Apple this week had a patent application approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office that it filed in 2008. This patent will lead to the establishment of systems, devices and methods that will enable users to control the content of text-based messages which are sent to or received from an administered device.

 

“In some embodiments, a message will be blocked (incoming or outgoing) if the message includes forbidden content,” the patent abstract reads. “In other embodiments, the objectionable content is removed from the message prior to transmission or as part of the receiving process. The content of such a message is controlled by filtering the message based on defined criteria. The criteria may be defined according to a parental control application.”

 

This system will amongst others allow parents to block the use of any inappropriate language such as swear words and sexually suggestive language within text messages that their kids can send or receive, which might bring an end to teenage sexting (at least on Apple devices). 

 

 

Besides revealing that AMD will soon be entering the tablet arms race, the company’s CEO Dirk Meyer also exposed the launch dates of AMD’s next generation of GPUs.  

 

According to AnandTech, Meyer revealed when gamers should expect to see AMD’s “second-generation DX11” cards. 

 

“We will be launching our second-generation DX11 graphics offerings next week,” Meyer stated. “We’ll be shipping all the family members of that product line I’ll call it, by the end of this quarter, and total volume think in terms of several hundred thousand, or hundreds of thousands of units.”

 

 

 

Intel has announced that its Q3 revenue has surpassed $11 billion for the first time ever. The company’s revenue has increased by 18% year-over-year to $11.1 billion. It reported operating income of $4.1 billion and a net income of $3 billion.

 

“Intel’s third-quarter results set all-time records for revenue and operating income,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO.

 

“These results were driven by solid demand from corporate customers, sales of our leadership products and continued growth in emerging markets. Looking forward, we continue to see healthy worldwide demand for computing products of all types and are particularly excited about our next-generation processor, codenamed Sandy Bridge, and the many new designs around our Intel Atom processors in everything from the new Google TV products to a wide array of tablets based on Windows, Android and MeeGo operating systems.” 

 

 

 

Opera Software announced enhancements for its browsers this week, including extensions technology in the upcoming Opera 11 PC browser.

 

According to CNET, the company will release Opera Mobile for Android phones shortly (after releasing Opera Mini 5.1 for Android in July) and will also launch support for a significant new feature soon. This feature being hardware acceleration for its browsers in order to speed the display of pages, as well as page functions the likes of scrolling and panning.

 

“Opera Mobile for Android is the real McCoy. It’s the full Web browser on the phone,” Opera chief development officer Christen Krogh said.

 

Hardware acceleration will see the addition of pinch to zoom for Opera Mobile, whilst Opera Software will follow the same path as Google (Chrome), Apple (Safari) and Mozilla (Firefox) for the Oprah 11 extension program.

 

 

 

Eminem’s music publisher, Eight Mile Style LLC, has petitioned a U.S. District Court judge in Detroit to enforce a settlement that it reached in a lawsuit against Apple.

 

According to The Detroit News, this lawsuit was for downloads of the rapper’s music on iTunes and the settlement amount comes to about $2.2 million (almost R15 million).

 

The Court of Appeals previously determined that Eight Mile Style was entitled to 50% of sales proceeds as opposed to the 12% (the rate for physical albums) that it got for downloads of Eminem’s songs and ringtones between 2003 and 2008 via Apple’s iTunes store.

 

Eminem himself was not named as a party in the lawsuit.