Hoping to Bring Phone Users Closer to The Game, Whatever Game They’re Playing
We are now in a generation that must always be connected to technology. Whether we are watching a football game on TV, or just trying to get in to our phone to play Candy Crush, we want to be as involved as we can be—at all times. When we watch sports, we want to be a part of the game. Even on Facebook, we want the world to know who are team is. Innovators are listening and starting to work on patents that bring us all closer to world we are living in—our sports world, our Facebook world, or any world we can find on that little screen.
New Play-Calling App Patent Introduced That Hopes To Bring Popularity to the NFL Pro Bowl
Let’s face it. No one watches the Pro Bowl. For years, the NFL has been trying every new trick they can find to increase viewership. But the truth has always been that the week before the Super Bowl, it’s really hard to pump up interest in the players not going to the big game. A patent for a new app could be what the league hopes will turn that around. Your Call Football, a tech startup company based in Boston, thinks they have found the future of football and would like to try it out for the Pro Bowl.
The app aims to make the game more fan-interactive, like the popular video game, Madden. The idea is for the fans to be able to vote on the app from three possible plays for a coach to run in a given situation. The coach will take the most popular play and actually give it to his quarterback. Your Call Football plans to run an exhibition game with former players and coaches to test the idea. If it works well, the NFL has agreed to consider using it for the Pro Bowl in January. With ever-dropping ratings for that game, the league really has nothing to lose and only interested fans to gain.
Searching for and including new innovations in one of your existing products could help you transform that product—just as the NFL has considered this app to improve their Pro Bowl ratings. If you’d like to explore how this could work for you, give us a call.
Microsoft Eyes More Compact Notch with Technology To Integrate Facial Recognition Components
One of the coolest new features of Apple’s iPhone X is its facial identification technology, which has been done by collecting 3D data of the shape of your face and its features, creating a pixelled reprint of it, and reading the image with infrared camera technology. As you can imagine, that takes a lot of software, which is crammed all near the top center portion of the phone.
Microsoft is working on reducing the amount of software needed to perform this operation. They recently applied for a patent to compact the “notch” in the front of the phone, where all the facial recognition takes place. That can be accomplished by combining the front-facing camera with the infrared camera together into a single sensor.
Microsoft is claiming that there are multiple advantages to this integrated technology other than just leading to a more compact phone notch design. But being smaller always seems to be on the top of new phone users’ wish lists, so that’s a good sign for Microsoft if they do decide to move forward with this patent.
Patent Infringement Case Against Facebook Pending For Geolocation Technology
Have you ever been on Facebook and decided you wanted to put a frame around your profile picture, and noticed that a filter for your favorite team comes up first? Or, if it wasn’t your favorite team, it was probably for something that a lot of people around you loved. The reason such popular frames come up first is because Facebook uses filters that are geo-location based to determine what’s popular in your area.
It’s a great idea, but unfortunately, one that had already been patented by United American. Also known as UnitedCorp, United American created the patent portfolio called “iFramed,” which is the geolocation technology behind what Facebook was using to bring up the most popular frames for any given location. After receiving no response to their notice to cease and desist, UnitedCorp has decided to press charges now against Facebook for monetary damages as well as an injunction to prohibit the social media giant from continuing the patent infringement.
Patent creators are seeing what people want—people want to be involved with their technology. Do people want what you’ve created? Contact us and we’ll help you find out!
