AUSTRALIAN PATENTS NOW SEARCHABLE

Patent Lens now includes Australian Granted Patents, searchable and full-text, in addition to the US and European ones already available. The service provides free PDF downloads. CAMBRIA in Canberra, ACT, Australia produces Patent Lens, as well as other “molecular enabling technologies with a focus on their use by disadvantaged communities, for example, in international agriculture and public health.”

URL: http://www.patentlens.net

QUICK LOOKS AT USEFUL WEB SITES

EU RSS Feeds Available
http://europa.eu/rapid/syndication/setLanguage.do?language=en
For now this list includes press releases and commissioners’ speeches, but more are to come.

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_
search_engines.php
Worth taking a look at to augment your regular Google or Yahoo! searches.

A Blog Just for YA Librarians
http://www.yalibrarian.com/
Alternative Teen Services is a new blog from a group of librarians at the Kansas City, Missouri Public Library.

Strange Maps
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
Includes such wonders as “The World as Seen from New York’s 9th Avenue” (a New Yorker cover), Oz, and a diagram of the US Interstate system.

The Phrase Finder
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/index.html
Find the origins and meanings of phrases, sayings, and idioms in categories such as from the sea, Shakespeare, the Bible, proverbs, euphemisms, and the body.

The Law in Plain English
http://www.nolocast.com/
Podcasts from publisher Nolo.

Inventor’s Handbook
http://web.mit.edu/invent/h-main.html
Eleven chapters covering intellectual property, how to conduct a patent search, applying or a patent, licensing, and other practical matters. Also at the site: inventor of the week, games and trivia, and other links and resources. From Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Engineering.

Help for Teaching Statistics
http://exploringdata.cqu.edu.au/
Exploring Data has activities, worksheets, slides, datasets, articles, and resources “designed to enhance the statistics knowledge of the [secondary school] teacher.” From Central Queensland University, Melbourne, Australia.

GOOGLE PATENT SEARCH DEBUTS

You can now search over 7 million US patents via Google Patent Search. Images include the abstract, text, claims, and drawings. You can search by patent number, inventor, assignee, classification, issue or filing date. Check out patent number 1, or all those by Thomas Edison, or input “martini” and see what you get. The searches are very quick and, most importantly, free.

URL: http://www.google.com/patents/