As far as texting apps go, we have no shortage of options. There’s textPlus, TextNow, textfree, and plenty of others. However, the developers Borange and atebits (developer of Tweetie) are teaming up to enter the arena with a new app named Textie.

So, what does Textie bring to the table? It can send messages to other Textie users, email addresses, and most mobile phones; it’s free; push notifications are included; and it can handle photos, too. But the real draw here is its user interface. As you’d expect given the developers (atebits’ Tweetie client is set to become Twitter’s official app), the user interface is stellar, and careful attention has been paid to detail. While the app’s feature list isn’t bursting with bullet points, the app handles texts quickly and cleanly. Your “inbox” looks more like the standard Mail app than a third-party application, and in my book, that’s a great thing!

Of course, there are at least a dozen solid texting apps in the App Store. But Textie is free, simple, and elegant. If you don’t have a free-texting app yet, be sure to grab Textie and take it for a spin. (Just make sure you have a data plan!) The app claims to support a number of carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and more, but excluding T-Mobile in the US.

FREE!

Textie Messaging - Beautiful free text chat unlimited (SMS)

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2010-04-27 :: Category: Social Networking

Remember the good old days when your dad would want to show off how cute you were. Whenever he could get the chance he’d whip out his wallet and that accordion style photo holder would flop out with a dozen embarrassing photos…well today’s kids have it even worse. Think about it, with an iPhone the parents of today can walk around with over a decade of snap shots in their pocket just waiting to embarrass their 25 year old son with…no, I’m not bitter!

To make matters worse, not only can they whip them out at a moments notice but now they can share a copy of them with anyone on the spot simply via MMS or e-mail. If you’re not familiar with this, it can be easily done from the Photos application. Clicking on the arrow in the lower left corner of the Album View will bring up 3 options. “Share,” “Copy,” and “Delete.” Next you’re able to select up to 5 photos and by tapping on the Share icon you’re can choose either “MMS” or “Email.” Quick, simple and to the point, right? But what if you have 12 or more photos you’d like to share, is your only answer going back and forth creating 3 separate e-mails? Nope, here’s your trick: Copy. By selecting the Copy option instead of the Share your iPhone will allow you to select as many as you like and paste them in a new blank e-mail all at once. This can be a handy little time saver but there are some restrictions. For starters it won’t work for MMS and also the number of photos you can send in a single e-mail is limited by how large of a message your provider will allow you to send. Oh and BTW, this trick does not work with videos either.

Now if you’re a parent, go forth and embarrass away with all of those priceless photos. If you’re the victim…I mean child in this disastrous scenario well then I’m sorry. But do take some comfort in the knowledge that someday you’ll probably be sharing your kid’s holograms via text.

AT&T finally today turned on MMS for the iPhone in the US. Having missed their original target date of “Late Summer”, it’s finally here and so far it’s actually working. Working slowly, but it’s working.

Enabling MMS on your iPhone requires a little work. First, you have to connect to iTunes and be running OS 3.1 if you aren’t already. Next, you need to click the Check for Updates button in iTunes. iTunes should then tell you that a carrier file update is available and ask you if you want to install it. Go ahead and do it, it’s really quick. It will look like nothing has happened, but the key is that you need to restart your iPhone.

Next you’ll need to restart your iPhone. Shut it down by holding the power until you see the Slide to Power Off screen. Slide the button and then power up your phone once it has shut down.

Once you have done that, launch the Messages app and look for the new little camera icon in the message entry dialog. Congrats, only 3 months after every other iPhone provider, AT&T have finally turned on MMS capability for your iPhone.

Want to know how to use MMS? The main thing you need to know is that you can include images, videos (if you have a 3GS), map locations, and contact details. You can include the images/videos from within the Messages app or you can copy / paste them from the other apps. Contacts you can click the share contact button from a contact details screen and select MMS. For maps, click and hold on a pin and select the blue chevron and choose the share location button.

If you want more details on how to use MMS, head on over to The iPhone Blog, they have a nice MMS walkthrough posted.

Don’t expect it to be speedy. In our first tests it’s taken about 30 seconds to send an image. Much longer to send a video. Receiving images seems to be fairly quick, but getting slower as our tests go on.

The question now is, will this overload AT&Ts network. They seem to be a bit worried. And if it does, will it just delay MMS delivery or will it bring the whole network down?

So Apple had a big day yesterday announcing new computers, the new iPhone 3G S, and of course the long awaited software upgrade to 3.0 with Copy & Paste, MMS, and the new Video Recorder (3G S only). As great as these features are though, I think they’ve completely over shadowed some other great additions, many of which, on a daily basis are going to be far more useful than being able to receive that picture message of my parents dog in a pig costume, scary…I know. I’ve gone through all of the information I could find directly from Apple’s website (these aren’t rumors) and pooled together some of the new features that have slipped through the cracks.

iDisk
MobileMe got some major revision with the “Locate My Phone” feature and the “Remote whipe” but there is also a free application coming out called iDisk. Yup, you will now be able to remotely view you iDisk content straight from your phone, sorry MobileDisk and Air Sharing Pro. An added bonus is that through this app you can send a direct link to any file on your iDisk via e-mail so that anyone you like can view it, this is especially useful for content that is just too large to be sent through an e-mail itself.

Contact Syncing
More good news for MobileMe and Exchange users are the new advances in over the air contact and calendar syncing. Right now turning on syncing from a cloud to a phone will erase all information currently on the phone and replace it with the new info. With 3.0 though users will get the choice between erasing, merging all data, or creating separate profiles.

Apple also states that on top of MoibleMe and Exchange the phone will be able to sync contacts and calendars from Yahoo!, Google, iCal, and Microsoft Outlook. At this point it’s unclear if these are going to be new over the air features or more likely ones that need to be synced through iTunes. We do know though that you’ll be able to add subscription based calendars directly from the phone over the air, this is great for some one like me who needs an alert every time the Cubs are going to play a game or Special Holidays are coming up.
Continue reading iPhone 3.0: The Features Falling Through The Cracks »