Tag: PATENTS

If you've ever dreamed of striking it rich with a groundbreaking invention, you may want to read designer Dominic Hargreaves's cautionary testimonial before embarking on a quest to become the next Thomas Edison or George Washington Carver. Writing for the BBC, Hargreaves, the creator of a folding bicycle and a scooter-slash-backpack called the Transporter, describes the hazards and hindrances ...

A new Apple patent has been found that will assuredly warms the hearts (and hands) of many iPhone users currently enduring a cold winter. Originally filed a day before the iPhone's June 28, 2007 launch, it details a glove with a thin, electrically conductive, "anti-sticky" inner layer that is able to function with a capacitive touchscreen. It also suggests the glove could have apertures on the ...

Amazon's latest patent, called the "Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement," has people a little freaked out. As reported by Slashdot, the patent describes a, shall we say, situation, in which some program or robot called "Task Server" arranges humans to do things called "subtasks". While that may at first sound like a benevolent division-of-labor scheme, things get very creepy when the ...