This post is presented by iMobie, maker of PhoneRescue.

Your iPhone carries a lot of information, but it’s not a locked box. Eventually, for one reason or another, you’ll go to find a text thread or photo that you’re sure you kept, except you didn’t. Well, with the right tool, almost any data that was lost can be found again.

Just yesterday I had the experience of sending a text message to the wrong person. Okay, luckily it wasn’t a compromising message in any sense, but it goes to show what happens when you’re carrying out too many text conversations at the same time.

Clearly someone at Apple has had a similar experience, because a patent published Thursday reveals how future iOS devices might incorporate background images of the people you’re messaging, to ensure you don’t send out misdirected messages.

Some users have reported problems with sending text messages to their friends and family after the upgrade to iOS 7.

Typically, when iMessage is unavailable, your iPhone should send messages as SMS ones instead, denoted by the green chat bubble as opposed to the regular blue.

If, however, your iPhone won’t send texts automatically, here’s a possible fix.

It used to be simple to delete text messages from your iPhone (or, I suppose, your iPad if you use iMessages), but with iOS 7, the cute little Edit button has gone away from the upper right corner. Instead, there’s a Contact button up there, which–while useful–used up the space where the Edit button used to be.

You can still delete entire message conversations by swiping to the left in the list of all your text messages, but how do you delete specific messages within a conversation? Swiping to the left just shows you the timestamps of the messages.

Never fear, we’ve got the answer.

Not too long ago, there were a couple of iMessage service outages. When that happened, I (and many other folks, I bet) wasn’t able to send out my iMessages. The little red exclamation point would show up, mockingly, and I waited for the service to go back online to send them again.

Luckily, there is a way to easily turn that iMessage into a regular SMS text message, thereby avoiding any service outages from Apple. Here’s how to do just that.

Mac OS X has had the ability to recognize data like dates, times, and phone numbers for a while now. If you’re using the Mail app, you can right click on a recognized date and add it to the Calendar app. If you right click on a phone number, you can add it to the Contacts app. Pretty neat, right?

But what you may not have known, however, is that the app you can see iMessages in from anyone on an iOS or OS X device, Messages, is also able to recognize this data, making adding Calendar events from within Messages super easy. Here’s how to do it.

When Apple unveiled iMessage, one of the first thoughts for many IT professionals and business users was that Apple had come up with a secure messaging platform that could rival RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger. While iMessage has a lot going for it as a secure messaging platform, there are still some reasons that it may not be an ideal business solution.

Here’s an obvious yet often overlooked tip – something that I’ve personally looked at every time I use the Messages app on my iPhone, but never really “connected” with.

I’ve often needed to send along a specific text message, to a boss or co-worker, or even to a family member. I’ve often copied an individual message, then pasted it into a message of my own to the new person.

Starting in iOS 5 iOS 4, though, there’s an easier way – forwarding it. Here’s how.

Following nearly six hours of downtime this morning, the Apple Online Store is back up. Although the Cupertino company has not added any new products, it has introduced a new notifications service that provides U.S. customers with text message alerts when their order status is updated.

Phil Zimmerman, the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption for email in the 1990s, has come to the forefront yet again as the spokesman for Silent Circle, a company planning to beta test an encrypted phone call and text message app for the iPhone and other smartphones. The app will be free when it’s released in July of this year, but the service itself will cost somewhere in the $20 per month range.

Zimmerman, long a proponent of technological solutions to civil liberties, thinks people will pay for the privacy.

“I’m not going to apologize for the cost,” he told CNET, “This is not Facebook. Our customers are customers. They’re not products. They’re not part of the inventory.”

That may well be the case, but getting consumers to pay subscription fees is notoriously difficult. Silent Circle plans to offer a solution for easily encrypted email, phone calls, and instant messaging to start, with plans for encrypted SMS in the future.

In addition to the iPhone release, Zimmerman told CNET that the company was planning to roll out an app for Mac and PC as well, but that it’s not ready, yet. They’ll focus on the mobile app first, allowing customers to communicate securely if they both have the app installed. If only one does, the information will be encrypted to Silent Circle’s servers, but not from there to a recipient’s phone.

This sounds great for most consumers needing to keep their legal communication safe and private, but it’s unlikely that lawmakers will see it the same way. It’s possible that Phil Zimmerman may yet again fall under scrutiny as he did when he released his first encryption product nearly two decades ago.

Via: Boing Boing