Various Apple patent applications have been published today from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, indicating the Cupertino-based company is trying to win various patents including relating to facial recognition, voice, and messaging, among other areas.

The Facial Recognition patent application relates to technologies that determine if a computer user is passively working with the computer. Apple notes current computer systems cannot determine if a user is actively looking at the screen. For example, you could be reading a long article or simply doing something else when the operating system turns on the screen savor. With the new Apple technology, the software via the iSight camera would know a user is presently looking at the screen, preventing it from executing certain actions.

Another application for the facial recognition software is the application could be used to authenticate users based on facial recognition. Instead of constantly having to enter administrative passwords, the system would know who is using the computer and could automatically make privacy/admin changes.

Apple also applied for an Object Recognition patent, where the system can relay useful information back to the user based on objects captured from a camera or a RFID sensor.

The patent applications noted above were the most notable today.

Other less important Apple patent applications unveiled today include:

1. Unread Message Alerts (application) that would alert the user when he is about to send an outgoing message.

2. Messaging Filtering (application) that would allow users to filer messages based on its content.

3. Managing outgoing messages to multiple recipients (application)

4. Illumination/Images (application) that is ”A method for capturing a digital image using one or more lights,” comprising/capturing a digital image;analyzing the digital image to determine if light is evenly distributed;adjusting at least one light and recapturing the image”

5. Unread Message alerts

6. Hybrid Antenna Concept that combines various antennas such as cellular, WiFi and Bluetooth into one.

It is important to note that these concepts might or might not ever make it to a marketable machine.