Gearfuse

Don’t you hate when you buy a brand-new gadget, take it out of the package, power that sucker on, only to discover that you have about 30 seconds of battery life to play with before the thing is tapped out. Apple, always thinking ahead, has submitted a patent which would allow their iPhone and iPod Touch gadgets to be charged while still in their packaging.

This “active packaging” would allow “power, data, or both power and data to one or more electronic media devices housed within the packaging.” Data too, huh? Does that mean a constant data feed to each device? That would keep all of their devices updated constantly.

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If you’re unfamiliar with Worlds.com, you’ll have to read up on the company’s asinine history sometime. The company created some shitty 3-D environment back in the dot-com boom days and because of this, it feels it owns all the patents pertaining to 3-D gaming. Now CEO Thom Kidrin is pulling a real douche move and is looking to sue the makers of Second Life and World of Warcraft.

Right now, NCSoft is in court with Worlds.com, battling over IP rights to games like City of Heroes and Guild Wars. If Worlds.com wins, we could see a lot of trouble on the horizon from websites with shady patents. In the mean time, 1999 called. It wants its shitty websites back.

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Remember the T-Mobile G1? It was a pretty big deal ’cause it was the first Android-based cellphone. Though feature-rich, a lot of buyers complained about the phone’s lack of multi-touch capability. As it turns out, Apple actually asked Google not to use multi-touch on the G1. Apple owns a lot of patents related to the multi-touch, so it’s a move that at least makes sense.

The question is, should Google have caved in to Apple’s demands? Considering the patents at stake, the nature of the two companies and the scope of each legal department, I think it was a smart move. If you really need multi-touch on your G1, there are ways to get it working.

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Neatorama has compiled a ‘Top 10 Strangest Anti-Terrorism Patents’. Ideas that will someday become realized. Check out this hippy trying to blow himself up during a protest demanding a “Jerry Garcia Day” be held in the month of August. There are tons of wacky ideas to scoff at, like the doggie earphones, airplane trap door and the explosion containment net.

The terrorists will never know what hit ‘em.
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A technology that scientists didn’t expect to pop-up for a decade or so is showing its face early. SeeReal Technologies is working on developing a 3D holographic display technique which wouldn’t require any funny-looking glasses to watch.

The holographic system would follow the watchers eyes and produce the holographic effect accordingly.

Holographic display reconstructs a “scaled-down” natural scene. So it can look as a theatrical stage or a country-side landscape merging with the horizon. SeeReal technology addresses this by replicating the depth of the original image. So if it has corners viewers can look around them, as well as sections that lie one behind the other. All impressions of depth and 3D are replicated in the image you see.

SeeReal has already filed over 100 patents for the technology. When asked when the technology will be available, they answered “…when this technology actually hits mass consumer markets will depend to a certain extent on partnerships, but the components needed can already be mass produced and assembled at reasonable cost. To all intents and purposes, commercial products could be made available in a fairly short time.” — Andrew Dobrow

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You thought Mac was the only media handling company to think about delving into the mobile business? Think again. The above design shows a phone subitted by Nintendo in 2001 to the U.S. patent office. The patent title was “Electronic apparatus having game and telephone functions”. The patent was not approved until June of 2006.

The name on the patent was Satoru Okada, general manager of research and engineering over at Nintendo. His name being on the patent makes it clear that at one point this was considered a serious mobile venture. To be anything breathtaking, the phone would have to be redone, design and interface wise.

The phone was to have two processors. One for the phone and a seperate one used solely for gaming. The last thing that Nintendo needs is to jump into the Japanese handheld market when there is so many goddamn competitors hitting the kids these days.

In 2001, we’re sure that a Mario inspired phone seemed like a very good idea. Though, now it just seems already obsolete. Who’s fault is it that we’ll never see this phone? We’re gonna take a jump and blame it on the patent office. — Andrew Dobrow

Electronic apparatus having… [Google Patent Search, via Digital World Tokyo]

No real specifics, unless you want to wade through the murky waters that are patents. What is known is that a patent (see link below) was filed by Sony and describes something that could be awesome, and it also has the possibility to fall flat on its face (or it could be you falling flat on your face if this doesn’t work right).

The present invention relates to a vehicle which can travel in the front and back direction and which can turn by right and left wheels rotated when a rider riding on a step-board moves the position of rider’s balance from the center of a vehicle base.

Not too technical of a description…. yet. The patent goes on to describe equations for operation, yada yada yada. Could Sony pull this off? It’s also possible that some other company might be working on something like this and that Sony would sell the rights to that someone else. As a last comment, doesn’t it sound sort of like that futuristic looking BMW skateboard (as pictured above)? Now take a look at the patent, please, be our guest. — Nik Gomez

Application No. 20060260862 [US Patent & Trademark Office]