Apple Gesture Patents around iPhone

I noticed a flurry of gesture patents that mentioned a 'portable mutlifunction device'. That's patentspeak for iPhone. The patents were all from APPLE Inc. Well done Apple. That's how you manage a patent portfolio. Philips and IBM used to be the masters in this line of completely covering an area with a barrage of patents. It will give Apple something to negotiate with in future business deals with other vendors. Here they all are as far as I could tell:

1. PORTABLE MULTIFUNCTION DEVICE, METHOD, AND GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR INTERPRETING A FINGER GESTURE ON A TOUCH SCREEN DISPLAY (WO 2008/086302)
2. PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE SUPPORTING APPLICATION SWITCHING (WO 2008/086298)
3. SYSTEM, METHOD, AND GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR INPUTTING DATE AND TIME INFORMATION ON A PORTABLE MULTIFUNCTION DEVICE (WO 2008/086073)
4. APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACES FOR GESTURE OPERATIONS (WO 2008/085848)
5. MULTI-TOUCH GESTURE DICTIONARY (WO 2008/085784)
6. GESTURE LEARNING (WO 2008/085783)
7. PORTABLE MULTIFUNCTION DEVICE, METHOD, AND GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR INTERPRETING A FINGER SWIPE GESTURE (WO 2008/085770)
8. PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE, METHOD AND GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR DISPLAYING INLINE MULTIMEDIA CONTENT (WO 2008/085747)
9. PORTABLE MULTIFUNCTION DEVICE,METHOD, AND GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR TRANSLATING DISPLAYED CONTENT (WO 2008/085744)
10. OVERRIDE OF AUTOMATIC PORTRAIT-LANDSCAPE ROTATION FOR A PORTABLE MULTIFUNCTION DEVICE WITH ACCELEROMETERS (WO 2008/085741)
11. METHOD, SYSTEM, AND GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR VIEWING MULTIPLE APPLICATION WINDOWS (WO 2008/085739)
12. METHOD, SYSTEM, AND GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR PROVIDING WORD RECOMMENDATIONS (WO 2008/085737)
13. Somewhat earlier this year: DELETION GESTURES ON A PORTABLE MULTIFUNCTION DEVICE (WO 2008/030975)
14. SOFT KEYBOARD DISPLAY FOR A PORTABLE MULTIFUNCTION DEVICE (WO 2008/030974)
15. PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE PERFORMING SIMILAR OPERATIONS FOR DIFFERENT GESTURES (WO 2008/030972)
16. EMAIL CLIENT FOR A PORTABLE MULTIFUNCTION DEVICE (WO 2008/030970)
17. PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE, METHOD, AND GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR DISPLAYING STRUCTURED ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS (WO 2008/030879)
18. PORTABLE MULTIFUNCTION DEVICE, METHOD, AND GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR CONFIGURING AND DISPLAYING WIDGETS (WO 2008/030875)
19. PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE FOR PHOTO MANAGEMENT (WO 2008/030779)
20. PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE FOR INSTANT MESSAGING (WO 2008/030776)
21. 2007: UNLOCKING A DEVICE BY PERFORMING GESTURES ON AN UNLOCK IMAGE (WO 2007/076210)
22. 2006: GESTURES FOR TOUCH SENSITIVE INPUT DEVICES (WO 2006/020305)

Who will be able to argue with this patent portfolio? Who will be able to claim that the things Apple has patented were already invented elsewhere? Who will be able to maintain that gestures are not technical inventions but natural human communicative actions? Who will pay the lawyers to fight these fights? Here it all is in a fashion that is easier to digest than sifting through 22 patents. I think Apple has won this fight before it could even get started.

Healy's Flute is an Orangist Salute

Although the story of David Healy's flute gesture is getting a little moldy it has generated enough discourse to deserve another mentioning here. The interesting thing about this flute gesture is how it is part of the history of the Northern Ireland sectarian conflicts. Sensitive catholic Irish republicans will get inflamed over the gesture while others have no idea what the problem is. David Healy making the flute gesture. (source) These flute bands on Orangist marches are what the gesture refers to. Get a glimpse of the triumphalist nature of these marches By coincidence I am currently reading 'The Irish War' by Tony Geraghty. He sketches a long and messy conflict which has gone on for more than 300 years. It is clear that these marches are of an inflammatory nature, and therefore a gesture that refers to them is also inflammatory. It is not just a merry band of flute-playing men. They celebrate Orangist protestant dominance in Northern Ireland at the expense of the catholic part of the population. The conflict carried over to a Scottish football match called 'the Old Firm' between the Rangers (protestant) and Celtic (catholic), see this nice historical overview by the BCC. Many Irish people moved to Scotland and brought the conflict with them. Paul Gasoigne made the mistake of making this gesture while he played for the Rangers and paid a heavy fine of 20.000 pounds. Paul Gascoigne made the same flute gesture during the old firm (Picture: BBC News) David Healy was not playing for the Rangers, in fact I don't think he ever did, but he is known as a Rangers fan. He is from Northern Ireland and he plays in their national side. However, in this game Healy was playing for Fulham (an English club) in a friendly match against Celtic, which sets the context for the gesture. Healy was 'provoked' by the Celtic fans who knew his sympathies and chanted 'where were you on The Twelfth' (a reference to an important march on the twelfth of July). In response, he seems to have made this gesture somewhat jokingly. The strange thing is that he seems to be escaping the sort of fine Gascoigne got. Why is that? Was Gazza perceived as doing it to inflame Celtic supporters whereas Healy was just fooling around? I think many people will take it more seriously than that. As always happens with sportsmen making inappropriate gestures, Healy is now apologizing and his club is investigating. It wouldn't surprise me if a fine came soon. The Orange Order What Irish Political Pundits have to say about it A similar incident at Belfast Zoo, involving a panda. CNN reports about the Orange Order marching season Update: I think an important difference between Healy and Gascoigne is that the latter played for the Rangers who were at that time trying to defuse a tense situation. Gascoigne's gesture was hurting that effort.

Gesture Based Presentation System

Control a Beamed Powerpoint Presentation with Gestures These students appear to have created a gesture based application that we also considered about four years ago. I know IBM and Philips were interested in this sort of application. So, well done guys! And excellent presentation too. I think they managed to make the best of it, given a difficult application. Why is a presentation system a difficult application? Well if someone is presenting he will usually gesture during talking. These gestures are directed at the audience and not at the presentation software. So, the first task of such a system is to discriminate between those gestures: what is for me and what is for the audience. Furthermore, a presenter may also be fidgeting during his talk which shouldn't be interpreted as a gesture. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether these students treated these issues. The things they did do seem to be designed well enough. I think I like the calibration they designed: It creates a connection between the user's physical environment and the camera he must address. It grounds the interaction. The subsequent examples of the functionality they have built in is less impressive. The forward-back commands are okay, but the drawing and highlighting are not very valuable in my opinion. People in the audience can see that you are pointing at something so there is perhaps little need to do more. But maybe these are first steps which need a bit more maturity in their interaction design to become useful. On the whole, excellent work.

Nijntje Signs

Nijntje DVD in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT) There is a new DVD for kids created and sold bij Nederlands Gebarencentrum with translations or enactments of ten Nijntje stories in NGT. It is the first of it's kind in NGT, but similar to this ASL video of Click-clack Moo. In both cases the images of the children's books animate the story. But in the Nijntje example the 'storyteller' dressed up like the Nijntje character. Funny though that may be it seems a bit beside the point. The voice-over in spoken Nijntje DVD's does not represent the voice of Nijntje but is a storyteller. But here I go again with the sour comments. Stop it! It's fun and good. ps. It reminded me of Woof woof way, an ASL DVD where the storyteller dressed up as Paws, the dawg.