Developages - Development and Technology Blog

theodp writes “On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Microsoft a patent for the Automatic Censorship of Audio Data for Broadcast, an invention that addresses ‘producing censored speech that has been altered so that undesired words or phrases are either unintelligible or inaudible.’ The patent describes methods for muting offensive words and replacing them with less offensive versions, and ‘a third alternative provides for overwriting the undesired word with a masking sound, i.e., “bleeping” the undesired word with a tone.’ After all, there’s nothing worse than being subjected to offensive speech when you’re shooting someone in the head.”

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Original post by Soulskill

jonbryce writes “The court of appeal in England has ruled that companies should be granted patents for ‘complex’ software products. In this particular case, Symbian had written something that makes mobile phones run faster. The court case has received very little attention because of the bank crisis, but it can be appealed to the House of Lords and then the European Court of Justice.”

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Original post by timothy

theodp writes “If you’re a PC, you may be unfamiliar with The Dock, the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of a Mac and provides easy access to Apple applications. But don′t count on it becoming a standard on the PC. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Apple — and inventor Steve Jobs — a patent for their User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access, aka ‘The Dock’, after a rather lengthy nine-year wait.”

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Original post by CmdrTaco

Lorien_the_first_one writes “After years of wrangling, TiVo has won its day in court against Dish Network, formerly known as the EchoStar, when the Supreme Court declined to take up Dish Network’s appeal, forcing the satellite television company to pay $104 million in damages. According to the article, ‘TiVo originally won a patent infringement case in 2004 against Dish, which was then named EchoStar Communications. It charged that Dish illegally copied its technology, which allows people to pause, rewind, and record live television on digital video recorders.’ Despite an injunction, Dish continued distributing its set-top boxes in the belief that the work-around they had implemented avoided infringing TiVo’s patents. Now the case goes back to the lower court for review to determine if they did indeed steer clear of those patents.”

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Original post by kdawson

Filed under: Laptops

Back in July, we heard that Sylvania (of all companies) would be bringing a few more netbooks into the world, and sure enough, that g netbook MAGNI that was hinted at earlier this year will be making its red carpet debut in time for the holidays. Based on information gathered in an interview with Paul Goldenberg, Managing Partner of Digital Gadgets (the company that sells under the Sylvania brand), the 10-inch netbook will be nothing more than a rebadged MSI Wind with a 120GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, an Intel Atom CPU and your choice of either Windows XP or Ubuntu Remix. Pricing and battery size details have yet to be determined, but given how easy it is to search for both of those tidbits in relation to the Wind, we’d say you’ve just found a great use for your deductive reasoning skills.

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Original post by Darren Murph

At Toy Fair this past February, one of the Hasbro offerings that I really liked was an odd and appealing new line called Room Tech Beingz. Hybrids of toys and appliances, the Mood Lamp and Alarm Clock not only perform their eponymous functions, they also communicate with each other. As in, when the Alarm Clock goes off in the morning and wakes you with music, it tells the Mood Lamp to go on too and give you a wake-up light show. The Lamp also can light up randomly or when touched, or pulse along to music, play their own steel-drum-sounding tunes.

Hasbro send us a Mood Lamp ($39.99, ages 8 and up) to try, and I wasted no time in irritating my coworkers by playing with it.

The Lamp’s “head” can stay centered or tilt in 4 directions: front, back, left, and right. Each position provokes different functions. When it’s centered or tilted to the left, the top responds to touches with light and musical tones, or pulses to music if left alone. The forward tilt–”Groovy Mood”–responds to a several-second touch by playing a soothing melody. A backward tilt causes 6 different light shows, which you can loop. And…

By tilting its head to the right, you can pick which color the Mood Lamp glows from underneath its mushroom-like head–red, amber, or green. If you hold your hand on top for a few seconds, it’ll go into a light-changing mode among the three colors.

Though the word “tween” appears throughout the Beingz literature, I think these little guys are fun for anyone who likes whimsical design. As in, me. They’re available now through Hasbro’s site.

Original post by Carol Mangis

South Korea, who I have criticized several times over their blocking of third-party VoIP providers like Vonage and blocking U.S. military from using VoIP, has announced they plan to allow VoIP on WiBro (wireless broadband). WiBro is essentially the Korean version of mobile WiMax.

So far WiBro has had a slow disappointing uptake. The Korean Communications Commission (KCC), Korea’s broadband and telecommunications regulator, decided to allow WiBro to support VoIP, which could give WiBro the shot it needs.

KCC is also considering granting a license to a company to voice calls over WiBro as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), leasing the networks of KT and SK Telecom.

According to the Korean Times, “Delivering quadruple play services that package broadband Internet, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), cable television services and wireless services is something to think about,” said Yoo Se-joon, president of the Korean Cable TV Association.

Source

Tags: KCC, Korean Cable TV Association, Korean Communications Commission, Korean Times, South Korea, voip, Vonage, WiBro, wimax

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Original post by nafiz

According to the Seminole Chronicle, police were befuddled when they responded to a 911 call with a crying baby on the open phone line, only to discover they were at the wrong house. Apparently, the owner is a Vonage customer and moved without notifying Vonage of the change of address to update the 𑄗 records.

The article explains:

Kelly informed Sanford police of the situation. Upon arrival at the family’s home, officers confronted a rather confused and embarrassed father who admitted his son had been playing with his cell phone.

They had moved, the father said, and had not bothered to update their phone carrier, Vonage, with their new address.

What I don′t get is how the baby dialed 911 using a cell phone that is tied to Vonage’s service. Since when did Vonage start offering cell phone service? If 911 was dialed from a cell phone, the tracing of the call should be performed from the wireless carrier not Vonage.

The only thing I can think of is that the father installed some sort of Vonage software on his mobile phone that enables outbound calling through the Vonage service. But if such a piece of software exists, I′m unaware of its existence. The closest thing is Vonage Companion, and that is designed to run on PCs not a mobile phone. I’m more confused over this than the mainstream media was over the Governor Sarah Palin VP pick.

Tags: 911, e911, voip, Vonage

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

var digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/Apple_releasing_interactive_album_applications_next_month’; Looks like Apple is continuing to push the envelop of digital music with new “interactive album applications” set for imminent release. The first artist in the cue is Snow Patrol, scheduled to release their latest studio album next month. According to a Polydor production manager, the downloadable, “interactive” application (via AppStore or iTunes or the rumored iTunes version 8?) will offer additional content such as artwork, behind-the-scenes images, and lyrics for iPhone and iPod touch owners — “A digital booklet that will take you into the videos and content,” if you will. Now who says that digital music can’t be profitable?

[Via MacWord UK]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

There’s been a lot of iPod chatter in the air lately and now MacRumors and Ars Technica say that we’ll be seeing El Steve boom-boom some new gear on September 9th. No specifics on what’s in store, but new nanos are obviously on the table, as is that rumored subscription service and possibly a new iPod touch at a lower price. Anything you guys hoping for?

Read - MacRumors
Read - Ars Technica

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Kevin Rose of Digg origins claims to have the scoop on the latest iPod nano. Mind you, this is the same Kevin Rose who notoriously claimed that a generation one iPhone would launch in both CDMA and GSM versions with a pair of batteries and slide-out keyboard. Uh hem. This time however, he backs up his claims with a picture of that skinnier, longer, and curvier nano pictured above — credible because it just happens to be consistent with other rumors we’ve seen floating around and certainly makes sense for an Apple obsessed with tapering edges and video playback. Kev also claims that the iPod lineup will undergo price cuts to avoid the market cannibalization assumed by the lower $199 iPhone 3G purchase price. The iPod touch, which currently starts at $299 for 8GB, will see some slight cosmetic changes as well as a new 2.1 firmware update (which will obviously make its way to the iPhone). Tagging along with the iPod refresh is a new iTunes 8.0 which, according to Rose’s sources, deserves the full point upgrade based on all the new features and functionality it brings. All this, “in the next 2-3 weeks.”

He then adds that OS X 10.5.6 is rumored to include Blu-ray support which could point to future Blu-ray options in Apple’s lineup of Macs — oh, and ponies, lots of ponies. Listen to the man say it in his own words in the video after the break.

[Thanks, Matt and Alexis F.]

Continue reading Kevin Rose unearths redesigned iPod nano, digs for more?

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Apple’s experimented with allowing iTunes to stream over the internet as well as your LAN in the past and quickly removed the feature (probably due to RIAA pressure), so we’re not placing too much stock in this, but AppleInsider’s unearthed a patent that seems to describe a way to stream music over the ‘net to your iPhone / iPod touch. The goal is to prevent you from having to selectively sync content to your device — instead, you′d sync just the metadata and stream whatever you wanted direct from your machine as though it was all stored locally. There are some obvious problems here — it wouldn’t work if you didn’t have service (or over EDGE, really), most home upstream connections aren’t that fast, etc., etc., — but it’s certainly interesting, and a welcome addition to local storage if it ever makes the scene. In the meantime, how about working in some of those new UI elements from the Remote app into the iPod app?

[Via Macrumors, thanks Mark]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

That’s right chicks and dudes, iTunes 7.7.1 is now available for your downloading pleasure. Does it snap the App Store liberties you’ve been taking? Will it enhance your audio? Is it spying on you and your loved ones? Only Apple knows for sure.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio

It has been a solid tick since we’ve seen a good FairPlay hack, so it’s with great pleasure that we pass along El Tunes for Ubuntu 8.04 users everywhere. Tested to work on Hardy Heron using RhythmBox (but assumed to work on any modern Linux Distro with GStreamer and a media player that utilizes GStreamer), said plug-in enables open-source aficionados to play songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. As for limitations, the current version has no Pause / Seek support and cannot de-authorize a machine for playback, but a future version should hopefully cure those two quirks and add support for purchased video content and audio streaming to an AirTunes device. Give it a shot and let us know how it treats ya.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops

There’s no OS to speak of, no optical drive, just 4GB of flash storage and 256MB of RAM, and you’re limited to a 400MHz Freescale 5121E processor with integrated graphics under the hood. But the CherryPal desktop PC — just revealed with a $249 price tag — is definitely worth making a fuss over. About the size of a plastic paperback sporting a pair of USB ports and VGA-out, the mini PC plugs directly into the CherryPal Cloud via 802.11b/g WiFi or 10/100 Ethernet for 50GB of free Internet storage, automatic system updates, and access to a number of webified apps (which also reside locally) including iTunes, OpenOffice, and a CherryPal-branded instant messenger and media client (though we figured iTunes would have taken care of the media playback). Of course, the lack of traditional specifications results in just a fraction of the power consumption used by that electron gobbler sitting on your desk. Not bad if your PC’s primary function is to playback audio, surf the web, and occasionally edit an Office document. Oh, and that name, CherryPal? It originates from an early tester who declared it, “sweeter than an Apple.” We’ll see when the first CherryPal desktop ships at the end of this month — order today.

[Via Crave]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker