Hasta La Gadget!

Apple’s apparent filing for the “iSlate” trademark and purchase of the iSlate.com domain has some convinced that iSlate will be the official name of Apple’s rumored touchscreen tablet. Some more digging around led to the discovery of a trademark application for “iGuide,” which bears striking similarities to the iSlate application. The theory, then, is iGuide could be another name candidate for an Apple tablet.

MacRumors, who originally reported evidence that Apple purchased iSlate.com, found that the iGuide trademark application was signed by Apple’s senior trademark specialist Regina Porter, who was also the signer of the the iSlate paperwork. The iGuide application describes features that could be part of a general-purpose gadget:

Computer hardware and computer software for accessing, browsing, searching, recording, organizing, storing, transmitting, receiving, manipulating, streaming, reproducing, playing, and reviewing audio, video, games, music, television, movies, photographs, and other multimedia content

Also, a detail perhaps overlooked by MacRumors — the address of the listed applicant, iGuide Media LLC, shares the same address as the applicant listed for iSlate, Slate Computing LLC: “1209 Orange Street, Wilmington DELAWARE.” That address is linked to Corporation Trust, an agency that assists corporations in expediting legal services and other requests. The implication, then, is Apple hired Corporation Trust to file for the iSlate and iGuide trademarks. Corporation Trust presumably set up accounts as “iGuide Media LLC” and “Slate Computing LLC” for filing their respective trademarks.

Wired.com consulted trademark experts to help assess the iSlate trademark application. They declined to speculate on Apple’s plans, but based on the legal expertise they provided, Wired.com finds it inconclusive that a future Apple product will carry either the name iSlate or iGuide.

Jane Wald, chair of the trademark practice group at Irell and Manella, noted to Wired.com that the iSlate trademark has not been registered in the United States; it’s only been filed. In U.S. trademark law, a company can only win registration of a mark once it provides sufficient evidence it is actually selling the product under that name. That means “iSlate” is not a name set in stone; it could be abandoned.

Furthermore, a company can file for multiple trademarks that are potential candidates for a product’s name. However, a company must file for trademarks in good faith, meaning it must at least be considering using the name in commerce.

“If you filed 100 different [marks] for the same product years in advance, you probably wouldn’t be having a good faith intent, but a few of them doesn’t ring alarm bells,” Wald explained in a phone interview.

In summary, based on the appearance of Apple’s trademark specialist on both applications, it’s safe to conclude iSlate and iGuide are trademarks filed by Apple via the agency CT. And if we are to believe iSlate and iGuide are candidates for an Apple tablet, then there could be a few others out there — but not very many.

iGuide, though? Bleh.

See Also:

• Times Editor Leaks ‘Apple Slate’ News — Sorta
• Approaching January, Apple Tablet Rumors Run Wild
• Video Demonstrates Wired’s Concept iTablet App
• Everything We Know About Apple’s Touchscreen Tablet

Illustration of an imaginary iPhone tablet: Flickr/vernhart

Updated 12/29 with additional details

Ray Kurzweil, a prolific inventor who is best known for his prediction that machine intelligence will surpass that of humans around 2045, still has a few things to offer carbon-based life forms. Kurzweil has introduced new e-reader software, called Blio, that approaches e-reading from a completely different angle than the current E Ink-based devices like the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony Reader.

Blio is not a device. Rather, it is a “platform” that could run on any device, but would be most obviously at home on a tablet. The software is free and available currently for PCs, iPod Touch and iPhone.

“Everyone who has seen it acknowledges that it is head and shoulders above others,” says Kurzweil. “We have high-quality graphics and animated features. Other e-readers are very primitive.”

Blio is set to debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.

E-readers have become a hot consumer electronics product. About 5 million e-reader devices are expected to be sold by the end of the year. Meanwhile, electronic books for the Kindle outsold physical books on Amazon for the first time this Christmas, said Amazon, one of the largest online book retailers.

Kurzweil — who is better known for his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near — has worked extensively in areas such as optical character recognition, speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis. His company Kurzweil Technologies has a joint venture with the National Federation of the Blind called knfb Reading Technology to create reading products for people with disabilities. knfb Reading is the company that has created Blio.

One of Blio’s major advantages over current e-book readers is that the software offers a full color experience. E Ink, which is the black-and-white display used currently in almost all e-readers, works best for text, and even then most e-books still look ugly, thanks to design limitations in the readers.

Blio actually lays out the “pages” as they would be seen on paper, with typography and illustrations copied across. It also supports video and animation. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of the interactive magazine applications (also meant for upcoming tablet devices) shown off by the likes of Time Warner, Popular Science publisher Bonnier and Wired’s parent company Conde Nast.

Add to that some nifty features such as text-to-speech and the ability to synchronize things (like bookmarks, highlights and the page you last read) across multiple devices, and it makes for an interesting e-reader.

“We can take a PDF and an audio book and merge the two to get a combination such that you can hear the audio book and see the words highlighted on the PDF at the same time,” says Peter Chapman, an executive at Kurzweil Technologies.

For publishers, says Kurzweil the advantage is that Blio preserves the original book’s format, including typsetting, layout, fonts and pagination.

Though it sounds nifty, Blio is up against some stiff competition. Kurzweil and his team are betting against the trend of dedicated e-reader devices such as Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader.

“People don’t want an extra piece of hardware,” says Kurzweil. “They want to take one device and do everything with it and they want color screens.”

Instead, Kurzweil is betting that tablets that are scheduled to be launched next year — including the much speculated Apple tablet — will be used by consumers instead for reading digital books. Blio could fit well on those tablets.

Blio will also go up against existing e-reader software such as Stanza for the desktop. Amazon acquired Stanza earlier this year, and its Kindle for PC and Kindle for iPhone apps also sync with the Kindle device. Barnes and Noble also plans to offer desktop and smartphone-based e-reader software that will work with its Nook. But Kurzweil says they can’t support multimedia and text-to-speech like Blio does.

Blio creators are also working with major book publishers to port their e-books from the Adobe PDF format to Blio for free. They are trying to partner with Google to make its massive library of free book titles available in Blio.

On its own, Blio looks solid, but it signifies something much bigger: the end of the paper book. Right now, e-books are poor copies of paper books, with a single advantage: convenience. A book is just a container for text, not its natural home.

The upcoming rash of tablets could provide a better place for reading words than these old wads of paper, usurping print the way Gutenberg usurped hand-copied manuscripts.

A chart from Blio shows how the software compares to its rivals:

See Also:

• Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live
• Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives …
• Barnes & Noble Unveils Kindle-Killing, Dual-Screen ‘Nook’ E-Reader
  
• Review: Amazon.com Kindle 2
• Review: Barnes & Noble Nook
• Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet

Photos: Blio/knfb Reading Technology

When we brought news of the concept MP3-playing Mint Cube, with its retro-styled dials and pocket-unfriendly shape, some of you loved it and some really hated it. So we have good news or bad, depending on your tastes: Korean manufacturer Dodona has popped out its own cube-shaped player, and it is actually a real, buyable product.

For “just” $170, you get a 4GB, 2×2×2-inch box with an FM radio and a digital – not analog – OLED display, capable of playing MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA and FLAC tracks. There is also a microphone for voice recording and a speaker on the back so you can “entertain” your friends. In short, it does everything a dollar-store MP3 player would do, only it costs almost as much as a video-shooting, movie-playing iPod Nano with four-times the capacity.

The one analog part that might be found on the superior (and non-existent) Mint Cube is the volume switch, although rather than being a satisfyingly hefty knob is is just a little, twistable plastic nubbin. This is probably one to avoid, unless you want a tiny, tinny clock radio beside your bed.

Cube product page [Dodona]

See Also:

• Mint Cube: A Pocket Sized, Retro-Styled Music Center

After Wednesday’s barrage of Apple tablet rumors from media outlets big and small, Wired.com is convinced the long-awaited product will see the light of day in 2010. But there is one more thing.

New York Times writer Nick Bilton adds to the rumor frenzy with two sound bites from Apple staff.

“I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet,” a current senior Apple employee is quoted in Bilton’s post.

Bilton also cites a recently departed Apple employee who said, “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.”

Intriguing, especially the second quote. Just how could the interaction method surprise us? In August 2008, a 52-page patent filed by Apple described how a touchscreen tablet might work. The patent described a device that would be able to detect simultaneous touches and gestures from two hands. But that hardly sounds like it would be surprising.

Interestingly, AppleInsider spotted a new patent application that was appeared this week in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s database. Filed by Apple, the patent application is titled “Keystroke tactility arrangement on a smooth touch surface.” It describes a tactile-feedback mechanism for a touch surface keyboard to create physical bumps for the user to feel the keys:

One approach is to provide tactile feedback mechanisms, such as dots, bars, or other shapes on all or many keys. In another embodiment, an articulating frame may be provided that extends when the surface is being used in a typing mode and retracts when the surface is used in some other mode, e.g., a pointing mode. The articulating frame may provide key edge ridges that define the boundaries of the key regions or may provide tactile feedback mechanisms within the key regions. The articulating frame may also be configured to cause concave depressions similar to mechanical key caps in the surface. In another embodiment, a rigid, non-articulating frame may be provided beneath the surface. A user will then feel higher resistance when pressing away from the key centers, but will feel a softer resistance at the key center.

Could that be the big surprise? It would certainly be a welcome addition to eliminate the need to stare at the keyboard while typing. And one could imagine it would be a crucial feature on a touchscreen device with a bigger screen.

See Also:

• Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
• Everything We Know About Apple’s Touchscreen Tablet
• Approaching January, Apple Tablet Rumors Run Wild

Photo illustration: Wired.com reader Gluepet

The Nook hacking frenzy seems to be as active as the first wild days of iPhone cracking, with new news arriving all the time. Now owners of the Barnes & Noble e-reader can “jailbreak” the device without having to open it up.

Previously, to gain full root access to the internals of the Nook’s Android operating system meant grabbing a screwdriver and physically popping out the internal microSD card on which the OS resides. Now, thanks to a tiny 7.5k download, you can do all the dirty work from the comfort of your computer’s file browser.

The file, called bravo_update.dat, comes in the soft-root package, and can be downloaded from the currently bandwidth-buffeted nookDevs site. All you do is pop another microSD card into the external slot, copy across the file via USB cable and eject. Switch the Nook off and on, immediately holding down both page-turn buttons.

This forces the Nook to run a firmware updater which does what the hardware hack did before (change a word in the operating system’s init.rc file). Now, after grabbing the Google Android developers kit to run on your computer, you are good to hack.

Needless to say, this will probably void your warranty, but it should work with all versions of the Nook firmware, including the two-day-old v1.1.0. The nookDevs team is also working on adding Nook-friendly software: first up should be an email application, coming in the next few days.

nookDevs root enabler for nook [nookDevs]

See Also:

• Nook E-Reader Gets Hacked to Run Apps, Browser
• Nook Torn Open, Hacked, Rooted
• Barnes & Noble Improves Nook With Firmware Update