Barack or Hillary?

It seems like 50% of the news stories are about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Although I am sick of hearing about them, it is of course extremely important that a proper choice is made. The coming election is slated to be pivotal in many respects, one of which is how we will respond to radical Islam's threat to convert us to Islam or eliminate us.

After living through the Clinton presidency with its new scandals about every week, it was refreshing to have a black man (half black anyway) vie for the candidacy on the Democratic ticket. "Go Barack! Anyone but Hillary" summed up my attitude. Barack has a charisma about him that inspires people.

However, the more I learn about Barack Obama the more questions I have about the wisdom of choosing him to be the Democratic candidate. I didn't know his father was a Muslim. I didn't know his mother divorced the father only to marry another Muslim from Indonesia. I didn't know he belonged to a church that vilified whites and whose pastor, Rev. Wright, from the pulpit made racist and anti American statements. I was appalled when I visited the church's web site. I had never seen a more racist web site. It has apparently been taken down now that the Rev. Wright connection to Barack has been publicized.

Of course Barack has denied sharing the opinions of his pastor while not distancing himself from the man as a mentor and friend. He would not be where he is today while standing with Rev. Wright's Statement, "I say God Damn America!" What would you expect a politition to say? I hold that in all probability Barack Obama is a patriotic american, not a Muslim sympathizer (in spite of his mother's twice marrying a Muslim) or a racist black man. But when it comes to choosing man that could become president of the United States, should we even consider taking a chance on a man with so many items in his past that could influence his thinking in ways that could be harmful to our country? What about his wife's comment, "This is the first time in my life I have been proud of my country". Was it a gaffe or is it further evidence that we don't know their true feelings about America?

I have changed my mind. I would rather see Hillary get the nomination. If the super delegates end up making the choice of candidate, I hope they choose the "devil we know rather than the devil we don't know".

Vernon Sandel

God Spoke the Worlds Into Existance??

Many times I have heard preachers say, "God spoke the worlds into existence". Yes, I know that Genesis 1 says, "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light", etc. But does this mean that God spoke and that speech or sound created light? The picture I get from this is a God that is a big genie in the sky who creates things by magic. I think there is a better interpretation of this that corresponds with other scriptures.

First, we understand sound rather well in terms of pressure waves in a medium. It is difficult for me to believe such pressure waves created the earth, sun, moon, stars, and life.

Second, in John 1:1-3 we read concerning Christ, "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." Christ's involvement in creation is further confirmed by Paul in Col. 1:16: "For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him."

When the scriptures use the word "God" it refers to the Father. 1 Cor. 8:6 "Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live."

If God (the Father) said, "Let there be _____" and that created it, there is no role for Christ in creation. A better interpretation is that God said, "Let there be _____" and Christ created it. The scripture does not give a clue as to how Christ created it except in the case of the birds, animals, and humans which were formed from the ground.

Notice that in Gen. 1:20 and 24, the creation of birds and animals, the same "And God said" phrase was used as in all the previous creation verses. However, the Lord God formed the birds and animals out of the ground: Gen. 2:19 "Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air." From this scripture it is obvious that God did more than "speak" the the animals into existance. Thus we may assume that in the other creation days there may have been similar creative activities not specified. God said it and the Lord God (Christ) did it. This fits the pattern of the above interpretation. We are not given the details of how God created the world.

I cringe every time I hear it said, "God spoke the worlds into existence".

Address comments to: vrsandel@hotmail.com

Vernon Sandel

The Birth of Jesus—Harmonizing the Accounts

Why is it that when the Christmas story is told whether in sermon or movie, the total Biblically correct story is never told. Is it because of inconsistencies in the facts presented? Luke (Luke 2), for example, has Mary and Joseph living in Nazareth and traveling to Bethlehem for a census at the time of Jesus birth, which occurred in a stable. He continues with the circumcision of Jesus on the 8th day, Mary’s purification and the sacrifice in Jerusalem required by Jewish law and then the return to Nazareth.

Matthew, on the other hand, makes no mention of Mary and Joseph living in Nazareth prior to Jesus’ birth, but leaves you to assume that they lived in Bethlehem at that time. The star announcing the birth of the “King of the Jews” and the wise men (Magi) are prominent features of the Matthew account. The wise men came to Bethlehem after visiting King Herod (Herod the Great whose official Roman title was King of the Jews), and followed the star to the house where the “young child” (not baby) was. Subsequently, Joseph was warned in a dream to flee to Egypt because Herod would try to kill the child by killing all the boys in Bethlehem who were 2 years and under (in according with the time he had learned from the Magi that the star appeared). Clearly the family was living in Bethlehem at that time. After the death of Herod the Great, the family returned to Israel, but went to Nazareth instead of Bethlehem because Herod’s son Archelaus was Tetrarch of Judea.

Movies portraying the events surrounding Jesus’ birth meld the two stories together usually by leaving out the Luke account of returning to Nazareth or by having the Magi visit the stable birthplace of Luke’s account. Neither of these scenarios fit the Biblical account. So what did happen? How can we meld the two together?

In the Luke account the family stayed in the Bethlehem area for at least 8 days. Being poor, Joseph who was a carpenter probably had to look for work during that time. Being an excellent carpenter (we presume), he may have been offered a job on a permanent basis at a wage superior to his former employment. In which case, he would take the family back to Nazareth, collect his belongings and move to Bethlehem. Thus when the Magi arrive they are living in a house as described by Matthew. Although there may be other Biblically correct scenarios which meld the two stories together, this is the one which makes most sense to me.

The difference in the two accounts of Jesus’ birth has caused another problem which is not so easily resolved: the year in which Jesus was born. Since history records the death of Herod the Great as March or April, 4 BC, Jesus must have been born before this date. If the events recorded by Matthew occurred near the end of Herod’s life, this would place the birth of Christ about 6 BC. However the Luke account places the census and birth of Jesus while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Historical records show that Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6 or 7 AD, after the banishment of Herod’s son Archelaus to Gaul (France) in 6 AD. This has been a problem for Bible scholars, most of whom accept the timing of Jesus birth according to the Matthew account. Tertullian, writing around 200 AD, stated that the census had been taken by Gaius Sentius Saturninus, legate of Syria from 9-6 BC rather than Quirinius.

In summary, the Matthew and Luke accounts of Jesus birth can be harmonized, but a mistake has to be acknowledged in the Luke account in naming the wrong governor of Syria.

One other point, when is the last time you stood under a star? The attempts by some to determine what the star of Bethlehem was would seem to be futile if you consider that to guide the Magi it would have to have been a light that was close to earth. Otherwise there would be no way that the Magi could have followed it.

Care to comment? You can reach me at vrsandel@hotmail.com.

Vernon Sandel

Scams in the Invention Promotion Industry

An aspiring inventor often hears ads on TV and on the radio offering help for patenting and/or marketing inventions. Be extremely careful who you hire to help commercialize an idea. There are a lot of scams out there. This blog is the story of what has befallen a large number of uninformed inventors that hired American Inventors Corporation (AIC) to help them obtain patents. This story is from the 1990's, but just recently one of the patent attorneys complicit in the AIC scam was barred from prosecuting patents.

AIC solicited individuals to submit their ideas and offered a free patent search. They would tell each potential client that their idea had great commercial potential, and in a sales presentation offer to help the customer obtain a patent and then to promote the patent to manufacturers. In a contract signed by the customer AIC claimed they would obtain a "patent" for the customer for a fixed fee or a fee plus a percentage of royalties. The fee was refundable if a patent did not issue. No mention was made of the type of patent to be obtained. AIC was to hire a patent attorney or patent agent, and to supervise the application process. Direct communication between the customer and patent attorney was discouraged. When a patent application had been drafted, the company presented it to the customer for signature. Sound good?

AIC would forward the inventors disclosure to a patent attorney , Leon Gilden, requesting a design patent. A design patent protects only the decorative features of a product and does not protect the structural or utilitarian features. The patent attorney added decorative features to drawings on the customer's application (drawings the inventor did not submit) and filed design patents. Thus the customer did not get the patent protection of his idea that he sought and thought was getting. The design patents, which inevitably issued, were worthless.

The patent attorney, Leon Gilden, was punished for taking part in this scam with a 5 month suspension of his licence to represent clients before the patent office. AIC then hired another patent attorney, S. Michael Bender, to prepare and prosecute over 1000 design patents, many left over from the Gilden fiasco. Bender has been excluded from prosecuting patents before the patent office in an appeal of such sentence by a lower court. To read the whole proceedings see:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/gcounsel/docs/06-1243.pdf

As far as I know, the company has not been punished for this scam. If you have questions about the legitimacy of an invention promoter or need guidance in how to proceed with the invention process, I suggest you become a member at http://www.inventored.org/ which is an email forum. You can post a question that is sent to all members and you will get answers by email.

Until the next post,

Vernon Sandel

Ideas and Invention

When asked what I do for a living (in spite of my age I do get asked that) one of the things I always mention is that I have a patented product that I am selling on the internet. (http://www.bowstabilizer.net/) This usually brings an expression of awe or admiration that is undeserved. True, most people have not patented an idea, but basically everyone has the capacity to come up with ideas that could be patented and marketable. You don't need an advanced education or a lot of creativity. If you have ever been frustrated in the use of a product, find a better way and you have a potentially marketable idea.

Just recently as I was trimming my lawn with a string trimmer, I tapped the hub on the ground to draw out new string but nothing happened. A quick examination of the hub showed that dirt had clogged the mechanism. I had to stop the trimming, take the hub/spool system apart and clean it so it would work again--frustration! There must be a better way to extend the string. After thinking about it a few days an idea occurred to me how the problem of dirt clogging the mechanism could be totally eliminated. A prototype is presently under construction. If it works, the next step is to do a patent search to see if there is anything like it in the patent literature. If there isn't, I will write up a provisional patent application and submit it. The cost is only $100.00 and a lot of my time. But the provisional patent application gives me a year to try to sell the idea to a manufacturer. This is the poor man's way to market an idea. If my prototype convinces a manufacturer that he wants the patent he can pay for the filing of a utility patent.

You can see how easy it is to come up with a potentially marketable idea. Why is it then that more people do not try to capitalize on their ideas? First of all is lack of confidence. Is it really a good idea? We tend to elevate OUR ideas in our minds, sometimes to the extreme. If you have an idea that you think might be worth while pursuing, talk to someone, preferably a professional such as an engineer in the field of your idea, to get a second opinion. You should have a privacy statement for him to sign. If you still feel your idea has merit, do a patent search at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html. This is very much like doing a keyword search on Google. If this turns up nothing that is similar to your idea, it may be patentable. This search should not be considered a true patent search, only an indication that the idea is worth pursuing.

It is at this point that you really need to consider whether you are willing and able to carry through with the idea as the process can get very expensive from here. Up to this point you have not occurred any significant costs. Next, you will need to try out your idea. If you have the skills, making a prototype yourself may not be very costly. Otherwise, hiring a company or person to construct a prototype can be expensive. One resource which may help keep costs down is your local college. If you can talk a professor into letting a student take on making the prototype as a senior project, you may be able to save labor costs, but you must follow closely the person doing the work to make sure there are no misconceptions in what is to be built. I have found that what I picture in my mind in the construction of a prototype is often not possible or practical. Even scale drawings, while very useful, are often not sufficient to anticipate many problems.

If you have a prototype that works and truly does solve a problem or provide a useful function, the battle is half won. At this point it is time to consult a patent professional. Do not fall for the advertisements on TV offering help in patenting your idea! Many of them are scams that will promise much and deliver little. Check with your local college or a local company that is producing a new product, or the patent office at http://des.uspto.gov/OEDCI/ for suggested patent attorneys or agents.

The services of a patent professional can run as much as $15,000 to procure a utility patent. If you cannot afford the cost, you have two options. The first is to find someone who will finance the patent work for a fraction of the profits that ensue. The second is to do it yourself. The Patent Office has manuals describing the overall process of writing and applying for a patent, but they are written in legalese that I found very hard to follow. I found that examining a number of patents (downloaded from the patent search) to be more instructive.

Anyone who is capable of writing a description of their invention and describing how it works should be capable of producing a provisional patent application. Just follow the format of the specification section of other patents in your search. You do not need formal drawings, only sketches. Be sure to label each part with a number and describe it in the specification. The description MUST be clear enough for a person knowledgable in the field to understand what the invention is and how it works, and the advantages you claim over previously disclosed inventions. There is no need to draft claims or have approved mechanical drawings.

The provisional patent application allows you to claim "patent pending" status while you try to sell your idea, but you must file a utility patent application within one year. If you need to find a company or an investor to finance the patent application, work fast because the year passes quickly and it will take time to draft a proper utility patent.

Let me give you another example of a simple idea that has led to a successful business. I met Martin Tervo at our local hardware store a couple weeks ago. He recognized that it was difficult to put up hangers on a concrete or block wall. Truditional hangers, like coat hooks, utility hangers for shovels, brooms, garden tools, ladders, etc. are made for installation in wood. Some may be adaptable for concrete, but it involves drilling multiple holes. Mr. tervo invented simple system for installation of such hooks using a single hole and glue. A 1/2" hole is drilled in the concrete. A hook that is formed on a plastic base with a 1/2" tube is inserted into the hole in the concrete. Inside the tube is a packet of glue and a plastic plug. The hook is set perminantly in the hole by tapping the plug into the tube which ruptures the glue packet. Glue flows around the outside of the tube and upon setting firmly holds the tube and the attached hook to the concrete, a simple and elegant solution to the problem of setting a hook in concrete. Check out his web site at http://www.tapset.com/ to see the idea in action.

Internet Marketing Problems

The greatest problem I had in learning about internet marketing is information overload. Once you download a free report or ebook, you get all sorts of emails offering more free reports, informational videos, or memberships. When you click on a link in the email you are taken to a "squeeze page" which requires you to give your name and email address to get the media. When you fill in the form you are sent an email confirming your desire to receive information. Before you get the free information you are sent to a page offering an "incredible" price on another ebook, updated membership, or whatever. Whether or not you buy, you may be sent to another advertisement or two. By the time you are done going through all these advertisements you don't know where you are to get the free media. In the case of memberships, each one has a user name and password. When you get done with all this you don't know where you have been or what you have purchased! If you respond to a free offering keep a log of the url of the site and the name of the person or company making the offering. Then go to your "Documents" file and make a new folder with the name of the person or company making the offering. Put anything you download in that file. Organization is the name of the game, otherwise much of the information you obtain will be lost. Organization is one of my weak points that I have to work on.

Many of the Internet marketing firms will offer free affiliate memberships. These often pay in excess of 50% commissions on anything they sell. You don't need a web site to obtain these commissions, you only have to refer people to the web site. This can be done by placing ads on the search engines. You buy an ad that is placed when someone searches on a key word or phrase like "work at home", or "make money". You have to bid for placement of your ad. The more you are willing to pay, the closer to the top of the first search page of the key phrase your ad will be. You do not pay for the presentation of your ad, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad and are sent to the site you are advertising. This is called pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. All of the major search engines have PPC advertising. These are the "sponsored" ads you see when you make a search. The possibilities here fascinate me. Maybe I will give it a try.

There is a site www.clickbank.com that has over 10,000 products that you can market as an affiliate. It costs nothing to become a member of Click Bank to seek those offering affiliates. The reality is that the most popular affiliate programs already have too many affiliates driving up the cost of PPC advertising, so you have to find a "nitch" where there is demand for the product, but with relatively few affiliates. Once you decide what affiliates you want to promote, you write down all the keywords that a person might search under to find the product you are promoting. Google will help you with this. Click on the link: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
I have started a campeigh with Yahoo Search Marketing because my web site host offered $50 free toward a campeigh, though I had to contribute $5 as well. Since my web site http://www.bowstabilizer.net was already no. 1 on the Yahoo "organic" or free search results, there was no point in paying for an ad to popularize that site. I put up another site advertising my Compound Bow Rest & Holder and advertised the new web site. The keywords I chose, bowhunting informaion, are not very popular, so it only cost me 10 cents per click on my ad, which appeared on the first page of the search results of that keyword phrase. This was just a trial to see how the system worked, and it did not drive much traffic to my site.

I think this story is now complete, so I think I will start another topic next. Income tax is coming up shortly so it may be a while.

Vernon Sandel

Internet Marketing 101

Getting Traffic to My Web Site

Having a web site does not mean that anyone will be able to find it. With no traffic to my site I recognized that not only did the Compound Bow Rest & Holder needed to be marketed, but also the web site (http://www.bowstabilizer.net) had to be marketed as well. I had no idea how to go about this. Fortunately, about in Nov 2006 I ran across this advertisement:

I ended up purchasing an ebook in addition to the free material. Although both were helpful, I was too green to put into practice the things they were teaching. What was even more helpful was the flood of emails I got and continue to get advertising ebooks, video courses, and teleconferences, many free but several purchased, which gradually gave me a reasonably good idea of how to drive traffic to my web site.

In a nut shell I learned that first of all the web site had to be optimized for the keywords that one would use to find my site, search engine optimization (SEO). Since the Compound Bow Rest & Holder holds a bow, steadies a bow, and acts as a steady rest, the most relevant keywords were bow steady rest, bow rest, bow stabilizer, and bow holder. To get higher ranking on the search engines, these keywords needed to be used frequently on the title of my site, in the headlines of my site, and in the body of my site. Furthermore, they needed to be listed in the "meta tags" of my site. Meta tags are a list of keywords that are listed at the beginning of the web site program but which do not show up when someone comes to your site. The search engines use these meta tags to help decide which keywords are relevant to the site. These are not the only factors that determine the position your site will show up when someone searches on one of your keywords, but they are important. With this information alone, I was able to become no.1 in both Google and Yahoo search under "bow stabilizer". I am no. 1 under the search term "bow rest" and no.3 under "bow holder" in Yahoo. When I searched under "bow steady rest" didn't even find my site within the first three pages. Looking at my meta tags, I had forgotten to list "bow steady rest". As you can see, meta tags are important. The omission was corrected today.

Google is a completely different situation from Yahoo. Searching under "bow rest" in Google I found my site on page 7. It is widely known that they take into consideration the number and "quality" of incoming links in determining a site's ranking in a given search. If your site has incoming links (a reference that sends the web surfer to your site) from a popular web site, it will give you a higher position on any given search. Getting links is much more difficult than adding keywords to meta tags or adjusting web site content to reflect keywords. You can buy links from some web sites or you can solicit mutual links with other web sites. I have not done this yet.

One of the most valuable things I learned was the existence of an awesome web site that provides many invaluable functions to web site owners. There you can find out which search engines have indexed your site, get an analysis of your web site and instructions to help you improve your search engine placement (search engine optimization, SEO), check your web site's search engine rank, and your site's popularity. They also have utilities to generate meta tags and to "crunch" (make smaller) JPG and GIF files so your site will load faster. All this free! Bookmark this site!

I also learned that email marketing is the way to sell a product. Even with traffic to your web site your conversion rate to a sale is usually quite abysmal. It usually takes at least several contacts by email before you entice a person to buy your product. But first you need an "opt in" list of email addresses. This list is usually obtained by offering something free, usually information, for which the person has to give his email address. Once a list is obtained, emails are sent advertising your product(s). The whole process is automated by an auto-responder program which you can buy or rent. The auto-responder will store the email addresses, confirm the opt in of the person by email, send the information packet, and then allow you to post email letters to everyone in your list. For more information on list building visit List Dot Com.

Getting traffic to a new web site through the search engines is a slow process. Even if your site's host has a program to submit your site to the search engines, you may not be indexed. Although my host claimed to submit my site to over 300 search engines, and later I personally submitted my bowstabilizer.net site to MSN search, it never did get indexed. Apparently you have to be persistent, and then your site may "drop off" a search engine for no apparent reason. Your site should be submitted to the search engines once a month to maintain your listings.

The fastest way to get traffic to a new web site is "pay-per-click" (PPC) advertising. This is sort of an auction in which you bid on keywords that someone would use to search for your site. The ads appear on the sponsored areas of a search page, at the top and right side. Each time a person clicks on your ad you pay the bid amount. The problem with pay per click is that when you bid you do not know what position your ad will appear. The higher the bid and the greater the click through rate (percentage of presentations that get clicked), the closer to the top in general, but with Google other factors also are considered such as the quality of the landing page (page to which the ad points). You set up an account, set the amount you are willing to spend each day, the amount you will pay for a click, and the set the time your ad will start showing. To set up an account, go to the search engine you wish to purchase an ad and search under "pay-per-click", but before you do you should visit this blog. It contains an ebook and a number of videos that will give you more information than you ever wanted to know about PPC advertising.

Well, that is a summary of what I have learned so far. While going through all this I became interested in affiliate marketing. This is a way to make money on the Internet with no product to sell, no shipping, and no customer support. You merely drive traffic to other people's web sites. If they buy something there you get a commission. Perhaps this will be the topic of my next blog.

Vernon Sandel