Blogs: A crossover reference: Peer-to-Patent

Friday, January 23, 2009 - 12:00 AM

Peer-to-Patent is a pilot project in collaboration with the US Patent and Trademark Office. It was established in 2007 and recently extended/expanded to June 15, 2009. It is focused on helping the patent office perform high-quality examinations of pending patent applications by enlisting the public to help find and explain prior art.... Peer-to-Patent uses social software features to facilitate discussion amongst groups of volunteer experts. Users can upload prior art references, participate in discussion forums, rate other user submissions, add research references, invite others, and more. This helps the examiners focus their attention on the submission(s) of prior art that have the highest relevance to an application.

Beth Simone Noveck, Law Professor, and Director, Institute for Information Law and Policy, New York Law School launched the Peer to Patent: Community Patent Review project.

Incentives for submitting an application to the project include:
• Expedited review. Public review begins one month after publication of the application. Review continues for four months, after which the patent examiner conducts an expedited examination of the patent application.
• Potentially stronger patents. If Peer-to-Patent review works as expected, patents that survive the process have already undergone considerable scrutiny and will be less at risk of a successful challenge later.
• Public service. Applicants can feel they are contributing to a valuable experiment in new models and technologies for public decision-making.

"The Peer-to-Patent Web site is built using open source technologies (RoR, MySQL, Linux OS). Hosted database/web servers, load balancers, and interactive features (threaded discussions, e-mail alerts, RSS feeds, social bookmarks, video clips, tagging, ratings, and more)."

Sponsors: CA, Inc., General Electric, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intellectual Ventures, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, Omidyar Network, and Red Hat. Peertopatent.org content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 US License, except where otherwise noted.

Projects: Open Source Font & Forges

Saturday, December 13, 2008 - 11:20 AM

An interesting post-typographical innovation...

Free EcoFont uses up to 20% less ink.
Results vary font size 9 or 10 is best depending on
your software and the quality of your screen...
Best for OpenOffice on Mac, PC, or Linux.
Distributed under GPL and based upon Bitstream Vera...


VeraSansSpecimen.svg by Sun Ladder
CC-BY-SA 3.0 & GDFL

Also check out some new forges on the top right column... : )
BioForge, Digital Commons, Media Commons, Moving Images, Open GoogleCode, RubyForge,
ScienceCommons, ScientificCommons, Software Archive, SourceForge, WikiSpecies

Projects: The 1st Stanford University Open Source Lab Unconference

Wednesday, November 05, 2008 - 07:54 PM

People: FLASH: Giant Styrobot Invades from Oregon!

Monday, September 29, 2008 - 06:40 PM

Giant Styrobot & Featured Stories & More


"Zoe and Styrobot, Looking Back - Rice University Art Gallery"
Source: Flickr • Photo by Mr. Kimberly
(CC) Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0


“Ironically, the robots actually critique
the very culture of which they are byproducts . . .
Every time something ships there’s a piece of
Styrofoam to keep it safe and sound . . .
I really look at these pieces as being
mechanical and robot in nature.
The result is a pretty poignant statement about what we buy . . .
and what we throw away.”
- Michael Salter, Associate Professor
Department of Digital Arts, University of Oregon
Time-lapse of "Art from Excess" at the San Jose Museum of Art.

People: berkeley.edu.law.tech.freeculture.con

Friday, August 08, 2008 - 08:00 AM

freeculture.berkeley.edu/Free_Culture_2008.html
law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt/events_calendar.htm
dmax.bampfa.berkeley.edu/blog/2008/09/free-culture-2008-international-conference-2

Organizations: Cycles and Spirals

Friday, July 25, 2008 - 12:07 PM

Wikipedia : Cycles


"This image has been (or is hereby) released into the public domain by its author, Cumbrowski at the English Wikipedia project.
This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible:
Cumbrowski grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose,
without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law."

Time ^ Calendar
Planetary cycles
Astronomical cycles
Climate and weather cycles
Geological cycles
Organic
Agricultural cycles
Biological and medical cycles
Brain waves and cycles
Physics
Mathematics of waves and cycles
Electromagnetic spectrum
Sound waves
Manmade
Economic and business cycles
Music and rhythm cycles
Religious, mythological, and spiritual cycles
Social and cultural cycles
Military and war
Literature
& Spirals . . .

10th Anniversary of Media Ecology

Blogs: U R Meta4, 2008 :::: From Happening to Unmuseum to Open Museum(s)

Saturday, June 07, 2008 - 12:00 AM

Unmuseum recommended reading: "Possibilities for Transformational Conferences" a paper by Sunrise Facilitation, a collective that met regularly in Eugene, Oregon from 2000-2006. While no longer active, the ideas and connections from it generated this paper. Formats include: appreciative inquiry, expert time vs. participatory time, fishbowls, kinetic spectrum, pause for pairs, small group sharing, speed geeking/dating, storytelling, open space, world café, and more. Published (CC) Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.
In addition, view the open exhibition catalog by Sterling Israel M.S. curating and archiving Eco-Art & Artists titled, "Creative Students and Artists in Eugene: New Visions for a Healthy Planet" from March 2007, Arts & Administration, University of Oregon. Published (CC) Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.

"Basic Open System Model" by Anonymous, wikipedia, Public Domain

<<< The Open Museum >>>
Digital Art Media Progam (DMAX)
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
...the first open-source museum collection - is a preservation repository
and online database of born-digital art. This next-generation cultural works project,
currently in the planning phase, also provides a testbed for developing innovative legal,
economic, and cultural frameworks for the digital arts.

<<< Open Source Museum of Open Source Art >>>
Department of Modern Culture and Media
Brown University
...the museum is entirely in the public domain
(add, modify, or remove art, likewise, elements of the building).
Our goal is to reimagine definitions of art, artist,
curator, museum, culture, and open source.
This project is underway in a virtual reality called Second Life.

<<< Online Spaces >>>

"Galactic Trading Cards Installation"
Illuminated, by PodCollective

p.s. worth checking out when in a deeply reflective state...
Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator

Photo by John Swords via Flickr
(CC) Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

[Part I] [Part II]

... more to come ...

Blogs: Practical Ways to Foster Ecological Remediation

Friday, May 23, 2008 - 11:55 PM

"WCI student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags" (via The Record)
Synopsis: Daniel Burd's stew contains ground-up plastic in a mix of landfill dirt, yeast and tap water. After experimenting with different temperatures and configurations, he isolated the microbial remediators. He discovered that it biodegrades over 40% of the weight of plastic bags in less than three months. The only waste is water and a bit of carbon dioxide.

"This is a huge, huge step forward... We're using nature to solve a man-made problem."
Daniel Burd, 16-yr-old junior, Waterloo Collegiate Institute & Canada-Wide Science Fair winner

Additionally, in re-meditation, continuing to reduce our consumption
of packaged goods and non-reusable baggage remains a high priority.

"String is king" by fixlr (via Flickr)
(CC) Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

How to help limit the ever-growing patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean:
• Limit use of plastics when possible.
• Use a reusable bag when shopping.
• Take your trash with you when you leave the beach.
• Make sure trash bins are securely closed.

News: :: MOMA OPEN'D & ELASTIC :: GRL & SPOT :: DESIGN LABS EXTRAORDINAIRE ::

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 - 04:00 AM

FLEXIBILITY OF MIND!!! Two featured open source artisans on Imaginify, The Graffiti Research Lab and MM2+3 collaborator Scott Draves are now featured in the Museum of Modern Art's "Design and the Elastic Mind" (2008) curated by Paola Antonelli and Patricia Juncosa Vecchierini. "Over the past twenty-five years, people have weathered dramatic changes in their experience of time, space, matter, and identity. Individuals cope daily with a multitude of changes in scale and pace... The exhibition highlights designers’ ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and history..."


L.A.S.E.R. Tag Graffiti Projection System (The Mobile Broadcast Unit)
PopRally presents Graffiti Research Lab: The Complete First Season (May 4, 2008 @ MOMA)
funded by the generous support of Katherine Farley & Jerry I. Speyer [Trailer]
Imaginify : ::::::::::::: EXPERIENTIAL GRAFFITI ::::::::::::::::::::::::: (April 2006)
TORRENTURL : torrentz.com/d8153e785b737b8f355c7a0ce9864de21059661a (April 2008)


Electric Sheep (Spotworks) MOMA Online by Scott Draves
Leonardo (cover) : Vol. 41, Issue 1 (January 2008)
Discover Magazine : 14 Best Ways to Use Your Computer’s Spare Time (March 2008)
Imaginify : Distributed Stimuli (October 2005)
BLIP.TV : Dreams in in High Fidelity/Electric Sheep Sample (March 2007)

Projects: Online..... Ecology... Games... Innovation... Learning... Media...

Monday, March 31, 2008 - 06:20 PM

MIT Press Journals has recently published (under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Unported 3.0 license) a series on Digital Media & Learning, definitely worth examining "...the effect of digital media tools on how people learn, network, communicate, and play, and how growing up with these tools may affect peoples sense of self, how they express themselves, and their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically..."

See: ”Read open access” — complete creative commons'd and free editions . . .
Digital Youth, Innovation, & the Unexpected
(cc) Edited by Tara McPherson, Associate Professor, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California.
How emergent practices and developments in young people's digital media can result in technological innovation or lead to unintended learning experiences and unanticipated social encounters.

Youth, Identity, & Digital Media
(cc) Edited by David Buckingham, Professor, Institute of Education, London University.
Contributors discuss how growing up in a world saturated with digital media affects the development of young people's individual and social identities.