Posts by Lyndsay Williams

Kickstarter unplugs iFind miracle battery-free locator

Whatever next?

A team of radio engineers on Kickstarter checked out the maths on the energy harvesting and could not see how it would work. As the company claimed "patent pending", a legal term, that can only be used if true, I searched for a patent application in US and Europe, but the application number the company supplied seemed to have only part of the patent number. I repeated asked for photo of prototype but no response. When I asked specific engineering questions such as temperature range of use of device, I was told "normal", a bit vague. There were many other red flags, such as project leader saying he had not even a Linkedin profile, due to previous identity theft. The video "demo" omitted the Bluetooth icon on the phone. They were 3 days away from collecting $545,000. I contacted Kickstarter with others, but got no response from them.

Canadian cyborg says Google Glass design is cracked

Re: The difference between Steve Mann's glasses and Googles version is ...

I worry about the social aspect of "Peeping Tom " aspect of Google Glass and other devices. It would be interesting to see the female point of view of guys wearing these devices. I did some work years ago with wearable cameras (Microsoft's SenseCam), but we always used good manners,switched off if required, and did NOT record audio as intrusive. Re Glass - Is the wearer engaged in a conversation with you or online? I did have a few hours conversation with a guy with head mounted recording specs and found it very uncomfortable. The social aspects of people wearing Bluetooth headsets and talking to themselves (or not) have been covered and parodied. A less attention seeking alternative is a glanceable display mounted around the neck, facing vertically, like a nurse's fob watches? I am testing one now.

Energy scavenger eats leftover wireless signals

practical

This is a practical idea but very old. Crystal radios and antennas have been shown to power a Light Emitting Diode. Some Microcontrollers now work at 0.9V or less. A computer powered by this technology has many useful applications.

HTC 'dismayed' by Apple's bizarre patent allegations

spelling

Thank you for correcting my spelling, I started work too early. :-)

What has William Gates go to do with it however? (Apart from the fact he personally was offered this patent in 1998 for almost nothing and turned it down)

This article in The Register on the patent has a few mistakes, so I will be telling the true version tomorrow.

this patent is 14 years old

This phone device was invented in 1997, nothing like this back then. Hardware was built and tested in a garage near Milton Keynes.

"hardware patents are generally much stronger and more likely to be found to stand up"

I agree.

It was not designed to make lawyers loads of money and stop the sale of HTC devices to customers.

I will be doing a talk on it's history tomorrow at Oxford University to get the facts straight.

Apple flings patent lawsuit at HTC (again)

Microsoft were offered the oldest of these patents in 1998 but declined it

Microsoft was offered the oldest of one of these 5 patents in 1998, the BT one mentioned here, http://tinyurl.com/65c4ud3. They declined it - the phone had no keyboard .

Lyndsay Williams

SpinVox: The Inside Story

spinvox

Interesting article.

re"SpinVox declined to give a figure. "It is our confidential business formula. It is literally the ratio that any competitor or company wanting to start a business in the potential multi-billion dollar marketplace that SpinVox actually created would love to know so that they could come after us. ."

Is that not like bringing a new computer to market but not telling anyone the speed, memory capacity etc , in case the competition found out?

Asus Eee PC 4G sub-sub-notebook

ASUS EEE - waterproof?

My ASUS EEE just got shipped today, I can't wait to see it on Monday. A serious question, as it has no moving parts, how waterproof is it if it falls in the bath? Cellphones seem to survive after a 3 day dry out. Anyone tried it?

Lyndsay Williams www.lyndsayw.com

Trevor Baylis cranks multimedia up a notch

battering charging

You can buy today wind up battery phone chargers on eBay, e.g. the one from Orange can charge devices like cellphones.

Lyndsay Williams

www.lyndsayw.com

Broadband claims mislead on speed

Broadband speed is fine

I have been with NTL then Virgin Media since around 1999, living in Cambridge. The old Surfboard S83100 modem capped at 4Mbits/second. I was paying for 20Mbits/sec. In July I phoned Virgin and asked why I was not receiving the 20Mbits/sec I was paying for. I was told the Surfboard modem was too slow and got a FREE upgrade to a new E08c007 modem. (I rent the modem from Virgin) . I now get 15.6Mbits/sec and higher.

Lyndsay Williams

www.lyndsayw.com