Hasta La Gadget!

We still haven’t heard much out of Intellectual Ventures’ latest patent offensive against no less than nine tech companies, but the company founded by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Mhyrvold is now making some news on another front. It just announced today that RIM has followed HTC and Samsung and entered a licensing agreement that gives it full access to Intellectual Ventures’ patent portfolio of more than 30,000 IP assets. Details are expectedly light beyond that, but it certainly seems like Intellectual Ventures is doing alright for itself these days — it was recently reported that it hauled in $700 million in licensing revenue in 2010 alone, and that its total revenue to date is around $2 billion. Full press release is after the break.

Continue reading RIM strikes licensing deal with Intellectual Ventures for 30,000 IP assets

RIM strikes licensing deal with Intellectual Ventures for 30,000 IP assets originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

It’s been well documented that AT&T’s 4G phones aren’t just slow—their upload speeds are often slower than its 3G network. So what happened to that extra G? Turns out it’s not the network itself that’s borked; it’s the phones. AT&T has intentionally crippled the Motorola Atrix and HTC Inspire—the carrier’s only fourth-gen network phones—by actively disabling the handsets’ HSUPA capability. Gross. But there may be sweet relief coming soon. More »

There isn’t exactly much of a need to entice Japanese to buy bottled water right now, but Vittel has another great collaboration with New Balance that pairs the sporty water with miniature versions of New Balance running shoes as mobile phone straps. Running is rather popular these days in Japan after all, and everyone loves some quality omake (giveaways).

On top, Vittel has created the Tokyo Run app that uses technology from Sekai Camera, the augmented reality app that allows for a feature called “air tagging”. This means that you can place tags in virtual spaces defined by geography, and other people can find the tags on their own devices and interact with them.

The Tokyo Run app is also a game of sorts that creates digital running paths for joggers to take, with virtual Vittel bottles marking the turns at set geographic points. By using the phone’s GPS, runners can hit the points during their run, collect points, and then be eligible for winning prizes such as limited edition shoes.

The mini shoes straps are pretty nice and quite detailed. It says a lot about Japan that such cool little gifts can be so casually attached to the bottles without being stolen.

Even the tread on the shoes is realistic!

Tesla’s looking to take reality shows to a whole new level. The high end electric car manufacturer has sued the British Broadcasting Corporation, alleging that its Top Gear program faked a racing scene involving one of the company’s vehicles. In the scene, the Tesla vehicle grinds to a halt after running out of energy.

A conclusion for Captain Obvious to draw, this is not. As with most mega-corp job postings, the wording in Microsoft’s latest is just obfuscated enough to keep us guessing, but a few key phrases have us (as well as ZDNet‘s Mary-Jo Foley) on edge waiting for the next big thing in cloud storage. Judging by the rousing reception seen by Amazon’s Cloud Drive, we’re guessing that the folks in Redmond haven’t forgotten completely about Kin’s one positive feature: Kin Studio. Based on a new job request, there’s a Windows Phone Mobile Studio brewing, and the leading thought is that this is really Kin Studio… but for WP7 devices. Granted, this may be nothing at all like it sounds — we could be looking at a future home for apps, or simply another aspect of Zune that’ll make music management a wee bit easier. That said, we’d love to see Microsoft bust out a world-class streaming / storage service for its mobile platform, and you can bet we’ll be prying for details at MIX next month.

Microsoft job posting teases Windows Phone Mobile Studio, requires thinking cap to grok originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink ZDNet  |  Microsoft  | Email this | Comments