Smartlife

On the surface, it seems like filing a patent shouldn’t be too difficult: you describe your idea, fill out forms, and send it off to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). But there’s a very important step missing from that process: the search for prior art. When filing a patent, it’s important to be sure that no one else has filed a patent on the idea previously, as well as to be aware of any related patents that another company may have filed. Such a search can require a…

Heading into the marketplace, you’ll find a lot of terrific products that get lost in the fold due largely to poor branding. On the flip side, you’ll also find a lot of mediocre products that have skyrocketed to monumental success, largely thanks to great branding and marketing.

In this way, spending time to create and develop a strong brand is well worth the investment. The conventional route would be either to come up with a brand name on your own or to hire an advertising firm to come up with…

These days, it seems like everything is being crowdsourced. Threadless uses crowdsourcing to make T-shirts, Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk uses crowdsourcing to offer a virtual marketplace for intellectual capital, and the Democratic National Committee’s Flipper TV uses crowdsourcing to expose Republican flip-flops, contradictions, and “out-of-touch” policies. By letting the wisdom of the crowd guide decisions, organizations are finding innovative ways for both themselves and individuals to lower costs, achieve higher-quality results, and come up with groundbreaking ideas.

Every relationship has its problems, so how can we use the Web 2.0 age to resolve our “he said/she said” arguments and save our relationships? Let the masses solve our disputes for us! SideTaker.com, a new website that was just featured on TechCrunch, allows couples to voice their stories about an argument anonymously and let the users decide who’s at fault. Finally, an opportunity for me to show my significant other just how right I am — all the time!

A few weeks ago, two events occurred in my life that prompted me to join the fight against oppressive fuel costs. The first: I realized that I own a stock that trades at a rate lower than the per-gallon price of gas. (Okay, perhaps my stock-picking strategy is to blame here — and not OPEC — but every once in a while even an Existentialist like me finds someone other than self culpable.) The second: I helplessly stood by and witnessed the gas pump meter exceed $60 for the first time in my re-fueling life. At that point, I decided to take a stand.

Need a new logo, graphic, website, or business card? Overwhelmed by the process of finding a new designer, getting the end result you want, and keeping costs and time commitment down? 99designs promises the perfect solution for both clients and designers alike: post a contest to create your design, and thousands of designers compete to create the best product for you, at a cost named by you.