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Google's Project Glass trackpad gets swaddled in patent protection
Remember when Sergey Brin was on The Gavin Newsom Show showing off Project Glass' right-sided physical trackpad? Today, that element of the tech was given the official thumbs-up by the US patent and trademark office. Legally-trained minds in the audience concerned about the appearance forming prior art, take it easy -- the patent was filed five days before the Google chief took to basic cable to demonstrate his pet project to the current Lt. Governor of California.
Project Glass revealed to have physical trackpad along right arm (video)
Sergey Brin has appeared on The Gavin Newsom Show on Current TV to drop a few more enticing hints about Project Glass. While showing the presenter a picture he'd taken with the AR glasses, he revealed that the prototype is controlled with a trackpad running down the right* arm. He also talked about the device's genesis in Goggle's (pun intended) X Lab, which he described as an "advanced skunkworks" where "far-out projects" are developed -- it's also the department that occupies most of his time. While the units he and his colleagues have been wearing are very rough prototypes, the Google co-founder shared his private hope that the tech will make its way to general release next year. You can catch the extract in full in the video after the break. *Right for the wearer, left for the observer. It depends entirely on your perspective.
San Francisco City Hall gets its own electric vehicle charging stations
It's a long way from the city-wide infrastructure that GM and others envision, but San Francisco has now at least taken one more step in that direction with three new Smartlet electric vehicle charging stations installed right outside City Hall. Those chargers, on loan from Coulomb Technologies, will be used to charge vehicles from ZipCar, City CarShare, and one unspecified "plug-in car in the City of San Francisco municipal fleet," and Mayor Gavin Newsom (an early EV1 owner himself) says he hopes they are just the first of more to come, adding that he's also talking to other Bay Area cities about purchasing additional electric vehicles for municipal fleets. In related news, AutoblogGreen also got confirmation from ZipCar that its first plug-in vehicle is in fact a one-off converted PHEV Prius designated specifically for City Hall, though it apparently didn't elaborate on any future plug-in vehicles.[Via AutoblogGreen]