Custom Home Screens Based Upon User Location

A recent patent filing made by Apple suggests that the iPhone could provide a customized home screen depending on the current user location.

Custom iPhone Home Screen

The filing was revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office this week. The filing was dated February 21st 2008 for “Transitional Data Set”, it describes an invention that would display specific applications populated based on dynamic factors such as location.

“The user can create a set of location-aware applications that can be populated by transitional data sets,” the filing reads. “A transitional data set is a data set that can change based on the current location of the mobile device… as determined by a positioning technology (e.g., GPS, cell tower triangulation, Wi-Fi).”

“If the user’s home is in New York, then the user may configure a “weather” widget to display the weather in New York as a default,” the filing reads, “and such default information can be persistent. If the user travels to San Francisco, the user can touch the “Here” button… and the “weather” widget will automatically display the weather for San Francisco… Thus each time the user travels to San Francisco, the location-aware mobile device… can automatically populate the “weather widget with transitional data associated with San Francisco.”

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iPod Classic (7th Generation) To Get Camera?

As the rumors of the upcoming camera equipped model continue to appear, a recent report by Digitimes claims that Apple iPod ClassicOmnivision, one of the suppliers for the CMOS sensors in the iPhone 3GS, will be supplying new 3.2 megapixel CMOS image sensors for the new iPod line-up as well.

This seems to validate prior rumors of the a camera equipped iPod Touch and iPod Nano.

Quote:
OmniVision will be the sole supplier of 3.2-megapixel CIS products for new iPod nano, iPod classic and iPod Touch models which will be launched in September, the sources indicated.

This rumor seems quite legitimate as we’ve seen photos and even video of the iPod Touch with a camera.