patent on technabob...

We can file this under art, or under why?/why not?: Invented by Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus, the Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus “downloads and parses a part of the text of a recent best-selling book” and then, for some strange reason, peruses the archives of the United States Patent and Trademark Office for drawings that…

I’m starting to think Nintendo (maybe all of the big three, actually) employs a division whose sole job is to produce ridiculous patent applications designed to create waves of silly throughout the wide plains of the Internet. I find that a much more plausible explanation than the idea of yet another Wii accessory–especially one that…

At this point, I’m pretty sure that everything in the damn world is about to be patented as a possible game control system. Right now, someone is filing a patent for a game controller modeled after their grandmother’s little finger. Why? Tea party simulations, y’all. In the meantime, Sony has filed a patent for a…

Imagine this scenario: you’re in the living room. A magical world unfolds on the television screen, a world filled with flowers and butterflies, a world with a golden road unspooling before you. It’s a road that might lead anywhere. And in order to travel that road, you have to sit on a very large whoopie…

Okay, perhaps I’m being a little ridiculous with my title there, but I’m torn between thinking this new development from Microsoft is both funny and completely horrible. Microsoft’s adding all sorts of new ads to the Xbox 360 interface, and now there’s a patent for walking billboard avatars who hang around in avatar-supported games.

See…

Move over, Project Natal and Wii-mote: here comes Sony, trying to break into the let’s-make-it-real movement with a new patent for image-scanning with their EyeToy camera. Oh, did you think I meant their oddly-shaped wand controller from E3? No, friends, this is altogether different.

The new patent expands on the combination of wand and camera…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…