Google has released their beta version of Google Patent Search. This specific sub-search engine of the uber-powerhouse that is Google searches through the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you. You can also used the Advanced Patent Search page to search by criteria, including patent number, inventor, and filing date, as well as viewing images of original patents online.

The Google Patent Search uses much of the same technology that powers Google Book Search, so you can scroll through pages and zoom in on text and illustrations just like you can with books.

Google states on their official blog “It’s a natural extension of our mission to make this public domain government information more easily accessible using Google’s search technology. We’re pleased to have started with over 7 million patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and look forward to expanding our coverage over time.”

It has long since been a practice on the web for the-less-than-scrupulous to “typo squat”, that is to register a domain name that is similar to a high-profile site, and wait for surfers to type the address incorrectly and get to that site.  Now, the self-proclaimed Web Professor, Scott Horne, has created a search engine that will break down an entered domain and search for possible typo domain names, and then further break down if those domains are free or if they are currently registered.  It is a great way to check and see if anyone is trying to steal traffic from your business and maybe find a few domains similar to yours you may want to register yourself.  Check out what Horne has created for yourself at his Typo Squatter Search Engine.

It has been reported in Australia that new copyright laws could bring search engines to a halt.  Google warns that if these laws pass as written, it could bring the country to a “pre-Internet era”.  As the law is written, search engine companies would need to get permission to index and cache copyrighted material that come up in search requests.

Google has stated that “given the vast size of the Internet, it is impossible for a search engine to contact personally each owner of a web page to determine whether the owner desires its web page to be searched, indexed or cached.”

If this law were to pass, it could possibly pave the way for countless copyright owners to take legal action against search engines.  Google believes that the laws fail to bring Australia’s Copyright Act into the digital age, though Australian lawmakers believe the laws have been designed to keep pace with technological advances and change.  Google is not only fighting in the Aussie courtroom, but also in Europe, where several news agencies have complained that Google is caching and indexing their written word for search purposes without permission.

Yotophoto is a search engine that specializes in finding freely licensable images. In that aspect it’s not too different from other search sites such as Creative Commons Search. For example, I wanted to find a picture of a very intense monkey (don’t ask why) and it was very helpful.

(Image CC by OskarN)

But what if I wanted to find something more specific like, say, a bright red car? Not all people tag or label their images based on color, so Yotophoto’s color search feature is pretty handy. Here are the search results for cars with the added hex code for red, which is #FF0000.

Even with their little color picker, though, it’s a little hard sometimes to pick a hex code that will give good results. They’re blog explains how the color matching algorithm is implemented, but I really don’t think it works as well as it should. I hope they continue working on it, though, because it could be quite useful. You know, for finding more pictures of monkeys.

If you ever find yourself in need of non-restrictive sounds for a multimedia project or a similar endeavor, The Freesound Project might be what you need. They offer a user-contributed database of Creative Commons-licensed sound files.

As with all Creative Commons materials, I would suggest you go over the licensing rules and understand when and where you can use the sounds. The Freesounds Project uses the Sampling Plus 1.0 which specifically restricts usage in advertising. It’s really not all that complicated, but proper attribution is what makes these licensing schemes work and attracts creators. Just take a quick look at their Rules and Legal pages and you’re good.

I searched for all sorts of random things and came up with really nice results. The files are of good quality and not noisy and scratchy like you’d expect from some random Joe with a crappy Walmart mic.

And just in time for Halloween, there’s a wide assortment of screams and other scary sounds.

It appears that Google has not received the ruling they were hoping for in their copyright case against the Belgian media. Not only have they been forced to cease indexing French and German-language news stories through Google Nieuws België, but they have finally posted the entire court ruling on their Belgian front page which they had been fighting.

Here is a screenshot of the page in question for those of you who may read this after the five day court mandated period has passed.

Lifehacker has a useful article about finding media with reusable licenses such as Creative Commons or GNU Free Documentation License. They list several search engines tailored specifically for this and also some tips you can use to find such media with your usual search engine of choice.

Now, I was going to post about this story and then add a nice little edited Creative Commons licensed image to show my support for sharing your work and allowing others to creative derivative works, but as I got into reading about the different licenses and discussions regarding their usage, I realized it was all very vague on some points and more than a little confusing. Their FAQ answered some of my questions, but left enough unanswered, especially in regards to attribution, to persuade me into not using a CC licensed image.

It would take the patience of Gandhi to figure all that out. Well, not really, but I wanted to use this public domain picture of him that I masked out and made a “derivative work” from.