AT&T has recently announced that they have a new plan in the works for those who go the GoPhone route. Basically, pay $60 a month and you will be given unlimited voice and messaging to all of North America including 100 other countries.

If you’re looking to get down on this plan head to your local AT&T store on October 12th as that is when it goes live.

via phonescoop

Tags: At&T, Cell Phones, gophone, messaging, Mobile News, Mobile Software, Plan, Unlimited, voice, wireless

The above patent filed by Apple was recently spotted by AppleInsider which gives us a glimpse at a new feature in the works that could possibly find its way into a future iPhone OS update.

The patent deals with both in-call messaging and file transfer which will elimnate the need to hang up before you do so. Below is an excerpt from the filing:

While a user of a mobile device is using telephony services, the user may want to send a message or a file to another part. To send this information, the user may have to disconnect the call, and then perform a lookup of the caller’s contact information prior to being able to send the message or file. This multi-step process can be tedious for the user.

Now we’ll have to wait for an official announcement from Apple.

Tags: Apple, Apple, Cell Phones, file transfer, in-call, iPhone, messaging, patent

New Apple patents reveal new and interesting applications are ready for the iPhone. The patents reveal features like object identification, face recognition and a couple of messaging tweaks. Anxious to see any of these on your future iPhone? Well let’s check them out now!

The iPhone will be capable of recognizing certain objects and scan various bar codes or RFID tags and then offer you more information about said objects.

Facial recognition is one more important feature. How will the iPhone use it? Well it looks like the handset will know what person is using the phone and thus you can actually control who can access certain applications and functions on the phone.

The message filtering patent application shows you how you will be able to control and filter various messaging systems. That will be especially useful for controlling your children that convinced you to buy them an iPhone. Here’s how it would work:

Control application includes an instructional tool or study aid where the administrator sets one or more modes, such as language, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, punctuation and/or other content of a text-based communication based on, for example, a user’s age or grade level. This can be especially useful, for example, such as when a child’s grades go down. A parent can then institute a condition to improve a child’s grades. For example, the control application may require a user during specified time periods to send messages in a designated foreign language, to include certain designated vocabulary words, or to use proper designated spelling, designated grammar and designated punctuation and like designated language forms based on the user’s defined skill level and/or designated language skill rating. If the text-based communication fails to include the required language or format, the control application may alert the user and/or the administrator/parent of the absence of such text.

Status reports are also coming to the iPhone and a new feature will show you any missed messages, emails or voicemails from one of your contacts before you send a new message to a said contact. And since we did mention voicemail, a new voice-related feature will let you change voice output. That means you can actually hear yourself narrate stuff for you!

When will Apple roll all these features out? Nothing official just yet! We have only got the patents!

via uspto

Tags: Apple, Apple, barcodes, face recognition, iPhone, messaging, Mobile News, Mobile Software, object identification, patent, RFID, voice

GOGII, Inc. has announced its textPlus application is now available on the Apple App Store. This unique textPlus app brings unlimited and free messaging to iPod Touch and iPhone and allows consumers to have real group “conversations” in text. “We’re excited consumers can use textPlus to easily create and manage group text conversations with as many or as few people as they choose, in addition to one-to-one communication,” said Scott Lahman, CEO and co-founder, GOGII. “textPlus for iPhone and iPod touch brings more fun, social and useful functionality to text and is the first step toward what we believe is the future of messaging.”

Some of the additional features include landscape keyboard mode, which makes it faster to write texts, and notifications to let users know when they have received messages. The textPlus application is available for free from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore.

Tags: application, GOGII, iPhone, iPhone, iPod Touch, messaging, textPlus