VoIP Blog - Tehrani.com

« December 31, 2005 | Main | January 3, 2006 »

Milliondollarhomepage.com Auction

I recently wrote about Milliondollarhomepage and the fact that they are getting lots of publicity lately. Now low and behold they are auctioning off their last few pixels. Yes you too can become a part of the future and the history of pixel ads.

The auction has about 8 days to go and the highest bid is $21,400.00.

Good luck.

| This entry was posted at 4:52 PM. | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Link this | Email this | Leave comment
Trackback URL: Milliondollarhomepage.com Auction
Technorati Del.icio.us BoingBoing Slashdot Digg Spurl Furl

JPEG Patents and Yahoo!

Patents have become huge in the computing industry. I thought my Rates Technology vs. Google Patent Troll post from earlier today was the end of the patent news for today. Boy was I wrong. I just learned that Yahoo! Has paid for the ability to post JPEG files on the Internet.

Forgent Networks announced Thursday that it has signed a deal with Yahoo to license its patented technology for posting digital images on the Internet.

The Austin-based company holds patent No. 4,698,672, the coding behind the JPEG compression technology. Nicknamed '672, it's the most widely used technology for storing photos in digital cameras, printers, scanners and personal computers on the Internet.

Forgent has collected more than $105 million in licensing fees from the patent from 50 companies including Casio, Olympus and Nokia since it began enforcing its patent four years ago. Forgent also develops scheduling software, but the bulk of its revenue now comes from patent enforcement activity.

The Forgent case is also a trend in the technology industry of "patent mining," with NTP and Research In Motion, the provider of the popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail and paging services, being the most high-profile case lately. The two companies are negotiating to resolve the patent dispute, but a jury has found that BlackBerry has infringed on NTP's patents for wireless communication.

Patent enforcement happens in all industries, and the latest slew of technology patents is not unusual, said Robert J. Tosti, patent attorney and partner in Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP in Boston. Some companies, such as Forgent, have formed business models around pursuing licensing arrangements for existing patents, but there are not many of them, Tosti said.

"It may be that they found a Rembrandt in the attic," Tosti said.

Forgent began enforcing its portfolio of technology patents in 2001 and got its first deal with Sanyo for $15 million, and then Sony for $16 million. Article.

| This entry was posted at 12:45 PM. | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Link this | Email this | Leave comment
Trackback URL: JPEG Patents and Yahoo!
Technorati Del.icio.us BoingBoing Slashdot Digg Spurl Furl

Internet Telephony Expo Show Hotel Sold Out

Great news. The first show hotel at ITEXPO, the Fort Lauderdale Marina Marriott is sold out. This is quite a testament to the growth of VoIP and the global interest in the technology. I am extra-excited about this event – the first IP communications show in 2006 because ITEXPO is moving to an exhibit hall.

Please book your hotel room immediately if you haven’t done so. I want to be sure there is room for you in Ft. Lauderdale for the show.

| This entry was posted at 11:14 AM. | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Link this | Email this | Leave comment
Trackback URL: Internet Telephony Expo Show Hotel Sold Out
Technorati Del.icio.us BoingBoing Slashdot Digg Spurl Furl

Patent Troll

I found a great site that discusses computer and related technology patents. The site is called Peter Zura's Two-Seventy-One Patent Blog. Peter describes 2005 as the year of the patent troll. Here is an excerpt from his post titled 2005: Year Of The Troll:

Alas, there are significant problems that holding companies have brought to the forefront. There is no denying that current means of patent enforcement are strongly skewed in the favor of the patent holder. The current cost of litigation almost prohibits smaller companies from challenging a patent plaintiff, and almost guarantee that larger companies will settle in lieu of engaging in a proactive defense. To its credit, the government has been attempting to address these problems by introducing significant patent reform, but there are some troubling aspects in the proposed legislation (e.g., first-to-file, redefining prior art), and it remains unclear which parts will survive when the legislation works its way through Congress.

Also, the issue of patent quality and prior art need to be addressed more seriously. While there always have been (and always will be) "bad patents," the USPTO has to take a more proactive role in searching and applying prior art, especially art that is found in non-patent literature. While there is a conventional wisdom to view every patent being asserted by a holding company as a "bad" patent, this is not typically the case in reality. Nevertheless, there are a few cases where lapses by USPTO personnel have ended up costing others millions of dollars in defending themselves against poorly examined patents. This simply has to stop.

Peter also does a great job discussing the Rates Technology vs. Google case.

Some of the comments in this particular post are interesting:

At 12:08 AM, Ankush Garg said...

It just shows how the whole patent regime is replete with flaws. RTI is exploiting 'doctrine of equivalents'like anything. I feel that there should be a provision in patent laws that a company not developing a technology will be stripped of patents pertaining to that technology.

| This entry was posted at 8:52 AM. | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Link this | Email this | Leave comment
Trackback URL: Patent Troll
Technorati Del.icio.us BoingBoing Slashdot Digg Spurl Furl

Leap Second

Wondering what scientific debates are going on as a result of the new year? Take a look at this article on leap seconds. Things that you will learn:

In 1958 an atomic second was defined as the time it takes for an atom of cesium 133 to tick through 9,192,631,770 cycles

The trouble is that the heavens behave more capriciously than cesium. Also, the length of Earth's day is increasing by about two milliseconds per century because of the tides, whereas today's atomic clocks, unaffected by cosmic events, tick away with an accuracy within one second for every 20 million years.

Because of this discrepancy, atomic time has been pulling ahead of astronomical time for the past 47 years. To fix this, the International Telecommunication Union in 1972 stipulated that "Coordinated Universal Time," an atomic time used as the world standard, could not diverge from astronomical time by more than 0.9 seconds.

The adjustment tool was the leap second, to be added or subtracted at the discretion of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, either at the end of June or the end of the year. Beginning in 1972, there have been 21 leap seconds, the last one in 1998.

"Astronomers wanted a time scale that represented the Earth's movement, and the clock community wanted a smooth scale," said physicist Judah Levine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado, who favors eliminating leap seconds. "The compromise has become increasingly difficult to maintain."

In November, a working group of the International Telecommunication Union meeting in Geneva decided to postpone discussions of the U.S. proposal, which would have abandoned leap seconds in 2007 and let Coordinated Universal Time and astronomical time diverge for several hundred years before inserting a "leap hour." The group said more time was needed to form a consensus, and suggested that this year's leap second offered a welcome opportunity to determine whether change is necessary.


I wonder if having computer and other systems get their time automatically from satellites wouldn’t solve this problem. In other words ensure that a satellite has the exact time and allow all devices to sync up with it. This way you can add leap seconds as needed and all the world’s devices (in the future anyway) would be updated. The same signal would be available online allowing devices with internet but not satellite access to also stay up to date.

| This entry was posted at 8:27 AM. | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Link this | Email this | Leave comment
Trackback URL: Leap Second
Technorati Del.icio.us BoingBoing Slashdot Digg Spurl Furl