Journalists are prone to hyperbole, but this title is almost euphemistic. SHAPE Services, creator of the popular IM+ client, are continuing to roll out feature after feature for their mass-market social networking application.

IM+ current supports Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN / Live, AIM (Mac users think iChat), ICQ, MySpace, Facebook, Jabber, Twitter and Skype chat. Outside of the seemingly endless list of clients, the application also provides an equally long list of push notification options, including e-mail arrival notifications from popular clients such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Google Mail.

In addition to the application being universally built for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, IM+ also features an in-built browser for those who don’t have the ability to multitask – a welcome addition for iPhone 3G and iPod Touch users who are unable to avail of Apple’s much-awaited feature.

The latest update – 4.3 – brings with it a number of new themes and wallpapers, high resolution graphics for iPhone 4 users and VoiceOver support, allowing for speech recognition to be enabled. This last feature will set users back 99c a month.

There’s no doubt that SHAPE Services developers are trying to appeal to everyone. From customizable sounds and animated emoticons to geo-location support and retina display graphics, IM+ is becoming the client of choice for social networking users. It remains one of the top grossing applications for Social Networking – not bad at all for a $9.99 application with almost 4 000 competitors. And to top it all off, there’s a free version too.

$4.99

$9.99

IM+ Pro

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2008-11-14 :: Category: Social Networking

FREE!

IM+

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad

Our Rating: :: RECOMMENDED
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2008-08-27 :: Category: Social Networking

The long awaited Gmail Push Notification Service is not coming from the search engine giant and creator of Gmail, Google, but from Tiverias Apps: a non-related company specializing in productivity enhancing applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Tiverias Apps have released a statement saying that “GPush is the missing link between GMail and the iPhone. For the first time, receive instant Gmail message notifications”. The application was released on the App Store earlier this month but was taken down just hours after its release due to server complications. Tiverias have subsequently fixed the problem and have used this downtime to address other issues and concerns with the application. The downtime serves as both a fix and an update.

In essence, the application will mimic what it is like to receive a text message, where a user is alerted and a notification is shown on the front screen displaying what the message says. Several applications already take advantage of push notifications, but none have been posted to the App Store that allow push notifications of incoming mail.

Users should see signs of increased battery life as well, as data will be pushed instead of pulled. Under the current system, the Mail application operates under “Fetch”, a feature that pulls data to the iPhone at specified intervals (usually every 15 minutes). With the arrival of push notifications, data can now be pushed to a phone from external servers as opposed to be being pulled by phone:

Fetch (Data Pulling)
iPhone –> Talks to servers –> Pulls any data from servers

Push (Data Pushing)
Servers talk to Apple –> Apple Push Notification Service –> iPhone

As you can see, in the former (fetch) it is the iPhone that does all the work. With push, it’s the third party servers.

We’ll have a review of GPush up within a few days of its release. Check back soon!

6.00AM PST
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