Apple patents 'winter-friendly' touchscreen gloves

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Apple has decided to apply for a patent on a means of using a multi-touch device with gloves. Traditional gloves block the electrical impulses from your skin, meaning that a capacitive touchscreen doesn’t get any signal when your mittened hand touches it.

You might be thinking ‘how can you patent a product that’s already on the market?’, but the difference here is that the fingertips of the unconductive outer layer can be drawn back to reveal a more conductive inner layer. Apple suggests this could be accomplished with an elastic ring.

Apple’s patent application (via AppleInsider)

Related posts: DOTS Gloves | Etre Touchy Gadget Gloves

Apple patents idea for complex "3D Desktop" layout – development of Windows 7 thrown into chaos

Attention Microsoft! Apple has patented a new thing! There’ll be emergency meetings going on in Microsoft’s Seattle HQ today, thanks to internet scavengers tracking down some 3D desktop ideas Apple’s been toying with. Which means MS is going to have to start pretending it actually had the idea six years ago.

The patented potential “Multi-Dimensional Desktop” layout looks a little bewildering compared to Apple’s traditional locked-down simplicity, but the concept of having all your documents sitting behind each other in a little line waiting to be flipped through seems decent enough. It could work. Here’s how it looks. The finished thing will probably be in colour, if it ever comes out.

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it also makes your monitor…

Chunky Nokia cameraphone patent discovered, looks a bit retro, N85 coming?

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There’s something chunky and slightly retro about the latest patent to escape from Nokia. The slider phone itself looks reasonably up-to-date, but that swivelling camera on top is decidedly blocky, and either fell out of a Duplo set or travelled forward in time about three decades. (OK it could’ve come off a Nokia N90.)

Nevertheless, the potential specs are 21st century enough, with the rotatable camera snapping a minimum of five megapixel images, if not six…

Apple patent points to clamshell iPhone

Unlike most established mobile phone manufacturers, Apple has so far released just one handset design. The iPhone is a large candybar — a sleek, shiny, touchy-feely one, granted, but still a candybar.

However, a recent patent suggests that Apple may be considering a clamshell iPhone, looking and behaving like a cross between the current iPhone, a clamshell phone, and a Nintendo DS…

RIM patent for vaguely different slider phone, new BlackBerries coming?

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I get a bit cheesed off with the number of technology patents being filed, with seemingly small variations on a similar theme.

Take the latest from Research In Motion, makers of the BlackBerry, which details a “Hybrid Portrait-Landscape Handheld Device With Trackball Navigation and Qwerty Hideaway Keyboard”.

Yes, indeed, we’ve all seen devices with keyboards that slide out from under the phone, but apparently this one is different because it’s got a trackball on it.

Woop!