A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state (national government) to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention.

Typically a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention which must be new, non-obvious, and useful or industrially applicable.

Source Wikipedia

Patents have been around for a while and in my view it is a way to protect an Inventor’s idea from being stolen by a multi-national company and bringing it to the market. But over time the concept of Patents should get a big overhaul on the research and granting part, because the social media creates a whole new meaning of something getting publicized and thus out in the open.

Is my idea new or not?!
When attending a Patent searching workshop myself, it became clear to me that applicants of patents do everything in their power to prevent anyone of finding their patent. They accomplish this by use of synonyms and different ways of describing a definition of their application, making it a hard job to find out if something is new or not. The workshop leader also specifically noted that when an applicant applies for a patent, the search for it being new has a guarantee to the door as we dutch would say this. Meaning that they actually give almost no guarantee that a thing is new, because of this approach of making things hard to find.

Complicating things or vice versa?!
So when you’re adding social media (or even blogs or other stuff on the WWW) to the equation, is finding out if something is new getting easier or is the big noise of the social media stream too big to filter that out? I believe this is also one of the constructs behind being open source, that something that is known widely and is being developed by a community is not granted a patent. So getting your idea out in the open would be the best thing to do…or is it? I think this all depends on what your plan is and if you have ideas to market your idea or not. But be ware that when pitching your idea at a company, that they might respond with a “Nah, we’re not interested in such an idea.”, only to find out that exactly your idea has been marketed by the same company you pitched it to. So before pitching, I would decide between publicly known or patent beforehand!

Is Social media a legal tool for granting application or not?
Another question arises when you are checking for new ideas. Once an idea has been publicly available, it cannot be patented. Or at least one has to really narrow definitions down to some specific area or field and use combinations where it does make it a new thing. So the question is; “When someone spits out an idea into the social media stream, is it preventing a new idea for patent application of being granted or not? This is a question that needs to be answered in the overhaul for the concept of patenting.

The other side of the social media being a legal factor or not might be the ability to search through all the clutter… As I could think of the example where I can find back my first tweet, but searching for that exact tweet is impossible.

So a lot is unknown on how the new ways of communication are effecting the patent-business. But hopefully there will get some stories into the media, where a social network’s message or status is used to claim an idea being new or not. And if you yourself have something to share on this topic feel free to drop it in the comments.

As hard as the 10th dimension theory might be to grasp, I use this as an overlay on how I perceive the world and my journey called life. Whenver you’re given a choice or you have to make a choice I remind myself that I’m at a branch on my path and I have to decide which way I am going to continue my journey. No matter how hard the choice, or how high the pressure involved, I should not stray. Sometimes it’s hard to remind myself that taking time for a choice to make is golden. But I’ll keep in mind that I do have a certain path in my head with certain goals or possibilities to take into account.

When I’m at a branch point, whether it is willingly or unwillingly introduced onto my path, I also try and consult loved ones & friends on their point of view on a choice if it were theirs to make. Asking them doesn’t push me in the direction they’re pointing, but I’ll forge the best of their advice into a alloy with my own beliefs. It might work against me or take a lot of time to come to a good choice, but for me this is a way of creating a well-founded choice which I hopefully will not come to regret.

If I do feel regrets about a certain path I’m walking, I have no problem correcting my path and branch back or into a new direrction. For instance when I was about the age of 16 I’d always thought to drive a certain car when I was older and capable of buying it, eventually this did not serve as the only option. I think of it as a goal that was set under beliefs and circumstances known to me at that time. Later I came to other conclusions and felt that I’d rather have a car for it’s function than it’s status or my past beliefs. So I reconsider the options and even though I might have had the money for it, I wouldn’t have made the choice for that car I thought to be driving when I was younger.

I’ll remind myself through time that choices are mine to make if they involve my participation and don’t stray from my path.

? by (davide), on Flickr

Have you ever had to make a decission, meet a deadline or get something done? Of course you have! But what if you do not see a possible route to the outcome? Maybe it has blurred your vision by complexity, uncertainty of variables or whatever stands in your way of seeing a possible outcome. Soon you’ll find yourself in distress about it and eventually your thoughts are out of focus and distracted, blurring any possible route even more. How do you go about and comfort yourself, that for instance ‘this is what your good at’ and mark your worries as unfounded?

A few years ago a friend of mine pointed me out ot a video-clip, that really helped me in visualizing a topic that is quite hard to grasp from plain text. By watching this video and trying to digest the theory that was laid upon me, I related some of the explanations to every day life and how to utilize it in a certain way. The topic at hand might be a bit mind boggling and might take some time to penetrate the grey mass, but I will try and put down my theory in words on how I deal with the blurry vision. But first take a look at the video clip:

My theory focuses around the 4th and 5th dimension and I’d like to take two quotes from the video-clip and write ‘em down here:

Quantum physics tells us that the subatomic particles that make up our world are collapsed from waves of probability simply by the act of observation. In the picture we are drawing for ourselves here, we can now start to see how each of us are collapsing the indeterminate wave of probable futures contained in the fifth dimension into the fourth dimensional line that we are experiencing as “time”.

So, the long undulating snake that is us at any particular moment will feel like it is moving in a straight line in time, the fourth dimension, but there will actually be, in the fifth dimension, a multitude of paths that we could branch to at any given moment. Those branches will be influenced by our own choice, chance, and the actions of others.

Theory

Stock Exchange by Travel Aficionado, on Flickr

When I look up the definition of probability; “Probability is a way of expressing knowledge or belief that an event will occur or has occurred”. Reading this explanation of the word, I immediately think of stockbrokers trying to use the probability of certain patterns from history repeating itself. The use it to predict probable outcomes in a way that client and broker both get better from it, based on bunch of historical data.

What they’re actually doing in my opinion, is creating a certainty of a point in the future, on which they base their trust and confidence to act. And this is exactly the thing I’d like to use when my vision of reaching that deadline is blurred out. To explain it in other words, I’d like to compare it to the fact that in the past I have been doing and achieving certain things. Although I might not have always succeeded instantly, eventually my persistence payed off.

On this very ingredient I base my confidence. when the path is unclear. My mind keeps track of time, just like with stockbrokers use history to predict future of investments. Based of my successful achievements from the past, I create a point of certainty in the future. That of the fact I will meet the deadline one way or another, as I’ve shown myself before in other achievements.

By creating this confidence for myself, I believe in the power of myself and get rid of troublesome thoughts that are filling up my grey area. It’s not a failsafe solution, but it has been helping me a lot to get rid of troublesome thoughts, the ones known to take over your mind and leave you unable to complete any action, let alone make a decision for any choice. The chance and actions of others are somewhat harder to control, but having yourself in control really helped me out in past events of doubt and uncertain times.

Storm explained

” Storms are created when a center of low pressure develops, with a system of high pressure surrounding it. This combination of opposing forces can create winds and result in the formation of storm clouds.” – Source wikipedia

High pressure system
The past year I have dedicated my evening hours – besides my normal job – to studying and achieving my MCSA and MCSE certifications and with success I might add! Alongside all the learning, there were my other passions which also needed time in these same hours. I created quite the schedule to get all this done and still manage social life on a moderate level.

At the time I achieved both certifications, I felt stronlgy that a period of rest would really be the thing to cope with the dedication for certification of the past time. This is where the opposing forces are starting to work their way into creating a storm.

Low pressure
The past month I have been laying low when it comes to my evening hours. I still spend time to my passions and really find enjoyment in relaxing my mind for a period of time. Until recently the low pressure area was working out fine, but at my current point this area is creating quite a storm in my head. I believe this is due to the opposing forces are forming a storm.

Combination of opposing forces
My mind has been adopting to the high pressure way of learning and dividing my time over the evening hours. This state of elevated concentration of course can only last so long. But the complete removal of the learning element, surely created a drop in pressure and now in it’s turn is creating a storm of thoughts varying from innovative ideas to wanting to learn and spent time in sports more.

Tackling this storm

This is my brain right now… by iujaz, on Flickr

My way of dealing with situations like these, is to create a new schedule to up the pressure area, currently at it’s low point. I go about doing this by pin pointing each and every thing I want to do with my time and fix a “time spent” to it. Once I’ve marked all the stuff I want to do, ranging from daily grind to specific goals, I pour it into a weekly schedule.

This new schedule isn’t working for me when I’ m being strict to it for 100%, but it serves as a guideline through my week. I should refer to the 80/20-rule for this when saying:

I’m going to use 20% of my energy to get 80% of the schedule done, whereas the last 20% of the schedule will require 80% of my energy to get it done.

Concluding
The tackling measure is purely in place to bring the opposing forces in a balance and not to fully get rid of the storm. As my brainstorm generates ideas, questions the world, processes the daily impressions and fuels my creativity.

Missing a piece in the journey...

I know and also believe that it’s very important to set goals in life, sport, work and other areas, if you want to know where you want to go with it. It really comes down to emotional maturity as stated on the wikipedia article. But in many many cases the most important thing seems to be forgotten… How about enjoying the journey you take to reach the goal? I’d like to take it one step further by saying: It actually doesn’t even matter what the end goal is, but the journey that takes you there should be about enjoyment and getting satisfaction out of  it.

Of course I had my own learning moments, while I was discovering this for myself to be true. I would plainly set a goal and only focus on reaching it and in the end only feeling euforic for a few hours or maybe a even day. I would push through some boundaries, with only the end goal in my sights. The only thing I had been proving myself was that I could reach a goal if I really put myself to it,… but this is really exhausting and you can only do it this way for a certain ammount of time.

On the other hand, when you make the journey towards a goal more interesting by putting in some sub-goals and other useful stuff as you go on your journey, I find that it motivates me more. But even more important for me is that it makes the journey worhtwhile and more memorable than just having only goal-focus.

The big difference comes afterwards, when you’re recapping the moments you had in reaching your goals. When you’re more aware of the journey you’re planning to make, on your way to the end-goal it will be more memorable and long-lasting. This actually helps me out on setting new goals and finding motivation in less motivated times in journey’s towards new goals.

Making it more memorable, really puts in the additional ingredient needed to enjoy the goals you set throughout time.

Bottom-up
The way this works is that you want to reach the people interested in your specific disciplines/topics. So you’ll have to start at that level to let those people find your specific website/blog. If people are generally interested in the way you bring the news, they’ll start searching for your name and not the specific brand name. On the website or blog about yourself, you redirect people further to the topics you’re also writing about. In my opinion this way of working attracts the people you do want to have as followers, because they’re genuinely interested in the stuff you write.

Top-down
The reason why I dislike the Top-down way of working, is that people should not be pushed into following all that you do, share, post,etc. Your own stream of news, interests, shared items, posts and other stuff, might look cluttered to people who are only interested in one of the topics you write about. So offering them the option to find your sub-topics in a place of their own, leaves the choice to the reader.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Please share it in the comments…

Eyes! Click! by Jayel Aheram, on Flickr

It seems that only drill instructors posses this skill and have  a way with it on bringing their message across to the ones they command. But getting some discipline into your own life and way of living should not be more then setting out the things you want to do and doing them.

Once you set your mind to something, you should go for it and time will aid you in getting the new mindset activated. For instance you want to change the time you start working from 9 o’clock in the morning to 7:30 in the morning. How are you going to go about getting this in your daily schedule?

How it’s done…
In my case with starting early I’d reach my ultimate goal, which is: (during day-time) having more spare time at the end of the day to do things I like. To reach this goal I set out to start early at work and head for home early accordingly. Some of the things you might want to change is the time you head for your bed.

Setting limits or boundaries
I was this guy who would have no trouble going to bed late in the night, working on that last pixel of a picture that needed to be photoshopped. Sometimes ending up going to sleep when the first birds started whistling again… Who doesn’t love their years in college , but my working life asked for a different approach. Because you’ll have to be representative, fresh and fit at your job to perform your tasks accordingly.

I was willing to change that by setting some limits to the time I’d head for my bed. So I set my limit to a maximum of midnight, but better was 30 minutes before that. At first I had a hard time believing this would work and the stuff I’d be doing normally would suffer greatly due to this shift.

Persist
In reaching my ultimate goal, I had to be strict and disciplined to  myself, but amazingly all it took was two weeks and I had activated the new mindset. Waking up was getting easier, even to the point I’d wake up 5 minutes before the alarm clock. The urge to work late was passing and I found a good way of getting my things done during the day-time. When you look at the plan I’d made, it is simply shifting the period in which I spent my awake hours.

What if your bound to a start time
What if your start time is set for you, you still have options to re-schedule some of the things you do after work time to the morning part. In the past I had shifted my afternoon fitness session to the morning part before work. I had to start at 8:30, thus leaving me with a huge window of opprtunirty to do my fitness before work. I started my fitness schedule at 7:00 to 7:45, shower and head for work and still be in time. Additional bonus was that I was feeling very fit at work, opposed to what you’d expect. After work I’d have time for all the other stuff I’d used to do after midnight.

Concluding
All it took to get into both schedules, was two weeks of disciplining myself, after that it was mostly auto-pilot. Only having to put some extra effort after a well deserved holiday, which interrupted the schedule.

• How do I want to utilize it?
• How can I let it work for me?
• What do I want to achieve by using this technology?

How to utilize
As twitter, friendfeed and Google friend connect – and many of the other technologies – feature a user interface, they also open up their API for programmers to create interfaces to optimize the way you can work with these technologies. For me this was my first journey into utilizing the technologies for me. Over time I’ve found a few clients to use within iGoogle, Windows Mobile phone and desktop. The ones I go by at the moment, which optimize my usage for the technologies are: Twittergadget for iGoogle, Twikini for Windows Mobile and Twhirl for desktop.

As I’m almost getting my Android phone, I’ll be swapping the twikini – which now costs money to use – for twidroid.

How do I get it to work for me
The people who are also using the new technologies, form a great stream of interesting and non-interesting topics and items. I described in an earlier post, that it’s important to filter these streams into a custom stream which I find interesting. This is also how I let Twitter work for me. I handpick every user I follow and see if they post interesting tweets before adding them. When somebody is tweeting a tat bit too much to my liking I’ll most probably remove them from my list, as they’re cluttering the overall customized stream of things I do want to know about.

I’d like to see Google’s Friend connect more like a community builder, through which people can stay in touch, comment on and generally a central communication method. I setup the connect bar and widget’s up for people to join my site and leave their thoughts through that system.

Friendfeed on the other hand is a tool, which you can utilize in many different ways. It could be that I’d use it to search for the latest technologies people are talking about, or I’d like to find other people in the same area and follow their topics in friendfeed. On the other end, I’d rather have it working  for me, as my time is limited and I don’t want to get consumed into the stream of friendfeed posts, likes and comments. the way I let it work for me, is to utilize it as a aggregator of all different items that I find, share, create, write, blog, etc… And put it in  a single place called friendfeed, then it becomes a powerful database of information of which I know I can refer to or call on, when I want to find that one item again. This might not be the way friendfeed wants me to fully use it, but I let it work for me in this way, so it works for me.

What do I want to achieve
Well staying up-to-date in the ever faster changing Internet world is important for me, these technologies make it possible for me to do that. Although I had to find my way with them, there always seems to be someone out there like me who put in the features I like. That way I’m able to fully utilize the technologies and let me operate at my full potential in finding my way around and communicating it with others who are interested in that kind of information as well. If there ain’t a technology for it yet, they always turn up after others have felt the need for it as well. The things you can achieve with todays technologies, were far fetched in the time I started using web-related technologies, but here they are so “Use them” -  Just do it!

Being a consultant, representative or expert, it doesn’t do me any good when I use terminology or technical jargon to bring the formulation of a problem across to whom I’m explaining it to. In my day-to-day work, I’m very keen on using anecdotes or explain problems by use of examples that they can connect/relate so they comprehend. Not to show off my skills, but it’s not their expertise and I should anticipate that.

Although I’m applying this, I still find myself falling back into explaining why stuff is going wrong, totally getting full into detail about i.e. why that DNS server isn’t properly processing it’s requests. In most cases I sense that the person I’m explaining this to puts up a vague expression on their face, but what if I’m not able to sense this… Will this scare of the person to never ask a thing again or will they just knot along… In case of a potential client this would mean a catastrophe on the sales end.

I think this is one of the harder things to any trade, knowing when to talk plain English instead of technical jargon. However the opposite is exactly the same, you could just as easily have a conversation with someone who does know.

My advice would to build up a arsenal of good anecdotes and comparisons for any given situation, which you can use in explaining your day-to-day terminology in plain english.

Tell me your anecdotes in the comments, I’m curious to see which things you use to explain yourself…

1. possessing the claimed or attributed character, quality, or origin; not counterfeit; authentic; real
2. free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy; sincere

As it’s quite hard to distinguish yourself from the rest these days and it’s getting harder to stand out of the crowd, it’s likely you get tempted to look into the “10 ways to…” articles that are all over the net. For example; articles that show you how to increase your twitter followers. Really good to see there are ways to get people started into using a service and they should use it. Most of the articles I read tell me that the way I’m currently using services is about 75% the way it’s supposed to be used. But do I really want all those people following me just to follow me because they’re taught to follow and have a huge follow list and so giving me a large follow list, or do I want the people who are interested in what I’m genuinely posting and sharing…

The most important thing about my online presence is that it has to be genuine. This is where I start questioning myself to get into these ways to increase and be heard, because my feeling tells me I’m about to leave my authenticity behind. Maybe it’s a noble cause to hope that people start to notice you because you’re being genuine, but for me it certainly is the way!

Which brings me to the next questions; what will I be sharing? What am I posting about? What are my passions and interests and can they be packed into one blog? It’s time to answer these things by just doing what I feel is right. It’s time to let go of the thinking (just a bit) and start sharing more and not keep myself occupied with thoughts all the time, because living in thoughts doesn’t share my view of things.