iPhone News Updated

PostSecret iPhone app shut down due to ‘threatening’ and ‘pornographic’ content

Nearly four months after founder of the PostSecret blog Frank Warren launched an iPhone app to allow users to anonymously post and peruse secrets on their phones, he has shut the app down. Warren cites the submission of “content that was not just pornographic but also gruesome and at times threatening.”

In a blog post, Warren explains that anonymity on the app made it “very challenging” for volunteers to “remove determined users with malicious intent,” even if they accounted for only 1 percent of the submissions.

Internet trolls, or people who use an online identity for specific abusive purposes, have long stirred up trouble on message boards and discussion groups, but this may be the first time they’ve brought down an iPhone app.

Controlling bullying online has long been a battleground for Web site administrators and, increasingly, for authorities offline. In September, a young man in Britain who targeted Facebook tribute pages to taunt the dead victims and their families was jailed, the Guardian reports.

At the time, the Guardian reported, the chief detective working on the case, James Hahn, of Thames Valley police, called this kind of malicious communication on social networks a “new phenomenon,” but said their investigation showed that “offenders cannot hide behind their computer screens.”

The problem may prove to be more difficult on iPhone apps moderated by volunteers and depending on the submissions of a crowd. The PostSecret app received some 30,000 submissions a day, or more than 2 million in just four months.

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Google pulls “Siri for Android” app from Android Market

A number of wannabe apps that try to mimic the capabilities of Apple’s Siri on the iPhone 4S have shown up in the Android Market over the past few months, but none went so far as to appropriate the Siri name and app icon - except for one.

Thankfully, Google has caught on to the infringing app, the so-called “Siri for Android,” and has pulled it from the Market.

The Siri for Android app not only took Apple’s copyrighted name, but it also used the same microphone over a metal coin design for its icon as Apple uses for Siri on the iPhone 4S. While it had the appearance of offering a new service to the Android platform, all it actually did was open the Voice Actions service that is built into every Android phone. Apparently, about 1,000 people downloaded the app before Google was able to remove it from the market. Google went ahead and banned the developer from the Market as well.

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