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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Patent pooling to access patented knowledge for innovation

2 comments : Posted by Geshan Manandhar at 8:40 AM Labels:


A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.
Patent pool is a consortium of two or more companies agreeing to cross-license patents relating to particular technology. This is mainly done to save time and money of the patentees and licenses to relax the legal complications. Patent pool is a hot debate. This helps to keep alive the non exclusive quality of knowledge and information. The more people use a technology or product its value is incremented.

Patented knowledge is protected by Patent rights which clearly forbid it from being used easily and widely. Until the Patent owner eases the restriction of the exclusive rights acquired by him/her the product or technology is far from being used on a larger scale. Patent pools can give chance to an idea, technology or knowledge being to be used by more people. This will lead to benefit to the mass. With use of Paten Pools and patent clearing houses the search and transaction cost in research can be reduced. With the implication of the network effect and critical mass the collaborative cross patenting can make knowledge better accessible.

Challenges posed by IPR are more evident in developing countries, though there may be laws but the inability to implement them practically has give rise to piracy. Bitlegging also seems to be a practical option as the economic resources are scarce. Mainly in health sector the compulsive use of patents forbid new inventions and innovations to come out. As the IPR should be respected, the depth of access to information is deducted. Patent clearing houses and Copyright Clearance Centers can help to lower the excessive control of the right holder so that the protected knowledge can be used for the welfare and development of a developing nation.

Research is a vital aspect of learning new things. Government should mandate the use of Patent Pooling in all possible ways. The collaborative cross Patent among companies can work wonders but yes the monitoring to keep competition growing should also be considered. Government should look at innovative research from a different perspective and be a catalyst to promote research and reap its benefits.

Patent clearing houses do not have such direct and visible impact here but the possibilities cannot be neglected. There are many ways from which developing countries can benefit form them. First it supports collaborative effort this will lead to finding similarity among differences that will surely benefit the stakeholders. The concept of cross licensing can be new but it will be helpful if used to full extent. The best way to establish and sustain patent pooling and patent clearing house is first create awareness about the whole IPR and patent issues. Relevant training and workshops relating to the control and use of patents can help about the right use of the patent to get best outputs.

The concept of cross patenting can be misinterpreted so the awareness program should be able to flow the right information in the correct way. This will in turn enable the people to know the benefits of Patent pooling which will ultimately lead to better use of Patents for improved gains.
Geshan Manandhar
Around 525 Words

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Thursday, April 3, 2008

Giving out custom RSS from your Drupal Site

5 comments : Posted by Geshan Manandhar at 9:03 AM Labels: ,
Recently I ran into a problem where by I had to give out RSS of the Forum only from a DRUPAL 5 site, as the website was forum centered but it had blogs also. So when I first used the default rss.xml like (http://somesite.com/rss.xml) it gave out all the update not only the updated of the Forum that I wanted. I even tried another RSS source http://somesite.com/forum/rss.xml but it also had the same output. So problem is: giving out RSS of Forum only, how to do that?

Then I was suggested to use the views module, I said to myself views how will it do that? But I was not using the "Arguments" part of views there was the trick. Read the steps below if you want to do it yourself as well:
  1. Assumed you have views installed, login as the adminstrator (user1) or user with access to edit views.

  2. Goto Administer>>(under Site Buliding) Views>>Add

  3. In the new view configuration do something like below:

    1. Type the name of the view, I gave forum_rss, and specify access if you want to or give a description.
    2. In the page section choose something like below, give url it'll be yoursite.com/forum_rss.
    3. Skip the header, footer, empty text, menu and block sections.

    4. In the fields section add "Node Title" and "Node Body" if you want to add more its fully your choice, see below:

    5. The main step to get the RSS feed is here in the "Arguments" section, choose "RSS: RSS feed selector and click "Add Argument", then specify "Display all Values" and your feed's title as below.

    6. Use following filter in the filters section, I've used content type "Forum" and other needed filters.

    7. Select a sort criteria like below (new items first) then click save.

    8. Go to the new view page create and get your RSS feed's URL.

  4. The main trick lies in "Arguments" segment, when you add an argument choose "RSS: RSS Feed Selector" and display all values in default when it is added.

  5. Then see the view you have a RSS feed icon at the bottom of the page or
    you can get your custom RSS feed at http://somesite.com/page_view_url/feed.

What can it be used for only some possibilities:
  1. Giving out RSS of selective content type like blogs, forum or even you own CCK made content type.

  2. Giving out custom RSS of some vocabulary (tag) or any view customizable content like RSS of content tagged with Drupal.


There can be numerous possibilities with RSS of views. I got my problem solved hope you also benefit from it.

Geshan Manandhar
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Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Showing last 5 posts in your blogger blog

2 comments : Posted by Geshan Manandhar at 8:47 PM Labels: ,
As you might see above the post(s) here in my blog I've put up the last 5 posts to my blog. You can also put this in your own blog its very easy. It can be done with no hassle following the steps given below with screen-shots for your convenience:

Steps
  1. Login to your blogger account and go to the bottom of you blog's main page (yourblogname.blogspot.com) and copy the link to your blog's feed from the "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)" like shown below. {I'm using Firefox and yes have got lots of add-ons ;-) }

  2. In your Dashboard click on the "Layout" link of the blog you want the last 5 post to be displayed on.
  3. In the Layout>>Page Elements page (where you should be now), click "Add a page element" link as shown below, it'll trigger a popup window.



  4. In the popup window click "Add To Blog" under the "Feed" section found at the bottom of the pop up as shown in the picture below.

  5. Paste your feed URL (must be like http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default) to the Configure feed page which asks for the feed URL as below and click "CONTINUE".

  6. Alter the settings if you need to put "Last 5 Posts" in the title as shown below and click "SAVE CHANGES".

  7. New block will appear on the section you added, to move it to above the posts drag it from the section it is in above the "Blog Posts" segment/block and it'll place itself in a place holder there as shown in the picture below.

  8. Click Save then view your blog, you'll have the latest 5 posts.

The idea is subscribing your blog with its own feed. Happy Blogging and blog templating :-).
Geshan Manandhar.
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Tuesday, April 1, 2008

5 Notable April Fools Gags of 2008

3 comments : Posted by Geshan Manandhar at 8:35 PM Labels:
This year April Fools had some great pranks and gags to offer, here are 5 of them which I liked. Some are even believable I guess:

  1. Google+ Virgin Media = Virgle --- are sending people to live in MARS,
    “Here's the Virgle Pioneer pitch: Things will get better. Eventually. Sure, the work will be hard, the broadband rates low, the commodes decidedly open source, and yes, your life might be extinguished in a fiery instant of catastrophic technological malfunction. But your enriched descendants will appreciate your sacrifice, which should render worthwhile your choice to spend the rest of your (perhaps radically foreshortened) life in deprivation and uncertainty.”

    They (two co-founders of Google) have even put a convincing 1 minute youtube video about it, see it here. Google had other gags as well but I like this the most.

  2. CNET News, News.com says Mark Zuckerberg facebook founder as guest host on upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live. It quotes
    “The mild-mannered Zuckerberg, best-known for vanilla-flavored speeches filled with talking points about "the social graph" and "making communication more efficient," will provide the opening monologue as well as appear in a number of sketches on the NBC show's April 5 episode.”
    Read it all here.


  3. BBC reports Flying Penguins at Edinburgh Zoo, It adds:
    “And penguins were the subject of an April Fool at Edinburgh Zoo too - when staff claimed they had an exhibition of the world's-first flying penguins. Sadly that was a joke too!”
    Read it all here ,(has a good round up of the world celebrating April Fools in this page) or the video of flying penguins here.

  4. Janet to re-shoot ‘Rock With U’ video: JanetLove.com: It quotes
    “Janet Love has learnt that Janet will re-shoot her video for Rock With U. In a statement released exclusively to Janet Love, Island Def Jam representative Lila Froop confirmed that Janet was unhappy with the initial version of the video and held crisis talks all weekend with director Saam Farahmand. He was given 24 hours to pitch new ideas for a video and has been instructed to have the shoot ready for this coming weekend.”
    Good and someone may even believe :-). Read full story here.
  5. Last but not the least our own The Himalayan Times (THT) published an anchor news titled Booze banned as Nepal goes dry, It adds
    “The authorities are gearing up to declare Nepal a dry country for the next 10 days in the run-up to the CA election.

    In normal course, the election authorities ban the sale, distribution and consumption of liquor 48 hours before polling, that too only at a radius of 100 metres near the polling centres.”
    I think it'll be good if Nepal Government really does this. Read full news here.
There were lots of gags and pranks to watch out this April Fools day many are listed in Wikipedia here and a site has been setup to report April fools day on the web here. See them, enjoy.

Geshan Manandhar.
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