Conventional Wisdom of Web-Savvy Voters

The Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles earlier this month boosted Vice President Al Gore’s standing in the polls against his Republican competitor, Texas Gov. George W. Bush. But that’s not the only boost he got. His official Web site, https://www.algore2000.com, saw traffic increase 21.7% compared with the week earlier, according to new figures from Media Metrix. But although Gore’s site attracted 73,000 separate visitors during his convention, it garnered even more traffic--107,000 visitors--during the Republican National Convention two weeks earlier.

Bush’s Web site did even better, according to the New York-based firm that measures audiences on the Web. His site, https://www.georgewbush.com, attracted 199,000 separate visitors during his convention in Philadelphia and 92,000 visitors during the DNC.

Comparing Stock Options With Product Patents

The way Nir Kossovsky sees it, patents have a lot in common with stock options.

A stock option gives a person the right to buy shares of a company’s stock at a specified price. But the option will be valuable only if the price of the stock rises above the option price.

Patents are valuable if they can be used to create a product--such as a medicine or a software program--that people want to buy. But at the time a patent holder tries to license a patent to a company, no one knows whether the patent will actually produce a windfall.

Trying to determine the value of either a stock option or a patent license can be difficult because there’s no sure-fire way to predict how much the asset will be worth in the future.

Economists Fischer Black and Myron Scholes found a solution for stock options. Their Black-Scholes model for calculating option prices relies on five interacting variables and allows corporations, investors and others to determine their present value.

So Kossovsky, chairman and chief executive of Patent & License Exchange Inc. in Pasadena, decided to adapt the Black-Scholes model for pricing patents by adding a few more variables to reflect current market conditions. The result is the Technology Risk Reward Unit, which computes a suggested present value for a patent. Using that price as a starting point, Kossovsky hopes that patent buyers and sellers will be able to expedite the negotiation process and more likely to strike deals.

That would be good news for Patent & License Exchange, which operates a Web

site at https://www.pl-x.com where patent holders can sell, license or auction their patents and other intellectual property. The Technology Risk Reward Unit calculator is set to launch Tuesday.

Internet Access Now Taking to the Streets

Who says mobile Internet access has to be limited to Web-enabled cell phones and Palm VII personal digital assistants?

This week, the Community College Foundation will hit the road with EBus 1, a onetime public transit bus that has been transformed into a state-of-the-art community technology center on wheels. The bus is outfitted with two-way satellite Internet access and will travel to public libraries, schools, churches, youth centers and senior centers in predominantly low-income areas in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

EBus 1, which received financial support from Wells Fargo, will make its first stop Wednesday at the Bell Community Center. For more information, visit https://www.communityconnect.org.