Apple wants to let your friends drive

The latest patent filings from Big Tech.

Apple wants to let your friends drive
Image: Rainbow Designs/Govind Dhiman/Noun Project

The slow summer has finally caught up with patent filings. This week: Google wants to fix your workflow, Apple wants to help you keep your Apple Pencil safe and Microsoft wants everyone to have fun when they play video games, no matter what.

As always, remember that the big tech companies file all kinds of crazy patents for things, and though most never amount to anything, some end up defining the future.

Alphabet

Allowing for different workflows

Google docs are pretty straightforward: You write in the doc, edit it, allow other people to edit it, and all of the changes are stored in a version history that anyone can see. But a linear workflow isn't the only kind of workflow that's out there. Sometimes a branched workflow is more appropriate, such as when building a web portal. In those instances, each component is composed of various versions that all come together to make one item.

Right now, document editors are only able to do one workflow at a time. But in this patent, Google imagines a way for both workflows to exist in the same document, and you can switch between them, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. That way you don't have to use various editors to do one task, and if you're sharing the document with someone else, they, too, can choose which workflow style they want to use.

Apple

Animated avatars

Emojis are fine, but animated Memojis are even better. You can send one to a friend and it can more or less figure out your emotions by analyzing your facial features via the camera. But what if it's not really reading your face and accurately depicting your current mood? Or what if you, for some reason, want to create an avatar when you're in a meeting, as this patent suggests?

Apple wants to figure out other ways of animating avatars, and it's starting with the simplest: by typing in the emotions you're feeling. If you want to send a text to your mom that you can't come to the party, you can send a text that says, "I'm sorry I can't come to the party," then give it a command, "send with a sad robot," and the message will go through with a robot looking sad. The system could even offer a dropdown of various emotions, so you can choose which one to send. Never feel bad for missing a party again, because you've got a sad robot on your side to help.

Storage for your Apple Pencil

Although it's known for its clean designs, some Apple designs are a miss. For example, try using your Magic Mouse while you're charging it. I'll wait.

But that's not the only big miss: No Apple devices have a built-in, dedicated, secure spot for an Apple Pencil. Apple's trying to change that with one of its recent patent filings, which imagines a little slot at the top of your laptop keyboard that can fit a Pencil. Does this have anything to do with last week's patent filing that imagined a touchscreen MacBook?

Give others access to your ride

Most vehicles require a key or key fob to enter. But what if you want to let your friend drive your car? Give them the key, of course. But what if you're on vacation? Or what if your car offers a way to input a code? You'd have to change the code once you got back so your friend didn't take your car for joy rides at night.

This patent aims to make everyone's life easier by providing a token to a friend based on their phone number or some other type of identification method, similar to how apps use tokens to authorize users. But with this method, the car effectively "locks" the user out after using it or after a set amount of time by the owner.

Facebook

A better way to virtually type

When using a VR headset, there are ways to use a virtual keyboard to input text. But often the inputs don't give any kinesthetic feedback, and typos might occur. This patent imagines a way to fix that by using a language model that can autocorrect or autocomplete a word in real time. When the headset determines that you're not really paying attention to the keyboard, or that your typing slows down or speeds up, or your gaze shifts, it can be a little more aggressive in fixing typos and finishing your sentences.

Microsoft

Playing with friends

Playing games online, like first-person shooters or MMORPGs, can be fun — unless your skill level doesn't match the others. Whether you're too good, or really bad, if everyone's skill doesn't match up, it could leave gamers feeling disengaged. This patent wants to change that by assigning various game modes to players of varying skill levels. If you're a level 1, it will assign you easy tasks to do that help the entire team complete the mission. If you're a level 10, it will assign you hard tasks to do that will also contribute to finishing the mission. Everyone will be able to enjoy playing with friends, no matter the skill levels of the entire team.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

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Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

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FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

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Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

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Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

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Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

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