Look no further than a company’s patent trail to understand its expansion plans. If some moonshot technology suddenly comes up in a filing and never resurfaces again, it’s likely just the legal department trying to make the most out of employees’ overflowing imagination. But if that technology starts appearing in more applications over time, then you may have just stumbled…
Tag: patent
Solar concentrators are finally becoming a viable energy source
Manufacturing follows a very basic economic principle. The easier a product is to make, the faster it can be assembled, which means that the production line is able to churn out more units and exploit the resulting operational gains to cut overhead. With luck, the savings are passed onto the consumer. But the axiom is…
Microsoft has found a way to halve the size of mobile cameras
Microsoft’s mobile engineers appear to be paying close attention to the work of their peers over at its application development business. In that world, if a certain component is used multiple times throughout a project, you simply split it off into a standalone library that is shared among the other program files to avoid burdening…
Qualcomm has designed a touch sensor for holographic phones
One of the best measures of a trend’s progress in the consumer electronics world is the reaction of the component suppliers. If the suppliers start taking concrete steps towards addressing it, then they anticipate demand from their manufacturing clients, who in turn must be anticipating demand from consumers. That’s why it’s such an encouraging sign that…
LG is taking holograms mobile
The race is now officially on in South Korea to create the world’s first holographic smartphone.
IBM is bringing the corporate world’s unbreakable encryption to your phone
IBM wants to use your phone’s accelerometer to match the the specialized encryption hardware used by the world’s largest organization.
IBM is developing a nanoscale GPS
The company is bringing the accuracy of magneto-resistive detection down to the micrometer scale.
Patent filling reveals the Samsung Galaxy S7 iris scanner
A new patent filling reveals that the Galaxy S7’s iris scanner will have not one but two separate biometric cameras to maximize accuracy
This Italian exoskeleton could revolutionize physiotherapy
Researchers at at Rome’s Università Campus Bio-Medico have found a better way to
LG’s radical smart glasses wrap a battery around your neck
A new patent filling reveals LG has some interesting ideas on how to address the logistical limitations of wearable technology.
Microsoft is developing 3D folders for Windows 10
A new patent sheds light on Redmond’s plans for the future of the Windows UI and possibly the HoloLens.
IBM is reviving an experimental memory type that could replace all others
NRAM could blow alternatives out of the water if and when a commercially-viable implementation hits the market.
Sony's cylindrical display will shake up wearables
Wearables have evolved unrecognizably from the original wristwatches of the early 19th century, but manufacturers still have ship their hardware attached to low-tech wristbands for lack of a better option. The first exception may be Sony, which hopes to exploit recent advancements in display technology to break out of the trend line. Revealed in one of the…
Microsoft is developing a service to automate 3D printing
Redmond wants to turn the process of fabricating CAD models into real-life objects a much smoother experience for the maker community.