Filed under: Apple

Apple is a pretty innovative company, and here at TUAW we receive a lot of tips about new patents that have been filed by the company. While not all of the patents make it into products, Apple is assiduous about filing for patent protection on their intellectual property.

This week featured 4 patent applications from Apple that are all about keeping your devices cool. The first, titled "Methods and Apparatus for Cooling Electronic Devices Using Flow Sensors," talks about using tiny sensors to determine the air velocity in a device and then adjusting fan speeds and/or computing power to keep the device cool.

The second application seems so obvious it's surprising nobody has filed it before. Titled "Methods and Apparatus for Cooling Electronic Devices Through User Interfaces," the patent filing describes how to use input/output ports (FireWire, USB, and Ethernet) to increase airflow through a device. In particular, the application details how ports can be positioned to provide the best possible cooling of components.

The third patent filing, "Methods and Apparatus for Cooling Electronic Devices Using Conductive Hinge Assemblies," is specifically focused on notebook type devices. Here, the hinges on a notebook's screen are effectively used as heat exchangers to cool certain heat-producing components.

The last filing, "Methods and Apparatus for Cooling Electronic Devices using Thermoelectric Cooling Components," describes using the Peltier Effect to actively cool components. This can be also described as "solid-state cooling."

While it's uncertain when or if we'll see any of these patents come to life in a future Apple product, it is great to see that they're trying to figure out a way to keep MacBooks from being used as frying pans.

[via AppleInsider]

TUAWApple patent filings detail methods of keeping your devices cool originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hardware, Retail, Surveys and Polls, iPad

The survey included 3,171 consumers; it also indicates that for people planning on buying an e-reader in the next 90 days, 40% said they will buy an iPad for that purpose. 48% of those surveyed said they would buy a Kindle, 6% would opt for the Barnes & Noble Nook. Only 1 percent were interested in a Sony Reader.

That kind of dramatic shift in the market is likely to be disruptive if the numbers hold up. The iPad is unlike any device offered to consumers (except for its popular little siblings the iPhone and iPod touch), and usually getting people to buy something new can be tough sledding. Even the iPhone was a direct enhancement of existing cell phones with a much better interface and media features.

The news may not be all rosy for Apple. 1 in 4 potential buyers say they will likely put other Apple purchases on hold because of their iPad purchase.

TUAWChangeWave: 27% of e-reader buyers wish they'd waited for the iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A hand heater app, that will get your hands warm in minutes.

Study Guru is an application made for students who are currently doing their GCSE Maths, Biology, Chemistry or Physics. It was created by a team of top A-level students and has been checked and verified by teachers of one of the leading secondary schools in the UK, Tiffin Boys School. It contains a full range of necessary revision material for the above-mentioned subjects all packaged together in concise and digestible notes and diagrams. The application also includes a very useful search function to help you find whatever you need with the minimum amount of fuss.

We believe that you deserve more mobile, flexible and dynamic revision. Study Guru fits in with a modern, hectic lifestyle and is all about having that last minute revision at your fingertips whenever and wherever you need it.

The science revision is based on the AQA syllabus (and the maths based on Edexcel) but the application can be used be anyone who would just like to revise generally for their science exams and maths exams.

Follow us on our Twitter:

http://twitter.com/studyguru_ltd

and our Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Study-Guru-From-Simplez/322757948594?ref=ts

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Do You Play Games Where How Fast You Tap You Get More Points Or “Capture” A Object?
Well Now You Can Practice With Tap Frenzy!

With 12 Levels Its Fitted For All Games From 60s – 5s And You Can Challenge Your Friends To!

Now You Can Also Submit Your Score To Twitter! New Designs For Twitter Coming Soon!

Check Out Our Other Apps To!

Are You Reader For New Challenges Every Time You Play? If Yes This App is For You!

For Those People With Texting Fingers This App Is Also For You With Leader Boards Enabled You Can Compare Your Score And Be A World Champion Of A Level!

Updates Coming Soon:
-Shake/Accelerometer
-Achievements
-Better Graphics
-Better Graphics For Twitter
-More Levels (Maybe)
-Easier To Navigate
-More Fun!

Give your day a pleasant start by waking up to a beautiful sunrise.

The iSunrise alarm clock help you wake up fresh and energized. During the last 30 minutes leading up to the alarm it displays a sunrise that lights up the sky. As it climbs above the horizon the alarm will sound, playing your favorite music or one of the alarm sounds.

The sunrise was captured at 10 000 feet on top of Haleakal? (“House of the sun”), a volcano on the Hawaiian Island of Maui.

Legend has it that the demigod Maui climbed Haleakal? and used his twisted lasso of coconut fiber to snare the Sun. He forced it to slow its journey across the sky in order to lengthen the day.

Features:

- Clock
- Wake up to iPod music or playlists
- Adjustable sunrise speed
- 5 wake-up sounds
- Snooze
- Shuffle music on/off

turn your photos in funny pictures. Lets you easily customize photos by taping the screen

CollegeSave, The College Savings Calculator.

Many parents and school kids look at the top colleges that can provide the best education available. In this search, they need to plan to have the funds available to pay for the college fees and any other expenses.

CollegeSave is an innovative App, which visually shows the projected cost of college in the future. CollegeSave illustrated the future value of savings using the current lump sum and monthly savings plan. It illustrated if the potential future savings falls short of covering the total cost of college. In addition it also illustrates any surplus amount remaining after covering the future cost of college.

CollegeSave can be very useful for parents or students who are looking into affordability of college in the future. By adjusting the input, you can estimate the amount of lump sum and regular monthly savings that is required to cover the costs of your desired college.

App Features:

- Estimate future cost of college
- Project future value of savings
- Breakdown of future costs per college term
- Easy and Intuitive data input
- Save your college saving settings
- Open your saved settings
- Email your results to others
- Graphical chart view
- Text result report views
- Select all major currencies
- Full Glossary

What you eat, how you exercise, and how well you sleep can have strong and sometimes unexpected influences on your energy, sleep, hunger, mood, and ability to control both your weight and stress levels. B Healthy U’s – Body & Mind Connection is designed to help you easily track these lifestyle factor interactions.

By making you aware of these relationships, Body & Mind Connection can and will help you reach your health and fitness goals. The tracking can be done in less than sixty seconds and the results can be seen in clear, easy to understand graphs that highlight the relationships.

As an example of how this works, with some people, insufficient sleep can wreak havoc with their appetites. For many people, engaging in vigorous exercise can tamp down their appetites. With many people, eating highly processed foods can create an uncontrollable hunger for more highly processed foods. However, all of these relationships vary greatly from individual to individual. By tracking your own lifestyle factors as they interact with each other, you will discover strategies that can help bring your hunger, stress, mood and lack of energy under control.

A unique feature of the app is its diet and exercise recommendations. The diet information comes from Dr. David Katz, head of the Yale University Prevention Research Center and a world authority in nutrition and weight management. He has studied thousands of diets and knows what works, both for health and for weight management. He knows the latest research and many of his tips are likely to be new to you.

The exercise recommendations come from Joe Decker, recognized as “The World’s Fittest Man“ after breaking the Guinness World Records 24-Hour Physical Fitness Challenge.

Encouragement and inspiration come directly from the program’s author, Mitzi Perdue. As Founder of Healthy U of Delmarva, she has spoken with thousands of participants and has seen the joy people have felt when they’ve lost weight, reclaimed their energy, are able to sleep well or have had their moods improve. However, she has also spoken with people so discouraged that they were ready to give up on life. Mitzi created this app because she has seen the positive difference it can make in a person’s life when they discover the tools to help them achieve their fitness goals.

Filed under: Multimedia, Rumors, One More Thing, iPhone, Apple TV, iPad

In the battle of the network superstars between free-to-stream, ad-supported video (the Hulu model) and pay-per-show, ad-free TV (the iTunes model), there's been a big missing piece: how to monetize shows and sell ads for content that's downloaded and played on mobile devices like the iPad? Obviously, it's a better deal for the user if they can watch at will, without having to maintain network connectivity on the go (to say nothing of the streaming quality, or lack thereof, when connected over 3G), but making sure they see the ads in the content -- and reporting back to advertisers who want to know who watched what -- is much more challenging for anywhere, anytime viewers.

Wherever there's trouble, they're there on the double: the Bloodhound Gang known as Apple's engineering team has a patent application that may offer a way forward. First filed in September of 2008 and made public on March 4, this patent received a thorough analysis over at Patently Apple. The core idea: watch a block of ads to 'unlock' the next segment of video content, not unlike the way most network streaming sites appear to work now. The difference is in the implementation, reporting and controlling how the ads appear and which content is freed up. Users might be able to 'pay past' the ads, or watch them all at the beginning of the program to deliver a more seamless viewing session.

More intriguingly, Apple's patents suggest that advertisers can require or customize a particular level & kind of user interaction that will be embedded in the ad experience, requiring viewers to engage on some level before proceeding to the next segment (thereby ensuring that they're paying attention and not off making a snack). That would be something of a Holy Grail for advertisers who fear that their messaging is getting lost in the TiVo/DVR 'just skip it' timeshifting era.

Combined with the October 2009 patent regarding ad-subsidized hardware platforms, which lists Steve Jobs and Mike Matas among its co-inventors, and it's looking like we might be moving towards a future where that $499 iPad can be had for a fantastic, subsidized price of $199... if you accept a certain level of embedded and un-skippable advertising alongside your media and mobility experience. "Magical & revolutionary," you betcha. The idea of power-ads taking over your media playback might not bother everyone, but if you buy Fake Steve's argument, that's where the $30/month TV subscription plan comes in. Can't take the ads? Just pay to play.

[via MacRumors]

Image from Apple patent, courtesy Patently Apple site. No comment on the fact that it looks like a picture of Charlie from Lost (Dominic Monaghan).

TUAWApple's video advertising options detailed in patent application originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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