App Warns Phone Users About Negative Message Content

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth have developed an Android smartphone app that is color coding messages according to their content.

The idea of the app is to make sure users are not caught off-guard by angry or hostile messages. Ultimately, the application is designed to provide warnings about negative messages that are hitting a phone's screen from various sources, including Twitter, Facebook, IM and regular SMS. When warned, users may be able to handle their stress much more effectively, the scientists said. Conclusively, the app is called "Stress @ Work".

"We are increasingly sending and receiving information via messages on mobile phones. The rate of growth in this area has never been witnessed – everything from Twitter streams and Facebook messages to direct text messages are coming straight at us all the time on our handheld devices," said Mohamed Gaber in a prepared statement. “This information has an immense power, whether we are reading a worrying social media news story or a warning email from our manager, messages can upset mood and increase stress level, just as good news and encouraging emails can cheer you up."

By monitoring words and phrases, the app color codes incoming messages as green for positive, red for negative and blue for neutral so a user can see what content they can expect before opening a message. According to the researchers, the software works "faultlessly no matter what each phone's computational power and memory were." They said they are now working on a release that will be offered free of charge on Google Play. There was no word on whether the app will also be available for iOS.