Innoventions thinks RotoView, iPods make a perfect fit
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
May 2, 2006 at 11:58pm
After seeing Macsimum News articles regarding Apple’s possible application development with accelerometers (see “Apple’s new patent reveals a unique gaming tablet application” and “Apple’s new accelerometer patent reveals a stunning tablet PC”), Scott LaRoche of Innoventions feels the companies may share a vision of future handheld device navigation.
Houston, Texas-based Innoventions—whose mission is “to continue to ‘innovent’ innovative and inventive products in all
fields of computers, digital electronics, communications, medical electronics, and mechanical engineering”—has made such products as memory upgrades, SideClock, SimCheck and RAMCheck. But it’s their new RotoView technology (once dubbed GyroView) that offers some interesting possibilities in conjunction with recent Apple patents.
“Like Apple, we believe that users of handheld devices like iPods and tablet computers will want accelerometer-based view navigation options, particularly on devices with small displays,” LaRoche told Macsimum News. “To help accomplish this, we have patented the RotoView Tilt Display Navigation. It allows users to navigate large virtual displays by simply tilting the device. By shifting between ‘fine’ and ‘course’ modes, the user can quickly move across large virtual displays, then ‘slow down’ as they approach the part of the display they want to see. Using other hand gestures, the user can also zoom in or out. It works with either 2-D or 3-D accelerometers.”
In other words RotoView is an application that relies on a two or three dimensional accelerometer that allows the user to navigate (scroll, zoom) a display. RotoView was developed in the late 1990s and we have received two patents (US patent numbers 6,466,198 in 2002 and 6,933,923), with a third pending in Europe.
“We see it being incorporated into digital music players (like the iPod!), tablet PCs (think of being able to move a cursor or scrolling the screen by tilting the device), phones, handheld GPS devices, etc.,” LaRoche says. “RotoView includes a software interface to help product developers and engineers. We think RotoView may be an excellent alternative evaluation platform for Apple’s designs.”
There are many potential applications for RotoView, and Innoventions has created an inexpensive development system for it, he adds. Innoventions is currently searching for potential business partners who may be interested in RotoView for their development and sales efforts.
“Our goal for RotoView is to partner with a large player that recognizes the benefit of this type of navigation and wishes to license the technology so they can incorporate ‘tilt’ navigation into their handheld devices,” LaRoche says. “I think Apple is clearly going this route, based on the chatroom ‘buzz’ and from Apple’s own patent applications. The tablet Mac design was clearly specified in their patent application, and I think this navigation would also find a home in other handheld devices they have, including iPods or other devices we don’t yet know about. We may also be interested in selling the patents outright so that the company can control the patents themselves.”
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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