Alright, so you know the drill by now. A patent application doesn't necessarily mean an actual product is on the way -- but it's always fun to speculate, right? And this latest trio of applications from Apple certainly provides plenty of speculation fodder. The most notable of the lot is an application for a "multi-touch display screen with localized tactile feedback," which Apple seems to be at least considering as a possibility for the iPhone (or iPod touch). Like some similar systems, Apple's application covers a screen that uses a grid of piezoelectric actuators that can be activated at will to provide vibrational feedback when you touch the screen. Apple even goes so far as to use a virtual click wheel on an iPhone as an example. Other patent applications include a fairly self-explanatory RFID reader embedded in a touch screen, and a fingerprint identification system that could not only be used for security, but to identify individual fingers as an input method -- for instance, letting you use your index finger for play/stop and your middle finger to fast forward.

At first glance, we thought this all sounded a little too familiar: as you know, some PS3s had software-based PS2 emulation way back in 2007. So it was a little bit of a surprise when Siliconera unearthed patent docs dated last December (and only published by the patent office late last week) for the technology to decode and recompile software written for the PS2's Emotion Engine on the current device's Cell Processor. There's been some speculation that this functionality might be included in the rumored slim PS3 at some point -- either in the form of support for your old school PS2 discs or for digital downloads. Who knows? You might be playing your old copy of Shrek: Super Party! on your PS3 sooner than you think.

[Via Joystiq]

Life can sure be confusing for a teenager in this fast-paced techno-world we live in. Without the proper guidance, a kid could find himself unplugging someone's life support, or going to jail for borrowing the neighbor's WiFi. Hell, if old man General Tommy Franks (retired) has his way you won't even be able to hang out behind the Safeway and enjoy a six pack with your fellow juvenile delinquents without being tracked via GPS! So it warms our hearts when we do hear of a youngster that's bucked the odds and done something constructive. For example, a 13-year-old named David Baker has received a patent for his Light Beam Delivery System, a pico projector that fits in a pen casing, and works by combining three RGB lasers with an optics assembly that creates a light ray that is then shined through a rotating disk to the screen. "When the light goes through the lenses," he explains, "they take each light pixel and shine it onto a screen or wall. The lenses run back and forth until it fills the screen. This process repeats 30 times per second to make it appear as though you're looking at a solid image and not a series of pixels, and you have the image projected." And where did he find the inspiration for all of this? "I was sitting in church thinking about how to make projectors easier to handle and I just thought of it," he says. Here's to daydreaming during mass!

[Via About Projectors]

When most kids our age were cutting class to play Mike Tyson's Punch Out, the latch key kids over at Robot Stock News were taking apart their step father's vacuum. And as we grew up, all the while developing relationships with cellphone tipsters and eventually becoming successful tech bloggers in our own right, the Robot Stock News kids were also able to take their obsessive geek tendencies and make a name for themselves -- combing the interwebs, paying off high priced vacuum ninjas, and scouring the US Patent database for any and all news featuring many of our country's leading autonomous vacuum cleaners. They must have been really stoked to stumble upon a patent filed in November 2008, entitled "Compact Autonomous Coverage Robot." As far as we can tell, this document (filed by iRobot) details a Roomba with a squared off front, designed to hit those hard to reach corners that the traditional circular device cannot. This design change, while it seems minor, actually lends a level of complexity to the device: a square robot requires more complex programming, lest it get stuck in a niche that its round faced predecessor could never reach in the first place. Of course, there's no telling when (or if) this one will see the light of day, but you'll know as soon as we do. Promise.

[Via Robot Stock News]

It's been a few years since the original Kindle was unearthed within the murky blue bowels of the FCC. In that time, Amazon's created a nice little side-business with heaps of critical acclaim. So let's be honest now, there's no point in being nice anymore: the first generation Kindle design was unpleasant, atrocious even, cause for shoegazing Parsons' hipsters with asymmetrical haircuts to bemoan the end of aesthetics while cruelly tracing the Kindle's angular edges across their wrists. Yesterday, Amazon received a US design patent for said Kindle. In a one-line statement, patent D591,741 gives Amazon claim to, "The ornamental design for an electronic media reader, as shown and described." In other words, it says nothing about the underlying technology while giving Amazon, and only Amazon, claim to this particular geometrical configuration for time immemorial. Thank you for that Jeff Bezos.

[Via All Things Digital]

Read -- Patent D591,741
Read -- InformationWeek

James Dyson, the man who single-handedly transformed the vacuum cleaner from a symbol of domestic oppression to an object of techno-lust, is back on the scene with not one, but a whole coterie of kitchen appliances designed to save space -- by sticking 'em in a box. No longer must Americans stand for tea kettles shaped like tea kettles, toasters shaped like toasters, or for juicers... you get the idea. What's more, these guys are all designed to work together: controls are uniformly placed on the top or front panels, with devices sharing common power supplies. As it stands, this is all currently little more than a story dreamt up on the basis of a patent, fodder for a slow news day, and something which neither Dyson nor his colleagues commit to actually making a real reality -- even if patent US 2009/0095729 tells us a different story. But what the hell? A guy can dream, right?

[Via Core77]