Apple hires NFC expert to manage mobile commerce, prepare to pay with your iPhone
Don't look now, but things may be getting real on the pay-with-your-cell-phone front, as Cupertino's hired a man with years of experience in enabling just that to finally get 'er done. According to his LinkedIn profile, Benjamin Vigier is Apple's new Product Manager of Mobile Commerce, immediately following his handiwork on PayPal Mobile, Sprint MyMoneyManager and the iPhone-based Starbucks Card.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: benjamin vigier, entry, Job, near-field communication, nearfieldcommunications, netacgi, product-manager, result
Apple granted design patent for original iPhone, iPod touch
Apple may have enough patents and patent applications to wallpaper its entire Cupertino campus, but we're guessing this is one it's been especially eager to get: a design patent for the original iPhone and iPod touch. That, of course, covers the "ornamental design" of the devices and not their functionality, which means that any other devices that look a little too similar are now treading on even more dangerous territory than before
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: apple, fourteen, granted-design, netacgi, nph, other-devices, relevant, uspto
Motorola patent combines multiple devices to make one large display
It seems to us that if you indulge in mobile video from time to time, you're either lugging around a device with a decent display size (netbook, tablet, whatevs) or more likely than not you're watching your Britain's Got Talent! clips on a handset -- either solution is obviously less than ideal.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: display, either-solution, indignity, multiple displays, multipledisplays, netacgi, obviously-less, parser, patentapplication, pto2, result, screen-display, technology, thinkpad
Nokia patent application points to flexible phone displays
It may still be quite a ways from realizing its ambitious Morph concept , but it looks like Nokia has been toying around with the idea of flexible displays as of late, as evidenced by a just-published patent application (first filed back in 2008). Covering a "user interface, device and method for a physically flexible device," the application details (among other things) how a flexible display might be used on a phone to do things other than make it more portable. Most interestingly, that includes bending the phone into a particular shape to perform a specific task -- Nokia suggests rolling it into a can to search for a bar or pub, or bending it into a bowl to search for a restaurant.
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: application, concept, flexible cellphone, flexible display, flexiblephone, make-it-more, netacgi, nokia, nph, patent, phone, pto2, result, specific-task
RIM patent app will have you barely browsing the web at incredible speeds
Let's not mince words: any way you slice it, RIM's built-in browser for BlackBerry renders sites about as well as your $199 netbook renders Avatar . The good news is that we've got every reason to believe the company recognizes the problem and is working to solve it -- but on a completely unrelated front, they're trying to speed up the process of fetching raw data off the interwebs, too.
Categories: BlackBerry, Mobile Phone, Other Tags: barely-browsing, black, BlackBerry, browser, interwebs, netacgi, parser, patent, proxy, proxy-server, uspto