For nearly 20 years I've dreamed of an easy to use search engine that would index all US Patents and make it easy for any inventor or entrepreneur to do sophisticated patent research.

As an employee of Folio Corporation in the late 1980s, my job was to index huge data collections, such as AICPA content, all the IRS publications, and the US Code for our reference publishers who licensed our search engine technology. We looked at patent data several times, but it was never a project that actually got a sponsor.

My friend Adam sent me this press release about Allegiance this morning. I have watched the last few years while SilentWhistle, which won 2nd place in a Utah Business Plan Competition a couple years ago, acquired Allegiance Technologies and changed its name to Allegiance, and now has acquired another company.

I have purchased dozens of good domain names over the years, but haven't sold a great one before. But one of my companies is trying to sell the directory.net domain name.

From your experience, what is the best way to sell a good domain name like this? Should we list it on various broker sites (like greatdomains.com), hire a professional broker, or what?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I'm halfway done re-reading Permission Marketing by Seth Godin, the classic text (written in 1999) for internet marketers. This time, in good Tim Sanders fashion, I'm marking the book up like crazy and making it mine. Permission Marketing was very influential at MyFamily.com/Ancestry.com. Problem was, whenever I read a key book, I'd give my copy away and never see it again.

Curt Allen, founder of Folio Corporation, and former CEO of MyFamily.com (chiefly responsible for our raising $90.5 million in venture capital) is at it again. (He's also my brother and is responsible for getting me into electronic publishing and the computer industry 16 years ago--and I'm darn proud of him!)

In February 2004, the US Patent and Trademark Office released a preliminary list of the ten universities with the most patents in 2003.