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Creative patent filing reveals drag and drop interface with "action tabs"
Creative's made itself pretty well acquainted with the FCC as of late, and it looks like it's also been doing its part to keep the old Patent and Trademark Office busy as well, with a recently revealed application showing off some plans for a drag and drop touchscreen interface. That's obviously somewhat of a tricky area to patent, but it seems that Creative's big new idea is something called "action tabs" that could be used for something as simple as tabbed web browsing, but would apparently also be applied to other OS elements as well -- letting you drag something to the clipboard, for instance, or drag a photo to an action item of some sort. Just as interesting as the patent itself, however, is the fact that it's assigned to Creative subsidiary 3DLABS, now known as ZiiLABS, makers of the touchscreen-based Zii EGG. Like we said, interesting.[Via Tech in Hiding]
Is this Creative's full-screen Zen Vision?
Sit down, we're going to take you for a bit of ride which might just end with Creative launching the next generation Zen Vision model sporting HD video and GPS navigation. Some forum jockeys on Epizenter.net have put 2-and-2 together over at the 3DLABS Semiconductor site. See, 3DLABS -- a former subsidiary of Creative -- has a DMS-02 media processor with DMScaler technology which can playback 720p, H.264-formatted video on the small screen without transcoding or upscale it for output to your 1080p television. It also features high-end 3D navigation which looks pretty damn responsive even when slicing through fully textured maps overlaid with satellite images. What has Zen Vision fans now in a tizzy -- uh hmm, nearly 4 months after the video and pictures were released -- is that 3DLABS is demoing their wares on a touchscreen device sporting a Zen Vision video cable. As speculative as all this is, devout Creative fanboys who may have recently lost their way should be stoked by the prospects of a full-screen device they can call their own. [Via Epizenter, thanks Dan]
