Appletell

A recent patent application filed by Apple sheds light on a new application possibly coming soon for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Although at first glance the application looks almost exactly the same as the current Short Messaging Service (SMS) application for the iPhone, it is actually quite different.  Some of the main differences would include an Internet-based chat service (as opposed to a cellular phone texting service), a dedicated text input area, suggested words shown, and a slightly tweaked UI.  Some of the patent text also detailed the possibility of Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), much like today’s iChat Theater.  Hopefully this patent will turn into an actual product, as Instant Messaging has shown up regularly as one of the most requested features on the iPhone.  Should this not become reality, the only alternative for IM would be the rumored AOL Instant Messaging Application, but that would be slightly limited by possibility of Apple blocking apps such as Firefox, Java, and other background apps.

Via [AppleInsider]

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An awesome VoIP client known as “fring” that was previously only available for PCs and other mobile phones has now been released for Apple’s iPhone (and iPod touch). Of course, only jailbroken iPhones will be able to run the unofficial third-party application, and its VoIP capabilities are only available over a WiFi network.

The developer of fring is labeling it as a “light, sneak preview R&D version” so it appears that they are only testing the functionality and observing the popularity of the application on jailbroken iPhones and iPod touches before the application is officially released once the iPhone 2.0 software update goes public.

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I’ll admit that I rarely use Skype, compared to the other IM services out there - mainly because most of my communicating on the internet is done via text, and most of the people I know use MSN. Skype has some nice features, though. The fact that webcam video chats work from PC to Mac is useful, considering Microsoft Messenger for Mac doesn’t support anything other than plain text, and iChat is for Mac-to-Mac only.

In Skype 2.7, improved video quality on both Mac desktops and laptops has been added, along with a highly requested feature: Contact grouping. With 2.7, you are now able to group friends and family and organize your contacts in a much better way than before. There is also a new feature that’s Mac-only: Address Book integration. It supposedly saves you a lot of time, if you have contacts in the Address Book app. File transfers are also more streamlined and organized than in previous versions of Skype, and you can now automatically re-dial busy numbers.

Via [Skype Blog]

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No longer in beta, Adium 1.2 is available for public download now and has some nice improvements long time Adium users will notice and appreciate. It also has what the Adium team call “a ridiculous number of bug fixes”. Some of the new features include: An improved Adium menu item and account management features, various and sundry improvements to Jabber support (including SSL certification authentication, server-supplied action support, and discovery services browsing), fixed Bonjour local area network messaging with file transfers, better group chat (conferencing), a completely rewritten Applescript dictionary which should lead to all sorts of powerful new interactions with other programs, and detachable groups. One ‘advertised’ feature which did not make it into Adium 1.2 was MSN personal messages; development efforts for these are still in progress by the libpurple team. A future version of Adium will have this enhancement once it’s ready.

I use Adium for AIM, Yahoo! and Google Talk - but not for MSN. It’s a shame I still have to use a separate client for MSN, but it works best this way. This is one of many regular updates we hope to see in the future from the Adium team. You can download it here.

Via [TUAW]

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Adium 1.2 is just around the corner, with a download available from the beta page. The team have added many improvements into the next version of the popular messaging client, specifically Bonjour improvements. Bonjour, Group Chat, XMPP, AppleScript and many minor features have been fixed and improved, resulting in a less-buggy version of the app. With group chat, inviting contacts is now as simple as clicking and dragging, and Bonjour file transfers are now possible. AppleScript has been improved as well, with it being completely rewritten. Within the contact window itself, groups are detachable from the main contact list.

A download is available at Adium’s beta page.

Via [Infinite Loop]
Download [Adium]

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