First off, let me explain that I'm not making any declarations about Edison Nation or their staff's sexual proclivities. True, they have a large staff of male and females, so the literal here might be true. But I spelled it all ghetto to embrace the current young generation's vernacular: Edison Nation is bad/terrible/worthless.

What is Edison Nation, some might wonder?

It's basically a website that pledges to help inventors bring ideas to fruition. They allegedly make money acting like an agent for inventors. I say they suck at it.

Of course I'm a little bitter at this point. I had this swell product idea a year and a half ago for a product that would help people keep from dropping smart phones, handhelds, etc. I looked on line to see what the hell I could do with such an idea and found the fairly-new Edison Nation. Wow. What timing? I couldn't believe my luck! A fantastic, simple, cheap to manufacture idea falls in my lap, and I immediately find a way to do something with it. I am, afterall, a dad working for local government and don't have the money or power tools to develop, manufacture or hawk any idea on my own.

So I signed up. For $9.25 a month. Oh, and $25 to submit the idea. And I ended up submitting a couple of other unsuccessful ideas.

The way Edison Nation works is that they have "Searches" where they try and find product ideas for prospective clients. They screen entries in various stages, weeding out bad ideas from the rest until they make a final choice for a presentation to the company looking for that next big OxyClean-like product. As Seen on TV (Telebrands) is one of their ongoing clients, launching a "search" every quarter.

I have diligently entered my concept- which included photos of my paperclip and lego protoype- in many, many searches. I've come close- but never seemed to make the small band of good products that get presented.

This is a frustrating process. But losing is something I'm familiar with, so I held on, and kept entering.

Until today.

Someone has beaten me to the market.

Their product is basically a larger, improved version of my design- a loop held on a swivel and then bonded adhesively to the back of a handheld device. Where I envisioned sliding the loop over one finger, they have you slide all four in.

Did they somehow steal my idea? Hell, I don't know. As simple as this idea is, anybody could come up with it. It's also conceivable someone reviewing my idea passed it along. Don't know, don't care.

My beef is that Edison Nation sat on this for over a year, when it was clearly, demonstrably a good idea. And I sure thought I wasn't supposed to submit my idea to anyone else while Edison Nation considered it.

So how do I rate Edison Nation's performance? I give them five kicks to the balls. They suck. Hey, I'm sure someone sold an idea through them, but my super-simple idea sure didn't pan out.

Does that mean they suck? Well, yes- in my opinion. Just like if I think a movie sucks because I didn't partuclarly like it, I'm free to express my opinion. Someone else may think Edison Nation is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or mana.

In my case the only thing that has fallen in my lap is a big old steaming pile of disappointment. And it hit me right in the b*lls.