IM+ 3.1 is live and it is awesome! IM+ is my instant messenger app of choice on the iPhone, at least so far.  Beejive IM is very buggy and unstable (I get TONS of crashes on it) and I use multiple chat protocols, so AIM is out simply on the basis that it only connects to one service.  IM+ has been the best app for me since it was released.  I had been using the free version, but when the price dropped in anticipation of the 3.1 update, I purchased the full version.

Push notification works FLAWLESSLY with IM+.  I have been signed in all night, and the IM push messages are pretty much instantaneous.  There is no lag at all in chat notifications.  I noticed that there is a slight delay between when I receive a Twitter DM to my email and when I get the notification through IM+, but I have myself signed in to Twitter through IM+ anyway.  I mean, how awesome is it to get @ replies and DMs pushed to your phone without wasting text messages?  I’ve been waiting for that.

Finally, a chat program gets a coveted spot on my front app page.  I am very picky about what goes on that page–it’s where most of the stock iPhone apps go (YouTube, Calculator, Maps, Clock, Settings, Camera, Photos, Messages) and my top used apps (The Weather Channel, Stanza, Tweetie, and Byline).  Before, chatting was sort of inelegant and I rarely used it unless  I was stuck somewhere and totally bored, or at home and away from the laptop.  Now IM+ lives next to Byline so that I can access my chats at the touch of a fingertip.

Thanks for building a great product, Shape Services!  I look forward to enjoying push messaging at last.

1) Copying multiple photos from the Camera Roll to email. This is so freaking handy, especially when I use my iPhone to take snaps of something I am reviewing, or a series of photos of a single subject. It is super easy to just throw them into an email now!

2) Shake to shuffle the iPod. This is just intuitive and should have been part of the OS all along, given the accelerometer.

3) Spotlight search. It is so handy to be able to search instead of flip through pages of apps or cycle through tons of contacts.

4) Snappier performance in the Camera. One thing I hated about the camera was the extreme lag I often experienced when opening it, or trying to go from the Camera to the Camera Roll. The increased performance makes it a lot more usable.

5) Push notifications. Not a lot of apps have this enabled yet, but I can’t wait. IM+ is probably my most anticipated push notification app…it will be awesome to be logged in to IM whenever, wherever.

Now, with iPhone 3.0, there is an application called iScrobbler that allows you to scrobble directly from your phone.  You add your music (as much or as little as you want) and listen to it from inside the app.  As long as the app is open, your played tracks will be scrobbled.  Not as elegant as a small application running in the background…but it’s a start. According to a post in the last.fm forums about the app, you can also start playing tracks on your iPod, and as long as you start the app before the first song ends, it will scrobble that track and all tracks played until the app is closed.

I have downloaded it, but not used it yet.  My biggest complaints so far are that I really hate the color scheme–it is an inelegant mix of orange and yellow that quite frankly hurts my eyes–and the track information (artist, album, title) is in a very small font.  But, like I said, it’s a start.  I look forward to seeing this app grow and possibly seeing something cooked up that will allow background scrobbling in iPhone 3.0.

Thank you, three hour nap! I am so happy that I was awake.  I have been waiting for this app since I got my iPhone 3G at the end of August. Needless to say, I promptly purchased it using the App Store on my iPhone and got it all set up with my Google Calendar information (for calendar sync) and my Toodledo account (for to-do sync).

I had already set up my GCal to sync with my Outlook and gotten Toodledo populated with my tasks earlier this week so that I would be prepared for Pocket Informant once it was released. I’m so glad I did, and I’m glad that PI chose the services it did to use with sync out of the box.

Syncing both my tasks and calendars went flawlessly and I am really impressed so far. A full review is forthcoming, but I just had to express my joy. I have missed having a good calendar application at my fingertips! I suppose now I have absolutely no excuse for being disorganized…

What’s the key word here? It’s background, my friends. As we all know, the iPhone doesn’t allow for apps to be run in the background. For instance, the new, official last.fm client can’t run in the background while you’re playing songs from your iPod, so right now there is no mobile scrobbling. That is a HUGE bummer for me, because I was really looking forward to last.fm picking up tracks as I played them. Same with AIM–if you want to chat with your buddies, fine…but you can’t do anything else in between IM messages.

I understand the various reasons behind not having apps running in the background (chiefly memory and battery power), but I still hate not being able to do it. Thankfully, there is a sort-of solution on the horizon…yesterday Apple released the iPhone Push Notification API to a select group of developers. The Push Notification Service keeps your programs connected with third-party servers to alert you of any new happening (like an IM, for instance). Back in the WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs indicated that this service would be available to users in October, so I guess the heat is on to get it integrated into the 2.0 apps that have come out so far. I’m interested to see how it will actually work. Will it be disruptive to the iPhone user experience to have constant updates from various programs? I have to believe it will be more seamless than that, but I guess only time will tell!

How do you feel about background-running apps vs. push notification? Talk back in the comments!

I’m spending the next 45 days leading up to iPhone Liberation Day planning out my iPhone experience–researching cases, drooling over all the new programs in the App Store, reading reviews, etc. I’ve already got a running list of the apps I plan to install on my shiny new toy to take the place of similar apps I’ve grown used to on the Windows Mobile platform:

1. Pocket Informant for iPhone – This app won’t be out until the fall, but it’s already at the top of my must-have list! Finding out that Pocket Informant would be coming to the iPhone was what cemented my decision in the great Windows Mobile vs. iPhone debate. I decided quite early on that Windows Mobile’s built-in Calendar was not powerful enough, and when I found Pocket Informant it was love at first sight. It’s a wonderful, customizable calendaring suite that is easily the most useful thing in my mobile arsenal. I am a heavy mobile calendar user (as I’ve detailed in previous posts!) so knowing that I’ll have a more robust solution on the iPhone makes me happy.
2. Stanza – One of the things I use my PDA phone for most often is reading eBooks. I have amassed quite an eBook collection over the years, a mix of current stuff from retailers like eReader/Fictionwise and classics that are readily available from sites like Project Gutenberg and ManyBooks. When I saw Stanza in the App Store and examined it a little further, the top of my head almost blew off. It supports pretty much any format out there, which means that I won’t have to convert any of my library for the iPhone. I can just use the Stanza Mac application to transfer books to my iPhone and start reading right away. I think the iPhone’s gorgeous screen is going to make it a wonderful reading device. I can’t wait!
3. Evernote – I love Evernote. It’s a great catch-all for the little bits of information that would otherwise end up on a random computer print out or scrawled on a wayward sticky note. My Evernote contains bits of stories, ideas that occur to me in the middle of the night, phone numbers, software registration information, web pages I’ve clipped, recipes…the list goes on and on. The Evernote iPhone app lets you access all your current notes, upload new text notes, use your iPhone camera to capture an image and upload it (Evernote lets you search text within photos, how cool is that?!) and lots, lots more. I’ve been using their Windows Mobile application in addition to having the desktop clients installed on both my Windows PC at work and my Mac at home. What a great application!
4. eWallet – This is another program I use extensively on Windows Mobile that is making the transition to the iPhone. It’s not in the App Store yet, but apparently it’s just waiting on Apple to put it there, so it should be out shortly. It’s a GREAT service that stores and encrypts all your important information (accounts, passwords, etc.) so that you can access them easily AND safely. It’s been a lifesaver more than a couple times for me. I’m so happy that my favorites (or great equivalents thereof) will be on the iPhone!
5. ListPro – Another favorite of mine from Windows Mobile by the same company that makes eWallet is coming to the App Store in the near future. I have a crap ton of lists in ListPro–books I own (exported from Delicious Library), things to buy, food lists, etc. I hope I’ll be able to import information like I can in the Windows Mobile version (or better yet, use the lists I already have created!) because that would make the transition just that much easier for me.

What are your go-to apps on the new iPhone?  Talk back in the comments.