Girl, Apple's gonna make you sweat with a treadmill patent

Wednesday means we're about to delve into Cupertino's newest patents. Remember: just because there's a patent, doesn't mean it'll be in your next iPad. Got it? Good. This week's haul starts with a rather dry patent to correct bad motion sensing. Accelerometer-based devices are only as good as the data it collects, using a flat horizontal plane as a reference point -- any incline and the whole show is ruined. Apple's 3D patent can mathematically correct for gravitational movement along the "plane of motion." The second's about getting sweaty on sports equipment. Shove your iPod into a treadmill and it'll record your vital statistics for uploading to a third party website for "mutual encouragement." It wouldn't be hard to imagine this working its way into something similar to Nike+, but it would be hard to imagine Nike insisting that Apple just do it.