Archive for October, 2010
October 31, 2010
You are standing in an open field as usual, or perhaps you’re in the darkness, likely to be eaten by a grue, but the words aren’t etching their way into your soul from the familiar computer terminal — they’re on freshly printed paper. Like a player piano, the Automatypewriter lets you play games like Zork by automatically keying in letters via a series of solenoids and fishing line to tell you where you are, and it records your input, too; every time you type “XYZZY” in vain, it’s an Arduino board that sends signals to the text parser, which directs a hollow voice to pity your foolish word. Forget the iPad typewriter — this is old-school. See it in action after the break, or hit the source link for the schematics to build one yourself. Just be sure to install Planetfall, too.
Interactive fiction meets interactive typewriter, pilfers the kingdoms of Zork (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 18:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Apple’s iPod touch can’t make cellular calls — at least, not without a special case — but it did look enough like the similar iPhone to foil one would-be predator. A Delaware suspect asked a 12-year-old girl to get into his van in front of her middle school, but quickly fled the scene, when the girl reportedly put her iPod against her ear and told him she was dialing police. The local authorities did eventually get called and are still looking for the suspect. If you see a “white male, 35-45 years of age, with a dark crew cut styled hair” suspiciously eying the headphone jack placement on devices in your local Apple Store, perhaps you’d best stay away.
iPod foils potential kidnapping attempt in the hands of quick-thinking child originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 08:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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October 31, 2010
Hundred Year Starship Initiative plans to put people on Mars by 2030, bring them back by… well, never (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 03:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink PopSci, AOL News | Kurzweil AI | Email this | Comments
October 30, 2010
Evidently missing the first two games of the World Series was about all Cablevision thought it subscribers could take, as news just hit the wire: the fourteen-day standoff is over and both tonight’s game three of the World Series and tomorrow’s Jets vs Packers game are available to subscribers. While these carriage disputes are pretty common, it is very rare for channels to be pulled and downright unheard of for a channel as popular as Fox. It came to this because Cablevision was very unhappy about News Corp’s new terms and after many pleas to the FCC and politicians to intervene, an advertising campaign, and eventually an unaccepted offer to match the price that Time Warner Cable pays, a deal has finally been done. Not exactly all’s well that ends well, though, as Cablevision released the following statement: “In the absence of any meaningful action from the FCC, Cablevision has agreed to pay Fox an unfair price for multiple channels of its programming including many in which our customers have little or no interest.” Talk about sour grapes. Well at least we can hope that Cablevision’s efforts paid off a little bit and your cable bill won’t go up as much as it would’ve if the outage never occurred to begin with. We can hope.
Fox blackout on Cablevision ends after 14 day standoff, glaring contest continues on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Oct 2010 20:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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October 30, 2010
What, you didn’t think Apple was just going to sit around and take it after Motorola first sued for patent infringement and then asked to court to declare some 20 of Cupertino’s patents weren’t applicable to its products, did you? Apple’s fired back with two lawsuits claiming that Motorola’s Android phones, including but not limited to the Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, BackFlip, Devour A555, Devour i1, and Charm, infringe a total of six multitouch and OS patents. That would be pretty much par for the course — you sue me, I sue you — but there are a couple interesting strategic wrinkles to note:
- We’ve only seen Apple litigate one of these patents before: #7,479,949, Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics. You should remember it well — it’s the patent covering scroll behavior on multitouch screens that was hyped as “the iPhone patent” and triggered a press frenzy over a possible Apple / Palm lawsuit. As we predicted at the time, that hasn’t yet materialized, but old ’949′s gotten pretty popular: Apple’s asserting it against Nokia and HTC as well.
- Apple might be suing over six patents in these two cases, but ultimately Apple will claiming Motorola’s device infringe a total of 26 patents — part of Apple’s defense to Motorola’s 20-patent lawsuit will be to claim that that Moto’s in fact infringing each of those patents. That’s a lot of patents across a lot of devices, and it’ll just take one finding of infringement to cause a lot of pain.
- Apple’s filed its two cases in the Western District of Wisconsin, a patent “rocket docket” that tries cases quickly and are often perceived as being plaintiff-friendly. (Part of the Apple / Nokia lawsuit is happening in this same court.) Moto’s obvious next move will be to try and consolidate all these cases into a single proceeding at one court, a procedural tactic that will take likely take months. And that’s just the first step. Don’t expect these cases to be decided for at least a year — probably many years — unless Apple and Motorola decide to settle, which is always possible.
- Apple’s now seriously engaged in litigation with the two largest Android handset makers (HTC and Motorola), largely over OS-level patents. At some point Google has to get involved, if only to indemnify its partners against further liability for using Android, and we can’t help but think Apple and Google are eventually bound to face off directly. Or perhaps not — by suing Android handset makers, Apple’s essentially putting a tax on Android without having to further muddy up its complex competitor / partner relationship with Google by adding in a major lawsuit.
We’ve added in a list of the patents after the break, if you’re interested — and we know you’re interested, right? It’s not like it’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon or anything.
Continue reading Apple sues Motorola right back over six patents
Apple sues Motorola right back over six patents originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Oct 2010 15:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 9 to 5 Mac, Patently Apple | Complaint (1), (2) | Email this | Comments
We felt that Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 was a product that would be perpetually evaluated, tweaked and overhauled as time went on, and sure enough, we’re already seeing those winds of change blow yonder. Reportedly, Microsoft has now removed the restriction that prevented developers from writing applications that would continue to operate behind a locked screen (without a user’s explicit permission, anyway), enabling a whole host of apps to breathe in a manner in which they simply should. Audio apps, for example, will now be able to run in the background without yet another layer of pointless Vista-esque permissions, and Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel said in an interview at its Professional Developer Conference that this move “is an example of us continuing to listen to customers.” Frankly, it’s just more fair — Microsoft’s own ingrained applications could already do this sans user permission (email, Zune playback, downloads, etc.), so it makes sense to give loyal developers that same opportunity. Of course, devs will have to prove that background apps won’t burn up an absurd amount of battery life, but that’s definitely not an unexpected qualification.
Microsoft loosens up, enables Windows Phone 7 apps to run beneath screen lock originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 22:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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October 29, 2010
The latest rumor coming out of Redmond, Washington is that Apple rival Microsoft may be heading an iPad team at one of the company’s California offices. iOS app agency iPhoneDevCamp founder Raven Zachery overheard a Microsoft conversation at a Seattle, Washington based Starbucks cafe, and tweeted, “Two Microsoft employees sitting next to me in a Seattle Starbucks talking about things they should not be” and that among those things is that “Microsoft has an iPad group at their CA offices.” Zachery states that he “wasn’t clear if it was competitive intelligence or app dev.” Read on for our take of what Microsoft could possibly be doing with an iPad team.
Permalink: What is Microsoft Conjuring Up With an iPad Team? from Ubergizmo | Hot: Macbook Air Review,Epic 4G Review
October 29, 2010
ITRI of Taiwan has come up with a spanking new 6-inch flexible display which is touted to hit a line of e-readers “very soon.” Also known as the FlexUPD, this 1mm thick AMOLED display will feature a 5cm folding radius, accompanied by 150 nits of brightness as well as “unbreakable” construction. We do have our reservations when such superlatives are thrown around, since companies tend to have way too much faith in their devices than they should. If such flexible displays can hit the mass market soon with a relatively affordable tag, we’re probably looking at a winner here.
Permalink: ITRI unveils flexible color AMOLED display from Ubergizmo | Hot: Macbook Air Review,Epic 4G Review
October 29, 2010
Apple seems to be going from strength to strength as reports are out that the fruity company is now the fourth largest phone manufacturer of any kind, with 4.1 percent of the entire market, sitting happily ahead of RIM. Topping the list is Nokia, Samsung and LG in that order, but Nokia seems to have suffered the most, seeing its share drop to 32.4 percent, down from 36.5 percent the year before. If Nokia continues to falter, how long more do you think it will be before its closest competitors overtake it, especially with Samsung sitting pretty at 21 percent market share?
Permalink: IDC Says Apple Now Fourth Largest Mobile Vendor In The World from Ubergizmo | Hot: Macbook Air Review,Epic 4G Review
October 28, 2010
The folks over at Lockheed Martin must have plenty of pent-up rage, since they have started to test the HULC robotic exoskeleton. OK, so that was a rather lame reference to the angry green giant, but we do know that a bunch of improvements have already been made to the HULC prior to testing, where the exoskeleton is now more reliable and boasts an increased performance. Among them include new environmental sealing which delivers additional protection from natural elements and battlefield hazards, while refinements made to the HULC’s form and fit allows its wearer to adapt to it in a lesser amount of time. When will we see this hit the field in some serious battle action?
Permalink: Lockheed Martin begins to test HULC robotic exoskeleton from Ubergizmo | Hot: Macbook Air Review,Epic 4G Review
