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LG strolls into Town with C300 featurephone, offers portrait QWERTY for text addicts
Still on the lookout for an affordable QWERTY dumbphone? You might be in luck, as LG's just released this eye-catching Town C300 to cater to your texting and IM addiction on the cheap. Just like its predecessor, this new handset includes Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, and push email integration, along with FM radio, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a 2 megapixel camera from the hardware camp. The damage? Just a mere £69 ($108) from Orange, but don't tell your friends -- keep the extra booze money to yourself. %Gallery-102995%
Windows Live Messenger comes to iPhone
It's certainly not the first app Microsoft has crafted for the iPhone -- the Bing app has been alive and well for a while now, among others -- but you could argue that this is a pretty important one. Windows Live Messenger has just launched for iOS, and it's quite a bit more than your basic IM app with support for some manner of social service aggregation, media-rich status messages, Hotmail integration, and even built-in photo effects. Many folks will want an IM client that can span a bunch of services at once -- but if you're a Windows Live fanatic stuck in an iPhone world, this should be just what the doctor ordered. Let's hope the experience is just as good on Windows Phone 7, right? [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
First Look: iDisplay
iDisplay is one of those apps that you receive as a press release in your inbox and just when you're about to move on, it suddenly hits you exactly what that app does. And you go "Oh man! Yes!" In this case, iDisplay transforms your iPad or iPhone into a second monitor for your Mac. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet (I already downloaded the software but haven't received my iPad) but I am so looking forward to using it. It works like this: you install an extension on your OS X desktop system. (A Windows version is in the works, as well.) That extension looks like a monitor to the underlying operating system, which begins to send data through the extension to any attached device. The data is sent over Wi-Fi to the iPad (or iPhone, if you're using an iPhone, as it's a universal application), which acts as an extra monitor. It's not just a one-way connection. The on-device keyboard generates shared events for OS X, and the screen allows you to treat your second monitor as a multi-touch input device.
New Trillian alpha available for the Mac
A Mac version of Cerulean Studio's Trillian has been years in the making and as of this past Friday, the alpha build of the software is finally out in the wild for Mac users to try. A private alpha has been available since 2007. Since I dropkicked PCs out of my household five years ago, I've switched between iChat and the wonderful Adium. Trillian has a lot to live up to when it comes to instant messaging on the Mac. Adium, to start with, is free. Trillian costs Windows users $25USD to get full access to all of its features (the Alpha version for Mac is free). As stated when the original alpha was released, Trillian is rebuilding its software for OSX from the ground up. I downloaded a copy of the alpha to try, and I am not impressed. While Cerulean Studios did warn that the alpha version of Trillian is lacking features, the entire experience was just unpleasant. No buddy icons from any of my IM accounts came over and the program looks nothing like the picture included with this article (taken from Cerulean Studio's blog announcement.) Having one-button clicks to access your different accounts is nice -- when it actually works. The most glaring of the missing features is no group chat support, which will be a turnoff for many. Other missing features include a lack of voice and video support, chat logs and more. You have to sign up for an Astra account to even start using the IM client. When I was on Windows, the free version of Trillian was my IM client of choice. The Mac version has a lot to live up to, and maybe it could hold its own against its Windows big brother one day. But for now, I'd recommend sticking with much better, and free, alternatives such as Adium and Pidgin. [Via Lifehacker]
First Look: WhatsApp
There's a lot of buzz about iPhone IM clients.Other applications have gotten a lot of coverage for allowing iPhones to chat from their AOL, Google, ICQ, Jabber or a host of other screen names. WhatsApp [iTunes Link] is different, calling itself an "iPhone-to-iPhone chat application" that provides direct messaging between iPhones. The application features push notifications and provides functionality similar to SMS. So why bother trying it? The app makes it easy to chat with other iPhones with no need for screen names, logging in and out or the added cost of text messaging and cellular charges. It's a lot like an iPhone version of Blackberry's popular messaging service. You'll also quickly and easily be able to point out which of your contacts have WhatsApp installed. Even if you're offline, your messages will be saved until you're back online. Other cool features include the ability to "Broadcast" or send a message to multiple users, emailing of your chat history and sound and visual badges to show your unread message count. Users can also see when their friends are typing as well as the last time they checked their messages. WhatsApp is free "for a limited time" so head on over to the App Store and grab it. Here's a few shots of the app in action: %Gallery-78242%
Walk and talk feature added to Agile Messenger for iPhone
There have been some important upgrades to Agile Messenger [iTunes Link] since I last wrote about the multi-client chat app. Notably: a "walk and talk" feature that uses an iPhone camera to give you a view in front of your phone if you want to chat and walk at the same time. That's useful if you're going to type and walk around, but the under-the-hood upgrades are worth a mention as well. The biggest update for me was the ability to search contacts. If you have dozens of contacts, being able to search by name is essential; scrolling a huge set of lists is a chore. Searching works great in Agile Messenger, I'm happy to report. Push notifications work exactly as they did before. There are some cosmetic tweaks and performance tweaks, and I noticed the performance seemed snappier overall. Still, BeeJive recently added (somewhat limited) chat room support, which Agile still lacks. The iPhone IM wars are still on! Agile Messenger is only $1.99 for the next couple of weeks, which is a steal for the normally $9.99 app. If you use IM a lot, it's a great experience.
$38 Zipit Wireless Messenger receives Linux injection, becomes $38 netbook
Poor Zipit. As a $149.99 instant messenger client nobody got particularly excited about you. Even now, as a $38 IM client you aren't exactly in high demand -- but as a $38 portable Linux machine, well, that's another story altogether. The machines have been tweaked before, but the latest and greatest is this hack from Hunter Davis, who can turn a virgin Zipit Z2 into a full-featured Linux machine in under five minutes, as shown in the video below. To do the same all you need is Hunter's hacked firmware and a microSD card to throw it onto. Once completely tweaked you'll get full mouse support, WiFi connectivity, and even audio output so that you can rock some tunes on the go -- though the command-line interface won't make it the most compelling PMP ever. With only a 300MHz processor and 32MB of RAM we wouldn't go compiling our COMP-SCI 101 homework on here, but this little firmware refresh certainly makes for a tastier experience than before. [Via lilputing]
iPhone 3.0's 'broken' push messaging caused by unlockers, dirty keys
Earlier this week there was something of a brouhaha when some iPhone 3.0 users started receiving random instant messages seemingly intended for other folks. Push notifications were one of the big additions in this release and so naturally a lot of people claimed the feature was broken. They were partially right, but wrong in blaming Apple, as it was they who had themselves broken it. The iPhone generates unique public/private keys upon activation that identify handsets to secure those pushed IMs, and it should come as no surprise that unlocking tools use duplicated keys to facilitate illicit use. You know what happens when you share dirty keys, right? With single identifiers registered to multiple phones instant messages are getting zinged all over the place rather than to their intended destination, a feature we're guessing spammers will start exploiting in three... two...
Create unique avatars and contact pics with Persona
Some people like to have unique avatars for forums and instant messaging clients. I don't. My avatars usually end up being silly pictures of myself because I'm a shallow narcissist...and a bit lazy.However, for those more creative than I, Persona [iTunes link] is a nice iPhone app in which to invest the price of a quarter-pounder. It allows the user to create a cartoon face by choosing from a variety of facial features. Hair style, eyes, nose, beard, and more are all up for grabs. When you're done creating a mini-you (remember my personality issue described above), you can set it as the contact picture for any of your iPhone's contacts. You can also save your creation to the Camera Roll where you'll be able to export it via email or MMS (assuming you have the new 3.0 firmware and don't have AT&T), publish it to MobileMe, or use it as your wallpaper if you did a particularly good job. Once on your computer, you'll be able to use it as the avatar for that cute-cat-picture forum you visit eight times each day.Persona is simple enough; in fact, perhaps too simple. The faces tend to look very similar as the options are quite limited for a dedicated app such as this. Also, what's going on behind my left shoulder? Every avatar I create is staring in that same direction! Choosing from the available options isn't very intuitive. You choose the "parts" category and then pick the individual attribute, but no moving or resizing of the facial features is allowed. And very few accessories are presented, other than odd inclusion of a plethora of choices for nicotine deployment. (Note to self: see if the folks at Persona are sponsored in any way by Philip Morris.)Overall, it's a nice idea for an app that will have moderate appeal to the forum crowds. I doubt you'll be using it again and again, though, because the app just doesn't offer much depth. But it's the user interface and lack of extensive options that tend to make the $2.99 $.99 a bit hard to swallow.[NOTE: Thanks to those readers that pointed out the incorrect price. The developer's web site showed $2.99 when I wrote this, however the iTunes store had it at $.99. I have talked with Alfonso Bozzelli, the app's author, and he is changing the site to reflect the correct price -- $.99.]
Giveaway: four lucky winners to get Agile Messenger for iPhone/iPod touch
We'll have a head-to-head comparison of the just-released Agile Messenger [App Store link] versus Beejive in a few days, but why not test drive Agile Messenger yourself first? Four lucky winners will get to do just that, courtesy Agile and TUAW. Just tell us which chat protocol you prefer (AIM, Jabber, Yahoo, etc.) and we'll pick four winners at random. Sorry, we've got to limit the winners to the US, as promo codes don't work anywhere else. Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older. (Sorry, we know our international readers want to participate, but promo codes don't transfer outside the US.) To enter leave a comment telling us your preferred IM protocol (AIM, Jabber, etc.). The comment must be left before April 3, 11:59PM Eastern Time. You may enter only once. Four winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: Promo code for free copy of Agile Messenger for iPhone (US$9.99). Click Here for complete Official Rules.
Adium users disconnected from MSN
Late yesterday evening, users of the latest build (1.3.2) of the Adium multiservice chat client found themselves unexpectedly at a loss -- connections to Microsoft's MSN IM service stopped being accepted as of about 8 pm Pacific Time, according to a post on the Adium blog. The cause appears to be some kind of change on the server side that is blocking Libpurple (the underlying Adium communications library) clients using version 15 of the MSN protocol, so Adium isn't the only app affected.Users are advised to either roll back to Adium 1.3.1, which uses an older library that's still working, or use the official Messenger 7 client instead. The Adium team says they'll update the post when they have more details. Update 4pm ET: Reports are that Adium's MSN connectivity is working again. Thanks to everyone who sent this in.[via SmokingApples]
Beejive IM updated to 2.0, includes audio messaging
Beejive IM [iTunes link], the Swiss army knife of instant messaging on the iPhone, was recently updated to version 2.0. Beejive allows you to connect with many different instant messaging services including: AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN/Live, Myspace IM, and Yahoo messenger. This application was already top-notch in the previous versions and this new version just makes things a lot better. Let's take a look at each of the changes to Beejive. You are now able to send photos directly from your iPhone and have them show up in-line with the body of the chat. In addition, you can now easily see photos sent to your iPhone. Probably one of the coolest new features is the ability to record and send voice notes to your fellow chatters. Tapping on the toolbar at the top, which lists the current chat name, gets you four options. One of those options is a small microphone; tapping this icon makes your iPhone show a recording view, and instantly start recording audio. When you tap the stop button, your recording will be saved. You can play or record your voice note over again; if you want to send the voice note, tap the "Send" button and your voice note will be directly transferred to the current chat. In addition to being able to send/receive audio on your iPhone or iPod touch using Beejive 2.0, you can also receive and open multiple types of files, including: - Most image, audio, and video files - PDFs - Word documents - Excel spreadsheets - PowerPoint documents I found that once you receive these types of files, you can also forward them to another person on your buddy list. Once you accept the file transfer, you will get a small blue button that will give you more details about the file that you just received; when you are in this view, you will be able to tap the forward button and find another person to forward it to. By default, Beejive will use the default sounds for incoming/outgoing messages. These sounds are very similar to the sounds that iChat ships with; however, if you get tired of them, there is an option for you in this new version. You are now able to change the sounds in the Beejive section of Settings.app. Under "Sounds," you are able to change between default, AIM, and Yahoo sounds. I found that there were two settings for transferring files, and both are useful. Under the "File Transfer" section of Settings.app > Beejive, you are able to choose between two ways of sending files: post a link or direct send preferred. In my testing, version 2.0 of Beejive seemed extremely stable, and included features that made a big difference. I especially liked the ability to send/receive files right from the device. Beejive is available from the iTunes App Store for $15.99. While the price is high, this application is definitely worth it when you consider all of the capabilities you gain. %Gallery-40552%
Nokia Maps gets upgraded, Messaging hits most devices
The news is flowing hot and heavy from Barcelona, and the latest succulent tidbits to land in our laps are these. First up, a fresh version of Nokia Maps is on tap, which includes "a number of new features such as high-resolution aerial images, 3D landmarks for 216 cities and terrain maps, as well as a new route overview during routing and during Drive, the purchasable turn-by-turn car navigation guidance." Furthermore, users will find new options such as access to real time information (camera alerts, safety spots, traffic information, etc.) and Wcities event guides that give real time information for events and movies in over 450 destinations. Next is Nokia Messaging -- which is bringing popular IM services to the majority of Nokia handsets -- and Mail on Ovi, which enables PC users to "create and access Ovi email accounts as well as gain cross access to other Ovi services with just a single sign-on account." Plunge into the links below for more details on each.Read - Nokia Maps updateRead - Mail / Messaging%Gallery-38333%
Adium 1.3.1 released
It was just last week when our favorite multi-service instant messaging client was updated. Now Adium has been updated to 1.3.1. While there aren't any major new features in this version, some big bug fixes improves the application's usability. Here's some of the major bug fixes in this version: Facebook timing out when attempting to connect is now fixed Avatar not updating in open message windows after change is now fixed Stopped Adium from crashing when updating an account password You can read the full release notes here, and get the new version by downloading it from Adium's website, or by opening the application and going to Adium > Check for updates. Thanks, Eric!
Shape IM+ All-in-One Mobile Messenger for iPhone
Another instant messenger app for iPhone has been released, joining the ranks of such stalwarts as Pairingo, MobileChat, and AIM for iPhone. Shape IM+ All-in-One Mobile Messenger for iPhone (click opens iTunes App Store) supports AIM/iChat, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk and MySpaceIM. All public IM systems can be connected through the one client, and all messages come into one shared inbox.Shape Services GMBH is currently offering the iPhone application for free, while the Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian, and BlackBerry versions retail for $29.99. Get it while it's free!Thanks to ZaP for the tip!
Adium 1.3 released
Multi-service, open source and free chat client Adium received a new point release tonight, with new features and a redesigned interface for viewing contact information. Adium 1.3 features the following goodies: Get Info Window is now called the "Contact Inspector" The aforementioned Contact Inspector has a newly redesigned interface that allows for faster retrieval of contact information Facebook chat is now integrated into Adium 1.3 Standard contact window list now features a search box (found by pressing command + F) Improved MSN support with personal messages Speed improvements Multiple bug fixes To download this new revision of Adium, just visit the Adium website and click the download link. If you would like a complete list of all the changes in Adium 1.3, just visit the Version History page.
ApolloIM and MobileChat join forces
Both ApolloIM and MobileChat were jailbreak applications for chatting on the go with your iPhone/iPod touch. Alex Schaefer, ApolloIM's founder, has recently joined the MobileChat development team. In a blog posting by the developer of MobileChat, he said that both applications underwent "friendly competition" and that, while there was no clear winner in the iPhone IM business, users got the benefit from the ongoing competition. Now that Alex has joined the other team, you can expect that MobileChat will only get better. The post goes on to mention that Alex will be working on stability and user experience for the application. MobileChat definitely got off to a rough start on launch day due to server problems, but seems to be working much better now.
MobileChat now available in the App Store
Today Twenty08 released a new instant messaging client for the iPhone/iPod touch. MobileChat (iTunes Link) allows you to connect to multiple IM services, including: AIM/ICQ/.Mac/MobileMe Windows Live/MSN Yahoo GTalk Jabber In many ways, this application for the iPhone looks like a cross between Adium and AIM for iPhone. This application is feature rich, allowing you to take and send images or IM a phone number from any of your 10 supported IM accounts, Most notably, MobileChat allows you to use Apple's forthcoming "Push Notification" system for notifications when the application is closed. This feature is built into this release, but will not be active until Apple "flips the switch." You can download MobileChat today from the App Store for $2.99 (USD).[via MacRumors]
Apple files for iPhone instant messaging patent
The one feature that most of us iPhone owners want is native instant messaging. With the upcoming SDK release, instant messaging apps will most likely not be able to run in the background (in other words, they may not receive messages when the phone is sleeping or doing other things). However, AppleInsider is reporting on an Apple patent for instant messaging on the iPhone that was filed in August of last year, but just granted in March of this year. The drawing included with the patent filing looks identical to the SMS application on the iPhone, with some key differences, one of which is word suggestions that appear as bubbles above the keyboard. AppleInsider also reports that this service could be used as a substitute for MMS (multi media messaging) which the current iPhone is lacking. You can read the full patent filing on the USPTO's website. [via AppleInsider]Thanks, James!
Vtech's IS6110 cordless phone touts QWERTY keypad, IM capability
No need to bust out one of those newfangled smartphones to get your handset-based chat on -- oh no, baby boomers and their offspring can now handle IM conversations via a landline telephone. You heard right, Vtech is getting all extraordinary on us today with the industry's first instant messaging cordless phone, and sure enough, the DECT 6.0 IS6110 features a full-fledged QWERTY keypad to keep those thumbs happy. All that's required is that the phone's base station be connected via USB to a PC, after which users can have free access to MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. What better way to gently introduce your mother (hint, hint) to this millennium than by dropping $99.95 on this?
