Because they are skins that change color with a flick of your finger across their surface. There was a second reason…but memory fades…

Happily, they use no power whatsoever from your portable device. It’s true. Highly reflective LCD technology.

Currently available for iPod Touch, coming soon for iPhone. Check out all the designs at the Improv Electronics site.

Skin Flik

DirecTV pumps up its premium channel.
Satcaster to enhance, rebrand 101 Network as Audience Network.

DirecTV is devoting more resources to building its own premium channel in a bid to better harness the platform provided by its 19 million-plus subscribers.

As of June 1, the satcaster’s in-house 101 Network will be rebranded as the Audience Network. DirecTV plans a big marketing push for the change, which dovetails with the mid-July launch of the new season of “Damages.”…Derek Chang, DirecTV’s exec veep of content strategy strategy and development, and Chris Long, senior veep of content strategy and development, told Variety they view Audience Network as an opportunity to program their own pay TV-style channel and make it a big selling point for DirecTV with subscribers.

“We call it giving subscribers a premium channel without having to pay a premium price,” Long said. “We see our wheelhouse as programming that is edgy and thought-provoking.”

The Audience Network at the DirecTV website.

Igor

“A personal conveyance named after its inventor, an assassinated ruler, a character from Greco-Roman myth and a small furry mammal.” – Beldar Conehead

Uh oh. Seems like Cisco Systems runs a big chuck of the Internet on some thing called iOS. It’s deja vu all over again: you may recall back in 2007 when the iPhone was announced that Cisco owned the trademark for the name “iPhone”. Once again, Apple rolls out the strategy of “name it what we want, get legal to make it happen later”. Cool. If every company operated like this, it would make the job of naming companies much, much easier. And put more lawyers to work, recharging our economy in the process.

UPDATE: Kudos to Apple for making a legal deal with Cisco this time before launching the product. Says Cisco: “Cisco has agreed to license the iOS trademark to Apple for use as the name of Apple’s operating system for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.  The license is for use of the trademark only and not for any technology.”

Wordlab’s Business Name Generator – 7,223,742 potential company, product or domain names to chose from.

Name Builder – Over 340,000 possible combinations — try it for a company name, rock band, album title, product name, book of poetry.

Restaurant / Bar Name Generator – Over 100,000 potential names for your restaurant, bar, pizzaria, taco stand, tavern, pub, cafe, bagel shop, etc.

Band Name Generator – 4193 band names direct from Wordlab’s personal collection.

Drug-O-Matic – Over 9.3 million potential drug names lurking within this little apothecary’s monster.

Character Name Generator – If you need to name any kind of character, human or otherwise, this is the mother lode. With 379,175,790 potential names, mostly well off the beaten track, you can populate an entire country with uniquely named characters.

Morpheme Machine – If mashing morphemes is your thing (attention Landor!), here are over 151,000 chunks of lingo chum to chew on.

The ACME Namemaker – And finally, when you don’t want to stand out from the crowd, here are over 26,000 ways to blend in quite nicely. I think this one must be the most popular with Igor’s competitors.

Happy naming!

Geek.com picks up the story:

It’s everything the iPad was meant to be, according to German-based Neofonie GmbH that designed the device. WePad sports a large 11.6-inch screen and is fitted with a webcam and two USB ports, the two features sadly missing from Apple’s device. WePad runs Intel’s chip and a Linux software that supports both Flash content and Android apps. It’ll come preloaded with an open-sourced office productivity suite, too.

In case you’re wondering, yes – WePad will also do digital magazines. Neofonie teamed up with Europe’s largest magazine publisher Gruner+Jahr that promised to bring its flagship magazine Stern on the WePad.

It gets even better, as the company puts its indelible spin in the power of “We” (perhaps Nintendo might like to jump in here and Wii all over Neofonie as well), which is just so much more awesome than “I” (or “i”):

And if all of that wasn’t enough, Neofonie is dragging the Cupertino rival through the mud with its unapologetic marketing talk. For example, here’s how they defend the name choice:

Some people seem to think life is all about the I, and the Me, Me, Me. We beg to differ. To us, the power of many beats the power of one.

“Some people”, indeed. Unfortunately for Neofonie, “some people” also have an army of lawyers standing by to slice the “Pad” right off of their “We”. So if Apple sucessfully keeps them from using “Pad”, and Nintendo jumps in and says they can’t use “We”, they might be left with WePad, or eeP, at least until Asus’s legal eagles claim a risk of confusion with their Eee PC, and take away their “e”.

I think this padacious upstart should just go with truth in advertising, and call it the Neofonie. Ask any “Expert, texpert”. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all Neofonie… And here are some major recently-granted Apple iPad patents that Neofonie would do well not to tread on:

• Methods and apparatuses for operating a portable device based on an accelerometer (3.30.10)
• Multipoint touchscreen (2.16.10)
• Electronic device having display and surrounding touch sensitive bezel for user interface and control (2.2.10)
• User interface gestures (2.2.10)
• Proximity detector in handheld device (1.26.10)
• Automatic detection of channel bandwidth (1.26.10)
• Systems and methods for color managing content elements on a display device (1.26.10)
• Identifying contacts on a touch surface (11.17.09)

More: Here are 82,212 ‘tablet computer’ related patents for your viewing pleasure.

The new Wordlab is a full-fledged social network for naming and wordplay, collaboration and creative thinking. As such it is structured a bit differently than what you are used to if you were a user of the old Wordlab and its Wordboard forum, but the opportunities for interaction and collaboration are much greater and more powerful.

Check it out, sign up for a free membership, and join in the fun, either as someone looking for naming help, someone who can lend suggestions and advice to other users, or both.

The Dunder Mifflin logo sports an infinity symbol

Xfinity is meant to signal Comcast’s foray into the future of high tech possibilities, while at Dunder Mifflin, “Infinity” is the name of the internal initiative to bring technology to the failing paper company.

Why would the comedy writers of “The Office” chose the name “Dunder Mifflin Infinity” for the high tech effort? Because it is silly, obvious, pitiful and ridiculous, in keeping with ambiance of the show.

The name was such a hit that DunderMifflinInfinity.com is the show’s official fansite.

In the second episode of the fourth season titled “Dunder Mifflin Infinity”, regional manager Michael Scott best summed up the idea of “Infinity” (or Xfinity, for that matter):

“Everyone always wants new things. Everybody likes new inventions, new technology. People will never be replaced by machines. In the end, life and business are about human connections. And computers are about trying to murder you in a lake. And to me, the choice is easy.”

“Comcast Xfinity. The possibilities are mindless”

Erotic Capital