Unwired View uncovered three new iPhone patents that promise to turn everything from calling grandma on her birthday to turning off your phone in a movie theater into gloriously mindless activities.

Scheduled Communications
"A communications device may be programmed to initiate a communications operation when a particular condition is met. The user may set any suitable condition, including for example a date and time, location, event, received or sent communications operation..."
In other words, automatically email grandma on her birthday, or automatically send your wife a text message when you land in another state "I'm sorry honey, I'm seeing someone else...please pack up my clothing neatly and ship it to me."

Intelligent and Customizable Communication
"The communications system can provide intelligent communications between devices, in which the system can identify appropriate communication modes for incoming communications requests based on a user's preferences and availability. The communications system can determine whether a user is participating in an activity. In response to determining that a user is participating in an activity, the communications system can automatically identify one or more preferred communication modes that are available to the user."
In other words, if I'm at the gym (tracked by my location) or running from the cops (tracked by the jostling of my iPhone since my GPS is off), my family and friends can see that I'd prefer text messages instead of calls.

Life Event Based Modes
"One or more event-based modes of operation may be automatically or selectively applied to the device when a new life event is detected...The event-based modes of operation may be used to restrict access to certain applications or functionalities on the device, enforce or restrict certain user interface or other types of settings, and add or remove or rearrange the priority of device assets. The new life events associated with event-based modes of operation may be of various types, including location-based events, environment-based events, calendar-based events, news-based events, and usage-based events."
In other words, if you walk into a movie theater, your phone could automatically deactivate the ringer and text message notifications, plus it might turn off all push notifications to save some battery life while you weren't actively using your iPhone. Combined with a patent above, potential callers could even see that since you were at a movie, maybe they should delay the call, wait for you in the theater's alley and then threaten you, at knife-point, that you never should have taken out a loan you couldn't pay back just to buy a stupid iPhone.

I'll take it all, Apple. Thanks. [Unwired View]

Do the Pear Post-Its require a Registry to work and get viruses? Are the Apple Post-Its snotty and obnoxious? I don't know, I don't care. They are both pretty and will match your monitor nicely. [D-Bros via Mocoloco]

In what is probably the most surprising non-celebrity-death story in weeks, recently bankrupt Psystar—surly makers of all things hackintosh—is now claiming to be ready for a comeback, with a new product in tow. This makes very little sense.

A superquick recap: Psystar releases the OpenMac, a $400 desktop Mac clone; people debate if this is possible, technically or legally, and if Psystar is a scam; the hackintoshes turn out to be real; they ship; Apple gets upset; Psystar grandstands; Apple continues to be upset; Psystar gets murdered. To death.

That was the story a few weeks ago, at least. Now Psystar is basically acting like nothing happened, releasing a fresh bootloader, a new computer—the $1500, i7-based Open(7) desktop—and revisiting their old, defiant tone in an email newsletter:

As you all may already be aware in late May, Psystar filed for bankruptcy protection. Although this was critical to our continued daily operations, we are now ready to emerge and again battle Goliath.

The whole thing is reproduced below, and definitely worth reading.

Psystar's been subject to all manner or canonization, criticism, popular support and backlash, but now I don't know what to think. On the one hand, all their talk about monopolies, freedom and victimization always stuck me as a little hollow. (David and Goliath? So you're going to kill Apple?) On the other, it now appears as though the guys who run Psystar are either clinically insane, extremely persistent, unusually ballsy or just poorly advised to an extreme. Or all of the above. As Mark said on the story, "they wont stop unless Apple cuts off their hands. And even then, who knows." That spirit alone has got to be worth something, right? [TUAW via Neowin via Slashgear]

A three-wheeled scooter, a bike with a trunk, and the ultimate all-in-one piece of man furniture - release your inner child Jacko-style with the week's best from Uncrate.

This week at Uncrate: We belly up to the bar with a Newcastle DraughtKeg, cook up some round chunks of goodness in the Meatball Grill Basket, and add a little funk to our barren walls with Frames Wallpaper. We also take a ride on the Piaggio MP3 500 Scooter, get wrapped up in American Apparel Bedding, and hit it long with the Nike SQ Dymo STR8-FIT Driver. Finally, we carry our haul home aboard the Madsen Bucket Cargo Bike, kick it in the Nike Air Zoom Hayward + 3, and feast our senses on the greatness of The Man Wall.

The new litter of thin, cheap laptops, as we've seen from Lenovo and Dell, is inherently charming, making the experience of using a cheap, portable laptop bearable for people put off by netbook tininess. There's just one problem.

CNET caught up with Doug Freedman, an analyst for AmTech who has been speaking to device manufacturers:

Early production units being built in plastic, with the bottom case being plastic, are cracking...So, to get that really thin form factor that they're after, they're probably going to have to go with a metal case.

The obvious issue here is that they can't go with a metal case, or else they'll almost certainly cease to be "budget" laptops. As Mark noted in his review, the MSI X340—on the high end of this particular category already—suffered from an alarming flimsiness. Switching the case to aluminum would solve this problem; it would also push the laptop's price even closer to the MacBook Air, effectively eliminating its entire reason for existence.

To be fair, most of the laptops announced in the category haven't even started shipping yet, and problems like this could conceivably be conquered with some clever industrial design wizardry. Sometimes, though, there's a reason a particular product niche—especially an obvious one like this—hasn't been cracked before. [CNET]

We have seen the shuttle on an spectacular shot on top of its 747 mothership and a video of their almost impossible take off, but we have never seen a time lapse video on how everything gets ready.

Someone from NASA has sent us this unique video of shuttle Atlantis: A time lapse of the shuttle getting ready to be mounted on its 747 mothership at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, just before returning to Florida. I just can't believe how complex and laborious something that is conceptually so simple could be. It's just sad that many people take for granted the hard and complex work that the boys and girls at NASA do to keep the much-needed space exploration going on with a meager budget.

It's fair to say that everyone would've loved it if the last remote for the Sonos wireless media systems, the $400 C100, had a touchscreen. It didn't. Years later, the CR200 does, but it might be a bit late.

Oddly enough, this is Sonos' fault in every possible way. We don't have any specs, price or features, but given how close to perfect the free iPhone app for Sonos is, this wireless controller may have a hard time competing as an add-on product, especially if it's priced above the $229 baseline iPod Touch. In bundles, I suppose it'll do fine.

Speaking of which! Automated Home says the CR200 will be part of a spruced up Sonos system bundle:

The BU150 now changes to the BU250 which includes the CR200. There also is a slight colour change with the zoneplayers hardware to match the new controller but there are no technical changes & will still be named the ZP120 & ZP90

If that means anything to you, you probably know that this is a good thing. If not, then it's time to read up. [Automated Home via Engadget]

ASUS's touchscreen PC-in-a-keyboard was expected to land in June, according to rumors direct statements from company executives. That didn't happen! Prices and specs are presumably unchanged, but the new release date is somewhere in August. [Techdigest via Slashgear]

...When It's Not OK To Steal From a Church...Apple May Say Buh-Bye to Nvidia...Best Buy Shoppers Admit This Smartphone Thing Is Soooo Confusing...Exactly Who Is America's Fastest Typist?...

Some a-holes stole 31 monitors from a driveway as they were being transported from a hospital to a church, which was to ship them to hospitals in Cameroon, Africa. After a bit of community outreach, all but two monitors mysteriously reappeared with a note: "Sorry for the trouble hope you forgive us hope those kids in Africa enjoy." What exactly does this teach our children? No friggin' clue. [Switched]

Best Buy commissioned a poll, and released the "findings" to Dealerscope: Even though only one-fifth of people in their 20s and 30s currently have a smartphone, a "sizable segment" plan to buy one in the next year. However, forces that hold them back include "price, dislike of shopping, and confusion about the technology." Obvious? Sure. Vague? Absolutely. Helpful? That's a negative. [Dealerscope]

Apparently Nvidia thinks it's got a permanent thing with Apple, but Apple's all like, "No way, I can totally see other GPU manufacturers, and what's all that about you overheating, huh?" As exciting as I tried to make it there, you can see this is not only boring news, but when it comes to sticking with Nvidia or ATI as a brand, well, know what? It just doesn't matter. [Electronista]

We don't typically run promos for contests unless they're really up our alley—and certainly not if it's just some crass promotional play like this—but something about the "America's Fastest Typist" contest notice made me think: How fast is America's fastest typist? We all use keyboards everyday, nonstop, right? This entire generation could have been Mavis Beacon all-stars 20 years ago, but someone out there is better than all of us. I will follow up, because although I absolutely don't want to know who the Tiger Woods of typing is, I do want to know how fast he/she can type. [KeyRight]

Though it looks a lot like a larger version of those little cigarette rollers, this gadget is actually used to form perfect stuffed Japanese gyozas. We like it, but Alton Brown would never approve of such a single-function device.

Gyozas, like empanadas, dumplings, or knishes, consist of a stuffing (usually ground meat and spices) wrapped in a thin piece of dough (a "gyoza skin" here in the States) that is then deep-fried, pan-fried, or steamed. They can be a little tricky, because if they're not sealed airtight they can explode in mid-fry, spraying burning hot oil and gyoza insides everywhere. This gadget looks to automate the process for a perfect seal.

It may not be the most versatile of kitchen gadgets, but if you're doing a huge batch of gyozas and are some kind of wuss who fears horrible oil burns, we could see it being pretty handy. It's Japan-only for now, but we're sure an import kitchen supply store would have this or a similar device. [Akihabara News]