own devices and to bottle up their worries inside. They were unable to talk over daily and long range business difficulties with understanding peers who faced most of the same issues. The internet in general, and blogs in particular, have created that much needed virtual support group.

Business bloggers have a built in support group whether they realize it or not. Other blogging business people are reaching out through their writings; actively seeking peer support and guidance. As other business owners read the postings, the realization appears that other people share the most of the same business challenges. At the same time, the bloggers aren’t business competitors, but more likely, potential business partners or resources. The seeds of a business support network are planted.

As the business bloggers become more familiar with one another through comment, e-mail, Skype, telephone, and live in person discussions, the support network is born. Already, several groups of business bloggers are meeting via Skype conference on a regular basis. The chat isn’t always about business related issues either. Often, it’s simply enough to know that others out their can understand and relate to what an entrepreneur confronts on a daily basis. The sharing together is what really matters.

If you are a business owner who feels alone and isolated. If you believe that there is no one who understands your daily trials and rewards, it’s comforting to know that other entrepreneurs feel the same way. Find a group of business bloggers with whom you have developed a trusting relationship and form a business peer discussion group. Talk about those pressing issues that your employees and family don’t seem to grasp. Share the joys and pleasure of owning your own business with other owners who enjoy that same sense of achievement and independence.

Set up a regular meeting time, and chat together as a group on Skype, or some other conference call medium. If you find another trusted entrepreneur in the same city, you can meet in person over coffee or lunch. Two person discussions are also valuable stress relievers, as well as idea generators. You may find yourself providing as much or more peer advice to others as is returned to you. Business people helping business people is a reward in itself.

Start an entrepreneur peer support group today.

Sharing ideas and talking about problems helps everyone succeed and lead happier lives.

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Wayne Hurlbert provides insigtful information about marketing, promotions, search engine optimization and public relations for websites and business blogs on the popular Blog Business World.

Check out Blog Business World for yourself.

Ideally, all patented inventions would be novel and nonobvious. But the issuer of patents in the United States, the US Patent and Trademark Office, has been accused many times of rubber stamping patents that end up harming other inventions due to the patent covering some obvious function.

Like many government agencies, USPTO has by its admission been ill-equipped to handle the workload, namely a flood of patent filings in the modern era. Beginning Friday, the Patent Office may finally have a way to improve its research.

The Boing Boing blog noted the launch of Peer to Patent, a project that officially launches May 12th to enable community patent review.

IBM will sponsor the effort, which will be hosted by New York Law School. A description of the project appears on its website:

Professor Beth Noveck has been influential in driving the establishment of Peer To Patent, including its partnership with USPTO. Her blog announced the public briefing on Friday will be held in Alexandria, VA; registrations will be first come, first served and limited to 220 people.

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As a peer review network, SEO Consultants helps clients find reputable SEM firms. It also has a few surprises for its users, one of which I stumbled upon today while researching another story.

History buffs will be interested to see a simple but fairly detailed chart of the history of search engines dating back to the development of ARCHIE in 1990. The chart has only eight entries between 1990 and mid 1993, but things start to pick up in March of ’93 when Bill Clinton sent the first email message.

According to the chart, Yahoo! was released days after the release of WebCrawler in April 1994. Two months later, Lycos began sorting the web. Within two years, another dozen search tools joined the original 3.

The chart provides a nostalgic look at the history of search engines. Anyone with an interest in how we found ourselves where we are today can find hours of self-directed infotainment.

Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel – 250-385-1190 Toll Free – 877-385-5526 Fax – 250-385-1198

Link: Peer Pressure

Agreed. I still wish we wouldn’t do a series of linking technologies (even though I don’t see linking technologies as inherently evil anymore — at least as long as they follow my rules for being user centric).

There are so many ways to add links to a page to be helpful to users that don’t require trying to mess with (or confuse users) over the links on the page.

Now that most users have high resolution screens why not open a new pane up where you add “helpful links?” Why do you need to add the links onto the page itself?

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

I went to the boutiques page and found myself looking at a big map of the US with a large blank space under it. I wasn’t sure what to do with the map at first because it doesn’t say click on your area or anything (of course I figured it out but I like to “idiot proof my sites”). I think the space below the map could be made smaller so we get right to the listing by state. I would like the state listings to be alphabetical and not by time zone. After all, what does time zone have to do with it? Alphabetical is more efficient and folks want to be quick on the web.

I like the overall look and colors work well, elegant. I liked the layout on the news page but I found the print a bit small to read. I noticed other pages with the same size print and wished it was a bigger. I really liked the rollover thumbnails in the press section.

Margueritte Ogle

Peer reviewers volunteer their time and effort to help other ebusiness owners with their websites. Please take time to visit this reviewer’s site and say that you think what they’re doing is valuable to the web business community. For a complete listing of sites reviewed, visit the Peer Review section. If you’d like your site reviewed, send an email to editors@ientry.com.

My concerns would be in the font usage. Im not a big fan of the left menu font. I do recognize that it represents what it will look like in HTML, yet I would be looking to incorporate the font for the top right buttons more. It appears to be “Myriad” or “Helvetica” I think that a better fit for the left menu would be the “Myriad all caps” as seen in the “Basket Content” button. (Or whatever it is)

This would bring up the HTML vs. Graphic Intensive argument. In which I would argue, would not be a significant problem. Your talking about only adding about 5 or 6k of download time. In return, you’re getting a much classier look for the navigation. It loads once on the home page, gets cached..and boom..You’re shopping for some classy clothing on a very “chic” site.

Anyway, just my two cents.
Overall I think it works well.

Regards,
Christopher T. Fitch
Art Director

Peer reviewers volunteer their time and effort to help other ebusiness owners with their websites. Please take time to visit this reviewer’s site and say that you think what they’re doing is valuable to the web business community. For a complete listing of sites reviewed, visit the Peer Review section. If you’d like your site reviewed, send an email to editors@ientry.com.

“I like it”

Pros:
A well-designed site should always consider their audience. www.thefeltsource.com does just that. While the parent is the person who will obviously be buying the products you can see that there is a lot of consideration given to the child who will be sitting there too.

Good strong graphics and appeal

Cons:
Navigation: I have always believed that you need to get to any page from any page without having to backtrack. While this presents extra work for the webmaster, it is far less work for the visitor. Several pages on the site require backtracking to get to the next item.

http://www.thefeltsource.com/ClassroomActivities.html

One table has different alignment.

Paul Brace
www.Image-In-USA.com

A minor quibble… the http://www.thefeltsource.com/FeltKids-Story-Sets.html page forced me to scroll right in IE to see all the text. poor layout.

I would have prefered an easier way to get back to the home page from the middle of some of the long catalog pages…perhaps a sidevar menu?

Other than that, they do a good job of cataloging and displaying unusual merchandise. (I may be back to shop for my granddaughter’s birthday!)

Marge Clark
Your source for superb Essential Oils, Aromatherapy
http://www.naturesgift.com

I went to the Felt Source website and I was overwhelmed once opened with the many things they have on their home page. My eyes did not know where to look. I founded crowded at first but in the same time was not tiring maybe because of the images and colours have some kind of a reflection to ease the process. It is very easy to browse and easy access to different pages.

I found two dead link. I believe there are some software to detect dead link on any site.
http://www.thefeltsource.com/ClassroomActivities.htmll#TellingTime
http://www.thefeltsource.com/ClassroomActivities.htmll#CalendarSet

Over all I enjoyed my visit to the site and would recommend it.

Good job!

Joseph Ghabi
The Free Spirit Centre
Where like-minded free spirits connect from around the world.

Peer reviewers volunteer their time and effort to help other site owners with their websites. Please take time to visit this reviewer’s site and say that you think what they’re doing is valuable to the web business community. If you’d like your site reviewed, send an email to editors@ientry.com.

Once the Home page finally loads, it immediately becomes apparent that the page is too wide and too long. Other than that, it’s colorful and has a lot of things related to felt. I think they are just cramming too much on the home page. Some of the subsequent pages have the same problems as the Home page. The word magic word, “Free”, is displayed prominently in red ( a good thing).

Looking under the hood, we find Style Sheets used to change the text link colors in their various states. Unfortunately, this effect does not work for visitors using the older and still popular Netscape 4.7x. The title tag is in the wrong place. It should be the first tag in the <head> section. There’s a useless informational tag in the <head> section telling us that the site hasn’t been modified since October of 2002. Let’s hope they just forgot to update that tag. The meta description tag reads like War and Peace and the keywords are not far behind.

So, how does this site rank so high in Google under “felt”? Mainly because the page is so big that they’ve used the word “felt” a gazillion times. Also, Alta Vista shows just under 200 sites linking to them. I’m not sure how they accomplished this as I could not find that many reciprocating links on their site. This could make for some bad cyber karma.

This site could be a winner. It has great content for its focus on felt and educational items. They simply need to make the pages narrower and shorter. Aim for a total file size on the Home page to less than 50 KB. I know, that’s difficult, and I can’t always get my clients to keep the sizes down, but it’s a guideline. However, once a client allows me to cut out some of the glitz and decrease the load time, they are amazed at the increase in sales. Once this site’s page is smaller, they need to focus (and shorten) its keywords and site description. The title tag needs to be moved to the first position after the tag. This will balance out the loss of using the word “felt” a gazillion times. Lastly, if you are exchanging links with other sites, be sure that you don’t forget to post them on your site.

Dan Prinzing
http://www.DrTandem.com
DrTandem Web Page Design

Peer reviewers volunteer their time and effort to help other site owners with their websites. Please take time to visit this reviewer’s site and say that you think what they’re doing is valuable to the web business community. If you’d like your site reviewed, send an email to editors@ientry.com.