Apple is tapping into the social arena with plans to launch a social-networking application. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has filed a patent with the U.S. Patent & Trade Office describing a social-network application dubbed iGroups.
The application for patent, made available on Thursday, reveals that Apple is working on an ad-hoc social network that would enable users to communicate with one another without using a central access point or mobile-device networks such as Bluetooth’s personal area network (PAN) or piconet (an ad-hoc computer network that links a group of devices using Bluetooth technology).
Instead, iGroups would enable users to use the Bluetooth-enabled devices to communicate by setting the devices to a Token Exchange mode.
While set in this mode, all device owners or group members within a geographic range of one another would be able to broadcast and receive tokens. Tokens can be exchanged using a communication link within limited range.
The tokens received by members are stored locally on the device or sent to a trusted service operating remotely on a network such as Apple’s MobileMe.
“In some implementations, the tokens can be stored with corresponding time stamps to assist a trusted service in matching the tokens with tokens provided by other devices,” writes Apple in its patent application. “The trusted service can perform an analysis on the tokens and time stamps to identify devices that were colocated at the geographic location at a given contact time, which can be determined by the time stamps.”
Members would then be able to set up accounts with the service by registering through a portal or web site managed by the trusted service.
User interfaces, filters and search engines would let users search and manage groups. The groups can be used with various applications, including calendars, address books, e-mail, and instant messaging.
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