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Today I finally got around to testing out the new field suggestions in Drupal 7. If you’re not familiar with the standard suggestions in short you can either use field templates or override theme_field using a naming convention not unlike we do with preprocess functions. What struck me as kind of odd was the lack suggestions for field types—maybe there’s a very good reason for this such as performance, I don’t know, but I thought it might be interesting to see if I could use them, if I wanted to.

Amazon's patent on one-click shopping has survived the scrutiny of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In an official notice published this month, the USPTO declared its intent to issue a reexamination certificate affirming the validity of Amazon's amended version of the patent.

The patent, which was filed in 1997, describes a method of enabling consumers to purchase goods without having to provide credit card and shipping information during every shopping session. Amazon enforced the patent against competitor Barnes and Noble almost immediately after it was granted in 1999. The patentability of one-click Internet shopping is broadly disputed. It has become the textbook example of how a broad patent on a trivially obvious software concept can have a profoundly anti-competitive impact on a wide segment of the industry.

Peter Calveley, an actor and patent law enthusiast from New Zealand, launched a campaign against the one-click patent in 2006 and filed for a reexamination with funding that he collected from his supporters. A year later, the USPTO issued a decision rejecting 21 of the patent's 26 claims, largely due to the broad availability of well-documented prior art. Amazon decided to amend the patent in order to address some of the specific issues raised by the reexamination.

The amended version has a slightly smaller scope, limiting the patent's coverage to online shopping cart systems rather than all one-click e-commerce. In its statement today, the USPTO declared that the new version of the patent is valid, despite the fact that it has no functional difference from the original version. This outcome, which took years four years to reach, reflects the deficiencies of the reexamination process.

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Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of "digital natives" who have grown up with the internet?

Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of "digital natives" who have grown up with the internet?

Google has introduced Google Reader Play, a product intended to "make Google Reader more accessible for everyone."

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