Nintendo’s earnings have been on a bit of a roller-coaster in recent years—the company announced it turned its first annual profit since 2011 yesterday—and it seems it wants its fans to share the experience. The videogame maker is partnering with Universal Studios to bring Nintendo-themed rides to its theme parks.
Google’s next Glass wearable may well be a little easier on the eyes, though there’s no guarantee that it will look any better. In a patent awarded to Google today, the company outlined a curved display system for a head-mounted wearable computer. The patent suggests that a user could control the display of the wearable using a touch interface—rather like the one found on the current Glass Explorer model—and make it curve toward or away from the wearer, depending on what they are looking at.
The moment that parents see their baby on an ultrasound image is one of the most memorable parts of a pregnancy, unless you can’t see it. Using the 3D data from an ultrasound scan and a 3D printer, one blind mother was able to feel the ultrasound of her unborn son. It’s pretty powerful.
Google today announced a new section of Google+, called Collections. It’s essentially a scrapbooking tool, much like Pinterest: Users can create collections (like “boards”) which they can share with their followers or the public. Google says you can then “make your collection pop with custom names and cover photos,” if you’re so inclined.
The drawings in patent applications are no longer the works of art they once were, and it seems that the US Patent and Trademark Office now allows for a fair bit of artistic freedom in submissions. These vague, and sometimes eerie, drawings have led to some strange patents in recent years—someone actually managed to patent swinging on a swing. It’s not just hobbyist inventors, either: Even big tech companies like Apple have been getting away some odd-looking artwork that has been rewarded with patents.
Applying for a patent is not easy—that’s why patent drafters charge so much to file applications on the behalf of inventors. The US Patent and Trademark Office’s application rule book alone is over 450 pages long. Quartz trawled through the guidelines to find out why patent drawings look so bizarre, and came across a few other quirky rules that the Patent Office requires all its applicants to abide by.
During Microsoft’s BUILD developer conference, the company showed off a new website that attempts to guess how old the people are in a photo. The results are, at best, mixed.
This post has been updated and corrected.
Some politicians play musical instruments to relax, some smoke marijuana, and some enjoy their staffers’ company. Well, those were all one person. But Colorado congressman Jared Polis prefers to relax playing the online multiplayer action videogame League of Legends.
This post has been corrected.
Every computer manufacturer is looking for ways to make its laptops smaller and more portable. Apple recently announced a new MacBook that saves space by moving the keys on the keyboard together, and Dell got rid of the bezel on its newest XPS laptop. But a new patent awarded to Google today could lead the way for the most space-saving laptop yet, literally.
Calling all down-on-their-luck inventors or struggling businesses: Google will now let you apply to sell your patents to the company. In a blog post this morning, the company announced that it is setting up an experimental program to gauge interest in Google becoming a patent marketplace, as well as to fight the current scourge of intellectual property—patent trolls who do not manufacture products but hold patents in order to extract payments from those who they claim have infringed upon them.
In case you ever really wanted to wander around the face of a penny, there’s a new technology on the horizon that may be able to help. Nanotronics Imaging has created a new system, called nVisible, that lets anyone walk through a three-dimensional, digital visualization of a microscopic landscape, using a virtual reality headset.
Google has announced that it’s rolling out a wireless service in the US. The service, called Project Fi, combines access to Sprint and T-Mobile’s wireless networks with the ability to make calls over Wi-Fi. This means calls, texts, and data will automatically be sent out via whichever service has the strongest signal.
The European Patent Office (EPO) has announced its finalists for the 2015 European Inventor Awards, honoring brilliant inventions from a range of scientific fields. The EPO will have its work cut out choosing winners—everyone on the list is working on or has created something groundbreaking.
The writers of Back to the Future Part II in 1989 got many of their predictions about life in 2015 right. We have tablets and video calling, and we’re even getting Nike Air Mags with power laces (though we’re still waiting for hover boards and flying cars).
On April 19, 1965, an article was published in Electronics Magazine by a electrical engineering researcher from CalTech, theorizing that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year. (In plain english: computer chips would double in power.) The researcher, Gordon Moore, went on to found Intel. He revised his estimate ten years later, saying that computing power would in fact double every two years.
As 30,000 runners puff their way through the Boston marathon today, they will have a lot to worry about, but local authorities have ensured that drones are not one of them. Massachusetts State Police declared Boston a no-fly zone for drones during the marathon, and a Washington DC-based company will be probing for any drones that dare buzz over the city today.
Nokia today (April 15) announced its intention to buy French telecom company Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6 billion in stock. Included in that purchase is Bell Labs, the famed New Jersey research facility. It’s the birthplace of world-changing innovations—among them the transistor, cellular phones, solar cells, and the laser.
After getting a patent for giving robots personalities last month, Google now wants to unleash an army of Rodney Dangerfield bots on the world.
The United Nations has a lot of things to worry about. Famine, war, inequality, discrimination, epidemic disease… and now, reports New Scientist, the threat of autonomous robots that could destroy us on a whim.
In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker’s family of moisture farmers struggled to get by on an arid planet on the outskirts of a galaxy far, far away. In our galaxy, it seems that farming water could one day become a possibility for astronauts on Mars, according to the New Scientist.
There’s a theory that given an infinite amount of time, a monkey could eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare. But could that monkey come up with a new way to pair saffron and fennel? IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence computer—famous for its win on Jeopardy!—is trying to do just that.
Apple has unleashed hundreds of new emoji in its most recent updates of its iOS and OS X operating systems. Most of them, including the new awkwardly diverse options, are available in the iOS emoji keyboard or in Messages on OS X. Some, however, are missing from the keyboard, including the new Spock emoji and most of the world’s flags.
