Samsung’s corporate image has become slightly tainted as of late — some might argue that recent launch events are to blame, but the company has a different culprit in mind: LG. This latest accusation relates to the company’s position in the all-too-competitive home appliance space. Samsung has filed a lawsuit against LG in South Korea, targeting online advertisements that cited information that the company claims to be incorrect. You see, last year, LG told the public that its own refrigerator offered the highest capacity, but according to the suit, that badge of honor belongs to Samsung. This, of course, follows an LG suit against Samsung for its own promotional video on YouTube last year. 50 billion Korean won are at stake this time around, which works out to roughly $ 45 million — perhaps just enough for Samsung to recoup the costs of its massive Radio City Galaxy S 4 spectacle.
Filed under: Household, Samsung, LG
Via: PhoneArena
Source: Korea Herald
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As spotted during shooting in Toronto, here’s a first look at Joel Kinnaman as the titular cyborg officer in José Padilha’s long-questioned RoboCop remake. Mom is going to be so confused this isn’t a Batman!
Below, have another look at the costume with the visor removed, and see Kinnaman’s face slowly coming to grips with being sort of an Iron Man tire sculpture.
Seen here staring at an empty table like old people are so good at, a researcher wears the Age-Man suit, a suit designed to make the wearer feel 75+ years old (Note: not the first one we’ve seen). The concept is that by allowing health care professionals to wear the thing, they’ll have a better understanding of the troubles faced by geriatrics as a result of old age, and, in return, be more sympathetic. I SAID HOLD STILL YOU OLD COOT.
Developed by Rahel Eckardt at the Evangelical Geriatrics Center in Germany, the Age Man Suit is specifically designed to force a younger person to experience the physical limitations of the elderly. The 22-pound suit includes ear flaps to muffle hearing, a yellow visor to obscure sight, padded gloves to dull the sense of touch, and knee and elbow pads to restrict joint movement.
Hey — you want to feel like an old person? Here’s what you do: run around the block until you’re exhausted. Then, come home, sit on the couch, and shit yourself. Then have to sit in it for awhile until you’ve gathered enough strength to go to the bathroom and clean yourself up. Then, eat dinner at 4PM and be in bed 6. Because that’s what it’s like. Well, at least in my mind it is. Dear Lord, take me in my 60′s.
Thanks to Pin, who doesn’t ever want to grow up. Hey — second star to the right, straight on till morning. Now all we need is fairy dust.
As a fat, lazy blogger, I find myself often buying clothes online only to discover that XXL for a designer in Spain is basically a XXS for babies in America. The resulting shape and return fees were enough to drive me to distraction – until I saw this wild robot call the FitBot.
The robot – which is finally in production – essentially takes your measurements and reproduces them in real time. Got a big old tummy and broad shoulders? FitBot will show you what that shirt will look like on you. It can reproduce up to 2,000 body permutations and can be used by, say, an online store to show exactly what a certain shirt will look like on various people.
Barring some sort of live webcam feed, the way stores would use this is to take a shot of every possible permutation on the FitBot dummy. Then, when you tell the shop how grotesque you are (or, in the case of everyone besides me, well-built), the FitBot catalog will spit out the proper image.
No work on availability yet in actual stores but you can see the technology over at fits.me where it’s being offered to retailers. I, for one, welcome or golden clothes-fitting robotic overlords.
What seems more futuristic: flying cars or self-driving cars? They both sound a bit like science fiction, but they’re both getting closer to becoming a reality. In the latest chapter of Google’s efforts to develop a car that uses video cameras, radar sensors and lasers to navigate through traffic, the state of Nevada just granted Google the world’s first license for a computer-controlled, driverless Toyota Prius. Meanwhile, this week we also checked in on the PAL-V (which stands for “Personal Air and Land Vehicle”), a two-seat hybrid car and gyroplane that runs on gas, biodiesel or bio-ethanol. In other transportation news, the Texas Central Railroad floated a plan to build a $ 10-billion bullet train that would run between Houston and Fort Worth, and Toyota officially unveiled its second-generation 2012 RAV4 EV, which features a Tesla powertrain.
We also saw green technology cropping up in unexpected places this week, like the $ 1-billion ghost town that will be built on virgin desert land in Lea County, New Mexico to test emerging green technologies. Construction on the ghost town is set to begin in late June. Milwaukee native Bryan Cera invented Glove One, a 3D-printed glove that doubles as a cell phone. And in Tokyo, participants heaved 100,000 LED lights into the Sumida River as part of the 2012 Tokyo Hotaru Festival. Although it certainly looked cool, that’s a lot of LED bulbs to literally dump in the river, and it raises some questions about e-waste. GE found a more practical use for LEDs, unveiling a new LED light bulb to replace the 100-watt incandescent.
Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: self-driving cars, solar parasols and the ultimate DIY Iron Man suit
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: self-driving cars, solar parasols and the ultimate DIY Iron Man suit originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 May 2012 21:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Watch out, Honeywell. Nest Labs is serious. The Palo Alto start-up previously stated that it has the resources to defend itself, which is clearly the case. Just today the company filed Answer and Counterclaims in Honeywell’s patent infringement suit against the upstart thermostat company. Nest Labs flat-out denies infringement claims and validity of the seven patents listed by Honeywell.
A press released issued today calls the complaint “meritless allegations.” It goes on to quote its new vice president and general counsel, Richard “Chip” Lutton, Jr., who was Apple’s former chief intellectual property office, “Instead of filing lawsuits, Honeywell should use its wealth and resources to bring innovative products to market. Nest will defend itself vigorously in court and we’ll keep our company’s focus where it should be – on developing and delivering great products for our customers.” Grab some popcorn, folks. This is going to get good.
During his 10 year stint at Apple, Lutton worked with Nest Labs founder and CEO, Tony Fadell. The two likely worked closely as Tony Fadell led the iPod development team for 18 generations and the first several iPhone dev teams. As Apple’s chief patent counsel Lutton was involved in all aspects of Apple’s patent development, acquisition, licensing, enforcement, and dispute. So yeah, Nest Labs hired a big gun.
“I’ve worked with Tony for more than a decade – first at Apple and more recently as an advisor to Nest,” said Lutton in a released statement today. “What he and the Nest team have built is incredibly inspiring – the company has been disruptive from Day One and has no plans to slow down. I’m excited to help Nest drive and defend its innovative products and business culture.”
Nest Labs is essentially fighting the establishment. In today’s Answers and Counterclaims, Nest Labs labors on how the Nest Learning Thermostat product threatens the “blah-looking controller”, a controller that most often happens to be made by Honeywell. Nest Labs also refutes claims that its product uses Honeywell’s patents. But even if they did, Nest Labs insists said patents would be invalid as they’re retreads of older, expired patents or, not even worthy of a patent as in the case of Honeywell’s ’504 patent referring to a controller using “complete grammatical sentences”. As the document later points out, some of Honeywell’s older patents are invalid on the grounds that even older patent applications were abandoned when prior art was discovered.
It’s hard to say if Honeywell knew that Nest Labs would respond with such vigor. Start-ups often tend to roll-over and settle, content with pivoting rather than fighting. But not Nest Labs. They’re fighting to keep selling their clearly disruptive learning thermostat.
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The dispute between Apple and Proview over the “iPad” trademark has just gotten a lot more domestic. Proview, which owned the “iPad” trademark in several countries until they sold the rights to Apple, has been alleging shenanigans, specifically that part of the company never authorized the sale. Apple, for their part, says that everything is in order, and they have the signatures of the recalcitrant Shenzhen branch of Proview to prove it.
A Chinese court found that while the ownership of the trademark was not yet able to be settled, there wasn’t enough evidence to support a sales ban on the iPad. But now Proview has brought the court to California, alleging that Apple defrauded them of the trademark by approaching them as a fictional company: IP Application Development Ltd., or IPAD Ltd.
IPAD Ltd apparently applied to Proview for the trademark as an abbreviation of its name, and promised future products wouldn’t compete with Proview’s. If true, this is a fairly serious offense, and Apple’s ownership of the trademark could be overturned. The legitimacy of the emails (which the Wall Street Journal claims to have seen) will surely be contested, but if it’s all on the record, it could be curtains for the iPad in China — at least, unless Apple wants to pay Proview’s extortionate fees for the privilege.
The suit was filed in California on the 17th, and the China case was suspended yesterday. There is no word on when the U.S. case will go to court.
Seen here about to get creamed by a bus because they’re too f***ing slow, a couple demonstrate their AGNES (Age Gain Now Empathy System) suits, which make them move and feel like crotchety 75-year olds. *waving cane* Kids these days, I…just shat myself again.
When you put AGNES on, it starts messing with more or less everything it can possibly mess with to simulate being old. For example, braces and bands and straps attach to all of your limbs, putting additional pressure on your joints to simulate joint stiffness, increased muscular fatigue, and slowed movements while making it harder to take large steps or raise your arms above your head. Earplugs and goggles simulate poor eyesight and hearing loss. You even put on special shoes that make you feel almost off-balance all the time.
The concept is that people designing products for old people will be able to better understand the geriatric demographic by actually experiencing what they do. Walking a mile in their orthopedic shoes, if you will. “Old people can’t walk a mile!” Ha, I know, right? Plus they smell ooky.
Hit the jump for a video of the opposite of an exoskelton in action.
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M-Edge, a small Maryland-based company responsible for many popular Kindle cases, last week filed suit against Amazon. According to the Wall Street Journal, M-Edge claims that Amazon has repeatedly tried to change the terms of a contract put into place all the way back in 2009, and has bullied the accessory maker each time it fights back.
In the original contract, Amazon was to receive a 15 percent commission on all sales that go through Amazon’s Kindle store front. Apparently this wasn’t enough for Amazon, who later requested an increase in commission to 32 percent and threatened to remove M-Edge cases from the store if the Maryland-based company didn’t concede.
After finally reaching new terms, M-Edge alleges that Amazon then asked for the difference in commission on cases sold before the increase. Each time M-Edge fought back, Amazon threatened removal from the store and even went so far as to say that M-Edge would no longer get early access to Kindle designs, according to the filing.
“This case presents a classic example of unlawful corporate bullying,” reads the suit. “M-Edge developed a very successful product line: personal electronic device jackets with multiple features for the Kindle and other e-readers. Amazon thereafter repeatedly sought to hijack the product through threats, deceit, interference with M-Edge’s customer relationships, and patent infringement.”
Ah, patent infringement. I sure haven’t gotten my fill of those beautiful words.
M-Edge also alleges that Amazon is currently infringing on a patent it holds describing a book light-equipped ereader cover. Amazon currently sells the Amazon Lighted Leather cover (pictured, right), which M-Edge cites within the suit. The accessory maker is looking for a permanent injunction as well as damages.
