Everyone knows that Trump is in the news more than anyone lately. But did you know, prior to July 2015, there was a negligible amount of searches for the word “Trump”? So if you want your name to be searched more than anything else, do you need to run for president? Perhaps not.

After July of 2015, the name has been searched more than all other candidates. The others were also running for president, so what gives? If Trump becomes the president, some marketing textbooks are going to be re-written. Of course political books are already being re-written. Take a look at the searches in 2015 for Clinton, Sanders, Trump and Obama.

 

Once the Trump train took off, it just kept on going. Take a look at 2016, it’s more of the same. (interesting gesture made by the histogram at the bottom left of the graph 🙂

 

So what does this mean? CNN, Fox News, CNBC, ABC News, CBS News, NBC are all dumbfounded. They all keep saying, “Now Trump really did it…” but they keep fueling the train, and are constantly puzzled how he does so well.

 

I hate that “Upgrade to Windows 10 for FREE” reminder that pops up (seems every minute to me!). There are some computers that should not be upgraded to Windows 10, it’s not all, just some, like 97% should not be upgraded, but 30% should.

I don’t know if you are like me, but I feel as though all the upgrades, from Windows, to Firefox, Chrome, IE, etc etc. Are getting to be very frustrating. They all claim to close security loopholes, and enhance browsing etc. (I’m using too much etc., it’s because there are too many loose ends), back to the security loopholes and browsing enhancements:

I think the only group that benefits from the “Browsing Enhancements” are the companies providing these to us. They can better browse what we do on the computer, where we go, what we think, (Think of the movie Minority Report). And the “Security Loopholes” are probably the ones we had to avoid their constant badgering and annoyances.

Here’s a nice video showing how to remove the update from your list. Removing the GWX.exe file (GWX=Get Windows Ten) is a little more complicated, because you need to change ownership of the file from “Trusted Installer” to Your User Name, then you need to give yourself full control over it and then delete it. So if you don’t do that, It will keep coming up in your bottom tray and annoy you. This is a topic for another discussion. (You can always just click end process from the task manager to stop GWX.exe from running until the next reboot)

 

 

So if you are like me and want to just stay with Windows 7 or 8.1 (I even have one computer that’s on XP, hey I have 9 computers, I have to keep XP on one of them, it’s the most stable one 🙂 So if you would like to stop that annoying reminder, then go to your Windows Control Panel -> Programs and Features (Used to be Add/Remove Programs, it was too intuitive had to be changed!) -> View Installed Updates (It’s on the left side of the window as a link) -> Find the KB3035583 update and uninstall it.

It asked me to reboot it and then I was a happy camper. In case you want to know what this update has in it, Microsoft has a page devoted to it, and you can see it here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3035583

Now that I read that page after all the problems, I am much happier that I found the update and removed it. I am going to be extra careful to avoid having it reinstall on a future update. I have that number permanently etched in my mind, I know it forwards and backwards, 3035583, 3035583, 3855303, etc etc., yes and another etc!!

Yesterday I tuned into channel 200 on my Dish satellite system and saw “Removed by Turner” and MSNBC content showing instead of CNN content. They were also showing a message about how you can check the website for an update.

So checking the website, I found some info that I couldn’t believe would be communicated by a media company like Dish. They are giving alternatives, not only ones found on Dish, but elsewhere also. Whattt? Where here is some of the text.

“…While your channels are unavailable, we’ve put together a list of ways you can catch your favorite programming elsewhere including online options or other DISH channels…Watch Amazon Instant Video on your computer, Kindle Fire, and TV through the following devices: Roku, Xbox360, PS3, and select Smart TVs and Blu Ray Players. Watch iTunes on your computer, select mobile devices, tablets and AppleTV…”

Are you kidding me? If this was my company, the copywriter (at least the person that wrote this content) would be fired, right after removing the content.

In essence Dish is saying, “Hey, you don’t have to watch CNN or Turner media programming? And btw, there are devices that give you alternatives to Dish too, in case you didn’t know. Search Google for Amazon Instant Video, Roku, and if you already have an xBox or PS3 you don’t even need a new device…”

Wow, are they are willing to show how bad Turner is that they don’t care of you see how stupid they look and at the cost of losing subscribers to competing technologies–which are the real reason for Turner asking for more from Dish in the first place?

The reason, virtual monopolies, like cable TV, Satellite, and also like newspapers that have been pummeled by online classified and aggregated news sites, or even content creators like Turner or HBO etc., just don’t like competition, because they don’t know how to fight back with new emerging technologies so they latch on to old tactics of control, rather than evolve and compete within the new paradigm.

Unbelievable! I’m really amazed at this move, by both companies in this case really. I guess they’re operating with different rules. Thank God I don’t have any financial interest in either company.

Might as well say, “NFL Charges $10,000 to promote Beats headphones. Beats gets the best deal ever in advertising”: http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/10/colin-kaepernick-nfl-beats-by-dre

So the NFL has a deal with Bose that all NFL athletes are banned from promoting competing products within 90 minutes of a game. Well, what’s the punishment if one does promote other brands? In this case it was $10,000.

Beats will pay the $10,000 without even flinching. They will probably pay $100,000 or more if they can get this kind of coverage over and over. Look at the amount of publicity they got all over websites and news sites, from ESPN, Washington Post, NY Daily News, USA Today, CBSNews Sports, to Mercury News for goodness sakes, to sites like WebProNews, which have nothing to do with sports or music. Even NFL.com wrote about this promoting it further.

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In my opinion, a warning, followed by a game ban would do a whole lot more in enforcing this policy than a $10,000 fine. What’s $10,000 in the world of marketing and advertising? They got so much publicity out of this that I am sure Bose is reconsidering how this policy is enforced. As a matter of fact, if I were at Bose, I would be contacting the NFL, getting the story off of NFL.com and ask them to contact Bose before doing anything like this. Also have the NFL contact the Marketing officer first and get a clearance, not the legal department.

When I was an Engineering student, I would have been excused for making stupid decisions like that in marketing, it was not my field. But when I did my MBA, I learned that you could manipulate the system by doing unconventional things like this to achieve more powerful results. I’m not sure that this was not a calculated move, a genius at work! More power to you Beats by Dr. Dre, heck, even I am writing about this and adding another pin your basket.

Ask 1000 people the question, “Give me an example of a search engine” and chances are more than 900 of them will say, “Google”. It is no secret that Google dominates the search space, so if we looked at the results we would probably find Yahoo as the second company, and probably Bing comes in at third.

According to eBizMBA Ranking (Aug 2014), it is

1. Google,
2. Bing,
3. Yahoo,
4. Ask,
5. AOL.

According to comScore (Feb 2014), it’s:

1. Google,
2. Bing,
3. Yahoo,
4. Ask,
5. AOL

According to Alexa, it’s:

1. Google,
2. Yahoo,
3. Bing,
4. Ask,
5. DuckDuckGo.

Well, as far as traffic is concerned, according to Alexa the highest traffic sites are:

1. Google,
2. Facebook,
3. Yahoo,
4. Youtube,
5. Amazon,
6. Wikipedia,
7. LinkedIn,
8. Twitter,
9. Ebay,
10. Craigslist,
11. and Bing coming in at 11th in the USA, and 23rd Globally.

Looking at this list, I would say Google should be most afraid of one company in the list. Yahoo, and Microsoft (Bing) should also be afraid of one company in the list. Which one is it? Before I tell you, I have to also say, that this company doesn’t even appear in the radar as far as Search Engines are concerned, yet it is the most efficient and most targeted when it comes to products.

So if you haven’t guessed it by now, it is the company that is becoming all things to all people, while still maintaining its focus on bringing all products to all people. Yes, It’s Amazon. It is a search engine, it’s very efficient. When someone goes there, more often than not, they are looking to buy, they are not there just looking up information for their research paper.

It is a site with the richest consumer behavior information. It is a site that can convert the most visitor to it’s own products. Google sends people to other locations, so do Yahoo, Bing and all the others. Ebay is a close cousin, but the products that it sells are not its own, and the way they keep increasing the fees to the sellers, it has become more and more of a problem for the seller.

I would call Amazon, a diamond in the rough. I would call it the most powerful company in the world. They even got the post office to start delivering on Sunday for goodness sakes! I would be afraid of Amazon, more than Yahoo, Bing or DuckDuckGo. (Well, maybe not DuckDuckGo, they are coming up fast. With all the NSA stuff, a lot of people are using it now).

So a word to the wise, I would keep an eye on Amazon. I am amazed at the innovation in the consumer behavior, specially purchasing and motivation, that comes from this company. More power to you Jeff. You are a genius.

 

Below information is from eBizMBA Ranking . you can go to the actual page by clicking the link on the left.
Notable Note: Compare the monthly visitors of #1, 2 & 3.  1.1 Billion, 350Million and 300 Million. Google in a league all its own.

1 | Google
1 – eBizMBA Rank | 1,100,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 1 – Compete Rank | 1 – Quantcast Rank | 1 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

2 | Bing
15 – eBizMBA Rank | 350,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 5 – Compete Rank | 19 – Quantcast Rank | 22 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

3 | Yahoo! Search
18 – eBizMBA Rank | 300,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *8* – Compete Rank | *28* – Quantcast Rank | NA – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

4 | Ask
25 – eBizMBA Rank | 245,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 14 – Compete Rank | 31 – Quantcast Rank | 31 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

5 | Aol Search
245 – eBizMBA Rank | 125,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *250* – Compete Rank | *240* – Quantcast Rank | NA – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

6 | Wow
271 – eBizMBA Rank | 100,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 20 – Compete Rank | *26* – Quantcast Rank | 767 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

7 | WebCrawler
511 – eBizMBA Rank | 65,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 100 – Compete Rank | 759 – Quantcast Rank | 674 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

8 | MyWebSearch
545 – eBizMBA Rank | 60,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *105* – Compete Rank | 1,124 – Quantcast Rank | 405 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

9 | Infospace
892 – eBizMBA Rank | 24,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *66* – Compete Rank | *500* – Quantcast Rank | 2,110 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

10 | Info
1,064 – eBizMBA Rank | 13,500,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 378 – Compete Rank | 877 – Quantcast Rank | 1,938 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

11 | DuckDuckGo
2,153 – eBizMBA Rank | 13,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 2,323 – Compete Rank | 3,479 – Quantcast Rank | 658 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

12 | Blekko
2,280 – eBizMBA Rank | 12,500,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 862 – Compete Rank | 1,461 – Quantcast Rank | 4,518 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

13 | Contenko
2,402 – eBizMBA Rank | 11,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *200* – Compete Rank | *2,500* – Quantcast Rank | 4,505 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

14 | Dogpile
2,421 – eBizMBA Rank | 10,500,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 2,734 – Compete Rank | 1,446 – Quantcast Rank | 3,084 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

15 | Alhea
4,300 – eBizMBA Rank | 7,500,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 451 – Compete Rank | *1,225* – Quantcast Rank | 11,225 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Search Engines | eBizMBA

 

 

Amazon

When people talk about patents, they feel it’s just free, “Just patent it…” If you talk to an attorney these days, they start at $25,000. Well, which is it? Let me give you an idea.

 

Do You Really Need A Patent?

The first thing you need to evaluate is, Do You Need A Patent? Coca Cola doesn’t. Google didn’t get one till they were ready to change their search algorithm. The vast majority of products and inventions out there are not patented. Why is that? Well, two reasons, not filing because of intimidation or laziness, but more importantly, not giving others the real secrets of what the secret sauce or process is.

Is It Easy To Reverse Engineer?

So if the product, service or process is easy to reverse engineer, in other words, when you release it to the public, can someone analyze it and make an exact duplicate or maybe even a better unit or process or recipe easily? Then by all means, patent it. If it is not easy to reverse engineer, and you plan on keeping a competitive advantage for a long time (Like Coca Cola, with their formula), then you should not. Keep in mind that a utility patent is only good for 20 years (If filed after June 8, 1995) and a design patent is only good for 14 years.

So if you are an inventor and make less than about $150k/yr (3x the median salary of a regular household of $50k/yr), you can qualify as a Micro Entity. If you make more than $150k/yr, but are an individual, a university, non-profit or a small company (Less than 500 employees), then you qualify as a Small Entity.

So filing and the regular costs, like search, examination and issuance can cost are:

• From $640-$2,560 for a Utility patent
• From $330-$1,320 for a design patent.

Of course to maintain a utility patent beyond 3.5 years, there are maintenance fees (See chart below).

So if you are good in some legalese, drawing figures and do a lot of research and are able to craft the verbiage to file the patent, and you make less than $150k/yr, then you can get away $640. But if you need to have someone draw the diagrams for you, then you have added costs. If you need priority filing, or re-issuance, extension, etc, these numbers change. etc. then these numbers change.

I made a crude chart to give you an idea as to how much the actual costs are.

 

Of course these change over time, around the time of this post (Sept 2014) these were current numbers from the USPTO site.

To file a provisional patent is  $65 for a Micro Entity, $130 for a Small Entity, and $260 for a Regular Entity. A Provisional patent, of course, is not a patent, it is the right to file a patent and use a prior date. More on Provisional Patents here…

 

I will explain this in my words, if you want the legal description and all the nuances, then check the USPTO site.

A Provisional Patent is the procedure that replaced the Disclosure Documents Program (DDP Original Explanation here). The DDP was discontinued in 2007. A Provisional Patent is basically named to look like a real patent, it is different than a real patent (Non-Provisional Patent)and the DDP, because you have to put a lot more detail into the Provisional than you needed to in the DDP. The DDP was basically to establish that you had a real date from the USPTO for when you had the idea. Which is not much, but if you had to go to court, it was a little better than sending a letter to yourself (Which is what old-timers did.

 

Benefit:

The biggest benefit of the Provisional Patent, for me, is that you get an advance filing date. Let me give you an example. If you file a provisional patent on Jan 1, 2014,  then you have till December 31, 2014 to file for the non-Provisional Patent (The real Patent. When you file the Non-Provisional patent, it is as if you had filed it on Jan 1, 2014 (Not Dec 31, 2014). This is an advantage that helps you shop and market the product, process or service for one year and see if there’s any market before doing the full blown patent.

Another benefit is the cost. To file a provisional patent costs:

• Micro Entity – $65
• Small Entity – $130
• Regular Entity – $260

That is all you pay, because it expires in a year. If you don’t file the Non-Provisional by that time, then you lose that priority filing date, and you will have to file the Non-Provisional, or file another Provisional.

 

Warning:
If you filed your Provisional on Jan 1, 2014, but you have shared the idea with the public before then, (say in Oct of 2013), and it’s Jan 2, 2015 and you have not filed a Non-Provisional patent yet, then there are big issues. If you had shared it, on a website, a public event, or?? it was before filing the first provisional (Jan 1, 2014), then this is the major issue:

• Because the invention is known for more than 1 year, it is in the public domain
• You cannot file another provisional,

what’s worse, is:

• If the first Provisional has expired, now you cannot even file the Non-Provisional patent at this stage. It would have been publicly known for more than 1 year.

So be careful with these issues, while the Provisional has advantages, it does have disadvantages also.

 

Disadvantage:

• You cannot make major changes to the Provisional or they will consider that a different patent.

If your Provisional is different than the Non-Provisional, then it’s really a different invention right? and needs to be filed differently, with a different filing date. This is to stop people from filing multiple patents as a placeholder and then just coming up with things and in essence backdating the date of the invention.

I hope this helps. I can help you file an application, but the heavy lifting still has to be done by you. You have to describe everything about the invention and get ready to spend some time, maybe 2-3 days writing the descriptions and correcting and making sure you cover all bases, so when you file the actual Non-Provisional, that you don’t get rejected as a very different invention.

 

John Earl Shoaff (March 21, 1916 – September 6, 1965).
He was an entrepreneur and philosopher who was widely known as “The Millionaire Maker.”

Mr. Shoaff is credited in nearly every speech that Jim Rohn has given, as the smart man that shaped his future.  Jim Rohn (1930–2009), a legendary motivational speaker and writer whose work helped launch or further the career of many others in the personal development industry, including Anthony Robbins, Mark Victor Hansen, Brian Tracy, and Jack Canfield.

Mr. Shoaff is also credited as hving direct influence on the early lives of Zig Ziglar and Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kaye Cosmetics fame. At the age of 25, Rohn heard a “laws of success” lecture given by Shoaff and went to work for him.

My two absolute favorite John Earl Shoaff quotes:

• “Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.”
• “This is not all the company pays…it’s all they pay YOU!”

Some other of Mr.Shoaff’s  quotes include:

• “Don’t trust your memory, keep a journal.”
• “Profits are better than wages.”
• “It doesn’t cost too much, the truth is, you can’t afford it!”
• “The true mark of greatness is not found in what a person does with their own life. It is found in helping others discover that, they too, can become great.”
• “Nothing comes to us, everything comes through us from us. Everything in this world that happens to us comes from in here, not out here.”
• “Let’s not be moons, the reflector of the light. Let’s be suns. Let’s be the creator of the light – the creator of ideas. We all have the capacity.”

Mr. Shoaff was born Point Grove, Pennsylvania to a very humble family. He had a weak heart. He worked in a dry cleaning business and worked his way up to manager, learning everything there is to know about the business. He eventually opened his own dry cleaning business which he named “Earl’s Cleaners” in Michigan.

The Michigan Winters were getting rough on Shoaff’s elderly parents, so, in 1950, they moved to Long Beach, California. Shoaff got a job at Desmond’s department store pressing suits and settled into daily California life.

The Shoaff’s next door neighbor, took him to a success lecture in Long Beach given by Dr. J. B. Jones in the early part of 1953. Jones was a firm believer of the laws of success and toured the county giving lectures on how anyone who applied these laws could be, do and have anything they wanted.

Dr. Jones wrote a book in the 1950s titled “The Success Quadrant” that captures his philosophy and reveals the origins of Earl Shoaff and Jim Rohn’s success.

More to come later…