If you want to do custom statistical analysis on US Patent applications and awards, there’s no substitute for downloading the raw archives from the US Patent Office (USPTO) and manipulating them in the database of choice. However, in 2005 the USPTO uptdated its XML encoding standard to ST.36 (also referred to as “Patent Grant [...]

Twitter has to be the “noisiest” social media platform I’ve experimented with.  I realize I’m not a typical Twitterer - I tweet to mine contacts and information relevant to my career, and to experiment and play with how Twitter can be used for community building and intel-gathering purposes.  To me - and many else on [...]

… and SurveyMonkey killed the professional researcher.
My wife teaches design for public relations at a local university, and frequently comments how the availability of inexpensive desktop publishing and web design solutions has transformed and utterly devalued the graphic design industry.  Now, everybody who can afford a computer is told that they too can produce stunning, [...]