Tag: Messaging »

Text messaging has become an important part of the day-to-day relationships for millions of people. For some, it's a primary form of communication and helps people keep in touch at times when calls can't be made. But text messaging isn't as personal as a face-to-face conversation or even a phone call. Feel Me, a soon-to-be-released messaging app, aims to add a little more "feeling" to phone messaging.

The app displays, in real time, where the person at the other end of the message is touching the screen. Users can see each others fingers tapping at the virtual keyboard or just feeling out for a touch reply. In addition to the visual cues displayed when someone is touching the screen, a vibration or sound can be played when the two people are touching the same area to mimic the feeling that they're actually touching each other.

While the app is currently functional, it hasn't been released yet. On the Feel Me official websites, potential users can sign up to be notified when the app is released. We look forward to taking a look at this one when it comes out.

Sometimes when you want to send someone a message on your iPhone you want more than just text. You could call, but you really don't have time for that and a quick video message seems to be the perfect compromise. While there are plenty of options for creating video messages on iOS, none of them are as simple or elegant as Ravid.

Ravid allows users to quickly and easily record a video, then send it with one click. The service integrates seamlessly with your existing contacts list, and requires no additional sign-ins or special accounts necessary. Also, the messages created can be sent to anyone with a smartphone, so you aren't limited to only sending them to other Ravid users. So what we have here is a simple, free video messaging solution that requires no extra steps and works across all platforms. First off, why didn't this exist already? And second, why on earth would you not want to have it on your phone right now?

The App Store has seen its fair share of messaging, email and social networking apps. The new grouptime app, from the start-up company grouptime GmbH, hopes to set itself apart from the rest by combining the best of these services into one. Grouptime is a new kind of mobile social messaging service.

Grouptime takes inspiration from three forms of online communication: text messaging, email, and social networking. The app allows users to send SMS-style messages for free. Users can also share content with specific groups of friends in email-style distribution lists. Finally, like with any good social network, users of grouptime can update their status and location, chat with groups, and instantly share audio, photos and other multimedia.

Grouptime boasts extensive privacy features as well as a "simplified user interface." Grouptime is currently available for free on the App Store for iPhones, iPods and iPads. An android version is currently on the way.

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It’s a phrase you’ve only ever heard in the movies or on TV, but now “this message will self destruct in 30 seconds” has become a reality on the iPhone. MEDL Mobile, Inc has released a new app that allows iPhone users to send and receive messages with a preset destruction timer that keeps the contents of your message safe. A message can be set with timer of between five and sixty seconds before its contents are destroyed. Even more covert than simple self-destruction, you can also codename your contacts within the app so their true identity is never revealed when sending or receiving information. The app caters for images, audio and video and also provides a Push notification feature to inform you that a message has arrived.

We’re not exactly sure who needs this level of secrecy on their iPhone and find the passcoded homescreen lock provides adequate security for us. However, if you really want to keep your conversations under wraps and have $2.99 to spare, the app is available to download right now. But we didn’t tell you that, right?

There has been some question if Apple had been holding applications that use push notifications. Well, it looks like they have been, and they have started releasing them. Today we've seen updates to both AIM, and Beejive. Let's take a little closer look at the update to Beejive.

Beejive today released an update to Beejive IM, our favorite IM application. The update includes the greatly anticipated push notification services.

Adding push notification services to an IM application allows you to stay logged into the IM servers even when you are not running the application. Created by Apple as a substitute for allowing third party applications to run in the background and reportedly much less of a battery drain, done properly it allows much of the same functionality.

I've been using the push notification services of Beejive for a few days now and it seems to work pretty well. There have been some outages, times when the notifications didn't work, but we're chalking that up to Apple.

When you first launch the updated application with push notifications, you will be prompted just once to allow Beejive to send you notifications. This dialog is very similar to the "Application X would like to use your location" dialog we are all very familiar with. If you ever want to turn off the notifications, that can be done in the settings app.

Overall, push notifications is a fantastic feature and one of the main reasons I've been looking forward to OS 3.0. I use IM a lot and being able to stay logged in during the (unfortunately few) hours per day I'm not at my computer is fantastic.

Once caveat -- you can't stay logged into forever, there is a 24 hour maximum. To stay logged in longer you just need to make sure that you launch Beejive once a day.

There are some limitations to push notifications though. For one, push notifications don't stack up -- so you'll see only the latest notification from an single app. Other IM messages will only be in the app once you launch it. If your device is locked, you will see the notification, but can't respond or launch Beejive automatically once unlocked. These are all limitations of the push notification service itself and iPhone OS 3. Beejive have done a really good job working within the limitations such as these.

Currently the push notification option for Beejive is free, and there's no indication to think they they plan to charge separately for this feature. But I do expect some applications to use in-app purchasing to let users enable push notifications as there can be a significant cost to the publisher to support this option

The update to Beejive IM has been approved and is available now and will be free to previous owners, $9.99 for new users.

Note: There's something odd going on in the store -- the update is listed in iTunes as 2.2.0.24, but once installed it will show as version 3.0 in the app.

More screen shots after the jump.