Type of Article: MacTech Blog

By Greg Mills

There is a story in the international press today that tells how the government of India is touting an Internet connecting touch screen pad that runs Linux, with a browser, has PDF display capabilities, WiFi, 2GBs of memory and potentially email and other features.  

India has 250,000 villages that need to be dragged into age of the Internet. The prototyped device, called “Nano” is designed to offer communications for the government to interface with all the little villages and support educational programs, as well.

An Apple patent (number 20100182159) for a contactless plug detect mechanism has appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. This is directed to systems and methods for detecting the insertion of a plug in a device port without physically contacting the plug.

The patent is for an audio player includes an audio headset having two earpieces. A playback circuit provides one of a stereophonic program and a monaural program to the audio headset. The monaural program may be created by mixing channels of the stereophonic program. A mode control is coupled to the playback circuit and to the audio headset. The mode control detects when at least one of the two earpieces is not adjacent a listener’s ear and causes the playback circuit to deliver the monaural program to the audio headset.