Hasta La Gadget!



This awful diagram doesn’t show it well, but the keys have been resized to fit the user’s fingers

Touch screens look like they’re going to be the default method for most people to input text into their computers. As cellphones and tablets relegate laptops and desktop to the role of “trucks,” we’ll have to un-learn touch typing in favor of primitive hunt-and-peck. Or will we?

IBM has filed a patent that could provide on possible answer. The patent concerns touch-screen calibration. When you first fire up your device, you go through a training stage, only it’s the computer and not you that is being taught. Through a series of tests, it determines how you type, how big your fingers are, and how accurately you hit the keys.

Armed with this information, it then presents you with a custom keyboard, tailored to your own fat (or thin)-fingered paws. In my case, it might stop me typing “M”, “N” or a comma every time I try to hit “space” on my iPad.

Sadly, this is just a patent application, which in the United States means that it is will be used only to add firepower to lawsuits. A real shame, as touch-screen keyboards need all the help they can get.

Touchscreen keyboard morphs to fit your typing style [New Scientist]

Morphing Touchscreen Keyboard Interface (PDF) [Pat2PDF/IBM]

See Also:

• Fetish: Toshiba Netbook Ditches Keyboard for Second Touchscreen …
• Shoddy Study “Proves” iPhone Keyboard Sucks

The war between Google and Oracle is far from over, but the big G keeps racking up tiny victories in what are admittedly modest battles. Now the Redwood Shores-based company has been told to go back to the drawing board with its damages report. Originally Oracle sought $2.6 billion, but its theories were largely dismissed and Judge William Alsup suggested an alternative starting point of roughly $100 million. The company still has an opportunity to present a new report, one that will likely seek much more than the proposed $100 million, but things are looking increasingly tough for the claimant. It wasn’t all good news for Goog, though. While the judge told Oracle to narrow its focus from Android as a whole to just specific infringing features, he did agree that related advertising revenue should be included in the theoretical royalty base. He also offered harsh criticism for what he viewed as its “brazen” disregard for intellectual property rights. The trial is still scheduled for October, so we should have a better idea of how this whole thing will play out by Halloween.

Judge tells Oracle to rethink $2.6 billion claim against Google originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 03:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you thought Lodsys was done making a spectacle of itself and dragging app developers to court, you were sorely mistaken. The king of the patent trolls has amended its original complaint against mobile devs, removing one company, but adding five new ones — all of them big names. Rovio, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, Atari, and Take-Two Interactive have been added to the list of defendants in the suit filed back in May. Vietnamese company Wulven Games has been dropped from the complaint, but Lodsys has more than made up for it by directly targeting possibly the largest mobile title out there — Angry Birds. You can find the completely amended filing at the source link and, if you’re in the mood for a bit of a refresher, check out the more coverage link.

Lodsys adds Rovio, Atari, EA and others to patent suit, makes birds even angrier originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung’s imaginary cameras uses depth information from two lenses to blur backgrounds

With their tiny lenses and even tinier sensors, will cellphone cameras ever be able to take photos as good as those from SLRs and Micro Four Thirds cameras? The quality has all but been taken care of with the latest phone-cams, but there’s one problem common to all point-and-shoots: Their tremendous depth-of-field. A patent from Samsung shows how this could be fixed.

Depth-of-field is the amount of front-to-back sharpness in a photograph. Lots of it means that almost everything, near and far, will be in focus. A shallow depth-of-field (DOF) means almost nothing will be sharp other than what you actually focus on. Large sensors and wide-open apertures give shallow DOF, and let you pop your subject out from a blurred background.

Before and after: Blurred backgrounds from tiny cellphone-camera sensors

Samsung’s fix for small sensors actually uses two cameras in one, almost like a stereoscopic camera. The main one takes the shot as usual whilst a lower resolution camera takes another shot. The offset between them lets the camera work out the depth of anything in the frame. This information is then processed and digital blur applied to wash out the background.

It’s an idea that is already used, more or less, by the iPhone app Synthcam. The app combines stills from a video stream to calculate depth. Samsung’s version doesn’t rely on you shooting a shaky video, though, so it would be more or less invisible to the user.

Like most patents, we have no idea whether this will ever make it to market. But at least it shows that somebody is looking at the last big reason not to use a cameraphone for all your snapshooting.

Samsung Working on DSLR-like Bokeh for Compact Cameras [Photography Bay]

Samsung Patent Application (PDF) [USPTO]

See Also:

• Noktor ƒ0.95 Lens for Micro Four Thirds Cameras
• SynthCam: Shallow Depth-of-Field Photos on iPhone

How’s this for patent happy — this morning a grand total of 14 applications from folks at Apple were published, covering everything from “cable structure for preventing tangling” to an “adaptive audio feedback system and method.” Most of the filings are nothing terribly exciting — though the tangle-free headphones, involving a series of alternately stiffer and more flexible cores, is a welcome upgrade to the standard iPhone headset, which is usually reduced to an unmanageable ball of knots after just a few careless tosses in a bag. A number of other headphone makers have already taken similar steps to keep cords under control. Other applications include techniques for managing GPU resources, a tilting hinge design for the iMac, and a “compact input device,” which is actually just the click wheel we’ve all come to know and love. If you’re really into the minutia of patent apps, check out the source for links to all the sketches and vaguely worded claims your little nerd heart desires.

Apple goes patent application crazy with 14 über dull filings, hinge manufacturers tremble with fear originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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