6 Wild New Patents: The Future Of Tech

New is always better, says Barney Stinson. We agree. New developments in technologies keep making our lives better and convenient. Tech giants keep filing patents for discoveries made by their R&D teams and are constantly involved in patent infringement lawsuits. This shows how competitive the market has become. We bring you a list of 6 wild patents filed by leading tech companies that will pleasantly surprise you.

 
1. Diary Free Calorimeter
Company: Microsoft

How would you like to have a device which could act as your dietician and trainer? This might soon turn into a reality as Microsoft has files its patent for a device which is your quintessential calorimeter.

The device will estimates nutritional caloric intake by periodically monitoring weight and sensing physical exercise, which can then be used in a calorimetric model derived from regression analysis of a population.

The device will be a wrist strap on which will sense heart rate, body temperature, skin resistance, motion/acceleration and velocity. This device is a super intelligent trainer and dietician combined.

 

2. Nose Bridge Sensor

 

Company: Google

Google glasses sound like one hell of a gadget if we go by the patents that Google has filed for it. The latest one is the nose bridge sensor.

Google glasses need to have a number of sensors which will work better if placed in a forward facing part of the device. Hence the nose bridge is the ideal spot for a video camera, a sonar sensor, an ultrasonic or possibly a microphone.

This technology could also be used to switch the device on when the presence of the nose is sensed between the nose bridges. The possibilities sound very interesting and we can’t wait to see how it turns out.

 

3. WiFi and GSM Landmarks and Neighborhoods for Location Based Services

 

Company: Microsoft

Every other location today has some form of wireless landmark information such as a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi access point. This new patent by Microsoft will capture and then send the information from these landmarks to mobile devices.

This new technology will create a complete map of the area for a mobile device based on the information provided through the visible access points.

4. Method, System, and Apparatus for Patient Controlled Access of Medical Records
Company: IBM

IBM’s patent will allow different platforms to access controlled medical information for patients, the information will be provided only when permission is granted by the patients.

The information stored in networks shall be shared with hospitals, pharmacies, research institutes, emergency services, laboratories, physicians and insurance companies. This technology can help save lives in case of emergencies and mishaps.

 

 

5. Method and Program Product for Preventing Distribution of an E-Mail Message
Company: IBM
This latest patent will surely come in handy for all the corporate and for people running them. Using this technology a user receiving mails will not be able to forward it to unintentional users. The mail will be received only by the recipient and will not be sent or forwarded to a third party.

 

 
6. Automatically Generating Nodes and Edges in an Integrated Social graph
Company: Facebook

Facebook has recently files two patents and one of them is a method for maintaining a data store for nodes and edges. This technology will be used to understand what information from a user is shared.

The technology will make it easier for Facebook to understand concepts Facebook users use to connect to other users. Because of this technology making recommendations will become easier.

Hated To Loved: 10 Facts About Bill Gates' Life

Bill Gates the computer wizard is known for his wealth and power. The owner of the largest personal-computer software company was earlier infamous for his temper and ruthless ways as a businessman. But he is now known as the generous giving man who has pledged his life to charity. Read on to know about Bill’s dramatic journey from being hated to being loved.

 
1. Gates’ early life:

 
Some people understand their life’s calling very early on. Bill Gates was one such man. He had started messing around with computers in his early teens. This was the time when computers were a lesser known machine and were not available in every household.

Bill’s first ever computer program which he wrote when he was in the eighth grade was a simple Tic Tac game that was to be played against the computer. The computer he was working on fascinated him with how accurately it executed every software code perfectly. He said, "There was just something neat about the machine.”

 

2. Gates and Allen meet:

 
Bill met the Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen when they were in ‘lakeside’ a boarding school. They became friends despite the two year age difference. They both shared the love for computers.

The tech duo dreamt of creating computers for everyone. They met the CEO of a computer manufacturing company with a proposal about a software program called BASIC. In reality they did not have any such program. The duo rushed and wrote one in two months. That is how Micro-Soft was born.

3. The crusader against the free software movement:

 
During the 70’s which was the early stage for computers, techies shared and freely pirated software such as Microsoft’s BASIC. Bill Gates was always against this piracy and believed that distribution of software without paying would "prevent good software from being written."

He was a visionary and the paid software made Bill a millionaire. Although he had faced widespread criticism during the 70’s techies around the world now support Bill’s ideas.

4. Bill a brilliant conniver:

 
Gates’ mother Mary Maxwell Gates introduced him to IBM chairman John Opel in 1980. Gates convinced IBM that he had an operating system on which the IBM PC’s could be run. In reality the OS was not Bill’s. He had licensed in from some other company.

He adapted the software for IBM but did not give them the source code. Bill being the visionary had anticipated that other companies would clone IBM’s PC and would want Microsoft’s operating system. He ended up earning millions because of this.

5. Gates not a good boss:

 
Bill Gates is known to be socially challenged. His temper is a menace known to all. He is infamously known for shouting matches with the CEO of other computer companies.

He was not much of a good boss either. Known to have insulted his employees he was abusive while talking to his managers during the meetings and calling their ideas ‘stupid’. This abusive manager style has become engrained in Microsoft’s management DNA. One of Microsoft’s earliest female employees even sued the company for gender discrimination.

6. A mean and unfair businessman:

 
Bill gates is also known for his shrewd and calculating ways. His company has faced numerous law suits ranging from Apple’s accusation of them copying the ‘look and feel’ of Macintosh to the lawsuit for unfair business practices. In 1998, the United States charged Microsoft under antitrust laws. Gates was evasive in court and Microsoft lost the suit.

and keeping other players from entering the market.

7. Gates the eligible bachelor:

 
Gates was never known to be much of a ladies’ man but his immense fortune and powerful standing made him one of the most eligible bachelors in town. His love affair with Melinda French started in 1989 and culminated into a beautiful marriage in 1994. The couple has two daughters and they live in a lavish 66,000 square foot property overlooking lake Washington.

for a reformed software baron.

8. The kinder and nicer Gates:

 
Melinda’s presence in Bill’s life brought a visible change in his attitude towards life. He became a softer and gentler person who wanted to do good for the society. In 1994, he gave up some of his Microsoft shares to set up the William Gates Foundation. In 2000 the couple combined three family foundations and the Bill and Melinda Foundation was born.

He also quit the CEO position in Microsoft and became the ‘chief software architect’. He has now given up the day to day functioning of Microsoft to devote time for charity.

9. Gates initiated the ‘give away billions’ club:

 
Bill Gates along with his best bud Warren buffet signed the ‘Gates Buffet giving pledge’ in 2010 according to which they would donate half of their wealth for charitable purposes. Gates also started to convince other billionaires into given away their money for charity. Mark Zuckerberg was the first to sign the pledge.

10. The new reputation- ‘a giving angel’:

 
The change in Bill’s attitude helped him reform his image which had taken a severe beating because of the anti-trust lawsuits. He is now known as the one with a heart of gold. His philanthropic efforts have earned him the respect of the world. In 2011, he appeared on Jon Stewart to discuss the eradication of polio in underdeveloped countries.

His transition from the heartless and conniving software wizard to the gentle and giving sole is an interesting saga.

15 Most Interesting Linux Facts

Linux is one of the world’s most powerful and popular operating system. Linux operating system was developed by Linus Benedict Torvalds at the age of 21. At present there are more than 300 flavors of Linux available and one can choose between any of them depending on the kind of applications they want. If you are new to Linux read, Top 5 Advantages of Using Linux Os

Linux is a freeware and generally speaking its free from Virus and other malware infections.  In this post I will share few Linux facts which may or may not be know for many of us.

15 Most Interesting Linux Facts

1. Only 2% of the current Linux kernel written by Linus Torvalds.


2. The Linux kernel version is written in the programming language C.


3. The first commercial distribution GNU / Linux was Yggdrasil was launched Lice-CD format in 1992. Red Hat was one of the first distributions to settle within companies and data centers in 1999.


4. A guy named William Della Croce Jr. registered the name Linux and demanded royalties for use of the mark. Later, he agreed to assign the trademark to the true owner, who is Torvalds.


5. Countries such as Russia, Brazil and Venezuela have put their focus on Linux as a basis for interoperable management , cost efficient and technologically independent.


6. U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Navy Submarine Fleet, Federal Aviation Administration uses Linux in government offices. Indian state of Tamil Nadu uses Linux for education purpose.


7. 90% of the world’s most powerful supercomputers using an operating system GNU / Linux, in fact, the top ten of supercomputers use Linux. In fact, the penetration of Linux in data centers is very high, 33.8% of the world runs on Linux servers compared to 7.3% does so in a Microsoft operating system.


8. The name of the penguin, Tux , is not entirely clear. On the one hand, it is said that the origin of the name comes from the fact that penguins appear to be wearing a tuxedo, which in English is said max tuxedo tux and is abbreviated. In contrast, another source comes from the letters of the logo of Tux are Unix Torvalds.


9. Torvalds wanted to call the kernel Freax (a combination of “free”, “freak”, and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like), but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the kernel was hosted for download, the download directory called kernel of Linux Torvalds.


10. Debian was one of the first GNU / Linux that was constituted and organized as a community of developers.


11. Linux is present in highly critical applications such as Japan’s bullet trains, traffic control, San Francisco, the New York Stock Exchange, CERN, many air traffic control systems or control of nuclear reactors of submarines and ships many nuclear war.


12. Linux programmers are often associated with living “isolated” in the world, however, over 75% of the code developed for the Linux kernel came from private sector developers. In fact, large technology companies like Intel, Google, IBM, AMD, Sun Microsystems, Dell, Asus, HP, Analog Devices, Oracle, Novell or Red Hat help developing applications, contributing to the core or pre-installing any GNU / Linux their machines. In fact, during the 2003 Super Bowl (which paralyzes the United States and remains glued to the TV for many Americans), IBM delivered a beautiful ad talking about Linux and open source options.


13. The GNU project in 1991, had no drivers and kernel, that’s what led to Linus Torvalds to address the Linux kernel development. If GNU had had, perhaps, Torvalds had not been put to work on that.


14. The Linux kernel is now the most widely ported operating system, running on a great variety of operating systems.


15. World known companies such as Google, Cisco, Facebook, Twitter, Linked in etc use Linux as their main operating system.

Apple's Tim Cook wins where Steve Jobs failed: On Java

Tim Cook has pulled a startling coup, getting Larry Ellison to start cooking -- if not eating -- his own dog food.

The headlines make it sound like Oracle, the inherited owner of Java, has generously stepped in to help protect Mac owners from infections like Flashback. There's an important backstory, though, that hasn't hit the headlines.

Although Steve Jobs tried for years to get out from under the Java ball and chain, last week Tim Cook finally coerced Oracle into supplying updates for its own software. It only took 700,000 infected systems to convince Oracle to handle Java on OS X itself.

Steve Jobs dropped Java for the Mac in October 2010, removing it as part of the standard OS X install. The Mac OS X Developer Library post for Oct. 20, says, "The Java runtime ported by Apple and that ships with Mac OS X is deprecated. Developers should not rely on the Apple-supplied Java runtime being present in future versions of Mac OS X." At the same time, Apple stopped accepting apps for the Mac App Store that relied on the Java Runtime Environment. Apple had never supported Java clients in its iOS.

On Oct. 21, 2010, the MacRumors forum said that Jobs replied to a concerned Java developer, claiming, "Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it."

Of course, Jobs knew at the time he was blowing smoke -- or perhaps a reality distortion field set in. With a few notable exceptions, Java's owner has never supplied versions "for all other platforms." Back when Java started, Sun supplied a version of the runtime for Linux because, as the "father of Java" James Gosling says, "there was no one else to do it." Every other distributor -- Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple -- rolled its own version, based on Sun's reference code.

Java 1.0 for Mac OS 9 was released in 1996, the year Apple bought NeXT and Jobs returned to the Apple fold. Jobs knew full well that Apple was developing its own version of Java, just like all the other platform providers.

Microsoft started taking its version of Java far afield, adding its own extensions to the language, and Sun sued in 1997 to get its trademark back. A bitter, extended, and very public court battle ended in January 2001, with Microsoft paying Sun $20 million for its transgressions and Sun taking control of Java updates. Until this last week, Sun had released Java versions only for Linux and Windows. All the other platforms made their own.

The fact is that Jobs had been trying for years to get Sun, then Oracle, to take over Java releases for OS X. Back in 2007, Jobs is quoted as saying, "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain." In 2010, when Jobs dropped Java like a hot cup of coffee, he tried to shame Oracle into supporting it. Since then, Java's been a neglected stepchild in the Mac world, completely shunned in iOS.

As Gosling says, "In the early days, they [Apple] were insistent on doing the port themselves. They put terrific energy into it. They did a good job. But then, as OS X took hold and Apple was able to convince developers to target their nonportable/proprietary environment, Apple's fundamental control-freak tendency took over and they put less and less energy into Java."

Oracle is now distributing Java SE 7 Update 4 for Mac OS X, and that will become the default version on Java.com starting May 1. Henrik Stahl, senior director of Java product management at Oracle, says, "Oracle's JDK and JavaFX release supports OS X Lion on any 64-bit capable Intel-based Mac. ... There are community efforts based on OpenJDK to build JDK 7 [and JVM on 32-bit machines] for other configurations, easily found using your favorite search engine. We applaud these efforts! :-)"

Oracle has announced full plans to embrace OS X Lion and later with new updates to the Java Standard Edition and Java Development Kit. (The JDK includes the Java Runtime Environment, JRE, which in turn includes the Java Virtual Machine, JVM. And you thought Microsoft's terminology was confusing!)

It's not clear if Oracle will be updating the Java runtime for earlier versions of OS X. That's particularly troubling because Dr. Web, the site that originally broke the story on the Flashback infections, now says that 25 percent of all Flashback infections come from Macs running OS X 10.5 Leopard, and 63 percent more are from OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Only 12 percent of all infections are in OS X 10.7 Lion, and those are the only machines that will be patched with Oracle's Java SE 7 Update 4. Leopard and Snow Leopard users are left to the "community efforts." If either Apple or Oracle is concerned about the hundreds of thousands of customers left swinging in the wind, there's no indication I can find.

In contrast, Apple's two recent Java patches covered Lion and Snow Leopard. They didn't cover Leopard.

It seems that Jobs' desires have finally been fulfilled, with the Java monkey now on Oracle's back. Cook was at the helm -- perhaps actively involved? -- when it happened. Apple's now able to wash its hands of all Java's faults going forward. Oracle has responsibility for its own product. All it took was 700,000 infections.

This story, "Apple's Tim Cook wins where Steve Jobs failed: On Java," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.