Microsoft patent: Smack your phone up

The other night, I was awoken with a blinding flash of light.

I believed the nuclear holocaust had arrived. Or, at the very least, my slightly insane stalker.

Instead, my television had spontaneously switched itself on. I had to get out of bed and manually turn it off. I confess it crossed my mind to smack it.

Still somewhat dazed, I am grateful that Microsoft has finally heard my inner cry and patented a technology that allows you to smack a gadget to shut it up. In this case, it's your cell phone.

The Next Web tells me that Redmond's patent is as simple as it sounds.

You smack your phone, and it shuts up.

Patent Bolt reports that Microsoft's patent application -- number 20120231838 -- reads, in part: "When a user whacks the mobile device, the mobile device accelerates in response to the user whack."

Yes, it's a little like Secretariat in the last furlong.

It is something of a pity that Microsoft has used the word "whack," which has led to a torrid outbreak of online juvenilia. Patent Bolt says that the company clarifies that its whack could be a "slap, hit, swat, smack, flick, push, tap, or the like."

More Technically Incorrect

Still, in Microsoft's mind there seem to be those occasions when you're at the opera or listening to the New York Philharmonic playing Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

Your cell phone goes off, your face goes red, and your reputation goes the way of a coke-snorting starlet's.

There seems to be no indication of when this striking patent might come to fruition. However, I feel sure we will never see it applied to an iPhone.

iPhone users are far too in love with their apogees of design to ever think of hitting them. At best, one could envisage them gently stroking their devices, murmuring to them, "Shh, baby, shh."

I am sure Apple is filing such a patent at this very moment.

Chris Matyszczyk 15 Sep, 2012

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Apple posts detailed iPhone 5 schematic for case makers

iPhone 5 schematic for case manufacturers

(Credit: Apple)

Apple doesn't make life that easy for accessory makers before it launches its products, but after the unveiling it shares some of its secrets. Following the iPhone 5 launch, manufacturers scrambled to figure out the dimensions and feature placements so they could rush their cases to market. CNET's Daniel Terdiman was with Incase during the launch as the company monitored the live blogs covering the event  and gathered information in preparation for having iPhone 5 cases in the market by October 1.  Now they have all the information they need, as Apple published a detailed schematic for those making cases or other accessories. Here's the PDF.

CNET's complete iPhone 5 coverage

(Via Electronista)

CNET News staff 15 Sep, 2012

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Apple posts detailed iPhone 5 schematic for case manufacturers

iPhone 5 schematic for case manufacturers

(Credit: Apple)

Apple doesn't make life that easy for accessory makers before it launches its products, but after the unveiling it shares some of its secrets. Following the iPhone 5 launch, manufacturers scrambled to figure out the dimensions and feature placements so they could rush their cases to market. CNET's Daniel Terdiman was with Incase during the launch. Now they have all the information they need as Apple published a detailed schematic for those making cases or other accessories. Here is the PDF.

via Electronista

CNET News staff 15 Sep, 2012

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First listen: V-Moda Crossfade M-100 headphones

Val Kolton at the NYC CNET office

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

Val Kolton has a lot of ideas. I know him first as the man who runs V-Moda, but he's also a hotshot DJ. I met with him in NYC last week for a sneak preview of his brand-new Crossfade M-100 over-the-ear headphones. Kolton had just received the first production batch and hadn't actually listened to the completed headphones yet. I had the honor of listening first, even before the V-Man, and the M-100s totally knocked me out. It has a closed-back 'phone design, but the sound was remarkably open and spacious, a rare feat for a closed design. Bass was deep, but not overdone, and midrange and treble presence were quite good. Comfort levels are high, and the M-100 does a good job blocking environmental noise. This headphone was designed to sound great in noisy places, so it might sound too bass heavy at home. That's fine; since most people do most of their listening on the go, that design strategy makes perfect sense to me.

Volton is thrilled that a lot of the biggest-name DJs and producers like Avicii, Funkagenda, Morgan Page, Erick Morillo, and Nervo use his headphones. Kolton doesn't compete in what he calls the YACH (Yet Another Celebrity Headphone) sweepstakes that started with the Beats by Dre. That's a good move; paid endorsements don't do a thing for the sound, and worse yet, the fees have to negatively affect the headphones' build quality. DJs use V-Modas because they like the sound; there's no money changing hands, Kolton said.

The M-100, inside and out

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

Kolton must be doing something right; he's selling 1,000,000 sets of headphones a year. The man is equally obsessed with sound quality and durability; as a DJ he knows most of his customers won't baby their headphones. That's why he held off making a fold-up, collapsible headphone till now; hinges are prone to failing. He worked long and hard to develop a proprietary all-metal hinge, and the M-100s really do seem unusually rugged. Time will tell, but the M-100 is backed by a two-year warranty.

Kolton promised a M-100 for review in a few weeks when they go on sale for $299; I'll provide a more in-depth sonic appraisal sometime in October.

Steve Guttenberg 15 Sep, 2012

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This week in Crave: The huggable edition

C'mon, give us a hug!

(Credit: Hill & Aubrey)

We'd totally understand if you were too busy hiding from robot mules and cyborg cockroaches this week to keep up with Crave. We're pretty sure the coast is clear now, though, so please come out and catch up on what you missed.

- Give us a squeeze, Hug Me Coat.

- Awesome geek son hacks Kinect to help mom e-mail poststroke.

- Season or no season, NHL 13 gives hockey fans what they want.

- NBA Baller Beats sounds fun -- if you're not a glass fixture.

- To sleep, perchance to dream -- and have those dreams turned into music.

- May the Force be with your suitcase.

- Things we learned from this week's iPhone 5 reveal: untucked shirts might be the new hoodies, and good job, leaks!

- Guess which state you'll probably pay more for an iPhone 5 in?

- We don't have a definitive Wii U launch list yet, but we have this.

- Turn left at the transistor: Radio looks just like London tube map.

Got a story idea? Or a hug? Write to us at crave at cnet dot com, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @crave.

Leslie Katz 15 Sep, 2012

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No easy outs for YouTube in Islam video controversy

Cairo confrontation sparked by controversial video.

(Credit: CBS News)

World politics intrude on Silicon Valley (again). After days of violence sparked by outrage over a video trailer mocking Islam's prophet, Google and its YouTube subsidiary are caught up in a controversy in which the options boil down to bad and worse.

A brief recap: Demonstrations erupted in the Middle East this week against "Innocence of Muslims," a YouTube clip denigrating Muhammad as a buffoonish, skirt-chasing molester. The video, originally uploaded to YouTube in July, was a trailer for a movie produced by a Southern California filmmaker named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. In the violent blowback that followed, four Americans working for the State Department in Benghazi, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, lost their lives.

With the protests spiraling out of control, the White House wants YouTube to take the video down everywhere. For now YouTube's response is no, citing its community standards guidelines. More about that in a moment, but this is not the first time that a U.S. tech company has found itself at the center of a political storm. Nor is it likely to be the last -- especially as the Internet extends into corners of the world with radically different cultures and political traditions.

But earlier cases centered around the sometimes awkward interaction between the technology industry and nondemocratic regimes.

• In the 1980s, U.S. computer makers pulled out of South Africa after pressure from divestiture activists seeking to bring down South Africa's apartheid government. The only holdout was IBM, which chose to remain in the country, saying its presence there would give it better leverage to improve conditions for black workers. Big Blue came out black and blue as it took a PR beating, but nowadays that's only a distant memory for most people.
• Yahoo was called out for providing information to Chinese authorities in 2005 that led to the arrest of a local journalist. As the 15th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre approached, the journalist, Shi Tao, had forwarded information about the government's upcoming plans to independent Chinese-language Web sites abroad. He was subsequently convicted of "illegally divulging state secrets abroad" and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
• In 2010, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft were labeled accomplices of oppression during a congressional hearing (though Google by then had shut down its search operations in China, redirecting its Chinese users to the company's google.com.hk site in Hong Kong for unfiltered results.

You could take one side or the other, but those clashes were relatively easy to understand. The tinderbox topic of religion fuels this newest eruption. And making things that much more combustive: a centuries-long history of confrontation between Muslims and the West -- dating back to the 7th century conquest of Spain. Where's the corporate handbook on handling that one?

YouTube so far has blocked the video from being viewed in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, and India, and has rejected the Obama administration's request to do more. After a review of the video the company has decided it does not violate YouTube's community standards guidelines governing the United States. According to YouTube:

We work hard to create a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions. This can be a challenge because what's OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere. This video -- which is widely available on the Web -- is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube. However, we've restricted access to it in countries where it is illegal such as India and Indonesia as well as in Libya and Egypt given the very sensitive situations in these two countries. This approach is entirely consistent with principles we first laid out in 2007.

Even the partial ban has set off alarm bells among the usual civil liberties crowd, nervous at even the slightest whiff of censorship. But YouTube's community guidelines are clear about "hate speech," and how the service will respond to valid court orders or government requests.

YouTube wrestled with a similarly thorny question during the 2009 street protests against the Iranian regime when 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan was shot and killed. Her final moments were immortalized in a gripping YouTube video. One YouTube insider recounted that while the Neda video probably violated the company's community guidelines when it came to graphic content "we decided to keep it up on the platform because it was so newsworthy and depicted news events."

Current events will influence how YouTube navigates through what is obviously terra very incognita. But a media company where two hours' worth of video gets uploaded every minute is no longer in control of its own content. The genie's out of the bottle as the Internet has so connected the world that there's nothing a company can do about it. Problems get unleashed faster than human eyes can find them. Eventually, YouTube gets a handle on any content deemed offensive because users complain. But by then, the damage is already done and lives are already lost.

Charles Cooper 15 Sep, 2012

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