Hasta La Gadget!

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has once again invalidated Apple’s “bounce-back” patent. The patent, labeled patent # 7,469,381, was one of Apple’s major patents in its lawsuit against Samsung. It provides the “bounce-back” feature that bounces the screen back upward if the user scrolls past the end of a page/document. The patent also includes other features including dragging documents, rotating documents, list scrolling, scaling, and many other features.

The ’381 patent was invalidated last October due to “lack of novelty” and many other factors. Apple used the patent to accuse 21 of Samsung’s devices of infringement. It used claim 19 in the patent to accuse the Samsung Captivate, Vibrant, Fascinate, Galaxy S, Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S II, Galaxy S II (i9100), Epic 4G, Droid Charge, Infuse 4G, Exhibit 4G, Mesmerize, Continuum, Indulge, Gem, Replenish, Galaxy Prevail, Galaxy Ace, Nexus S 4G, Galaxy Tab, and Galaxy Tab 10.1 (Wi-Fi).

Apple appealed the first invalidation, but the USPTO has invalidated it again in what it says is the Final Office Action. Apple can still appeal the decision, but the “Final” aspect of the action limits Apple’s rights to amend the claims. Apple has 2 months to appeal USPTO’s decisions, and if it fails once again, it can seek judicial review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit or in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Last year, the courts ruled that Samsung had to pay a $1.05 billion fine to Apple, a fine that Apple hoped to increase. Unfortunately for Apple, Judge Lucy Koh reduced that fee by $450.5 million down to $600 million. Now that the bounce-back patent has been invalidated again, Samsung can reduce the fine even further. However, Apple, of course, isn’t going to let Samsung win that easily, if at all. It’s already working on appealing USPTO’s decision. It states, “Reexaminatinon of the ’381 patent is far from conclusion.”

[via CNET]

USPTO invalidates Apple’s “Bounce-Back” patent once again is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Mobile phones may not be anything too special these days, but 40 years ago today, the world’s first cellphone was just being born, and it was all the rage. On April 3, 1973, the first call from a cellphone was made by the inventor himself, Marty Cooper, where he called out to his rival: the head of the research department at Bell Labs, Joel Engel.

That phone call was made on a Motorola DynaTAC 8000x (pictured above), a 2.5-pound piece of machinery that was priced at $4,000 when it went on sale in 1983. When Cooper called Engel from his DynaTAC, he was quite literal with his feelings, and didn’t say anything too poetic: “Joel, this is Marty. I’m calling you from a cellphone, a real handheld portable cellphone.”

Of course, this may remind you of Alexander Graham Bell’s work and his invention of the first practical telephone. On October 9, 1876, Bell called his assistant, Thomas Watson, and they talked by telephone to each other over a two-mile wire that stretched between Cambridge and Boston, marking it the first time that anyone had ever communicated through two-way voice over electronic signals.

As for the first cellphone, that’s still a remarkable feat, and as with the traditional telephone industry, the mobile phone industry has come a long way since its inception. We went from 2.5-pound cellphones costing thousands of dollars, to devices that weight just a few ounces and can do pretty much anything. We certainly can’t wait to see what the next 40 years will bring us.

Image via Flickr

The cellphone turns 40 years old today is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

“There’s an app for that…”, or so the saying goes, and we are quite sure that iPhone as well as Android owners have far more installed apps than stock apps on their respective handsets. While Apple might seem to be on the backpedal when it comes to their iPhone at this point in time in terms of market share compared to the expanding Android footprint, do bear in mind that Apple’s App Store is a well respected cash cow for the Cupertino firm, so to speak, as the App Store still outsells Google’s Play Store by a rather hefty ratio in comparison – and we all know that there is money at the end of the apps rainbow. What happens when you take into account hardware accessories as well? This is where this unique iPhone microscope accessory would come in handy for the medical field.

An international team of researchers recently reported in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene that they managed to make use of a very simple microscope which was self-constructed, where thanks to a lens that costs just $8, it has been placed over the iPhone 4S’s camera and held in place with some sticky tape, and it was successfully used to detect the eggs of soil-transmitted parasitic worms, otherwise known as helminths, if you want to get technical about it. When compared to the results shown by a proper microscope when diagnosing children in rural Tanzania, it was discovered that for some nematodes, the iPhone microscope is more than capable of detecting worm eggs.

Well, what can we say about that? It would be nice if this makeshift solution was able to measure up to the kind of performance found in actual microscopes, but I guess that further refinements need to be made to ensure that this will happen sometime down the road.

Source
[ iPhone microscope helps out the naked eye copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

State governments around the US have been cracking down on mobile phone use during the past couple of years. Some states even make it illegal to use your mobile phone at all while driving, while some states will allow you to talk, but not text. However, it turns out that 1 in 3 US drivers still text when behind the wheel.

According to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American motorists are far more likely to use their mobile phones while driving than European motorists. The study took a look at two driving behaviors: talking on the phone while driving and reading or sending text messages while driving among motorists between the ages of 18 and 64.

The study found that 69% of US drivers talked on their mobile phone while driving compared to 21% in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, 31% of motorists in the US said that they read or text on their mobile phones while driving, compared to just 15% of drivers in Spain. The study did not offer a reason as to why the US had higher mobile phone usage rates than Europe.

Age-wise, there were some differences in phone usage. Younger drivers were more likely to use their mobile phone while driving, compared to older folks aged 55 to 64. Of course, this isn’t too surprising, since the younger generation is more apt to use mobile devices than older people. While older folks may have their own smartphone, many of them don’t use it as religiously as younger users.

1 in 3 Americans still text and drive is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

So, you think that your smartphone is smart, and will definitely be able to live up to its name? LG Electronics has something interesting up their sleeves with the announcement of Smart Video capability for the LG Optimus G Pro, their current flagship, which will be introduced as an update pack to the handset in the South Korean market from April onwards. Smart Video is a new multimedia user experience feature that ensures your video recording and photo taking sessions on the LG Optimus G Pro will never be the same again, and not only that, it will also sport eye recognition capability that opens up the doors to a whole new world of convenience.

With the implementation of advanced eye recognition technology, Smart Video is capable of figuring out just where your eyes are looking at at the moment, and should it “see” using the front-facing camera that your eyes are looking elsewhere other than the display, video playback on the device will stop automatically, and when you return your gaze to the smartphone, so too, will the video playback resume from where it last left off. If this isn’t smart, I am not quite sure just how high the bar you have set when it comes to the definition of a “smartphone”. Perhaps you want one that is also capable of fixing your daily cup of morning coffee, two lumps of sugar and all?

Apart from the Smart Video feature, LG’s Optimus G Pro is also said to carry with it another claim to a “world’s first”, thanks to its Dual Camera function. In a nutshell, the Dual Camera feature will be an extension of the Dual Recording feature that originally appeared on the Optimus G Pro that arrived in the South Korean market in February. Dual Camera is capable of capturing photographs using both the front and back cameras, delivering a picture-in-picture composition so that you as the photographer, can be “part of the story” instead of remaining as an independent observer.

Press Release
[ LG Optimus G Pro gets Eye Tracking and Smart Video capability copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]