Rob’s Life & IP Notes

My friend Rob Banagale maintains an extensive Dave Matthews Band fan web site he started four years ago called Weekly Davespeak. Recently, the DMB released the name for their first album in five years to be “Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King” and Rob has done a concise writeup of the album title here: Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King.

Big thanks to Javier Reyes. Sign in and leave a comment, etc.

In an effort to connect more family and friends to this site, I have added some Google Friend Connect gadgets. If you have a Yahoo, Gmail, or other supported account, sign in and leave some feedback on my wall. So far I just have the wall in place but my plan is to add more gadgets as Google rolls them out. 

Here is my 5000′ overview of Friend Connect: I think Friend Connect has a lot of potential even though it is still in its infancy. One thing I noticed already is that the “friendships” do not allow for much granularity in terms of setting up who can see what. Also, Friend Connect should really have a (better) hub to buildout your profile. Google allows you to setup a profile, but it is not nearly as sophisticated as Facebook. The upshot is that your Friend Connect profile is not a walled garden like Facebook, and you can take it anywhere (like on this site for example). In sum, Google Friend Connect needs more meat on the bones so-to-speak, but it has promise.

My decision to add these features is sort of an experiment more than anything. If it proves to be successful I plan on retooling the UM NALSA site to add social networking features for Michigan law students and alum. Since the Friend Connect platform is open, I can see how beneficial the tool could be in connecting the alumni network (e.g. via LinkedIn) to the student network, and allow them to interact on the NALSA site. That’s what Friend Connect is about (I think?).

In the meantime, enjoy the added features!

Having just put the finishing touches on my Law in Cyberspace seminar assignment last week, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided to change the rules for business method patents hours before class.

The week beforehand our class was joking around about this possibility and sure enough, it happened. Fortunately, the seminar discussion wasn’t entirely moot because some internet business method patents remain patentable subject matter. The good news for me is that I will have plenty to discuss in my upcoming MTTLR blog post.