Archive for August, 2007

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Wireless iPod/iPhone data transfers, iPhoto, and more

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Applications published on July 12, 2007 (part 3 of 3).

20070161402 Media data exchange, transfer or delivery for portable electronic devices (37 pages)
Wireless data transfer between mobile devices, e.g., wireless iPod or iPhone transfers. According to the claims, only one of the devices is a portable device. Though that does not prevent the device at the other end of the exchange from being a portable device, it just doesn’t require it. This covers transfers from, for example, a desktop computer to an iPod.

20070160290 Text flow in and around irregular containers (14 pages)

20070159651 Publishing and subscribing to digital image feeds (18 pages)
Photocasting, or RSS feeds with iPhoto.

20070159497 Rotation control (14 pages)
Manipulating 3D graphics using a 2D input device (like a mouse).

Posted in Miscellaneous Apple-related software patents, Published Apple patent applications, iPhone-related patents, iPod-related hardware patents | No Comments »

Applications published on July 12, 2007 (Part 2 of 3)

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

20070162842 Selective content imaging for web pages (12 pages)
Relates to creating Web pages with iWeb.

20070162839 Syndicated audio authoring (11 pages)

20070162589 File sharing using instant messaging applications (32 pages)
File sharing using iChat.

20070162574 Data serialization in a user switching environment (16 pages)
Switching user sessions under OS X.

20070162298 Systems and methods for presenting data items (77 pages)
Showing data items based on the significance of the item. One way to indicate significance is by the number of times that the item was accessed within a given period of time (for example, the number of times in a day or week). The one claim (which I imagine will be replaced) is directed to using this type of display on a Web page.

Posted in Mac OS-related software patents, Miscellaneous Apple-related software patents, Published Apple patent applications | No Comments »

Applications published on July 12, 2007 (Part 1 of 3)

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

20070162855 Movie authoring (20 pages)
Movie authoring via iMovie, including automated movie authoring. Claims are directed to adding themes, the iMovie UI, and a method for automatically authoring parts of a movie.

20070162850 Sports-related widgets (22 pages)
Aggregating sports-related information from one or more sources into a single widget. Not sure why they focuses on sports for this widget, but paragraph 0078 includes the catch-all, saying that this invention also applies to “any type of news item”.

20070162848 Predictive styling (13 pages)
Determining style attributes for objects added to a document based on a template used for the document.

A side note to the author of this application: get formal drawings before you file the case or at least on file in plenty of time to make sure the formals get published.

20070162846 Automatic sub-template selection based on content (12 pages)
Creating or editing a Web page using iWeb. A user selects a content item to be added to the Web page and the code to include the item in the Web page is automatically created.

20070162845 User interface for webpage creation/editing (16 pages)
UI for iWeb, including updating pages as they would appear on the Web in real time based on changes made by the user. Claims are directed to using a template to create the Web page and real time updating.

Posted in Mac OS-related software patents, Miscellaneous Apple-related software patents, Non-iPod video-related patents, Published Apple patent applications | No Comments »

Patents issued on July 10, 2007

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

D546,277 Battery pack (7 pages)
Design for first gen iPod Shuffle battery back.

7,242,576 Quick release structures for a computer (42 pages)
Release mechanism for the access door on pro-level towers.

7,242,411 Adjustment of color values for optimized image processing (13 pages)
Color space conversion from YCrCb to RGB.

7,242,169 Method and apparatus for voltage compensation for parasitic impedance (14 pages)

Posted in Apple design patents, Issued Apple patents, Mac hardware-related patents, Miscellaneous Apple hardware-related patents, Non-iPod video-related patents, iPod-related hardware patents | No Comments »

Applications published on July 5, 2007 (Part 3 of 3)

Monday, August 20th, 2007

20070152980 Touch screen keyboards for portable electronic devices (47 pages)
Various on-screen keyboards for use on an iPhone. Claims are directed to estimating where on the screen the user touched relative to the displayed keyboard, so the user doesn’t have to be 100% accurate with their typing.

20070152978 Keyboards for portable electronic devices (45 pages)
Related to the application listed above. Claims recite a keyboard in which at least some of the icons contain two or more symbols.

20070152977 Illuminated touchpad (34 pages)
Touchpad (examples shown include an iPod scroll wheel or a laptop trackpad) that at least a portion of lights up when touched.

20070152966 Mouse with optical sensing surface (27 pages)
A mouse that can sense different gestures made on its outer surface.

Posted in Mac hardware-related patents, Miscellaneous Apple-related software patents, Published Apple patent applications, iPhone-related patents, iPod-related hardware patents | No Comments »

Applications published on July 5, 2007 (Part 2 of 3)

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

20070156910 Method and apparatus for displaying information during an instant messaging session (16 pages)
iChat interface with speech balloons (yes, they claimed the speech balloons) positioning different users in different parts of the application window.

20070156364 Light activated hold switch (25 pages)
Using light to activate and deactive a hold switch for an iPod. The device enters a hold mode when it’s dark and leaves the hold mode when it’s light; dark and light being relative to a detected ambient light level. The claims are drafted to more broadly cover this, reciting a portable electronic device and one or more sensors, so the invention is not limited to iPods or to using light to toggle the hold mode.

20070155307 Media data transfer (39 pages)
Using local servers to wirelessly transmit data to devices within range of the local server. The local server discovers a nearby device, lets the device know that there is available content, the user makes a selection, and the local server sends the content to the device. The local server can also retrieve certain profile information from the device before presenting the list of available content to the device (i.e., subscription-related information or preferences).
This application is part of a larger family; there are five other related applications.

20070152984 Portable electronic device with multi-touch input (21 pages)
iPhone and the overall multi-touch UI.

Posted in Miscellaneous Apple-related software patents, Published Apple patent applications, iPhone-related patents, iPod-related hardware patents | No Comments »

Applications published on July 5, 2007 (Part 1 of 3)

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

20070157268 Portable media device with improved video acceleration capabilities (16 pages)

20070157094 Application user interface with navigation bar showing current and prior application contexts (24 pages)
iPhone GUI with navigation bar.

20070157089 Portable electronic device with interface reconfiguration mode (17 pages)
iPhone GUI where users can reposition icons on the display.

20070157041 Conserving power by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction-processing portion of a processor (8 pages)

20070156962 Media device with intelligent cache utilization (22 pages)
Reducing disk access during playback on an iPod, using a cache. Includes loading parts of files adjacent on a list to the selected item.

Posted in Miscellaneous Apple hardware-related patents, Published Apple patent applications, iPhone-related patents | No Comments »

Tomorrow’s Apple announcement

Monday, August 6th, 2007

I already predicted what Apple will announce (on the Crazy Apple Rumors Site comments) tomorrow, which is (more importantly) my birthday.

Though, to be honest, I’m not really expecting His Steveness to give me anything directly. A decent trade-in value on my currently almost three year old first gen iMac G5 (but that wouldn’t be from him) which would be used towards a new iMac (or MacBook, though I’m not so inclined to go laptop just yet, since I really don’t take the computer anywhere anyway) would be nice.

Also, I wouldn’t turn down a free iPhone. I’d even pay for the service.

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Fake Steve Jobs = Real Frigtard

Monday, August 6th, 2007

The blog Fake Steve Jobs was enjoyable. But people had to take it too seriously and try to figure out who it really was. I guess nowadays every reporter still thinks that they’re Woodward & Bernstein (the link is for those of you too young or too undereducated to know). So somebody at the New York Times sleuthed it out (read his article). And now we find out that it’s some tech writer for Forbes. Excuse me?!? Who is this frigtard? (And yes, I’ll steal that word. It sounds a bit more pleasant than my preferred “fucktard”.) It is now so much less interesting that we know the “truth”. The fiction was much more enjoyable.

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Sometimes, I hate being right

Monday, August 6th, 2007

Ever since I heard that slot machine revenue would be used to build an expansion of the PA Convention Center here in Philly, I knew that someone would say that more hotels would need to be built. I figured that would be coming from the construction unions (full of workers who don’t live in Philly but hold the city hostage every time some large construction project comes up). I guess the business community beat them to it. There is an article in the Philadelphia Business Journal that mentions that 26 new hotels are planned/envisioned for the Philly area. Nice boondoggle for them – crappy for the rest of us. (I can say that since I live less than 500 feet from one of the proposed slot parlors.)

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