Patent Law

Gmail, Toast, and Frogs

Posted on April 02, 2008
I heart Gmail. By Erik J. Heels First published 04/01/2008; Law Practice magazine, "nothing.but.net" column; American Bar Association My wife works at the hospital where I've had surgery three times in the last three years. When I joked that I should get a free toaster for being such a good customer, she bought me one for Christmas...

American Idol S07E26: Top 9: Dolly Parton Songs

Posted on April 02, 2008
AI season 7 episode 26. I didn't do so well with my predictions last week, going 0/3 for the first time ever. I was admittedly ranking 'em as I'd like to see them ranked rather than how I think America will rank 'em. And that's what I'm going to continue to do...

Wanted: WordPress Permalinks That Don't Suck

Posted on March 26, 2008
I just want to write articles, not tags or filenames. Quick question for the WordPress community about permalinks. The SEO community has debated the merits of the URL text for SEO for years. On www.clocktowerlaw.com, I use custom permalinks: http://www...

American Idol S07E24: Top 10: Birth Year Songs

Posted on March 25, 2008
AI season 7 episode 24. 1. Ramiele Malubay. She bites. I hope that's not foreshadowing. "Alone." This is a good song choice for her. She's out of breath and a bit flat on the low notes. Shouty and sharp on the high notes. Decent but not great...

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Clock Tower Law Group's 7th Birthday

Posted on March 21, 2008
My website enters its 12 year today, my law firm enters its 8th year today. It's our 7th birthday today. Happy birthday to us. Our website has changed. Again. Clock Tower Law Group is hiring. Either for a 2L patent clerk or for a 3L associate...

American Idol S07E22: Top 11: The Beatles

Posted on March 18, 2008
AI season 7 episode 22. 1. Amanda Overmyer - "Back In The USSR." I think she'll be in trouble going first, but this is a rockin' song. My band does it. Again we're having trouble making out the lyrics. And she's off key off bit at the start...

American Idol S07E20: Top 12: The Beatles

Posted on March 11, 2008
AI season 7 episode 20. 1. Syesha Mercado - "Got to Get You Into My Life." She's a student and a working actress. She aspires to be a waitress. OK, I made that up. She has a brass-heavy arrangement that sounds like something off of a cruise ship...

American Idol S07E17 S07E18: Top 16: 1980s

Posted on March 06, 2008
AI season 7 episodes 17 and 18. Guys 1. Luke Menard - "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" by Wham. This was tepid and off-key at points. It sounds like he is trying to sound like Wham rather than Luke. He doesn't sound like the original and brings nothing new to the vocal...

Reinventing Patent Law

Posted on February 27, 2008
Death, taxes, and uncertain patent laws. The February 2008 issue of the ABA Journal has a very good article about patent law entitled "Reinventing Patent Law." In the article, the author, Steve Seidenberg, notes that all three branches of the US government are changing (or have changed) patent laws in ways that negatively impact the [...

American Idol S07E14 S07E15: Top 20: 1970s

Posted on February 27, 2008
AI season 7 episodes 14 and 15. Guys These early rounds are hard to blog. The men were better than the women this week, but there was only one standout performance: David Archuleta. Here are my reviews (in singing order). 1. Michael Johns - Likes to play tennis, which is appropriate for 70s week...

Choosy Cats Choose Obama

Posted on February 25, 2008
Cat pundit. I was chatting with Rick Klau today. (Whoo hoo! Name dropping! My traffic will soar now!) About how my cat regularly picks Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Here's the explanation from our chat session: me: One of my cats repeatedly has chosen Obama when given the choice between Obama and Hillary [...

Jack Nicholson Prank

Posted on February 25, 2008
Fun with audio editing. My brother sent this to me (via eBaum's World): Note: Audio is NWS.

Using Google AdWords For Site Statistics

Posted on February 25, 2008
Name the one stat that matters. I have lots of sources for website stats: Apache log files, periodically processed (via cron jobs) with Urchin Lijit search stats Google Analytics FeedBurner feed and site stats Google AdSense revenue Raw log files are fun, but with so much junk traffic out there (click fraud farms, referrer log spam generators, contact form spam generators), the [...

Shredding The 1990s

Posted on February 25, 2008
Goodbye paper storage, hello electronic storage.          I loved the 1990s. I got engaged, got married, had three kids, wrote a best-selling book, graduated from law school, made money due to the (fun but) irrational exuberance of the stock market, and learned a lot about running high-tech companies...

American Idol S07E11 S07E12: Top 24: 1960s

Posted on February 21, 2008
AI season 7 episodes 11 and 12. Since I went 12 for 12 in American Idol last year, I will blog again this year. As long as Idol is good and blogging is fun. In the spirit of The Four Word Film Review, I give you my four-word Idol reviews. 1. David Hernandez - Too much affectation...

LawLawLaw 2008-02-17

Posted on February 17, 2008
Technology, Law, Baseball, Rock 'n' Roll, Etc. LawLawLaw • Introduction Stuff • Client Stuff • Law Stuff • Technology Stuff • Baseball Stuff • Rock ‘n’ Roll Stuff • Random Stuff The opinions expressed in LawLawLaw do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Clock Tower Law Group, its employees, or the author...

RollingStone.com's Feed Hacked

Posted on February 15, 2008
Plus how to find RollingStone 5-star reviews. On 10/16/07, two very interesting reviews (review one, review two) appeared in RollingStone's album reviews feed. Here's one of them: Gisselle - Contra La Marea Artist: Gisselle Review: for somebody who doesn't speak a word of spanish, i like it...

How Switching To Gmail Prompted Me To Redesign My Website

Posted on February 14, 2008
Goodbye static HTML, hello PHP. In January 2008, I switched to Gmail after 15 years on Eudora. I was doing an OK job of managing spam, but Gmail does a much better job. In fact, the switch to Gmail revealed that my previous anti-spam "solutions" were merely masking my spam problem...

Fun With Gmail

Posted on February 09, 2008
Conversion from Eudora makes finding email easier. In January 2008, I converted to Gmail after using Eudora for 15 years. Learning a new user interface was one challenge. A bigger challenge was importing all of my email. Since there is no direct "import" feature in Gmail, I had import my Eudora email into [...

Super Bowl XLII

Posted on February 03, 2008
Here's my prediction for today's big game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. Bill Belichick, more than any other coach in the NFL, knows how to make halftime adjustments. The Pats can be down five points in a game that is supposed to be a blow-out or tied in a game [...

Wire Transfer Inefficiencies

Posted on January 30, 2008
There has got to be a better way. I did a foreign wire transfer today at the bank. It took an hour and involved these steps: I entered all of the details of the transaction (amount, recipient's address, recipient's bank account information, special instruction) in a text file on my computer...

Domain Name Law

Posted on January 28, 2008
White hat domainers are not black hat cybersquatters. Domains Are Valuable? D'oh! I've been on the Internet since 1984, watched the Internet evolve from text-based protocols to web-based protocols in the 1990s, and completely missed the generic domain name gold rush that has made many millionaire domainers...

Paid Content = Invisible Content

Posted on January 23, 2008
The more you hide your content, the less relevant it becomes.

How To Fix Verizon FiOS Internet Service When All HTTP Traffic Is Blocked

Posted on January 21, 2008
QA rule zero: whatever changed last caused the problem. At 6:00 am, my wife woke me up to inform me that she could not access her Gmail. Ironically, I switched my parents, kids, wife, and office to Gmail in part to minimize tech support calls. And even though it's a holiday (MLK Day), tech [...

Sangean WR-2 Radio: Worst Clock Radio Ever, Good Tuner

Posted on January 16, 2008
Nothing is easy, but clock radios should not be this user-hostile. In July 2007, I gushed about the Tivoli table radio (pictured above). Amazon's reviews were great, so I bought one for Christmas for my wife. We had only one clock radio in our bedroom, a cheap GE model that I purchased when I [...

Yahoo! Registers First Favicon Trademark

Posted on January 15, 2008
Clock Tower Law Group filed historic favicon.ico trademark. You know that little icon that appears next to the URL in your browser? The same little icon that appears in your bookmarks window, on browser tabs, and in web feeds? That little icon, the favicon, can now be registered as a trademark with the USPTO...

My First Podcast

Posted on January 15, 2008
I'm so proud. Based on my article about Verizon FiOS TV Problems, I was interviewed by Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media for a podcast about high-speed Internet access. The interview occurred on 12/21/07, and the podcast was published on 01/12/08...

Lawyer Seeks Shoe Blogger For High.Heels.Com

Posted on January 08, 2008
Blogging for shoes. Greetings, As I mentioned on my blog last fall <http://www.erikjheels.com/?p=963>, I have teamed up with e-commerce expert Eric McCoy to develop my heels.com domain name (formerly used for my patent and trademark law firm) into a designer shoe store for women...

Google Checkout Is Broken

Posted on January 01, 2008
An ominous start to 2008 for Google Apps Premier Edition. A script error in Google Checkout is preventing me (and anyone else) from purchasing Google Apps Premier Edition. When you get to step 3 of 4 of the checkout process, you'll get this error message: <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Moved Temporarily< /TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000"> <H1>Moved Temporarily</H1> The document has [...

Erik's Year In Technology 2007

Posted on December 31, 2007
Hardware of the year: MacBook. Software of the year: LogMeIn. Service of the year: Google Reader. 0. System 1. Engineering 2. Games 3. Hardware 4. Internet Email File Sharing File Transfer Phone Remote Control Web Browsers 5. Multimedia Audio Tools Graphics Tools Multimedia - Apple Multimedia - Other PDF Video Tools 6...

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