Did You Know...
...that several people are credited with the invention of the flush toilet? Most people have heard of Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), the sanitary engineer who invented the valve-and-siphon arrangement that made the modern toilet possible. Another claimant to "the throne" was British inventor Alexander Cumming who patented a toilet in 1775. Then there's a nameless Minoan (a native of ancient Crete) who lived 4,000 years ago who supposedly was ahead of his time and created the first flush toilet!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7397345 | Method and vehicle for sending electronic advertisements A method and a vehicle (11) for sending electronic advertising announcements, information news or voice messages are described. A controllable, moving, unmanned vehicle (11) moves in a network of communication devices (9, 20) in a direction. Whe... | 07/08/2008 |
| 7363029 | Unified interface for voice, text or picture message authoring A unified messaging interface and associated methods that enables mobile communication device users to initiate the creation of a message for a recipient without being required to explicitly specify the type of message that is to be created. The mobile communication... | 04/22/2008 |
| 7327277 | Information transmission apparatus, information transmission method, and monitoring apparatus In an information transmitter (2) which is a portable personal information device, a system control circuit (26) analyzes information on vibration obtained from an acceleration sensor (22), information on temperature obtained from a temperature ... | 02/05/2008 |
| 7315689 | Recording system A recording system for preventing inconsistencies between the time information of the AV data which is recorded on the recording medium of the image sensing device (camera integrated digital video recorder and so on), and the time information of the AV data which is... | 01/01/2008 |
| 7305256 | Method, apparatus and program for providing user-selected alerting signals in telecommunications devices A method for operating a user communication device (18a, 18b, 19a, 19b), and a program and user communication device that operate in accordance with that method. An interface (2d, 2b, | 12/04/2007 |
| 7295863 | Portable telephone Disclosed is a portable telephone in which the informing of a reception is performed at the time of the reception by causing a buzzer to generate its reception sound and simultaneously a history of the reception is recorded in a memory, wherein in the case no respon... | 11/13/2007 |
| 7289578 | Wireless local area network apparatus A wireless local area network apparatus includes a transmitter and a receiver in which operation of the receiver is accurately synchronized with periodic signals from the transmitter. The periodic signals contain timing data indicating the state of a timer in the tr... | 10/30/2007 |
| 7289768 | Portable terminal capable of guiding user to invoke a function and method thereof A portable terminal capable of guiding a user to invoke a function and a method thereof. In the portable terminal, a voice detector detects a keyword uttered by voice corresponding to a function; a display displays guide information for guiding a user to access the ... | 10/30/2007 |
| 7274311 | Animated display of traffic information A method is disclosed for displaying traffic information on a display. Information that indicates traffic conditions on a portion of a road network is used to form an animation. The portion of the road network is shown on the display and the animation is shown on th... | 09/25/2007 |
| 7272406 | System and method for in-transit SMS language translation A system and method for facilitating electronic communication between people who speak different languages. An SMS message including content in a first language is received at a network node. It is then determined whether the content of the SMS message is to be tran... | 09/18/2007 |
| 7259666 | Method and system for displaying status indications from communications network A method and system for displaying status indications from a communications network is provided. Alert identifiers are provided that identify a communications-network alert to be presented to a user on a display device. A set of presentation attributes desired to be... | 08/21/2007 |
| 7254118 | Method and apparatus in a CDMA communication system A novel and improved method and apparatus, in a WCDMA communication system (100), for informing a mobile station (101) of a downlink data frame time offset by determining the downlink data frame time offset, and transmitting the downlink data frame tim... | 08/07/2007 |
| 7248863 | Alert-me management system for telecommunications infrastructure and method of operation thereof An alert-me management system for a telecommunications infrastructure and a method of providing an alert-me service. In one embodiment, the system includes: (1) distributed alert-me request servers configured to receive and aggregate alert-me requests pertaining to ... | 07/24/2007 |
| 7215246 | Binding for one-way wireless transmissions A system allows binding in a one-way wireless transmission. The system includes a transmitting wireless device having a button and a receiving wireless device having a signaling mechanism. The second wireless device receives a code transmitted from the first wireles... | 05/08/2007 |
| 7211958 | Modulation of a background light or any illumination of a mobile phone A communication device such as a cellular or wireless telephone handset has a light display, such as handset cover light or display backlight, synchronized to audio signals from multiple audio sources such as a microphone or AM/FM receiver. The communication device ... | 05/01/2007 |
| 7209949 | System and method for synchronizing information between a host system and a mobile data communication device A system and method of pushing user-selected data items from a host system to a user's mobile data communication device upon detecting the occurrence of one or more user-defined event triggers is provided. The user may then move (or file) the data items to a particu... | 04/24/2007 |
| 7203523 | Portable telephone with musical tones playback and class response to incoming call(s) A portable telephone is designed to control generation of musical tones and/or incoming call sound in response to classes of telephone numbers by which incoming calls are to be received. That is, the portable telephone stops generating musical tones while generating... | 04/10/2007 |
| 7193620 | Wireless device lighting system A wireless device lighting system provides backlighting of a display (104) and/or a user interface (1526) of a wireless device (100). A user interface (1526) includes a plurality of buttons (112) for entering information and at lea... | 03/20/2007 |
| 7190947 | Priority E911 call back during access class restrictions An apparatus (100) and method (200) for enabling a wireless communication device operating during access class restrictions to receive an incoming emergency call for a predefined time period are provided. After the wireless communication device (100... | 03/13/2007 |
| 7170883 | Information encoding and decoding method Portions of transmitted messages, such as a portion of a service option field, can include a coded representation. The coded representation can correlate to previously stored information as retained at a receiving unit. Upon receiving the coded representation, the r... | 01/30/2007 |
| 7167781 | Tactile device and method for providing information to an aircraft or motor vehicle or equipment operator A tactile device for an aircraft operator has a plurality of tactors for being passively attached to an aircraft operator, the plurality of tactors including a first tactor and a second tactor neighboring the first tactor. A control system controls actuation of the ... | 01/23/2007 |
| 7159008 | Chat interface with haptic feedback functionality A chat interface allowing a user to exchange haptic chat messages with other users in a chat session over a computer network. A chat interface can be displayed by a local computer and receives input data from a user of the local computer, such as text characters or ... | 01/02/2007 |
| 7151953 | Communication apparatus having a light emitting unit that emits light in a variety of colors A communication apparatus of the present invention notifies a user that one of a plurality of events has occurred, and includes a first reception unit, a second reception unit, a detection unit, and a light emitting unit. The first reception unit receives from the u... | 12/19/2006 |
| 7147351 | Illumination system for illuminating an electronic device with multicolored light An illumination system including light source elements including at least a first element for emitting a first color light and a second element for emitting a second color light whose color is different from the first color light. A screen receives the projecting li... | 12/12/2006 |
| 7143144 | System, method and computer readable medium for certifying release of electronic information on an internet A method of certifying the existence of electronic information released on a network at a time and date. The network connects one or more computer servers and a plurality of client computers with each other. Electronic information of a web page stored in one of the ... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7042364 | User programmable portable proximity detector A portable proximity alert detector is provided for a user to determine when at least one companion comes within a predetermined range of the user. The device includes a receiving portion for wirelessly receiving a first signal encoded with a code identifying a comp... | 05/09/2006 |
| 7030730 | System and method for formatting an electronic message A client/server based system provides an integrated messages system for a user having access to accounts on a number of different terminal communication devices, including at least one wireless terminal device. In a preferred embodiment, the system includes an agent... | 04/18/2006 |
| 7020498 | Portable telephone A portable telephone downloads from the music download center the music data that contain tone color data, tempo data, and a series of note data and rest data with respect to at least a single musical tune. A CPU outputs to an interface the tone color data, and the ... | 03/28/2006 |
| 7016701 | Apparatus for displaying an illumination pattern and method thereof An apparatus and method for displaying an illumination pattern includes a plurality of illumination regions (222, 224, 226 and 228), wherein each of the plurality of illumination regions (222–228), are capable of illuminating in one or more of... | 03/21/2006 |
| 7009579 | Transmitting apparatus and method, receiving apparatus and method, transmitting and receiving apparatus and method, record medium and signal On the transmission side, a background picture and objects #1 to #3 are transmitted at a transmission rate R/4 each. On the reception side, a picture composed of the objects #1 to #3 and the background picture is displayed with a particul... | 03/07/2006 |
| 7010058 | Wireless local area network apparatus A wireless local area network apparatus includes a transmitter and a receiver in which operation of the receiver is accurately synchronized with periodic signals from the transmitter. The periodic signals contain timing data indicating the state of a timer in the tr... | 03/07/2006 |
| 6998959 | System and method for providing user-selected information to a paging-capable device A system and method for providing user-selected information to a paging-capable device. An enhanced paging system responsive to information sources and a selection device transmits information to a paging-capable device. The enhanced paging system comprises a storin... | 02/14/2006 |
| 6993364 | Communication device with history based alerts and method therefor A communication device (100) includes a transceiver (115) for receiving a call, a received calls memory (145) for storing call sources (300) and for storing an associated call count (315) for each call source (310), a user p... | 01/31/2006 |
| 6990331 | Mobile terminal With a mobile terminal which is adapted to receive a message transmitted by radio through the telephone network and to store the message in the nonvolatile member and to show the message on a display, when energized, checksum for the message stored in the nonvolatil... | 01/24/2006 |
| 6980213 | Terminal device for mobile communication In a mobile communication terminal device that obtains data including text or an image from an external server through a digital network, a display displays display data DD generated based on data in a first storage unit. A plurality of display modes are predetermin... | 12/27/2005 |
| 6980083 | Radio communication system, radio communication apparatus, and radio communicating method A mobile station capable of connected to an information providing server via a radio link, comprises a reception history table which stores an identification of information which has been received, and a controller which prevents the same information from being rece... | 12/27/2005 |
| 6965786 | Annunciators for voice and data applications in wireless communication devices Techniques to provide the current status of voice and data applications in wireless devices. Annunciators are provided for these applications and are displayed as appropriate to indicate their current status. Certain applications may further be associated with addit... | 11/15/2005 |
| 6963762 | Mobile phone using tactile icons A mobile phone or telecommunications terminal that sends and receives tactile icons (tactile sensation patterns, including vibration patterns) discernible by feel to a user of the mobile phone or terminal, indicative of a message desired to be communicated between u... | 11/08/2005 |
| 6950403 | Method for time-stamping a message based on a recipient location A method time-stamps an electronic message in accordance with information about the time zone in which the intended recipient resides where the message is originally received by a message center in a time zone different from the intended recipient. ... | 09/27/2005 |
| 6918039 | Method and an apparatus for detecting a need for security and invoking a secured presentation of data A method and an apparatus in a data processing system detects the presence of sensitive data and renders this data in a secured manner. The data processing system may be any device with information presentation capability which can receive data from a network. Detec... | 07/12/2005 |
