TechFlash: "A U.S. design patent received by Microsoft today for a "dual display device" looks like a mere remnant of the days when the company's Courier project was still a going concern. However, the fact that Microsoft filed for a design patent earlier this year shows that the company was serious, at one point, about the possibility of bringing Courier to market as a product in its own right -- before killing it off.
Based on the illustrations, the design patent is pretty clearly for the Courier device, the "secret tablet" from Microsoft that was revealed by Gizmodo last year and held up as a potential rival to Apple's iPad. In April, Microsoft confirmed and canceled the Courier project in one fell swoop but noted that the underlying technologies would still be "evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings."
Microsoft has made it easy for iPhone users to check their mobile updates on Windows-enabled computers.
Is nothing sacred?
Microsoft's next-generation storage API for PC games might be kind of a mess. Taking a look at the news around the DirectStorage implementation in Forspoken and what it might mean for the API going forward.
