My patent (assigned to Microsoft) on using GPS data to augment a web browser request. This patent took 6 years(!) to issue (filed in 1998 and issued in 2004).

I'm not aware of any products using this now. The invention uses a new HTTP request header to send the user's GPS location. A GPS-aware server, can then respond with geo-targeted results AND provide a geo-graphic "expiration" zone (the comapatible browser will re-fresh automatically when the user leaves the valid zone).

Deb just got her Kindle last night. I think the Kindle is GREAT. Yes, it is easy to accidentally hit the right-hand Next-Page button when holding a Kindle. But I hold it at the bottom when reading so it's not a very bad problem - just a minor annoyance.

Features I like:
- Display is GORGEOUS! High resolution and awesome contrast. For print - better than an LCD display.
- I don't think it looks cheap at all. The device feels light weight, but solid.
- Interface is simple an intuitive.
- You can bookmark, annotate, or "clip" whole pages to save markers, or your thoughts. Your clippings file can be transfered to a computer (via USB only, I think).
- Downloading content (without a PC) to a Kindle is fast and frictionless.

Kindle comes with a Web Browser (in the experimental section) - I've not seen any developer information on the functionality of the Kindle browser (though it DOES have javascript support). I wonder if there will be a market for Kindle-optimized or Kindle-specific web sites (as their have been for the iPhone).

The Android/Google Phone browser is based on WebKit.

Quoted: WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that's used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. WebKit's HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE. This website is also the home of S60's S60 WebKit development.

The canvas tag allows you to draw vector graphics in the browser. Currently supported in Safari and FireFox. IE has an open source project implementing canvas in IE at

http://excanvas.sourceforge.net

Social Network integration experiment in the Mozilla (Firefox) code base. They are looking to use existing services for the backend - we should see if Blue Dot would be a good way to do this!

Quoted: The idea is to use RSS subscriptions to existing web service data feeds as a transport mechanism for all the various functionality. It will be up to us to cleverly mask this, but I'm thinking:

THIS is cool. First person shooter in JavaScript using the Canvas tag. Works in both Firefox and IE 7!

The last (of 3) patents I wrote at Microsoft. I felt at the time that this patent had a pretty broad scope - but relies on the convergence of GPS and Web browsing technology. I filed this in 1998, but not issued until 2004 (2 years after I left MS).

There are probably many infringing products now - I don't know if Microsoft is enforcing this patent or not.

Memory leak detector for IE.

Biz Week produced this "slideshow" format story about how Firefox is marketing themselves, and got to 10% market share.

Quoted: The little browser that could has grabbed 10% market share thanks to Mozilla's inventive marketing and a skulk of fox-fervent volunteers