Apparently, IBM thinks we’d be better off having *another* remote on our collective coffee tables: this one that is web-enabled and automatically tells the world what you are watching on TV. I haven’t read IBM’s whole patent application (but I did read far enough to see that it includes the Wikipedia definition of Twitter – teehee), but it seems that IBM thinks that the current availability of wifi-enabled laptops, netbooks, smart phones and all phones
with SMS capability is just too overwhelming for users wanting to put up a simple, automated, “I am watching So You Think You Can Dance on my local FOX affiliate, 7:00PM EDT.”
The patent application abstract touts users’ ability to “autoblog” their current viewing, “without having to resort to direct interaction with a computer to perform the autoblogging.” Thank goodness! I was so tired of those pesky computers and that cumbersome autoblogging!…
Granted, I’m one of those people who will actually filter out certain words or hashtags during big media events (and yes, the new episode of True Blood counts as a “big media event” for this purpose), so I’m a little biased. However, given that we were recently told that over 40% of what happens on Twitter is junk, I would like IBM to tell me how a device to automate the posting of the most banal information out there promotes, as the Constitution’s framers intended, the useful arts.
[Also, can the US PTO please explain why its images are only presented as TIFFs?!?]
H/t to Brett Trout on this story.
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Hi Laura,
I think that USPTO uses TIFFs because they are a hiqh quality (isn’t it nearly lossless?) format and .psd’s probably don’t display properly. You probably want as close to max quality as you can get when submitting/searching TM’s or patents.