Hasta La Gadget!

Most large tech companies are either making wearable devices, or at least showing an interest in them. Sony’s got a smartwatch, sure, but it’s bored of such “in-the-box” thinking. Either that, or someone at Sony’s been hitting the pipe, as the company’s trying to patent what it calls a “SmartWig” (yeah, seriously). The application describes a standard wig that could “be made from horse hair, human hair, wool, feathers, yak hair or any kind of synthetic material,” with a circuit board hidden among those luscious locks. That board can talk to a “second computing device” wirelessly — such as a phone or even a pair of smartglasses — and actuators embedded in the hairpiece could “provide tactile feedback to the user.” In other words, the wig could vibrate when you receive emails and the like. The wig-chip could also include GPS and an ultrasound transducer, with different regions buzzing to give navigation cues. If all that doesn’t sound ludicrous enough, how about an integrated camera? Or, get this, a laser pointer.

The filing goes on to claim a wig is the perfect hiding place for delicate electronics, as humans tend to “instinctively protect their heads more than other body parts.” While its potential utility for guiding the blind is mentioned, Sony’s apparently tested the SmartWig in a far less meaningful scenario: giving presentations. Switching slides by “touching side burns” is expected to be of some merit, as is an ability to sense facial gestures like the raising of eyebrows. It may be the wearable device Doctor Evil has been dreaming of, but for some reason, we doubt SmartWig could ever make it mainstream.

Filed under: Wearables, Sony

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Source: USPTO

These days, wearable tech is a beast that cannot be stopped, even if we wanted to (we don’t). We recently got wind of an application Motorola submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (initially filed in February of 2012 and published today) for an electronic device designed “to enfold about an appendage of a user.” While “appendage” could mean a great many things, let’s go wild and call this gadget a smartwatch. The application specifies a few interesting features, including gaze detection, touchscreen controls and a hinged dual display system. Motorola is no stranger to this territory; its MOTOACTV has enough features (like Twitter and Facebook) to be considered a fitness-oriented smartwatch. This newly proposed device includes functions similarly geared towards health-conscious consumers, like vital sign and exercise monitoring. While not all patents materialize into the finished products we might expect, it’s interesting to know that Motorola is actively pursuing one such as this. The application can be read in full at the source link below.

Filed under: Wearables

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Source: US Patent and Trademark Office

If you get a lot of work-related email, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen the misuse of priority tags — potluck dinners are suddenly as vital as company-wide meetings. It’s with a sense of dread, then, that we learned that Microsoft has applied for a patent on prioritizing phone calls. The approach would let callers choose an urgency level that flashes alerts, sends messages and otherwise signals that a call can’t wait. It would simultaneously foil telemarketers and other cold callers by requiring a passcode or encrypted authentication. If granted, the patent could be useful for on-call workers and worried parents. That said, we won’t mind if Microsoft declines to use it; we don’t need high-priority calls to refill the office coffee pot.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft

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Source: USPTO

In today’s sci-fi-inches-closer-to-reality news, Sony has filed a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for integrated camera sensors that can tag movies and photographs with your vital signs. The application, which can be read in full at the source below, describes a system of intensely personalized filings on your mobile device or camera. Rather than tagging those awkward family photos as “The Johnsons at Christmas dinner,” you would theoretically be able to attach your own biological data to the image, including body temperature, pulse rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, blood oxygen level and skin conductance. Camera units would contain dedicated sensors for vitals that would attach such information to the file, like a weirdly personal time stamp. Why you’d want to have your blood pressure associated with your photos, we’re not quite sure, but Sony, at least, is determined to fill a void we didn’t even know existed.

Filed under: Cameras, Peripherals, Sony

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Source: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Everyone’s found themselves in this situation at one time or another: you’re in a picture-perfect setting, but a selfie at arm’s length won’t cut it. You want to be in the picture, so you wait for a friendly looking passerby and ask them to take it. But, now it’s out of your control, and chances are the resulting snap won’t turn out exactly as you’d imagined. Samsung knows you’re too polite to hold the stranger up while you convey your vision, so it has come up with a camera feature that does the explaining for you. It’s described in a recent patent filing, and the gist is that you select the backdrop and take an initial snap that acts as a guide for the next, similar to how some panorama modes work. With a silhouette of the desired scene now showing atop the live view, the designated stranger just needs to let you get in the shot, line the overlay up with the live scene, and hit the shutter release.

The patent application also talks of editing the overlay, such as adding a circle to show the photographer where you’d like your face to be in relation to the backdrop. If you want the passerby to know how well they’re doing, the claims explain an on-screen “composition score” that would rate their lining-up skills. And, if you’d rather trust the final decision to the camera, a ball-in-the-hole scenario is described that’ll automatically engage the shutter release when the live view matches your ideal layout. This is just words and a few diagrams at this stage, mind, but if the patent gets granted, we could eventually see such a feature added to Samsung’s smartphones or Galaxy cameras. Until then, you’ll just have to put your trust in strangers and hope they have at least a basic understanding of the rule of thirds.

Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Software, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: USPTO (1), (2) (PDF)