MEHOM

The typical approach of Microsoft is misdirection. If they say they are not interested in it, do not believe them. They are in it!

Just started reading about Google gears. It is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline.

Source Link: http://code.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=11628 http://code.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=69197&topic=11629

"Failure to plan is to plan for failure." ... Writing a plan is fine does not creates the delusion that that one can actually control and predict how things are going to go. ... It gives the implementers an concept what might be happening. ... From a high level but pragmatic viewpoint, it is what process of writing the plan are you using that is failing you. If you are writing it from a low level, you will FAIL. Planning requires people with wisdom, vision and conscious experience. . . . A person who has no conscious of what is going on, usually live on the seat of their pants. ... Reader! Who is planning for your company? Do they know the big picture from a "top down tangible viewpoint"? (Where we are at, We call it a Tangible Vision.) From the strategic classics: One who excels at warfare will await events in the situation without making any movements. When he sees he can be victorious he will arise; if he see he cannot be victorious he will desist. Thus it is said he doesn't have any fear, he doesn't vacillate. Of many harms that can beset any army, vacillations is the greatest. Of disasters that can befall an army, none surpasses doubt. - Six Secret Teachings, 26

By reading some of the entries in the Startup news section. one gets the feeling that these people are self-centered and have a limited viewpoint of what the masses really wanted.

It is so difficult to get the right users to pay for your services when the most people using the Internet believe in getting things for free.

The problems of most startups (and VCs who back them) is their lack of discipline to map out a tangible goal and direction.

How can people develop a product when they do not know the market? Developing a product that is looking for a marketplace is a challenging way to generate revenue.

It takes a lot of internal centering, vision and experience to be creative. Sometimes people get lucky w/ one idea between the age of 21-30. Them they "peter" out for the rest of their lives.

The key objective is to develop an solution that would either generate revenue or save time and money for the user. If you cover that in your app, your group got a winner. Remember the key is to develop solutions not "stuff". An old economy rule for consultants. Be a problem solver.

Quite agree with your opinion about patent rights. Those who innovate are in trouble. Those who are copycats, are happy. Good artists innovate. Great artists steal.

For those who are too lz to click the link.

///// May 1, 2007 High Court Puts Limits on Patents By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, April 30 — The Supreme Court, in its most important patent ruling in years, on Monday raised the bar for obtaining patents on new products that combine elements of pre-existing inventions.

If the combination results from nothing more than “ordinary innovation” and “does no more than yield predictable results,” the court said in a unanimous opinion, it is not entitled to the exclusive rights that patent protection conveys. “Were it otherwise,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the opinion, “patents might stifle, rather than promote, the progress of useful arts.”

Because most inventions combine previously known elements, the court’s approach to deciding what sort of combination is so “obvious” as to be ineligible for patent protection will have widespread application. The result will be to make patents harder to obtain and defend.

“Granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress,” Justice Kennedy said. He added that such patents were also undesirable because they might deprive earlier innovations of “their value or utility.”

Patent law experts said the ruling created a common sense standard that could have a broad impact.

“Nearly every patent that contains a combination of prior ideas is at risk because the court has dramatically broadened the standard of obviousness,” said Cynthia Kernick, an intellectual property lawyer at Reed Smith in Pittsburgh.

Judges will have more leeway to dismiss patent infringement lawsuits without requiring a jury trial, and patent examiners, who generally grant patent applications unless they find prior references to the same invention, will now feel freer to deny claims, said Matthew Kreeger, an intellectual property lawyer at Morrison and Foerster in San Francisco.

“And we could see thousands of cases asking the Patent Office to re-examine patents it has already granted,” said Mr. Kreeger, who was one of the lawyers who had prepared a brief filed by the Biotechnology Industry Organization in support of the patent. “It doesn’t take a lot of resources to ask for a re-examination.” To be eligible for a patent, an invention must be novel, useful and not “obvious” to a person of “ordinary skill” in the field. The Supreme Court case concerned a fairly typical dispute over whether a combination of old elements in a new way was new or simply “obvious” to any expert.

At issue was an adjustable gas pedal for use on cars and trucks equipped with electronic engine controls. How could the vehicle’s computer tell the pedal’s position? A Canadian company, KSR International, under contract to General Motors, solved the problem by mounting an electronic sensor at the pedal’s fixed pivot point in order to communicate the necessary information.

A rival, Teleflex Inc., demanded royalties, claiming the device infringed its patent on an adjustable gas pedal equipped with an electronic sensor. KSR refused to pay on the ground that Teleflex had combined existing elements in an obvious manner and that its patent was therefore invalid. KSR won in Federal District Court in Detroit, but that decision was overturned in 2005 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

That court, in Washington, has exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals. After years of permitting its judgments to stand unreviewed, the Supreme Court has begun to take an active interest in the Federal Circuit’s cases and has overturned several, including a second case the justices decided on Monday in favor of Microsoft in a dispute with AT&T.

In granting judgment for KSR on Monday, in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., No. 04-1350, the Supreme Court listed several specific errors and “fundamental misunderstandings” in how the Federal Circuit had analyzed the case. In looking at the Teleflex patent, Justice Kennedy said, the appeals court made the mistake of considering what “a pedal designer writing on a blank slate” would have done to solve the problem of the pedal and the sensor. But the slate was not blank, he continued, and the Teleflex patent was essentially an upgrade of existing technology.

Justice Kennedy said the problem was not necessarily the Federal Circuit’s overall approach, but rather its rigid way of applying a commonly used legal test. The test requires a person challenging a patent as obvious to identify a reason that would have prompted someone to combine two or more previous inventions, such as published articles suggesting such a combination. This has made it difficult to attack a patent as obvious, and has often precluded summary judgment, instead requiring an expensive jury trial.

Justice Kennedy said that this test, in the Federal Circuit’s hands, had led to a “constricted analysis” that paid too much attention to an inventor’s motivation and too little to a simpler inquiry: whether “there existed at the time of invention a known problem for which there was an obvious solution.” The Teleflex patent fit that description, he said.

The federal government, which had sided with KSR, argued that the Federal Circuit’s approach had led to the granting of too many patents to obvious inventions. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry groups, entering the case for Teleflex, argued that innovation would suffer if patents became too hard to defend.

In a sense, the case presented a moving target. While the KSR appeal was pending, the Federal Circuit issued several decisions reflecting openness to challenges to patents as unworthy because of obviousness. “Those decisions, of course, are not before us now,” Justice Kennedy said.

Court Sides With Microsoft

WASHINGTON, April 30 (AP) — The Supreme Court sided with the Microsoft Corporation on Monday, finding that patent law does not apply to software sent to foreign countries.

In a 7-1 decision, the court rejected AT&T’s position that it was entitled to damages for every Windows-based computer made outside the United States using technology that compresses speech into computer code.

AT&T had said computers running the Windows operating system infringed on its technology for a digital speech coder system.

The decision could affect other lawsuits against Microsoft and save it billions because of the global scope of its operations.

The Supreme Court said software should be treated like exported blueprints and schematics.

If you had a marketing person in France, a QA guy in Singapore, another pair of developers located in NY city and London, England. How do you get everyone collaborating as a team? Setting up a fair meeting time for everyone can be challenging.

I agree with all of you. Have been in project management and product development situations that most of you have been in. What I discovered is the 1st meeting. This initial meeting determines whether the project has a chance to succeed or fail. The way I ran my meetings is that each and every stakeholders must be there in person. This goal of this 1st meeting to have everyone determines everything in terms of goals and objectives. During this time, everyone gets the "feel" whether they believe in the project and whether they believe in their future teammates.

From my experience, most people do not know what to do during this first meeting. In most cases, it is their problem.

In my case, I believe in establishing a Tangible Plan (or Overview) that everyone can unified with. It is about getting everyone to commit to the big picture (the goal, its specific and to each other).

The question is getting everyone to work through specifics of the grand goal.

From my experience, not everyone are willing to be teamplayers. During the 1st meeting, it is about seeing who wants to play teamball and who wants to play "Lone Ranger".

Team collaboration is not about software, It is about a process of getting people to collaborate. 100% team management psychology. ... Remember losers promises while winners commit. Each of your success will be about getting people to commit. .... Thank you very much for all responses.

Define your desired outcome. Then determine your strategy based on the goal. An endeavor that fails to prepare is an endeavor prepare to fail.

Has anyone ever heard of the "strategy by guidelines" and the "Tangible Vision" approach? Start by understanding what one wants in terms of the outcome and then develop a set of guidelines based on achieving the outcomes. Uses a mindmap software to draw out the scheme. Slowly start making connections between the outcome and the approach of completing the outcome (milestone by milestone). Without any project mgmt strategy, most developers are just guessing on their objectives and the approach.

Did I undermine free software efforts? Did I say that? Read again. As I mentioned before, "There is no free lunch. If you want something to be CONFORM to your standards, CUSTOMIZES it yourself or PAY someone to do it for you. ... " Not all free software is good. Not all paid software is good too.

If it is for free, what do people expect? Lets use the example of tap water. It is plain and simple. Do people expect it to come with different flavors?

[ Rule one of economics 101: There is no free lunch. If you want something to be conform to your standards, customizes it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. ]

How to price a project. Hmmmm. As a project strategist-manager, recommend the books Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (2006) and Software Project Survival Guide (1998). Used the SPSG templates as the basis of my pricing process. SPSG book is one of the few books that still sits in my bookshelf

Some European countries like Norway are designed for rich companies like the Rolling Stones. If one has the money and the A+ caliber lawyers, it is a piece of cake.

In the late afternoon, early evening, you can walk down to Oakland Chinatown and get an adequate meal at one of the deli's @ Webster/10th.

Oakland Chinatown is one of those rare places where some of the eateries are open 363 out of the 365 days.

Making a point that one is thinking about what is their low offer means he/she is only for short term gains and realizes their idea is not worth that much.

I quite agree. On the net, civility and formalty is out. From my experience people has a tendency to confuse civility with formality during face to face situation. Giving ppl the technology to collaborate does not mean they can collaborate as a team From my experience, I have seen people at team meeting never seeing the big picture while focusing on their agenda.

Regardless of the profession, good professional behavior is a must. Treating ppl with civility is a must

Indirectly it is. My methodology works with any type of collaborative and conferencing technology. Distance between each team member and the project culture of team is irrelevant..

The skill begins by defining the core points of the problem. Then delineating the critical path to the core center of the problem. Problem solving and trouble shooting are two skills many ppl lack.

Focus on the problem of a particular marketing niche Explain the causes of it Present your solution (1) the origins of it (2) the technical benefits (3) general benefits in terms of global marketplace and how do you and your solution fit into the big picture.

Team Collaborative Strategy that is above technology, distance and project culture.

Those who want to work for a startup (that has a great idea), has the aspiration to either make headlines or create history.

There is great knowledge in the classics. Patterns of human nature always repeat. WhenI know the mind of the other person, I know who their allies are. I also know their team and the position they stand in. Now take this point of view and apply it in your software app. It is a paraphrase from Sunzi AoW Chapter 3.