Inventor and entrepreneur Boyan Slat made waves some years ago by introducing a device that could potentially remove floating trash in the ocean. The device acts as an artificial coastline that floats in the middle of the ocean. The device passively collects trash (e.g., plastics) that float at […]
Here we have a Google patent application 15/859654 that describes smart home features that actively adjusts environment of a home to maintain a person’s sleep cycle. This is particularly relevant to babies, as you can tell from some of the Figures of the patent application. Cameras with thermal […]
Google’s ‘audience attendance’ patent analyzes people and their body language, as they consume content, to see how interested they are. If you are a little concerned for your privacy, I don’t blame you. Although the invention here differentiates between identified individuals that A) have agreed to participate in […]
In this patent – US9213947B1 – 23andMe uses machine learning to help correspond ‘phased haplotype data’ to specific ancestries.
Taco Bell has a long list of patents related to various aspects of its business. One invention not on that list, is an abandoned patent application (published as US20080020106A1) that attempted to patent what appears to be their ‘Crunch Wrap’ food item. https://www.tacobell.com/food/specialties/crunchwrap-supreme Taco Bell’s claim read as […]
My six-year-old, Jasper, has been obsessed with Beyblade for over a year now. A Beyblade is a spinning top that you and your opponent ‘rip’ into action in an arena. The tops (or ‘Beys’) spin and move about emphatically in the arena where they bump into each other. […]
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, is a named inventor on a Facebook patent filed way back in 2006. The patent, US8225376B2, relates to your Facebook privacy settings and how you, as a user, can control what different groups can see. When you select a privacy setting, […]
Being as I typically share these articles on LinkedIn, I figure it’s only right that I feature a LinkedIn patent application – published as US2019/0096007. This patent application (which means it is still in the patent prosecution stage and not yet a protected patent) features an algorithm to […]
The most recent podcast episode of Freakonomics talks about the benefits of exercise, and implications of an exercise-replacing drug. One guest, Robert M Evans, a scientist who works at the Salk Institute, invented a drug, which was tested on mice, that essentially gave the mice effects of exercise […]
When a user enters her Netflix account, recommendations such as ‘Top Picks For ___’ and ‘Because You Watched ___’ are all over the place, and often spot on, based on certain algorithms. This Netflix patent US8887095B2 describes a method for recommending shows based on collecting information during your […]
