patent on technabob...

It can be hard to do anything while wearing gloves, much less get directions to that new sushi place with your iPhone. Sure, you could just take off your gloves every time you need to do something, wear the fingerless variety, or just lose your “texting fingers.” But as those solutions might not always be color-coordinated with your gadgets (and might…

Ever heard the saying “If these walls could talk”? If this invention ever makes it into production, your walls soon could get a voice of their own. This new technology has the potential to turn just about any surface, including your walls, into a speaker.

Johns Hopkins materials scientist Michaely Yu and his team claim to have invented a material…

Ever had such a bad game that you wanted to throw your controller at your TV screen? How about a gaming system where chucking your display itself is an integral part of the action?

Philips recently filed a patent application for a video game system which uses a monitor that you can actually toss. The patent describes a durable, monitor…

The guys over at Gizmodo dug up this brand new patent filing from Apple, showing off another true innovation from the design masters at the company.

The patent application describes a modified Apple Cinema Display with a docking slot in the side for a portable computer (presumably a new, slimmed down MacBook). Specifically, they’re attempting to patent the idea that…

Satellite imagery has become part of our everyday lives through applications like Google Maps. However, the current technology involves capturing tons of high-resolution images and stitching them together to form one larger image. This not only creates a huge amount of work to precisely align these images, it also leaves live-action surveillance susceptible to drop-outs as subjects move between cameras…

Looks like the iPhone isn’t the only multi-touch device Apple has up its sleeve. According to a recently filed patent application, Apple has designed a mouse with a multi-touch surface covering its entire body.

The design features a mouse with a sensing surface that can be programmed to interact with objects and shapes on screen in a similar way to…

The tracking technology known as RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) is showing up everywhere from grocery stores, to shipping containers, to gas station, to toll roads. Now, your intestines can join in the radio wave fun!

Kodak has filed this patent application for RFID tagged capsules that could be swallowed to track activity in a patient’s digestive system. The capsules would…

I guess Apple has had their eye on the phone market for a long time…

And before you call fake, you can view the original patent filing here. Can you imagine us all running around with phones shaped like these? The patent also makes reference to a “Pac Man” phone, which I also find amusing, although I don’t know why.…

Back in May 2006, Sony filed a patent application, titled “Detectable and Trackable Handheld Controller,” which approaches motion sensing control in a totally different way than the Nintendo Wii does it.

Unlike the Wii’s internal accelerometer and gyroscopic sensors, Sony’s patent uses a series of four LEDs on the front of the controller, which provide points of reference for a…

While Microsoft is touting the wonders of the music sharing features of the new Zune media player, I’m quite familiar with a project in which a team from the MIT Media lab developed a similar wireless music sharing capability a couple of years ago. The team filed a patent application back at the end of 2005 for virtually the exact functionality…

Apple and Creative Technology, Ltd. today announced a broad settlement ending all legal disputes between the two companies.
Apple will pay $100 million to license Creative’s patent in all Apple products. Apple can recoup a portion of its payment if Creative is successful in licensing this patent to others. In addition, the companies announced that Creative has joined Apple’s “Made for iPod”…