I’m taking off the next couple of weeks and headed to Kansas to spend time with family. My dad and I are planning to build three lean-to barns to protect his horses and cows from the winter winds that sweep across the plains. That is the kind of vacation that I like!
UPDATE ON THE BLOG:
Today marks day 246 of this ‘Patently-O‘ website. What began as a simple toy project has evolved into a modestly successful site. During this time, I* have written a brief summary of each patent law appellate opinion. In addition, many interesting unpublished appellate and published district court decisions have been reviewed. The result is about one case brief every two days. I write about other patent law news too — so far a total of 521 posts — averaging out to more than two per day or about three articles per day if I take weekends off.
*While I have written the vast majority of the posts, I have not been alone in the process. Other writers who have contributed include Don Zuhn, Baltazar Gomez, Mark Chael, and Joe Herndon. I hope to get more people involved in 2005.
A couple of months ago, we have moved from a cheesy low-class web address: patentlyo.com to a cheesy high-class web address: patentlyo.com. For those of you who don’t know, this move costs about $8 per year from godaddy.com.
COSTS:
This blog is cheap. Typepad.com hosts the blog — I pay them $15 per month — that includes the blog templates and software for manipulating the various elements and sidebars. I like Typepad, although some people prefer to use Blogger because it is free. I also paid $20 (one time fee) for BlogJet, a “weblog client for Windows that allows you to manage your blog without opening a browser.” Finally, I pay the $8 per year for patentlyo.com domain name.
STATS:
For those of you who are interested: Free stat-counters are not worth much, but mine is approaching 180,000 hits. As expected, the blog is getting many more hits now than it was in the beginning. On weekdays, we can expect about 1500 hits. Ask your IT manager how many hits your Firm website gets each week.
The (incomplete) visitor list includes over 1000 corporations, 150 universities, 70 government agencies, and 250 law firms. This total does not include visitors who reach the site through a “feed reader” such as bloglines or Kinja.
I am also very happy with the 550+ individuals who receive the Patently-O Newsletter on a daily basis.
Major Referrers (past 1000 visitors):
www.google.com
news.google.com
search.yahoo.com
nip.blogs.com
www.IPNewsFlash.com
search.msn.com
www.techlawadvisor.com
www.becker-posner-blog.com
underneaththeirrobes.blogs.com
www.lawlawlaw.com
Most Popular Search Terms (past 1000 visitors):
duragesic; eolas; patently obvious; “cold fusion”; patent; crouch blog; patent blog; and uspto