Awesome Stuff: Little Devices That Help You Out

from the make-it-work dept

For this week's "Awesome Stuff" post I wasn't necessarily planning a "theme," but it seemed to mostly work out as one anyway: it's about three "little" devices that enable you to do more, by changing the way we deal with information in one way or another. This is a pretty exciting space in general, and it's cool to see projects popping up that explore certain areas that make you wonder why no one had done this before -- and then you realize that what's being done wasn't really possible until the tech caught up.

• First up, we've got the Automatic Link, a tiny device that plugs into your car's dataport and provides data directly to your smartphone. They even make it into a bit of a game, with a weekly "drive score" that helps you drive smarter to save gas. It has a number of other features as well, including automatically dialing 911 if it senses a serious car accident, and also a car locator feature, so you can always find your car via your smartphone in case you forgot where you parked or if you're sharing your car with someone else. For quite some time, the car's dataport was solely the domain of mechanics, and they'd use it when you went in to find out what the "check engine" light meant. A few devices have come on the market that you can buy to plug in and see what a check engine light means, but that's their entire purpose, for the most part. The Automatic Link does that too, but it's almost like a minor feature among all of the other features that make it an interesting device.
  
  This is another one that's not on Kickstarter, though it feels like it should be, but rather they're just taking pre-orders directly off their site, for $69.95 (and no service fees).
  
• Next up, we've got the HeatMeter, which is a creatively designed device to measure and track the heating usage in your home. There are tons of electricity meters on the market to measure how you use electricity, but heating is a different realm altogether. Most of the attempts to deal with this have been focused on various smart thermostats like the Nest, but the Heatmeter goes right to the source, by attaching to the outside of your furnace or boiler with magnets, and then its sensors actually can detect when the flame turns on and off, sending this bit of info over your home WiFi system to your phone. And, of course, you can track a bunch of info via your smartphone. Unfortunately, there are just a few days left on this Kickstarter and it looks like it won't meet its threshold. Looking through the details, this isn't a huge surprise. Even if the concept is cool, there are a few things that might scare people off. The design of the device itself has a bit of an amateurish feel to it, especially compared to many other Kickstarter projects. I wonder if a redesigned, sleeker, more modern version might pick up some more steam (ditto for their intro video). The second red flag for me is the price. $150 seems pretty high for most people to take a chance on something like this, especially if it's not entirely clear that it will help you save money. With the Automatic Link above, it makes a good, strong, easy to understand case as to why you'll save money with the device -- and the device is less than half the cost of this one, and seems at least more likely to be in the "I'll give it a shot" range for many people. And, finally, I wonder if a lot of people wonder how well the Heatmeter actually works. I could see some people wondering just how good a magnetic device you stick to the outside of your furnace will be at accurately tracking heating usage. It may work perfectly, but I could see how skepticism might be an issue, especially at that price (in contrast, again, people understand that the data port in their cars works to provide data).
  
  
• Finally, we move away from those kinds of sensors to the myIDkey device for tracking all your passwords. This is a little USB dongle that combines voice activation, fingerprint scanning and secure access to all your passwords (it'll even generate secure ones for you). Oh yeah, and it works with your mobile devices via Bluetooth as well. And, if you lose the device, you can quickly deactivate it over the web -- and you can resync a new one via its online storage. The device has an OLED display that will show you the password once you've proven that you're you, and it can include a bit of additional info as well. The myIDkey has already far surpassed its original funding goal, so this project is definitely moving forward.

There you go. Three interesting new projects that are showing new ways to do more via little devices and information, enabling things that really weren't possible until just recently -- at least not in these kinds of packages.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, biometric, car computers, driving, heating, id, passwords, sensors
Companies: automatic, heatmeter, mysecureid

Startups And Innovators Speak Out In Favor Of Fixing CFAA

from the good-for-them dept

The good folks over at the EFF have posted a letter from a group of startups and innovators to Congress seeking reform of the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act), which has been abused for years, most notably and recently, in the case against Aaron Swartz (full disclosure: I helped review the initial letter and helped the EFF get some of the signatures on the letter). This is important, because, as we have noted, plenty of innovators and entrepreneurs could have been charged under this law for some of their random hacking experiments, some of which directly led them to create amazing innovations.

Many people have thought that the tech industry isn't as interested in CFAA reform, since it supposedly protects them in cases where they have been hacked, but that's not the case. Through out the startup community, I've heard many people who were horrified to learn about the charges against Aaron Swartz, as they quickly realized how easy it would be for a Justice Department official to spin what they themselves were doing into something nefarious sounding. That does not help innovation.

No one is in favor of having no rules at all, but clearly the CFAA is outdated, broken and widely abused. Fixing the law to focus on actual malicious and nefarious attacks would be a huge step forward, not just for the public, but for innovators and entrepreneurs who often build great things by starting with a simple hack.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, cfaa, entrepreneurship, hacking, innovation

Awesome Stuff: Rethinking The Mouse (Finally!)

from the crowdfunding-picks dept

So folks seemed to enjoy last week's crowdfunding picks post, and the Saturday morning time slot seemed to work, so we'll stick with it. Still not sure on a name, but someone suggested "awesome stuff," and it's hard to argue with that. I reserve the right to change it at some point, but at least this week, we're going with Awesome Stuff. And, this week we're also going to test out a "theme." These are three crowdfunding projects that all revolve around reinventing the mouse. It's been almost 45 years since the humble computer mouse was first demonstrated by Doug Engelbart, in a presentation that I rewatch every so often. It's quite incredible when you realize just how much of the future he's showing off. The clip below should start right at the point where he discusses the mouse (if not, it's right around 30 minutes, 45 seconds): The humble mouse really hasn't changed that much in all those years, though we're starting to see the rise of so-called "smart mouses" (sometimes they don't seem so smart). Here are three crowdfunding projects that struck me as interesting, in that they really attempt to update the mouse in unique ways.

• First up, we have the EGO! smartmouse, which does a whole variety of things to try to take the concept of a computer mouse further. Beyond regular mousing, and being able to work in 3 dimensions, rather than just 2 (yes, you can lift it up and gesture with it in the air), it also can easily authenticate and switch to different computers on the fly, even bringing files along with it. On top of that it can act as a remote control or a gaming controller. Some of these features we've seen elsewhere, but pulling them all together in one device seems pretty impressive.
  
  
• Why does a mouse need to always sit next to your keyboard? What if it was wrapped around your finger? That's the premise behind the Mycestro. As someone who spends a lot of time moving my right hand between the keyboard and the mouse, there's something quite appealing about being able to keep my hands in one position and still be able to use the mouse. You can see the details in the video below. Like the EGO! mouse above, this is also a 3D mouse, recognizing gestures to move the mouse, but it also lets you click and scroll with your thumb. It's difficult to describe without seeing it in action, so check it out.
  
  
• Finally, we have another Kickstarter project that ended yesterday without hitting its goal. I debated if we should still include it, but it definitely seems to fit with the theme. It's the Mauz device that clips onto an iPhone to turn the iPhone itself into a mouse. Like both of the above examples, it enables 3D gestures, but also has a lot of flexibility in terms of features that can be used on the screen. I'm somewhat surprised that it failed to reach its goal. This seems like the kind of Kickstarter project that would take off.
  
  

And there you go. It appears that the mouse is finally the center of some significant innovation. Of course, that might be happening just as all of our screens are becoming touchscreens, and the entire concept of the mouse becomes less relevant.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, crowdfunding, input, mice, mouse

Is The 'Innovator's Dilemma' About To Get Disrupted By 'Big Bang Disruption'?

from the perhaps-an-evolution dept

As some of you know, I'm a big believer in the concepts behind Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma, which explain how disruptive innovation almost always takes incumbents by surprise. A few years ago, I even did a two minute video in which I tried to succinctly explain the innovator's dilemma (an explanation later endorsed by Christensen himself). The basic idea, if you're unfamiliar with it, is that disruptive innovations often hit the market by appearing to be "worse" than the legacy product, and thus the incumbents tend to ignore it. They brush it off as being too crappy or too small or too low end or whatever, and they focus on the "high end." What they often fail to take into account are the basic trend lines. The disruptive innovator tends to improve their product at a much faster rate, and, at some point, hits the quality level where, even if it's still worse (or possibly significantly worse) than the incumbents' offerings, it's actually good enough for their needs. When you look at innovative markets through this prism, you can see it happening over and over again.

So, I read, with much interest, a new piece by Larry Downes (a friend, and someone who has posted here on occasion) and Paul Nunes in the Harvard Business Review about Big-Bang Disruption, in which they argue that the old Innovator's Dilemma model may be somewhat obsolete. This is due to a variety of factors, focused around the fact that disruption comes faster than ever before and, these days, frequently comes out of left field -- from someone that people didn't even think was a "competitor." It's a really good read that basically says that a combination of factors, mainly centered around the ability to build new products and services in almost no time and requiring almost no resources, has allowed for a world in which lots of people are rapidly innovating experiment after experiment, and some of those catch on and go viral in an instant -- frequently disrupting existing players, who never even had a chance to see the disruption coming.

It's a great piece that I highly recommend for folks who are interested in the nature of disruptive innovation -- though I'll push back on one point. I really don't see how this conflicts with or is any different than the innovator's dilemma. It just shows the same basic thing happening more quickly. The main argument that Downes and Nunes use to argue that this is different doesn't so much focus on the innovator's dilemma, but rather focuses on how incumbents should respond to disruptive innovation. In the past, it has been argued, that if you understood the dilemma properly, you could spot the disruptive innovator's early, and then move to buy them out or build a viable competitor quickly. In practice, however, we very rarely see that happen. The number of legacy players, who have succeeded in responding to disruptive innovation, remains an astoundingly small list. And I'd argue that part of that is because disruptive innovation always seems to come out of left field and always seems to come much faster than incumbents expect.

That doesn't detract from the main point of the article, however, which does show how these things are happening faster and faster, and a lot of that is because of the ability to just throw something out there for fun, rather than investing millions of dollars early on in an idea that might never even work.

Right now, at Silicon Valley companies large and small, engineers and product developers are getting together late at night in what are popularly known as “hackathons.” Their goal is to see what kind of new products can be cobbled together in a few days. You know, for fun. The innovators are not even trying to disrupt your business. You’re just collateral damage.

Twitter, for example, began its commercial life humbly at the 2007 South by Southwest conference, following its invention at a hackathon the year before. Its developers wanted to test sending standard text messages to multiple users simultaneously, an experiment that required almost no new technology. Today the company boasts more than 200 million active users and half a billion tweets a day. Twitter has destabilized everything from the news and information ecosystem to unpopular national governments.

While I think the article underplays this somewhat, a big part of why these Big-Bang Disruptions can succeed in this way has a lot to do with the fact that not only can ideas hit the market incredibly fast, but they can also fail fast. We're in an environment where so much innovation for new services can not only be built quickly but people can learn and adapt or even shut down just as quickly. One of the biggest reasons why many people believe Silicon Valley remains the home of so many innovative companies is because there's very little stigma associated with failing. In many circles it's a badge of honor. But, in this environment, where it's so easy to create, that means that innovators also get to test a lot of ideas quickly, to throw out the bad ones, and to focus on the winners. This is so much more productive. On top of that, Downes and Nunes point out that each of those failures might not really be "failures" so much as priming the demand pump by teaching the market what's possible.

The adoption of disruptive innovations is no longer defined by crossing a marketing chasm. Instead, the innovators collectively get it wrong, wrong, wrong—and then unbelievably right. That makes it even harder for businesses wed to today’s products and services. All those failed experiments seem like evidence that the emerging technologies just aren’t ready. In reality, in today’s hyperinformed world, each epic failure feeds consumer expectations for the potential of something dramatically better.

The one other bit of insight that I pulled from the article was that this ability to build things quickly and cheaply, but also to do so online, where one can make use of a variety of tools to have a direct relationship with a community, users, customers, etc., means that companies can burst out of the gate with amazing products that aren't just disruptive by being worse than the market leader, but they can actually hit the market while being better than the leader. The authors write about how various strategy experts in the past have suggested that innovators need to focus on a specific value: be cheaper, be more innovative or be more custom (i.e., most customer focused), but that trying to hit on more than one category will dilute the message and the product. However, thanks to a variety of new services and products, it's absolutely possible to hit the market while being cheaper, more innovative and more closely connected to the customer. And that certainly makes it tough to be an incumbent.

In a separate piece, Downes goes further in explaining the policy implications of this argument, focusing on how these "big bangs" suggest that regulators need to tread even more lightly, as new disruptive services can completely change a market in a very short period of time -- in fact, in time frames that many regulators might not even be able to properly comprehend.

Quickly and efficiently, a predictable next wave of technology will likely put a quick and definitive end to any “information empires” that have formed from the last generation of technologies.

Or, at the very least, do so more quickly and more cost-effectively than alternative solutions from regulation. The law, to paraphrase Mark Twain, will still be putting its shoes on while the big bang disruptor has spread halfway around the world.

All in all, a very interesting theory with some important points that are worth thinking about. I look forward to the eventual book on the subject by Downes and Nunes, though I still think that setting it up as somehow a rethinking of the Innovator's Dilemma doesn't quite make sense, as I believe that what they're describing really is just a more detailed explanation of how current tools and technologies have accelerated the innovator's dilemma. It does, potentially, upset the businesses of those who claim they can train incumbents in how to avoid the innovator's dilemma, but I'd argue most of those efforts were never that successful in the first place anyway.

Filed Under: big bang, big bang innovation, clayton christensen, disruptive innovation, innovation, larry downes, paul nunes, speed

Yes, The US Industrial Revolution Was Built On Piracy And Fraud

from the a-little-history-lesson dept

Missed this when it first came out, but Bloomberg ran a fantastic report at the beginning of February, highlighting how piracy and fraud were key components to helping America catapult into the industrial revolution. In fact, there are reasonable arguments to be made that if the US was not a "pirate" nation, it would not have had the kind of success that it has had as the industrial world leader. We've discussed some of this in the past, and have highlighted how Eric Schiff's research showed how other countries (the Netherlands and Switzerland) industrialized by explicitly rejecting patents. The US didn't go that far, but it did involve quite frequent copying of the efforts of others and then improving on them, without fear of repercussions.

In its adolescent years, the U.S. was a hotbed of intellectual piracy and technology smuggling, particularly in the textile industry, acquiring both machines and skilled machinists in violation of British export and emigration laws. Only after it had become a mature industrial power did the country vigorously campaign for intellectual-property protection.

This is a point we've made many times as well. Patent and copyright system supporters frequently argue that stronger laws are needed to create incentives for creation and innovation. But, there are a ton of studies that show the actual pattern runs the other way. When you look at the pace of innovation before and after a change to patent laws, or if you do cross-country comparisons at the same time for similar types of economies, you quickly see that those with weaker laws show more innovation. The ratcheting up of patents is rarely about increasing incentives to innovate. Patents are put in place with the support of incumbents, knowing that it allows them to "exclude" competitors and upstarts. It is not a tool of innovation, but a tool to suppress disruptive innovation. Not having those laws (or having them widely ignored) leads to a situation in which people continually improve what's out there -- which is how the US economy took over the world during the industrial revolution.

The most candid mission statement in this regard was Alexander Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures,” submitted to Congress in December 1791. “To procure all such machines as are known in any part of Europe can only require a proper provision and due pains,” Hamilton wrote. “The knowledge of several of the most important of them is already possessed. The preparation of them here is, in most cases, practicable on nearly equal terms.”

Notice that Hamilton wasn’t urging the development of indigenous inventions to compete with Europe but rather the direct procurement of European technologies through “proper provision and due pains” -- meaning, breaking the laws of other countries. As the report acknowledged, most manufacturing nations “prohibit, under severe penalties, the exportation of implements and machines, which they have either invented or improved.” At least part of the “Report on Manufactures” can therefore be read as a manifesto calling for state-sponsored theft and smuggling.

In fact, as the article notes, our own original Patent Act recognized this very fact, by refusing to cover foreign inventions.

Of course, the idea that loose patent and copryight laws can help nations develop economically is not a new idea. Over a decade ago, we were writing about how various officials were admitting that strong IP laws probably did more harm than good for developing nations. And, yet, the US continues to try to push its extreme maximalism for copyright and patent laws around the globe. Either they are doing this out of ignorance (a real possibility) or because they actually understand the truth, which is that other countries with IP laws like the ones in the US will see a slow down in their economic development.

Either way, those who insist that the US was founded on the principles of strong respect for "intellectual property" haven't paid that much attention to the actual history of American industrialization.

Filed Under: copying, fraud, industrial revolution, inventions, patents, piracy, us

Crowdfunding Picks: Throw Trucks With Your Mind & Other Cool Control Interfaces

from the thinking-forward dept

For many, many years, we've talked about all kinds of business models, including ideas (and early attempts) at crowdfunding before "crowdfunding' was a word. Obviously, over the past couple years, Kickstarter has become "a thing," along with a number of other platforms, like IndieGogo, PledgeMusic and many more. On a nearly daily basis, we get pitches from people running cool crowdfunding projects, but we rarely write about them. Mostly, I've tried to only write about campaigns where there was something new or instructive about the way the crowdfunding was being done -- rather than the specific product itself. And yet, we keep seeing all sorts of cool products showing up that aren't necessarily doing anything unique or innovative on the business model side, but are simply unique, innovative and awesome all by themselves. For a few months now, we've been discussing internally the idea of a weekly series of something like "the five best crowdfunding projects of the week," but just never got around to doing it. This week, however, we came across three separate projects, all so awesome that they needed to be shared. Hopefully, we'll be making this into a weekly feature, so enjoy.

We're still debating (and debating and debating) what to call this new section and when to post it. This week, we're going with "Crowdfunding Picks" and trying Saturday morning. But we think there must be a better name than that -- and that the name doesn't necessarily have to be about "crowdfunding," but could just be about awesome innovation or cool projects or... something. So if you've got any ideas, please leave them in the comments.

1. First up is a game by Lat Ware, called Throw Trucks With Your Mind! And, yes, the name is quite descriptive (Lat jokes that we should imagine a world in which Call of Duty Gears of War is called "Hide Behind Chest High Walls," since he appears to prefer games to be named after their key concept). Lat was able to stop by our offices yesterday and let me try it out, and the game delivers what it promises. I did, in fact, get to throw some trucks with my mind, and it's pretty awesome. Lat has hooked up an off the shelf NeuroSky EEG device (which you can buy for about $80) to the game he's developing, and there are different actions that you can perform in the game based on how focused you are and how calm you are -- the two things measured by the NeuroSky. Moving around and selecting what telekinetic power you have is done via the keyboard. But staring at a truck and launching it at your enemy to crush them is an amazingly satisfying experience. You can also do other things like lifting, pulling, super jumping and "slow falling." As a fun test, Lat effectively has you jump off a cliff, and you fall slower if you remain calm, but if you get excited you fall faster and die. It's an interesting mental battle to try to keep yourself calm just as you start to fall faster and faster off a cliff.
   
   I've read some of the discussions online about TTWYM elsewhere, and some were concerned about how much fun the gameplay could really be, and let me just say that there shouldn't be any concern. After I tested it out for a bit, I called in someone else who works here, and we got to throw trucks at each other with our minds for a while, with the person more focused and more calm person winning. It's an interesting mental battle of wills when you're trying to kill your colleague by being the most calm. The game itself can handle up to 32 people at once, either over a LAN or the internet.
   
   The game itself is just the very rough pre-alpha version, built on the Unreal Development Kit. But the goal of the Kickstarter project is to bring in a team of kick ass video game artists to turn it into a very different visual experience that's much more whimsical and fun (there's some mockup art on the Kickstarter page). You can buy the NeuroSky device independently or one of the tiers includes one, but you do need it to play the game -- which may limit the number of folks who can play it early on. As of right now, the game is about half funded (to the $40,000 Lat is seeking), but it's definitely one of those things that feels like it's from the future, and gets you thinking about all the cool stuff that's going to be possible before very long, even if this example just involves using your mind to fling giant trucks at your friends.
   
   
2. Okay, move past that ability to throw trucks with your mind, and start thinking about controlling your computer with simple gestures, and then check out the MYO device, which has been generating a ton of attention mainly due to its amazing video highlighting how a simple arm band can create all sorts of useful gesture controls. For about a year, there's been a lot of buzz about Leap Motion's cool gesture control device, but the MYO may be equally as intriguing, supposedly recognizing different muscle movements in your arm to allow you to do things very easily. Since it's a wrist band, it can hook up to desktop machines, but also mobile phones or (eventually) something like Google Glass. The possibilities are pretty limitless.
   
   When I first saw the video, one of the first things I said to someone was that I was amazed MYO hadn't gone the Kickstarter route, as it just has the feel of a Kickstarter project. However, they apparently decided to go it alone, and it's working. The MYO website lets people pre-order the device for $149 and, within a few days, they claim to have received over 10,000 orders, or $1.5 million. Not bad.
   
   With both of these first two items, there are quite reasonable questions that can be raised about execution. Cool demos are one thing. Consumer-ready production is a different sort of challenge. I'm very hopeful that these two companies will succeed, but even if they end up not making it, just the fact that these kinds of offerings are being designed and built (by smaller teams, rather than giant multinationals) is really quite encouraging. We're about to enter a very interesting era concerning just how we control the electronic devices around us. The Microsoft Kinect and the Nintendo Wii were just the warmup round. A ton of innovation is about to appear in this space.
   
   
3. Finally, after those first two items that feel totally revolutionary, this last one might even feel a bit mundane (perhaps I should have put it first on the list!). But, it certainly caught my attention as soon as I saw it: It's the Almond+ Touchscreen WiFi Router / Smart home Hub from Securifi. Check out the video first: Almond already has a quite successful (and hugely popular) touchscreen wireless router, but this takes it up a notch by also adding in a smart home hub, and making the whole thing beautiful.
   
   This caught my attention for a couple reasons -- one practical and one inspirational. First, on the practical side, I'd actually just been exploring some of the latest in home automation. My house has an electronic door lock with a punch-button code, courtesy of its previous owner, and it's really handy, but a little simplistic and clunky. It can only store two codes, and we're constantly replacing the batteries. So I recently went looking around to see if the technology had advanced much in the past few years and, lo and behold, it appears that there are a growing number of "smart home" door locks that look similar but have a bunch of other cool features, such as the ability to receive email or text alerts when someone opens your door, or (much more useful) the ability to "schedule" codes to give people limited access, even from far away. But, for that to work, you need both the new door lock and a Z-Wave controller, which adds up in price. However, the Almond+ (beyond looking awesome) includes both a WiFi router and both Z-Wave and ZigBee support. And all that for less than the cost of just about any Z-Wave hub on its own. Just the Z-Wave part of this makes it really tempting for anyone interested in exploring the home automation field.
   
   The second reason it caught my attention was that it got me rethinking the home router a bit. My current WiFi router is shoved in a closet, where it belongs, because it's an ugly box with blinking LEDs. But the Securifi guys have turned the home router into something that looks really good and is the kind of thing that people would be proud to display out in the open. As we move towards a world where we have increasingly connected systems and devices, it strikes me as an interesting idea to actually make the central router/hub devices look good from a design standpoint -- because historically that's almost never been a part of the goal. As such, it makes me wonder how we'd treat our devices differently when we're not ashamed of them, but happy to display them.
   
   The Almond+ has already far surpassed its goal on Kickstarter, but still seems to be going strong.

And, that's the kickoff of our exploration of some cool crowdfunded projects that popped onto our radar screen this week. Let us know if you like this concept or how we might change and improve it (and what to call it), and hopefully we'll start making it a regular thing.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, crowdfunding, gesture control, innovation, mind control, routers

Video Shows How Patent Trolls Kill Innovation

from the uniloc-again dept

The good folks at Reason TV have put together a new video called How Patent Trolls Kill Innovation: It more or less rehashes the story that we've covered in the past concerning patent troll Uniloc suing the indie developer of X-Plane over a ridiculous patent (6,857,067) that never should have been granted in the first place, and is now being claimed to broadly apply to pretty much anyone who sells apps in mobile app stores. The video has a bunch of great quotes from Julie Samuels, the newly appointed "Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents", highlighting just how screwed up the system is.

"You can't separate the problem with the patent troll from the problem with software patents," says Samuels. "There are hundreds of thousands of software patents floating around that are really broad, that are really vague ... and a lot of them are bought up by patent trolls."

Nothing in the story or the video will really be all that new to regular Techdirt readers, but it's great to see more attention being given to the problems of patent trolls and how they harm innovation. It's also great to see it come from Reason.TV, a part of the libertarian Reason Foundation -- as there is still some dispute among the wider "libertarian" crowd as to whether or not the patent system is good or bad. It's felt like there's been a growing recognition that the answer is "bad," and hopefully videos like this represent a recognition that the scale is tipping.

Filed Under: innovation, patent trolling, patents