TV programs have come to the Internet, and the Internet has gone to mobile devices. Now the Internet is coming back to TV, and savvy software engineers and smart TV producers are finding ways to create new "hybrid" services that bring it all together. Which is why the rumored "iMac television" and, down the pike, the "iTV," would make sense.

New NPD In-Stat (http://www.in-stat.com) research forecasts that 100 million households will actively use a hybrid service delivered to their TV set by 2016.

The next step in the viewing experience will be for TV sets and set top boxes to permit all of the traditional TV-related services, which is then expanded and enhanced by bringing in content from the Internet, or from Internet-like web services that provide a "walled garden" of authorized content and on-screen features, says Gerry Kaufhold, research director, NPD In-Stat. The research group notes that...

Are you addicted to the Internet? If you're reading this (and I'm glad you are), you could be.

SodaHead.com -- an online, opinion-based social community -- asked its users if they thought they were addicted to the Internet and 61% of respondents said "yes."  However, 39% said they could quit if they wanted. But isn't that what all addicts say?

When the numbers are broken down by gender, 64% of women admitted to an Internet addiction, compared to 55% of men. Internet addiction was present in every age group, however the younger voters were more likely to be hooked (73% of those between 13-17 and 71% of those between 18-24).  The numbers decreased for older respondents with only 39% of those between 55-65 admitting to the addiction.

Full results of the poll, including detailed demographic information, can be found at...

Per a new Apple patent (number 20120070017) at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Apple is working on ethods and systems for improved interaction between media devices and accessory devices.

In one embodiment, the improved interaction can operate to configure a user interface of a media device dependent on the type or condition of an accessory device. In the same or another embodiment, the improved interaction can exchange status information between a media device and an accessory device that can influence operation of either or both of the devices.

The invention pertains to methods and systems for improved interaction between media devices and accessory devices. In one embodiment, the improved interaction can operate to configure a user interface of a media device dependent on the type or condition of an accessory device. The configuration of the user interface can be automatically performed when the media device is connected with the accessory device. In the...

Apple has been granted several patents pertaining to the Smart Cover for the iPad.

Patent number 20120066865 is for a foldable accessory device. A magnetic attachment mechanism and method is described. The magnetic attachment mechanism can be used to releasably attach at least two objects together in a preferred configuration without fasteners and without external intervention. The magnetic attachment mechanism can be used to releasably attach an accessory device to an electronic device.

Patents 20120066873, 20120068797, 20120068798, 20120068799, 20120069502, 20120069503, 20120068919, 20120068942 and 20120069540 involve methods and an apparatus for configuring a magnetic attachment system. The magnetic attachment mechanism can be used to releasably attach at least two objects together in a preferred configuration without fasteners and without external intervention. The magnetic attachment mechanism can be used to releasably attach an accessory device to an...

If Apple ever works out the details work an a la carte television viewing/subscription service, it can't come too soon for many folks.

A new research report published by Temkin Group (http://www.temkingroup.com) rates the customer experience of 206 large companies across 18 industries. This is the second year that the research group has released these ratings.

The research, which is based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers in January 2012, includes ratings of 11 Internet service providers -- AOL, AT&T, Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, EarthLink, MSN, Qwest, Road Runner, and Verizon - and 10 TV service providers: AT&T, Bright House Networks, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Dish Network/EchoStar, Optimum (iO)/Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon.

While the study rated 21 organizations across both the TV and...

Some folks were disappointed that the new iPad didn't have tactile feedback features. However, a patent (number 8138896) at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for tactile feedback in an electronic device shows that this is possibility -- for not just the iPad, but other devices.

An electronic device for providing tactile feedback is provided. The electronic device may provide tactile feedback using any suitable approach, including for example vibration, heat, electrical, visual, or any other type of feedback.

The electronic device may provide tactile feedback in response to detecting any particular status of the electronic device, receiving any particular input, or detecting any suitable communication received by the electronic device. For example, the electronic device may provide tactile feedback in response to identifying the current network of the device, the status of a particular electronic device component, or any other electronic device status.

As...

Apple has been granted a patent (8138869) for the iPad Smart Cover, a front cover for the tablet that snaps into space with magnetic hinges and which "wakes up, stands up and brightens up your iPad."

In the patent, a magnetic attachment mechanism and method is described. The magnetic attachment mechanism can be used to releasably attach at least two objects together in a preferred configuration without fasteners and without external intervention. The magnetic attachment mechanism can be used to releasably attach an accessory device to an electronic device. The accessory device can be used to augment the functionality of usefulness of the electronic device. The inventors are Andrew Lauder, Matthew D. Rohrbach, Daniel J. Coster, Christopher J. Stringer, Florence W. Ow, Jiang Ai, Jonathan P. Ive, Elvis M. Kibiti, John P. Ternus and Sean D. Lubner.

Here's Apple's summary of the invention: "An accessory unit includes at least an accessory body and a magnetic assembly...

Several Apple patents have popped up at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 8140975 involves slide show navigation. Per the patent, a slide show, integrated into an email application, displays images such as those included as an attachment to an email message. The user can view the slide show without exiting the email application. Slide show navigation controls are provided. An index sheet mode can be activated wherein a number of thumbnails are displayed, allowing easy navigation to any image within the slide show. Transition animations can be provided for clarifying operations such as activating and dismissing the index sheet. The inventors are Stephen Lemay, Gregory N. Christie, Marcel van Os and Hans-Werner Neubrand.

Patent number 8140809 is for computer implemented masked representation of data tables. In the computer software field, method and apparatus to obfuscate (mask or...

In a move that will rev the iTunes-vs-UltraViolet battle, Walmart is offering a service that turns physical DVD/Blu-ray collections across the U.S. into digital movies.

The retailer's in-store disc-to-digital service offers the freedom to watch their DVD/Blu-ray collections from Internet-connected devices, including televisions, tablets, smartphones, gaming consoles and more -- just as iTunes/iCloud does. The service is powered by VUDU, a video streaming service, and involves the UltraViolet format.

UltraViolet is a cloud-based movie storage solution that the industry is betting (or at least hoping) will convince consumers to buy movies instead of renting them. How? The "digital locker" solution keeps copies of films you've bought on remote servers for viewing any time on various devices.

Walt Disney is the only major film studio not backing UltraViolet. Apple also hasn't announced support for the technology. There's speculation that Apple and Disney are...

A new Apple patent (number 20120062206) shows that Apple is eyeing way to let you momentarily enable an electronic device. It relates generally to power control for an electronic device, and more particularly to a control mechanism providing momentary power and constant power states.

The invention is for a method and apparatus for providing intermittent or interruptible power to an electronic device. The circuit may provide power upon user initiation and interrupt that power in response to a user command, fault state, period of inactivity and so forth.

As one example, interruptible power may be initially provided to activate or "power up" an electronic device and constant power provided after the initial activation. The initial powering up of the device may be facilitated by closing two contacts. The circuit may continue to provide power after the button is released through a monitoring and/or feedback mechanism.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the...

Apple has won two patents from the US Patent & Trademark Office involving tags on mobile devices.

Patent number 20120062758 involves the relative positioning of devices based on captured images of tags and seems to involve the Places feature of iPhoto.

The patent is directed to determining the relative position of several devices by capturing representations of the device environments in which a tag is located. The devices can compare the captured representations to determine a perspective of the tag corresponding to each device. In some cases, a device can determine an absolute position relative to a coordinate system integrated in a tag. Using the positioning information, several devices can receive directions to come together at a particular meeting point. In some cases, several devices can operate an application that requires the interaction of several users of the devices (e.g., multi-player games).

The application can control the...

Now that Apple has unveiled the new iPad, concerns continue to mount over the influx of mobile devices converging on the corporate network: namely whether companies have formal bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs that can handle the increased demand for bandwidth.

Brocade (http://www.brocade.com/index.page) -- a company that offers "network solutions that help the world’s leading organizations transition smoothly to a virtualized world where applications and information can reside anywhere" -- has revealed the results of a survey of 120 IT decision-makers, which found that:

° Almost 40% of respondents indicated that employees use mobile devices to access their corporate networks regardless of an official bring-your-own-device policy.

° More than 30% of decision-makers expect traffic on their networks to increase as a direct result of the iPad 3.

° Almost 40%...

Apple has been granted a patent (number 8135865) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for synchronizing and transferring digital media items.

One or more media items are received, from a network operating environment, at a first device. A first media database on the first device, including metadata associated with the media items, is synchronized with a second media database on a second device.

The one or more media items are moved from the first device to the second device. The one or more media items are copied from the second device to the first device.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "The subject matter of this specification relates generally to digital media distribution services. In recent years, electronic online distribution of media items, such as music and movies, have become popular.

"A user can access a media service from a client-side...

Do you suffer from nomophobia, the fear of being without your iPhone? Apparently, lots of folks do.

First identified in 2008, it would appear nomophobia -- the fear of being out of mobile phone contact, is sharply increasing in the UK. A recent survey of 1,000 people in employment, conducted using OnePoll, discovered two-thirds of respondents fear losing or being without their mobile phone.

The study, sponsored by SecurEnvoy (http://www.securenvoy.com) -- which specializes in tokenless, two-factor authentication -- reveals that 41% of people interviewed, in an effort to stay connected, have two phones or more. When asked if they’d be upset if a partner looked at the messages and texts on their phone almost half said that they would.

Digging a little deeper, more women worry about losing their phones than men -- 70% of the women surveyed compared to 61% of the men. Yet it is men that are...

A new patent (number 20120057297) at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office show that Apple continues to work on ways to make its OS X and iOS devices run cooler. The patent involves heat dissipation in a computer device. More particularly, the invention relates to arrangements for protecting key components of the computing device.

Per the patent, the computing device includes a shock mount assembly that is configured to provide impact absorption to sensitive components such as a display and an optical disk drive. The computing device also includes an enclosureless optical disk drive that is housed by an enclosure and other structures of the computing device.

The computing device further includes a heat transfer system that removes heat from a heat producing element of the computing device. The heat transfer system is configured to thermally couple the heat producing element to a structural member of the computing device so as to sink heat through the structural...

It took me a long time to get onto Apple's online store and order a new iPad, but the trouble was worth it. The new Apple tablet looks to be incredible.

By the way, Apple calls it the new iPad. But what's its official moniker? The iPad 3? The iPad HD? The New iPad? I like "iPad HD," so that's what I'm going with until I see Apple officially calling it something else.

I do wish that Apple offered a 128GB version. Or at least an iPad with an expansion slot. We also didn't get the haptic display technology that some folks were predicting. But I wasn't expecting it. Of course, for the iPad 4, who knows?

The advance buzz on the iPad HD has been great. This is from "CNET": Neither the newest MacBook Air nor new Intel ultraportable laptops can boast that kind of display resolution and none offer a standard model with built-in broadband--and certainly not the LTE variety of 4G, which is considered the most promising. Even on the chip front -- considered a big...

Three Apple patents have popped up that show that Apple is working on ways to further improve the cameras on its iOS devices.

Patent number 20120057073 is for scene-aware, automatic exposure control. Per the patent, scene-aware auto-exposure control process stabilizes changes in a camera's auto-exposure settings so as to reduce lighting and color flicker during image capture operations. A metric, referred to as the Modified Adjusted Luminance (MAL) metric, is defined to remain relatively constant as long as the lighting of the scene being captured remains relatively constant.

Thus, scene changes such as an object moving into, out of, or around in a scene do not significantly affect the MAL metric's value and do not, therefore, trigger an exposure adjustment. Once the MAL metric indicates a scene's lighting is stable, the camera's auto-exposure operation may be suppressed. As long as incoming frames indicate a stable lighting condition (based on the...

An Apple patent (number 8132197) for mounting objects on a turntable has turned up at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It relates relate generally to computing systems and more particularly to an optical disc drive (ODD) and shows that Apple wants to make such drives smaller in its Macs -- assuming, of course, it does do away with them completely anytime soon.

The embodiments in the patent describe an apparatus and method for a reduced Z stack slot loading optical disc drive (ODD). In one embodiment, an optical disc mounting assembly can be used to chuck an optical disc to a turntable. The optical disc mounting assembly can include a hub spring for spring loading a hub and a clamping mechanism pivotally connected to the hub.

In the described embodiment, in an extended position, the clamp is used to secure the optical disc to the turntable. The clamping mechanism can include a clamp pivotally attached to the hub at a pivot point. In the absence of the optical...

I'm still dubious of rumors of a 14-inch MacBook Air for the Asian market (see http://macte.ch/5ybfW), but Apple has the chance to sell a LOT of laptops (as well as iPads and iMacs) in China in the days ahead.

According to the latest data from NPD DisplaySearch (http://www.displaysearch.com), the rapid growth of the China computer market is driven by the mobile computer segment, which includes notebooks, mini-notes, and tablets. Total computer shipments in the second half of reached 53.4 million, up 12.7% from the first half of the year.

China is the largest market for desktops and related displays (monitors or displays in all-in-ones), the number three market for tablet computers, and the number four market for notebooks and mini-notebooks. For the computer market as a whole, China is three, behind North America and EMEA [...

More good news for the iPad and the iPhone (especially if a 4G version of the latter is coming, as many predict): when it comes to technology, small businesses continue to ratchet up their use of emerging wireless solutions, including tablet computers, 4G devices, and GPS navigation mobile apps. This according to the just-released "2012 AT&T Small Business Technology Poll" (http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=22312).

More specifically, the national survey of small businesses revealed the following:
General Wireless Technologies:

° Nearly all small businesses (96%) surveyed use wireless technologies in their operations, with almost two-thirds (63%) indicating that they could not survive -- or it would be a major challenge to survive -- without wireless technologies.

° More than four in 10 (43%) small businesses surveyed report all of their...

Two Apple patents at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office show how Apple is working on letting you control, structure and organize your digital content across various devices, iCloud and the iTune Store.

Patent number 201200543679 is for a menuing structure for favorite media content. Technologies for generating a menu of favorite media items for presentation to a user are described. In one aspect, input from a user designating a show as a favorite show is received. In response to receiving the input, show information relating to the favorite show is displayed in a first graphical user interface.

The show information includes a plurality of shortcuts, each shortcut pointing to a corresponding episode of the favorite show, and indicia displayed concurrently with the shortcuts to mark unwatched episodes. In response to receiving the input, a pointer associated with the favorite show is displayed in a second graphical user interface. The pointer...

An Apple patent (number 20120050307) for an ambient light sensing technique has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and shows that Apple is working on ways to control characteristics of electronic devices -- such as laptops and iPhones-- based on ambient light levels.

In one embodiment, the method includes receiving light at an ambient light sensor of a device and measuring components, such as color components, of the visible light. The component levels may be weighted differently by factors that vary based on the intensity of the light received by the ambient light sensor.

Also, the brightness level of a light source in the device or color output of the device may be controlled based on the weighted component levels. Additional methods, systems, and devices relating to control of an electronic device based on sensed ambient light are also disclosed. Peter H. Mahowald and Ulrich T. Barnhoefer are the inventors.

Here's Apple's background and...

The latest poll results from Broadbandgenie.co.uk -- an independent broadband, mobile broadband and smartphone comparison website -- have revealed that just 8% of respondents intend to "definitely" buy a budget tablet in 2012. I would image most folks are saving their money for the iPad 3, which I suspect will go on sale in March.

The poll asked, 'Will you buy a tablet or iPad in 2012?' Of more than 1,000 respondents, more than half either weren't interested at all or already owned a tablet. Some 16.5% answered "maybe," while 17.5% intended to buy a top end tablet. Again, think iPad 3.

The result will be seen as another blow for makers of low-end Android tablets and cheaper models from other brands -- particularly BlackBerry, which has just released an upgrade for its heavily discounted PlayBook tablet.

"While Apple is going great guns at the top-end with its iPads, very little is happening of interest at the budget price point as yet," Broadband Genie editor...

Among several Apple patents granted today by the U.S Patent & Trademark Office one of the most interesting is for an integrated speaker assembly for a personal media device. It involves an external multi-speaker system. Though the patent was filed in 2007, Apple has released no such system -- at least not yet.

Systems and methods are provided for media devices including a housing, a frame disposed adjacent to the housing, and an acoustic source that is integrated with the frame for emitting sound from the media device. The inventors are Richard Hung Minh Dinh, Tang Yew Tan and Derek Boyd Barrentine.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "This invention relates to personal media devices and, more particularly, to integrated speaker assemblies for personal media devices.

"The proliferation of compact portable personal media devices (e.g., portable MP3 players, portable video players, and media capable cellular telephones) has created a need...