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It seems that one of the beta testers for Google Television couldn’t keep all that goodness to himself, and has posted several pictures and some video of the near-finished interface and hardware. It’s a brief and not particularly shocking video, but seeing it running on a home TV and hearing a regular guy expressing legitimate (if subdued) excitement make it a lot more real. Sorry about the ad before the content, by the way, but you should probably get used to it.

The interface looks more or less the same as when it was introduced: nested menu items starting on the left, search bar able to be evoked at any time. There are a few minor visual differences, for instance the bookmarks layout and thumbnails have been tweaked. Interestingly, “Applications” is listed twice.

The “What’s On TV” category looks handy; apparently it works as long as your cable or satellite provider has some category metadata, which is most if not all of them. I also note an Amazon menu item, which means you’ll be able to get those 99c Television downloads we heard about nearly immediately after the Apple Television announcement. I pictured a world without two data pipes coming into your house, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen just yet. This is too effective a way to watch regular Television.

Navigation is effected with the keyboard pictured above, which has a built-in trackpad and d-pad, or via any Harmony controller, including the Harmony Connect app.

The Logitech hardware looks solid; I like the two USB ports plus HDMI in. That means sharing what you’ve got around the house, be it on your camcorder or a five-year-old USB drive.

Unfortunately our narrator didn't demonstrate anything as far as searching or navigating recorded shows, or talk about the experience of having shows backed up to the cloud. Let’s hope for a sequel. I have to state, it’s looking pretty nice. I doubt it will cost as tiny as the Apple TV, but I wouldn’t put it beyond Google to work something out by which it is very competitive. After all, it stands to make a lot of money off owning your TV as well as your browser, your email, your phone, and… you know, your everything.

[via Engadget]

Random Posts

Who says Android phones need to be expensive? The Wall Street Journal reports that T-Mo is working with Huawei to add an inexpensive Android phone to their product line up, the Ideos.T-mobile would be the first carrier to have a phone made by Huawei, and the Ideos would be available for less then $200, vs. the $500 most Android phones cost without a contract.

The Ideos does have a smaller screen at 2.8 inches, but it still features GPS and Wi-Fi. Currently the Ideos runs Android 2.2 with 3G mobile hot-spot functionality, making it a sure winner for T-Mobile if the talks are successful. Huawei is also in talks with Cricket to bring the Ideos to their network.

[via Electronista]

I can’t decide whether or not to believe this. Can you?

[via The Daily What and Waxy]

We’ve been fans of Klipsch’s Image line of headphones for some time now, so we welcome the latest updates with open ears.

The ones I’m most excited about are the Image S5i Rugged (top). The S5i is a nice mid-to-high-end pair of headphones designed for use with your iPhone. The new version is “extremely durable” and has a moisture-resistant rubberized in-line remote. These aren’t waterproof or bulletproof or anything, but you won’t have to worry about sweat or rain ruining your favorite pair of in-ears. They’ll be $130.

The Image One is the first pair of traditional “on-ear” headphones from Klipsch. They too work with the iPhone and have in-line controls. We’re going to have to check these out; debut products like this are always interesting. $150 for these; they and the S5is will be available in November.

There is also a cheaper pair of in-ears being announced, the Image S3, for $50. They don’t sound too exciting — probably decent, but eh. I think good headphones are one of the things worth dropping a little cash on.

Here’s the full press release, if you’re interested.

Klipsch Broadens Headphone Offerings with Three New Designs

INDIANAPOLIS (September 3, 2010) – In just three years, Klipsch has carved out a niche in the heavily saturated headphone market by manufacturing products designed to offer unequaled comfort, noise isolation and musical accuracy at any price point. Today, the company plans to build on its success with three new headphone models catering to cost-conscience consumers, athletes and people who prefer on-ear solutions.

Ranging from $49.99 to $149.99 (US MSRP), these headphones maintain the same high-quality sound signature and comfort levels as previous Klipsch headphones, but introduce enhancements in design, cabling, performance, packaging and accessories. These new models join the existing Klipsch headphone line, which includes the best-selling Image S4, Image S4i and Image X10i.

Image One

The Image One brings high-performance Klipsch sound to people who prefer an on-ear design. Not only is it the company’s first on-ear headphone, it’s among the first to feature an Apple-based mic and three-button remote for taking calls and controlling music on iPods, iPhones or iPads. Each lightweight, pivoting ear cup features premium leather and high-density memory foam for comfortable wear and superior passive noise-isolation, designed to block out ambient noise and provide enhanced bass. The ear cups fold flat for placement inside the included carrying case. Purchase these sleek headphones for $149.99 (US MSRP) at authorized retailers and klipsch.com in November.

Image S5i Rugged

Extremely durable and perfect for active outdoor lifestyles, the Image S5i Rugged in-ear features a mic and oversized moisture-resistant three-button remote to put music and phone call controls at your fingertips. Offering bold styling, highly intelligible phone calls and full music and/or voice control on select Apple products, these headphones retail for $129.99 (US MSRP). Available in a black finish, the Image S5i Rugged comes with three pairs of different-sized patented oval ear tips and a heavy-duty safety case with a built-in flashlight and removable belt clip. Purchase the Image S5i Rugged at select retailers and klipsch.com in November.

Image S3

These affordable in-ear headphones offer a major boost in sound and comfort over similarly priced competitor models. Available in a gun metal gray, red, pink or green finish, the Image S3 accommodates virtually any device with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. It comes with three pairs of different-sized patented oval ear tips and a carrying case. Purchase the Image S3 for $49.99 (US MSRP) at select retailers and klipsch.com in October.

For more Probably Bad News features, click here. Goodnight and good luck.

Apple has been granted nine new patents, and I thought I’d take a look at the claims therein and see whether they match up to the descriptions, and whether they seem (to this humble blogger) like realistic items for which to gain exclusive rights. I’ve included links to all the patents, but the USPTO office is behaving strangely, and often returned an error when I tried to pull up documents. Those guys ought to claim a method to buy some new servers, whereby I don’t have to submit the patent number five times before it comes up.

I’m not going to get in the habit of analyzing in detail every patent that comes our way, but in light of recent lawsuits and all the noise being made about software patents specifically, it seems worthwhile to take a closer peek now and then.

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7,788,582 (filed September 6, 2005): This appears to be a patent for part of the cascading “search assistant” in iTunes, which lets you narrow your search to one of several categories (music, videos, podcasts, and “all” are claimed), and presents dependent parameters like artist, author, etc., to further limit search results. It’s no secret that many popular players have adopted this type of search, but if Apple decides to take them up on it, it may be that trivial changes or improvements will be all that is warranted to make others’ search methods distinct.

7,788,248 (filed March 8, 2005): This patent claims a method for automatically displaying search results when a user is typing into a search box if the user pauses or hits space. There are also claims for UI elements for setting parameters like search delay manually. The claims list is quite long, but much of it is boilerplate pertaining to including the keyboard, computer, and code in the patent. Obviously Google and others have been using this for some time (Apple in fact uses Google as their example in the illustrations); I wouldn’t be surprised if live search results have appeared in other, earlier patents. Apple’s appears to be limited to “an internet search engine,” but does that refer to any search engine accessed through a browser, or what? If this is a piggyback service offered through Safari, it would make more sense (i.e. automatically submitting search queries multiple times client-side instead of server-side displaying results for partial input).

7,788,656 (filed December 15, 2005): A technical patent for reducing GPU or CPU load when performing transformations on an image. Essentially combines two filters or other operations, eliminating redundant calculations and storage. It appears to combine to produce a third program program procedurally. This would accelerate color corrections in video and photo editing. Pretty cut and dry.

7,786,975 (filed December 23, 2005): The patent for the iPhone’s inertial scrolling system. The claim is essentially for simulating accelerative and decelerative friction on an object based on input from a touch-sensitive display, plus some parameters for allowing it to handle this or that type of non-ideal gesture. Obviously inertial scrolling is in use in many other applications now. I think it may be easy to get around Apple’s implementation: acceleration of scrolling through lists or windows has been in place for quite a long time, and passing user input from a touch-sensitive device to this other inertial scrolling method seems to me a distinct method based on what is claimed (again, not a lawyer).

7,788,605 (filed May 22, 2003): Claims a method relating to iMovie’s clip-based display, where the playhead determines what is displayed in the thumbnail and also indicates where in the clip that thumbnail image is taken from — or something like that, anyway. Pretty straightforward.

7,788,585: More editing-related claims, this time for a user-friendly way to do split editing — i.e. separately editing video and audio from adjacent or overlapping clips. Nothing too interesting here.

7,788,594: This is actually a great idea, which I haven’t seen implemented anywhere. The idea is a search box which, depending on where you click within the box, it searches different things. It basically just skips using a pulldown menu to search something specific; imagine if you clicked on the right side of the Google search box to make your search be an image search, and on the left side to make a regular search. I’m actually surprised not to have seen this around at all.

7,788,599 (filed July 28, 2006): This one is ridiculous. They appear to have been granted a patent for an unbelievably simple and fundamental way of displaying data. Cell-based menus for navigating a hierarchy. Isn’t this essentially a patent for a menu bar? They’re claiming something that’s been in constant use since the early 80s.

7,788,604 (filed November 3, 2004): Not quite as dodgy as the last one, but still questionable, if you ask me (though why would you?). This is a patent on an icon changing to a new state on mouseover, and not being clickable until it has fully changed to that second state — and upon being clicked, it goes to a third state. This kind of thing has also been a staple of graphical menus for a long, long time. In fact, I believe I programmed something like this into a Hypercard stack when I was 10 or 11. If I find that stack — prior art!

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I’m guessing these are only a few of hundreds of similar patents Apple has regarding UI items for OS X and iOS. It’s probably not an unreasonable assumption to consider this group a representative sample: the rest probably shares a similar proportion of well-deserved, questionable, and absurd claims. Of course, what matters is whether Apple will be satisfied to let these lie as protective against exact duplication, or whether they will start suing people for using rollover graphics in their icons.

Again, I am not a lawyer, and these are just my impressions on looking at the claims and illustrations provided. I didn’t look into the referenced patents and whatnot, but I felt my summary of the claims might actually be more informative than the baked-in descriptions.

SD Card Association: flash card speeds to triple by 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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