Do patent trolls have a negative impact on entrepreneurs? The answer appears to be yes. “The paper says that VC investment would have been more than $21 billion higher over five years if not for lawsuits brought over patents by frequent litigators.”

Now that the Supreme Court has put the kibosh on Aereo, Mashable shows you how to set up your own completely legal version. Warning: it will cost you some dollars.

Hey, a useful plugin for you political wonks out there. It’s called Greenhouse. “After installing the plugin on Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, Greenhouse will highlight the names of any members of Congress no matter what webpage you’re on. When you hover your mouse of the highlighted name, a list pops up showing the elected official, their political affiliation and state, and a full list of their biggest contributors, as well as dollar amounts. The pop-up also shows what percentage of the official’s donations were $200 or less, and which campaign finance measures they supported.”

From Poynter: How to do Twitter research on a shoestring.

Google has opened Gmail for developers with the addition of an API. “Using the Gmail API, Streak developed a new feature that puts a snooze button at the top of a user’s inbox. If they don’t have time to read an email right away, they can click the button and the message will be archived and bumped to the top of the inbox at a later, scheduled time.”

More Google: it is dialing back its “authorship” listing in search results.

More More Google: it has given Drive a makeover.

More more more Google: Nest will start sharing information with Google. “Most of the data that Nest will share – with Google and others – will focus on whether users are at home or not, as detected by sensors on the thermostat. When people link a home device and related account with Nest, the company will not share their email address, name or home address with other companies, Rogers said.” That’s not creepy at all. Nope.

More MORE — you get the idea. Google has dropped search queries from Google My Business.

From Mocavo: 5 Tips for Working with the US Census.

YouTube is getting a bigger video player — and apparently there’s more to come.

The Technorati Top Bloggers index has gone bye-bye. It hasn’t been relevant in seven or eight years, and it’s a little funny to think that you could once get a line on the blogosphere from just one list. But it’s true! Now gather ’round and I’ll tell you how I used to walk five miles through the snow to connect my acoustic coupler. Good morning, Internet…

I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!