Webware

Apple Insider has spotted a a newly released patent filed by Apple back in late 2007 that shows volume controls that can be integrated into various Web browsers. Described as a way to control "audio signals which may or may not be welcomed by the user" the patent depicts a new panel that sits in the top, right-hand corner of a user's browser and allows per-site controls over incoming audio signals. There's also a mute button that can cut out just the sounds from the browser entirely while leaving sound from other desktop applications untouched.

According to the patent, the key goal is to add a volume control overlay over sites that do not provide it, as well as a system that will remember the user's preferences between browsing sessions. This would be useful in Flash-heavy sites where the controls may be hidden away, or entirely absent. It would also let users create custom sound profiles, so you could have YouTube videos on your computer at work always start out at a low volume level, or your Internet alarm clock site always play at 100 percent.

The patent also describes situations where users can create specific rules that will change how audio can be played back based on whatever other applications are running. So you could theoretically set it to mute all your browser audio only when you're listening to music in iTunes, or using an audio-centric application like Skype, then bring the sound back as soon as you're not getting audio output from those applications. Apple has done something similar on the iPhone by interrupting music when you're getting a phone call, or slightly lowering the volume on notification sounds when you're using other apps.

What makes this patent filing notable is that it's not just for Safari, and is listed as being applicable to multiple browsers, which means it could either be a part of an upcoming OS or as a standalone application. As the usual disclaimer goes though, patents are often filed for technologies that never make it to market.

I've embedded the entire patent after the page break. (Thanks to Patents.com and Scribd for that.)

Update: Several readers have pointed out that Windows Vista has had a similar feature since its release called Volume Mixer that lets you pick out the maximum volume level for each application. However it's worth noting that in Apple's proposed implementation, the user would be able to control it on a per-site basis.

The browser audio controls would sit in the corner of the browser, and allow users to mute sound from sites they're visiting.

(Credit: Apple/CNET)

Social network Friendster announced Tuesday that it has been awarded its fourth U.S. patent, called "Compatibility Scoring of Users in a Social Network." It does pretty much exactly what it sounds like--it parses user profile data to find people who might be compatible as friends.

The social network, considered an also-ran in the U.S. but a much bigger phenomenon in a number of Asian countries--it has 65 million registered users in Asia--had its first patent granted in July 2006 and says that more are on the way.

"In just six years, social networking has become both an industry--since 8 of the top 20 largest Web sites in the world are social networks--and a critical platform for over half a billion Internet users globally to share, communicate, connect, and be entertained with existing and new friends, family, and colleagues," Friendster CEO Richard Kimber, whom the company hired from Google in August, said in a release.

"A core component of the evolution of social networks is the ability of the online 'social graph' to represent our real social life. Understanding the common interests between people establishes common ground to build and enhance relationships," he added.

In case you were keeping track, this patent is No. 7,451,161 and it was granted on November 11.

Got the next big idea floating around in your head but want to see if someone else has already come up with it? Digging through the mountain of patents on file at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Web site can be a bit daunting. To help in that search is Patents.com, which has an index of more than 450 million patents in 15 different languages. All of this is combined with an online marketplace where these patents can be bought and sold.

Like Google's patent search offering, Patents.com offers some great exploration, which is where I found the most value. The front page shows off some of the most recently approved and submitted patents, but the star of the show is the search tool, which goes from basic to "expert" mode with just one click. The expert mode gives you a whole new bag of search tricks like word proximity, a cheat sheet of commonly used patent jargon, as well as a "fuzzy" search that will look for alternate or misspelled words in patent titles or the actual copy.

One of its key improvements over the standard U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Web site is the image viewer, which I found far easier to use. It's essentially a PDF viewer, but it's stuck right on the page instead of opening in a new window. Also, unlike the U.S. patent office site, it does not require reloading the page each time you want to see another image. Users of Google's patent search will feel right at home.

As for the actual sale of ideas, if you're a patent owner you can claim patents on the site and, once verified, you can sell them. Patents.com includes a list price set by the patent holder, and anyone who is interested can be contacted through Patents.com. This is definitely a useful service for people who know what they're doing. Like anything that involves legality and potentially large sums of money, it's probably best to do some research before buying a patent on a site like this. The search, however, is quite a fun way to explore human ingenuity, and hopefully will lead to some fun patent discoveries from bloggers looking to unearth a major company's next big thing.

Did you know sugar could be patented? Apparently it's true for the owner of this patent, which we found while browsing Patents.com.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

(Credit: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office / uspto.gov)

AppleInsider has uncovered a patent filing from Apple (located here) that's a cross between what we've known as an "enhanced podcast" and the step-by-step driving directions found on the maps application that is on the iPhone and iPod touch.

In short, the design specified in the patent would let users grab driving directions (presumably from Google) and have them combined with voice activated commands that would advance the directions forward. The data would be packaged in the form of a Podcast that could be downloaded and put on the player like any other audio file.

The current system on the iPod touch and iPhone requires a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection, as well as touch input to advance the directions at each step. Presumably this system would allow the iPod or iPhone to be mounted and used in a similar fashion to a voice command-enabled GPS device via software alone. It could also signal backward compatibility with other enhanced-podcast capable devices, such as any iPod with a click wheel.

Also noted on the patent is a system for crunching the data through various servers before it ends up on the portable device. Included are servers for maps, and a text-to-speech server, the latter of which is Google has put a considerable amount of resources into, seen recently in its voice-controlled GOOG-411 mobile directory service and acquisition of online voice mail service Grand Central back in July. Despite the emphasis put on the mobile usability, nowhere in the specs is a direct line from the portable device to wireless data, as the data must pass first through a client (PC) and program (iTunes).

In the past, Apple patents have proven to be a hit-or-miss affair on upcoming technologies found in the company's consumer offerings, although a patent for a superwide laptop trackpad from 2004 ended up being a major feature in Apple's latest ultralight laptop the MacBook Air.

Northeastern University has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, claiming the database architecture that Google uses to feed up search results has been misappropriated, according to The Boston Globe.

The lawsuit claims the technology was developed and patented by a company called Jarg in Waltham, Mass., that was co-founded by Northeastern professor Kenneth Baclawski. The patent, owned by the university and licensed to Baclawski, covers a method for sectioning database queries into different portions that are each processed by a different computer.

The lawsuit was filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which specializes in patent cases.

Update 3 p.m. PT: Google spokesman Jon Murchinson says the lawsuit is without merit.

In another attempt to bolster its profitability, pioneering social-networking site Friendster said Thursday it has received its third U.S. patent in the past nine months.

Officially awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on March 6, Patent No. 7,188,153 B2 covers "System and Method for Managing Connections in an Online Social Network."

The San Francisco-based outfit's first patent, granted in July 2006, covers "A System, Method and Apparatus for Connecting Users in an Online Computer System Based on Their Relationships within Social Networks." It landed a second patent in October 2006 called "Method of Inducing Content Uploads in a Social Network," which is related to the process of adding text, video, pictures and additional content to other users' profiles.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

"These three patents address some fundamentals of online networking--establishing connections, distributing and sharing content, and managing connections over time," David Jones, vice president of marketing, said in a statement Thursday.

The company plans to continue making patent filings in hopes of "growing a very large, global business into an even larger and highly profitable one," Jones added, although he did not disclose any immediate plans to bring infringement suits or assert its patents against rivals.

Friendster, which launched as a "social experiment" in 2003, counts more than 40 million users worldwide and more than 19 million unique visitors per month, according to a company press release.