iPhone MMS: 3 Days In

Last Friday, AT&T added multimedia messaging (MMS) capability to the iPhone 3G and 3Gs, allowing customers to send and receive video, pictures and audio messages in the same way they could send text messages.

Start Messaging

To enable MMS messaging, connect your iPhone to your computer and click “Check for Update” in iTunes. Once the update is completed, restart your iPhone by turning it off then on again. Note that iPhone OS 3.1 is required so you may need to perform that software update first. Once you connect to iTunes, you will be prompted through the correct steps.

I’ve been able to successfully test this within the AT&T network, but still cannot send or receive MMS messages across carriers. Can anyone else confirm if this is working or not?

UPDATED: Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone

Last week, Yahoo! Messenger product manager Sarah Bacon put her foot in her mouth when she complained on the Y! Messenger blog that Apple was taking so long to approve their updated Yahoo! Messenger iPhone app. Somehow she missed the fact that the app has been resubmitted with some changes, resetting the review period. Nevermind that she’s a product manager and should know this. It’s a moot point now that the updated app has been approved and ready to download from the iTunes app store.

Yahoo! Messenger 1..2.2 for the iPhone incorporates several changes based on your feedback:

• Stay available, not idle. Now when you close the Yahoo! Messenger app, you’ll still show as “available” to your Yahoo contacts rather than “idle.”  Since you get push notifications of new chat messages, this is more logical.
• Get a better Buzz. No, not that kind of buzz. They’ve tweaked the Buzz feature with a new notification sound, the ability to turn it on or off, and added vibrating buzz notifcations.
• “Shorter and prettier” notification sound. – Apparently this was a big problem for a lot of people, based on feedback. Go figure.
• Address book integration fixed. Yeah, they broke it in the last version. Now it works properly again, so when you compose a new SMS to someone, you can access numbers in your iPhone address book, and not just your Yahoo contact list.

Resources

• Read more about the update from the Yahoo! Messenger blog
• Join the discussion in our Yahoo Support forum

Trillian for iPhone Screenshots

Cerulean Studios has begun beta testing Trillian for the iPhone, and BigBlueBall has new screenshots.

The closed beta began tonight, and requires the iPhone OS 3.0. I’ve been running this Trillian beta on my year-old iPhone 3G for less than an hour, and I’m already impressed.

Trillian for iPhone allows you to swipe to switch between open chats. Like the Trillian Astra web client which is now in public beta testing, this retains the groups you have already setup for your Trillian account and keeps them in sync.

Of course, it supports push notification so you can appear signed in even after you close the app (it’s configurable) and receive incoming instant messages. If you want to reply, it automatically launches Trillian and restores your chats.

Trillian for iPhone integrates with your iPhone camera, allowing you to take and send photos to your contacts, or to use it to create a new avatar or buddy icon.

Currently, there is no file transfer capability (other than for photos) and emoticons appear as plain text.

Being a beta, it’s still a little buggy. I tried sending a second photo and it crashed on me. Starting it back up I tried again, and it went through just fine.

Cerulean Studios has left the door open to add a few small enhancements before the launch this (apart from fixing any bugs found).

If you’re interested in signing up for the Trillian for iPhone beta, you can learn more here. They currently aren’t accepting any new testers, but that will change as they get closer to launch.

If you already use Trillian and have an iPhone, this could be an IM worth getting… when it becomes available. There is no word yet on when it will be ready for submittal to the iPhone App directory, or what the pricing will be.

Screenshots

Enable iPhone Tethering

Yesterday, Apple officially released the new iPhone OS 3.0 software update, which supports a slew of new features including the long awaited push notification and “catch-up” features such as support for MMS and tethering. Unfortunately, AT&T has said that MMS won’t be available on their network until “later this summer” and that tethering will be available eventually.

However, some bright minds have found a way to enable tethering on your iPhone right now, without jailbreaking. Just point your iPhone browser to http://help.benm.at/help.php and you can download and install a new configuration file for your iPhone and carrier. I tried it, and it worked! I was quickly able to setup a tethered Bluetooth connection on my Windows 7 laptop.

How do you enable tethering?

Once you locate the correct configuration for your carrier, download it directly on your iPhone, then reboot your iPhone. When it starts up, go to Settings > General > Network and you’ll see an option to enable tethering. Once you’ve done that, you can establish a tethered connection with your PC or Mac via either USB or Bluetooth. Surfing the web is actually not bad on 3G.

The same site also has the settings for enabling MMS, but I haven’t been able to find where to enter them.

Note that you enable tethering at your own risk. AT&T and other carriers may charge you for additional usage, if they figure out how.

via CrunchGear

iPhone 3G Ass

A hat tip to the Joy of Tech for skewering the latest Jesus phone — the iPhone 3G S — available beginning Friday June 19th. And if you want the iPhone 3G (not ’s’), you’ll be able to pick one up from AT&T for $99 with a two year commitment.

I’m not eligible for a subsidized upgrade on my iPhone 3G, so I’ll be passing on this phone. What about you? If you own an older iPhone, will you be upgrading to the new 3G S?

Skype for iPhone Arrives Next Week

I love a good rumor, especially when it’s about two great products. In this case, the rumor involves the popular VoIP messenger Skype (which has been downloaded over 400 million times) and the iPhone. GigaOM has it on good authority that an official Skype app for the iPhone will be showing up at the iTunes Application Store as early as next week during the CTIA Wireless industry event in Las Vegas.

Readers at Engadget point out that there are already several VoIP solutions for the iPhone (Nimbuzz and Truphone, to name two), but most of these are clumsy to use, at best. Skype products generally have a very polished feel about them, and we will be watching this news closely as the story develops.

Nimbuzz Adds 3G VoIP to iPhone

Nimbuzz today released an update to their VoIP application for the iPhone. The new version adds the ability to make VoIP calls to landlines and mobiels via Skype-Out and Nimbuzz’s major SIP partners, including Gizmo5 and SIPgate. Nimbuzz also works on an iPod Touch via wifi, essentially turning it into a VoIP phone. 

iPhone users can also make VoIP connections without wifi over the 3G network using Nimbuzz Dial-up VoIP. This makes international calls much cheaper, by allowing you to dial a local number, then connecting internationally to over 50 countries. 

Also in this version — Nimbuzz now allows you to post Twitter updates, making it a well-rounded, all-purpose communicator.

BeeJive Blocks Pirates

BeeJiveIM for iPhone was updated this week to support Facebook chat. Not long afterward, reports started coming in that something was wrong for some people. When they tried connecting to any IM service, they got a mysterious “PC LOAD LETTER” message which, when clicked, opened a clip from Office Space on YouTube (NSFW).

MobileCrunch reports that the “problem” was BeeJive’s offbeat way of fighting software piracy. The official word from BeeJive:

We have recently implemented new anti-piracy measures in BeejiveIM for iPhone. We have tried to keep our approach fun with an error message and a video. But we hope our message is clear: please respect the work of developers.

There was initially some confusion about who would get the message and why, but it all boils down to this. If you installed a cracked version of BeeJive, you got the message. If you purchase a legitimate license, you’ve first got to uninstall the cracked version, then install the legitimate version in order to eliminate the message. 

Kudos to BeeJive for tackling piracy with a sense of humor.

iPhone 3.0 Software Unveiled

Apple today unveiled the blueprint for iPhone OS 3.0 — the next version of the software for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Available today to iPhone developers, and released to iPhone owners sometime “this summer,” the new iPhone OS brings over 100 new features, including some that have been missing or promised for a long time. 

Here are some of the more notable enhancements you can look forward to:

 

Push notifications, originally promised for September 2008, Apple claims that when they introduced the concept to developers, they came up with so many new ways of using this technology, they had to go back and revisit the server infrastructure to support it.  Push notifications are significant to BigBlueBall readers, because they allow IM programs such as Meebo, Beejive and AIM to keep you connected, even though their program isn’t running (background apps are still a no-no on the iPhone). 

Cut-and-paste makes its way onto the iPhone, allowing you to cut, copy and paste between apps. 

MMS support arrives, but unfortunately for the early adopters, you must have an iPhone 3G or newer. Yes, you’ll finally be able to send and receive images and voice memos.

Peer-to-Peer connectivity via Bluetooth and wifi will allow gaming, file sharing and more. 

Turn-by-turn GPS directions will now be possible in apps, but the developer will need to license those maps. I’m betting we’ll see something from Google. 

And landscape typing will be an option everywhere, including the built-in mail app and SMS. 

There are many more features, and since it’s not available until this summer, that gives us plenty of time to learn more about what we can expect. 

Oh, and the upgrade will be free to iPhone owners. iPod Touch owners will pay $9.95 for the privilege. 

For more great coverage of the new iPhone OS, check out tuaw.com and Engadget.

Truphone Adds AIM to its iPhone App

The Truphone mobile VoIP service announced support for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) chat into its iPhone app. This comes just a couple weeks after adding instant messaging support for Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.

The Truphone iPhone app is free from the Apple App Store. The key benefit of Truphone is its ability to let you make free VoIP calls to any other Truphone or Google Talk user, and cheap international calls to any landline or mobile phone. The addition of instant messaging and Twitter are “nice to have” features that make Truphone a Swiss Army knife of communications. 

Truphone’s support for Skype calls announced last month at Macworld  has not been added yet, as they continue to work out quality of service issues. 

My take? Truphone is interesting, but if you’re in the U.S., your AT&T plan already gives you free long distance in the continental U.S..  Truphone won’t impress you unless you’re a geek or you really make a lot of international calls. 

Truphone is also available for many other platforms, including G1, Blackberry and some Nokia phones. 

www.truphone.com