Filed in 2008 and granted by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office this week, Apple has been awarded a patent for filtering text message content.
The patent is titled “Text-based communication control for personal communication device.”
It is unclear whether the patent will ever find its way into an iOS product but it seems Apple’s intention is to cut down on “offensive” texts sent from consumers using Apple devices.
Reads the patent: “One problem with text-based communications is that there is no way to monitor and control text communications to make them user appropriate. For example, users such as children may send or receive messages (intentionally or not) with parentally objectionable language.”
Additionally, the patent proposes a way to encourage better grammar in texts. The filtering system can not really work without proper grammar, as many phone users write in shorthand or use words that may not necessarily be in a dictionary, like “LOL.”
Apple’s patent would disallow the use of non-dictionary words.
Result for: text messages
T-Mobile MyTouch 3G Slide owners will begin receiving an OTA update for their Android operating system tomorrow, but it is not the highly anticipated Android 2.2 Froyo upgrade.
Along with optimizations comes some nice bug fixes as well, including a fix for an issue that has been quite annoying to me as an owner; the inability to receive MMS when connected to Wi-Fi.
Says T-Mobile: “Beginning August 4, T-Mobile will send an over-the-air (OTA) update to myTouch 3G Slide customers, which will provide a number of benefits, including increased battery performance and enhancements to software features such as Faves Gallery and Genius Button. The update will be sent to customers in staggered waves beginning August 4 and we anticipate all customers will receive it by August 19.”
The improvements to Battery Life consist of “Updates to the T-Mobile online contact backup connection, which will improve battery life.”
Users will now be able to send and receive MMS messages when connected to Wi-Fi.
The “Genius Button” is now improved with the “Ability to turn GPS on and off using your voice, such as “Turn GPS on.” The button will also announce Caller ID for incoming voice calls and allow you to “Answer” or “Ignore” using your voice. Finally, the button will announce incoming text messages and allow you to “reply” with dictation.”
Furthermore, the “Faves Gallery” is improved “the Faves icon being displayed beside notifications that appear while the device is locked to indicate that the communication is coming from one of your Faves. Fave photo display speed will be enhanced. Finally, general stability will be improved, including more seamless scrolling and consistent display of photos.”
Result for: text messages
Earlier this week a company called Lookout showed how several Android wallpaper apps were accessing user information, including phone number, subscriber identification, voicemail password, browsing history, text messages & the phone’s SIM card number.
The claims were made during a presentation at this week’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.
In a number of interviews since then the developer, Jackeey Wu, has released a statement denying most of these claims and Lookout has since agreed that only the phone number, subscriber identification & voicemail password (when stored on the phone) were accessed and sent to Wu’s server in China.
Wu stated, “I collected the screen size to return more suitable wallpaper for the phone. More and More users emailed me telling that they love my wallpaper apps so much, because that even “Background” can’t well suited the phone’s screen. I also collected device id,phone number and subscriber id, it has no relationship with user data. There are few apps in Android market has the favorites feature. Many users suggest that I should provide the feature so I use the these to identify the device, so they can favorite the wallpapers more conveniently, and resume his favorites after system resetting or changing the phone.”
He also included a screenshot from installing one of the apps, showing the permissions used. You can read the entire statement below.
Lookout’s clarification on their website says, “While the data this app is accessing is certainly suspicious coming from a wallpaper app, we want to be clear that there is no evidence of malicious behavior. There have been cases in the past where applications are simply a little overzealous in their data gathering practices, but not because of any ill intent.”
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