LOS ANGELES — James Conlon has extended his contract as music director of the Los Angeles Opera through the 2017-18 season.
The 62-year-old’s new deal was announced Wednesday. He was hired in 2004 to start with the 2006-07 season, and he extended previously in 2007 and 2010. His current agreement ran through the 2012-13 season.
LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian have found a new love nest – er, mansion.
The lovey-dovey duo scored a deal on their latest dwellings, shelling out $3 million for what was originally sold in 2006 as almost a $6 million home, according to real estate site Trulia.
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A new play about artist Ai Weiwei’s secret detention in 2011 will premiere in April in London. Written by British playwright Howard Brenton, “#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei” is set to open at the Hampstead Theatre.
The title of the play is a reference to Ai’s Twitter handle. The artist, who is a regular user of the social networking site, has gotten into trouble with Chinese officials a number of times due to his online activism.
Octomom is chill these days, because she’s getting baked goods delivered and getting a little baked herself … all while she cares for her 14 kids … sources tell TMZ.
Colin Farrell braves the freezing temperatures to film a water scene for his upcoming flick Winter’s Tale on Tuesday (February 19) in New York City.
“I’m kind of of a newbie when it comes to makeup, but I found a look that I like and have kept it for years,” Natalie Liao, a blogger and stylist, recently told us.”I pretty much only wear lipstick and add eyeliner every so often.” It doesn’t hurt that her go-to shade happens to be the cult classic, NARS Heatwave.
As for her subtly wavy hair: “I just put my damp hair in a bun after I shower and sleep on it overnight,” Liao said. “When I take it out in the morning, it’s wavy, and I style it from there.”
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Subways are the great equalizers. Whether you’re a local heading to work or a tourist heading to the museum, the subway is usually the most efficient way to go about it, forcing everyone to mix in the same underground melting pot.
While all that hustle and bustle highlights the primarily utilitarian purpose of mass transit systems, we encourage you to take a second to stop and smell the roses. That’s why we posed this question to our readers: What’s your favorite subway stop in the world?
The answers ranged from the ordinary (like Washington, D.C.’s Tenletown stop) to the extraordinary (like artistic Kungstradgarden in Stockholm.) Though, a few outliers posited that their favorite subway is the one that’s home to the sandwiches. And, why not! There are 37 million possible sandwich variations around the world, after all.
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You might not know it, but the melody from Happy Birthday To You is actually copyrighted, owned by Time Warner, and won’t enter the public domain until 2030 at the earliest. That’s why the Free Music Archive set out to find an alternative—and this is officially the best choice. More »
Along with a lot of publicity, Project Glass from Google has generated a bevy of approved patents and applications, but the latest one shows that the search giant’s trying to wrap up the whole kit and kaboodle — replete with detailed diagrams and descriptions to back it up. Specifically, Mountain View is claiming the design of the frame itself including the bridge, brow portion, transparent display, input device plus the means for affixing everything. There are detailed descriptions of how the device can be configured — for instance, one claim states that the screen could be adjusted “normal to the focal center of the eye,” and the position of the electronics placed “over a first side of the ear.” It goes on to explain the need for a balancing weight “over the second side” of the same ear in the latter case, such that “a majority of the overall weight is applied” to one side, which certainly jibes with some of what we’ve seen. That’s just for starters, though — head after the break to see more diagrams and details.
Filed under: Wearables, Google
Source: USPTO
Apple has a number of patents on wearable computing, but a new application spotted by AppleInsider blends some old and some new tech to provide a vision of what it might conceivably look like as a shipping product. The patent in question describes a wrist-mounted flexible screen, built on a support structure that closely resembles the “slap bracelets” children of the nineties will likely recall. When worn, the screen could provide an unbroken display that wraps all the way around the wearer’s wrist.
Apple even uses the slap bracelet directly as an example of how the device would work in its patent filing. Besides provoking nostalgia in people my age, the design would make it possible to use the device in both curled (worn) and flattened forms, acting as a different kind of display in either scenario. When on the wrist, Apple describes a sensor that would allow the watch to recognize where the end is, so that it can manage universal sizing while still wrapping a display around the wrist without any overlapping visuals.
The patent describes some software functionality, which begins to get at what an Apple iWatch might offer that others building smart watches can’t or don’t yet do. It could be used to “adjust the order of a current playlist,” review “a list of recent phone calls,” type out a message reply via a “simple virtual keyboard configuration across the face of the flexible display.” Apple even suggests using it as an input device for controlling and navigating apps like Maps. If you had trouble conceiving how an iWatch might actually revolutionize wearable computing, this patent’s description of features begins to answer that.
Apple’s patent describes making use of solar power and kinetic energy to help prolong battery life, and it includes provisions for a number of other ways to affix it to a user’s wrist, including snaps and velcro, meaning the slap bracelet look could give way to something much more in keeping with traditional watch design. But what’s most interesting is the functionality described in the patent: it shows how Apple, working with its own hardware and software in ways that third-party manufacturers aren’t able to could greatly extend the usefulness of a wrist-mounted, smartphone connected device.
The iWatch is rumored to be in production, with reports from Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal all surfacing recently. We’ve seen iWatch-related patents before, including ones that describe elements of this slap bracelet system, but this is the most complete patent to date and the timing feels more than coincidental as a result.
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