Apple just sued HTC for infringing on 20 patents “related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.

via

They go on to describe the actual patents in question, including this nugget.

The ‘849 Patent, entitled “Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image,” was duly and legally issued on February 2, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘849 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit C.

For those of you that might not know, one of my specialities is Point of Sale systems. Every system that I have ever used since ‘95 has had the ability to ‘unlock a device by performing gestures on an unlock image’, in this case in particular, rendered Windows bitmaps in the form of keypad that the user is required to touch to unlock the terminal.

(That’s me trying to be fancy by saying the login screen on most POS terminals do this, and have for many years).

Apple did not invent touch screen tech, they only brought it to the masses in a form factor that fits in your pocket. While I can appreciate the fact that they need to protect their intellectual property and technological advances, I think for this particular patent they are wrong.

There is also this one.

The ‘949 Patent, entitled “Touch Screen Device, Method, And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics,” was duly and legally issued on January 20, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘949 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit B.

I’m not sure, but I think the old HSI Profit Series system used to do this, and it was user programmable. Touch here, it does this unless you touch there, which causes a different action. Sure the heuristics weren’t applied automatically, but this is still pretty close.

Finally, for the record; Re: touchscreen technology.

Touchscreens emerged from academic and corporate research labs in the second half of the 1960s. One of the first places where they gained some visibility was in the terminal of a computer-assisted learning terminal that came out in 1972 as part of the PLATO project. They have subsequently become familiar in kiosk systems, such as in retail and tourist settings, on point of sale systems, on ATMs and on PDAs where a stylus is sometimes used to manipulate the GUI and to enter data. The popularity of smart phones, PDAs, portable game consoles and many types of information appliances is driving the demand for, and the acceptance of, touchscreens.

via Wikipedia.

Like I said before, Apple did not invent touch screen technology. It’s been around since almost forever. I wish them luck with HTC, but think they might have trouble with these 2 patents.

I have to give it to Verizon Wireless. They actually have quite an expansive Twitter presence that provides quality help and information to all that follow. Of course, with a fair bit of marketing spin and promotional materials/links too, but that’s expected. They let their Twitter folks post what they like (it would seem), so they aren’t a complete and total bore to follow.

That said, I think they might be keeping them on the short end of the information leash. This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a response like this from them. Shocking? It was, but not really.

You see, VZW is a huge company. Like massive. And, since it is a spin off of the company that sprang from Ma Bell’s loin’s herself, there is still a little bit of what the kids like to call bureaucracy. And everyone know the best way for information to not get passed around is to turn it loose in a bureaucracy, right?

Not familiar with the Nexus One, not familiar with the HTC Incredible (idiot name, but that’s for another post), not all that up on Blackberry stuff either. Of course, this particular person is a just marketing wag…oh, wait.

I guess my point here is this. Just because a company has a Twitter/Facebook/Orkut/Pornhub presence doesn’t necessarily mean they are truly plugged in to what is going on out here in the wild west known as the Internet. I would even go so far as to guess that most Corporate Twitter Users don’t have access to sources like Engadget, Gizmodo, BGR or Crackberry. Most likely blocked by the neck bearded admins who think sites like those will crash their Novell Networks and make IE6 do crazy shit.

I’m just saying.

I’ve been busy over on the other side lately, so be sure you are following along over there. There is some very cool stuff coming in the next month and change that is MINI related and I’m pretty excited about all of it.

I’m also going to making some changes (again) to this site. No matter how hard I try, no matter how many resumes I send out, I just can’t seem to make anything happen. So it’s time to take off on my own and try to generate some income anyway possible. I need a website that reflects that.

What does that mean to you? I’m not sure yet. Of course it will be cool, but that might mean that I move my more ‘personal’ blog posts over w(t)f and keep this more technical, which I’ve already started.

Anyway, go to the MINI sites and see what’s happening. If you are in SoCal, stop by and say hi when I’m at MINI of Ontario or catch me at AMVIV with almost the entire WRR crew.

The latest, greatest thing to come from Google was announced this week and has been rolling out to Gmail users as well. I finally got mine turned on yesterday and have a few thoughts.

If you want more information about what Google Buzz is, checkthis news search.

It most closely resembles FriendFeed, but it works like a cross between Twitter and Facebook. Being built into Gmail is a bonus, so you get one stop shopping. It seems to be pretty cool, but there are a few things I’m noticing.

• When sharing items from other sites, they double post
• It would appear that I’m limited to following only my friends or friends of friends
• It’s slow. Maybe not so much slow as it is laggy, especially when opening images.
• Sharing a video is slightly cumbersome and, as far as I know, it only works with YouTube. More testing is still needed
• Unlike FriendFeed, I’m not able to add any site to my feed that I like via XML. I thought that it was tied to the sites listed in my Google Profile, but that is not the case

I think it’s cool, but I have the distinct impression that it is not quite done. Yet.

As mentioned, I’m going to try to put this both on Viddler and YouTube for those of you still using iPhones. YouTube version coming soon.

Found on Twitter

First up in my find isn’t so much an app as it is a browser bookmarklet called Readability. I didn’t find this one as an add, but from following a link in a tweet in someone I follow (apologies if this was you, it’s been a while so I do not remember). Readability is by far the handiest thing I’ve used in quite some time.

Imagine if you will, going to a website like, oh, I don’t know, this one.

That is the Droid review at PCWorld.com as viewed in Google Chrome on my Mac. What a mess, until you click on the Readability bookmarklet. Instead of that mess up there, you instead get this wonderful page to read.

Wonderful. No ads, no cruft, just the story I want to read in large type with wide margins. You can customize the experience in many ways and it only takes a few minutes to setup. Oh yea, and it’s free. You really need to try this out.

The app that I found via an advertisement in Tweetie is a brilliant interface to Gmail called MailPlane. Yes, it is a desktop app to access a web based app. But it makes using Gmail so much better! I’m not sure if any of you have tried Fluid with Gmail, but it is very similiar to that experience.

With MailPlane you get drag and drop support, multiple account support that makes switching between accounts a snap, Growl support for messages and the ability to easily make it your default mail client. I’ve been using this for almost a month on the free trial and can tell you that I will be handing over my $24.95 happily next week. I’ve been looking for something exactly like this for quite a while now and am very pleased with how it works, especially when comparing to only using Gmail in a browser.

Sadly, MailPlane is Mac only. If you are a Gmail user and a Mac user, you should take the time to download this and check it out. The first 30 days are free, so why not.

If I were to go back and modified my top 5 mac applications, these 2 would definitely make the cut. If you try them out, I’m sure the rest of the class would be interested in what you thought about them. Comment below with your thoughts or opinions.

That’s right, I said it. I hate Safari.

Gasp! Boo! Hiss! Go on, get it out of your system.

There are many things that this brilliant iMac sitting on my desk does that I absolutely adore. There are many apps that I run on a daily or almost daily basis that I also think are quite keen. Keen enough to remember their name so I can fire them up in QuickSilver or that they have earned a place in the all mighty dock.

Safari is not one of them.

It’s not the way Safari looks, because it is a good looking app. And, it’s not because of how it displays websites. It is the way Safari works with a few websites, sometimes, stability and how tabs work.

In Firefox (all versions, all operating systems) and Internet Explorer v7 & v8 and Google Chrome (and, quite possibly Opera, although I never use that) you can close a tab 2 different ways using the mouse. You can either click on the ‘X’ (which, on all of these browsers is on the right, Safari is on the left) or you can press the middle/scroll wheel of your mouse anywhere on the tab. That might sound niggling, but it really slows me down. Having the use the CMD key with a mouse click has never worked for me. I’m either using a keyboard shortcut or the mouse, not both.

Then there is stability. I have recently discovered that by not keeping my cache and history tidy and neat, Safari does nothing more than crash while trying to start. Not only does it crash repeatedly when trying to start, it will sometimes crash altogether with the only fix being a complete system restart. And, since there isn’t an internet options in System Preferences (like Windows), there is no way that I’m aware of to correct it. In all of the other browsers, having a messy cache or lots of history just slows things down a bit.

Another minor thing is the lack of a status bar by default. I always check where links go in the status bar, and not having it seriously annoys me. I shouldn’t have to do a google search to find how to turn this on. Sure, it’s a hold over from my Windows days, but better safe than sorry, right?

And, finally, there is Gmail. And also, there isn’t Gmail. But, it is. Gmail is my email application. While I don’t live in there all the time, it is what I use to send and receive email (since replaced by Mailplane, more on that later). And with Safari (or Webkit, but not Chrome oddly enough) it just acts weird. And, only sometimes.

For example, on occasion when replying to an email, I click reply and start typing. Normally, the text just shows up in the email box like it is supposed to. Sometimes, and again, only with Safari, the reply window fails to grab focus, so when I start typing, the Gmail keyboard shortcuts kick in and do everything from deleting the message entirely to opening my task window. The annoying part is that it is hit or miss. If it did this consistently, I could work around it. But that’s the problem. It only seems to happen when Safari is having a bad day.

For the record, I have been using Google Chrome since it was released for the Mac and, at least for me, it’s been fantastic. It’s been my default browser for more than a month and so far so good. On occasion I do have to duck into Firefox for something specific or to use an extension, but for daily browsing, Chrome is it for me. Bonus it’s fast. Fastest on my Mac by a long shot.

Comments are open. Go ahead, do your best!

This was a post over at dbmini.us earlier this week about work not being right on the first visit. I wanted to make a few more remarks about this, but since they aren’t MINI related, here we are.

Have any of you used Windows Vista? Specifically, Windows Vista on any computer with only 2GB of RAM? I have and every time I do I keep asking myself the same question.

How could anyone think this was acceptable?

Windows Vista on underpowered machines is completely not useable. The system is unbelievably unstable and so slow it’s painful. For example, when trying to start Internet Explorer, it goes through a series of crashes until, about 5 minutes later, it settles down and then 3 minutes after that you see your home page.

When opening the Control Panel, it will also go through a series of crashes while drawing the icons. Trying to go into any of the CP applets is equally harrowing, with screens not drawing and the applet sometimes crashing.

Same goes when trying to close any program, especially Internet Explorer or any of the Control Panel applets. Most of the time they do crash and the only recovery is restarting the machine, which is another 10 minute ordeal.

Somewhere in the halls of Redmond (Or Austin – Dell is the biggest culprit here), there is a fellow in a room whose job it is to Q/A these kinds of things. I would imagine this fellow makes a good dollar or two in wages, benefits and other perks that come with working for such companies. My question for this guy is how do these machines pass Q/A? How can anyone look at this and say “yep, she’s good to go”?.

Unacceptable.

Knowing this, how can computer companies spec out a PC that would be better suited running Win2K and then install Vista? Seriously, a Celeron Processor? 1GB of RAM (shared with the video card too). I know it’s all about the all mighty dollar, but what about user experience?

It’s no wonder why Apple costs more, or why we pay more. That Q/A fellow in Cupertino actually does his job, and cares about user experience. If you buy a bone stock Mac, it’s a configuration that is completely acceptable to use for most tasks that the average user will need to use it for.

The average bone stock PC, not so much. That machine, usually available from any big box retailer for around $300, will barely run Windows. Why even bother to sell such a machine? In selling a $300 computer, you create expectations by your users that the computer experience, while completely painful and almost impossible, is an inexpensive experience.

Time to retrain. Time to stop buying $300 PCs. Time for manufacturers to stop selling $300 PCs. Honestly.

If you, or any of your users, are in the market for a PC, I implore you to encourage them to skip the bargain basement machines. Tell them to save for a little bit longer to get a PC that they can use and use well. It should have at least 4GB of RAM, at least a 2Ghz Core2 processor (Intel or AMD) and it should cost at least $600, more if they opt for better video with at least 128MB of RAM.

Or, they should buy a Mac.

It’s time we, as the consumer, start demanding better out of companies that continually churn out crap that doesn’t work, doesn’t work as expected or is just garbage for the sake of a buck. Really, it’s time.

Good customer service is not rocket science. It’s really not. Good customer service actually comes quite naturally to most people, unless you are a dick.

How I do it

One thing that I am exceptionally good at is customer service. What? You don’t believe me? Just ask and I will tell you that I am. Really. It’s a skill that I developed by working in restaurant kitchens if you can believe it. I have worked for some truly brilliant general managers when it came to service, and almost everything I know or do can be traced back to them and this simple sentence.

If you’re not serving the customer, you’d better be serving someone who is.

—Karl Albrecht

Good old Karl and his German, supermarket magnet ways. That is one of the most brilliant things I have ever learned.

What that means is that, while you may not be serving the actual customer that is giving the company money to keep doing business, you are helping the person that is helping the customer, which in turns makes that person your customer. In the restaurants working in kitchens, that meant that while I was working in the back, not interacting with the customer at all, I was working with the people that were directly serving the customers, and the level of service I was able to provide to them (my customers), helped the level of service that they were able to give to their customers.

Now, have another sip of your coffee, sit back and think about that for a minute. Don’t worry, the lightbulb will go off very soon, trust me.

And when it does, you will start to see the brilliance provided by Mr. Albrecht and how it applies to you and your customers. If you continue to think about this (like I have for the past 20 years), besides seeing the brilliance in it, you will also start to believe it and even practice it. Or, at least you should.

Much like the other, simplest-thing-you-can-do-to-impress-someone trick that I know. This one is a toughy, but I think you can handle it. Ready?

Use their name.

It’s the 21st century now and I think it’s about time that we trade in those stuffy “sir”s and “ma’am”s for a persons name. It’s dead simple to do and will make your customers feel like you really care about them and think of them as a person as opposed to another number on a screen.

Did you know that you get so many chances to get a persons name it’s not even funny? If you work retail and the customer pays by credit card, their name is right there! On the card. No foolin’. If you have a CRM open on your desktop with the customer’s account information, it’s there too, right at the top of the screen (usually).

Starbucks will ask your name when you place your order. A good employee will notice you when you come back. A better employee will great you by name when you come back for the 5th time. An employee that should be getting paid quite a bit more than they are should will even remember your drink.

2 tricks for you this fine Sunday that I hope will help you as much as they have helped me. Do you have an easy tip that helps you to get through your day? Share it below!

I live here! Amazing, and it was a perfect day for it too.