iPhone Daily News Digest

Apple this afternoon released an updated SDK along with the beta for iPhone OS 3.1.

Early reports are that little very little has changed with regard to developer APIs. This is very likely a bug fix release. We also don’t know yet whether it kills the ability to jailbreak or unlock your iPhone using ultrasn0w.

Remember, this release is just mean for developers so users will still have to wait a while before getting their hands on it.

We’ll keep our eyes on the release and keep you updated as details emerge.

Related Posts

• Dev-Team Delays iPhone 3GS Jailbreak
• Dev-Team Says iPhone 3GS Jailbreak Possible Via 24Kpwn
• Dev-Team Releases Ultrasn0w For iPhone 3G
• Jailbreak for 3.0 OS Released
• iPhone OS 3.0 Release Expected At 10AM PT, 1PM ET

I finally did it. No more monthly fees for text messages from AT&T. Thank you, Push Notifications.

The way people use texts varies considerably from person to person. Some need unlimited messages while others only send a couple a day. In any case, here are options that should make kicking the costly text message addiction easy for just about everyone, well anyone with an iPhone that is.

Savings could range from a couple dollars a month to over $20 a month if you’re on a family plan.

Textfree Unlimited (currently $5.99) and Textfree Lite (free)

Textfree Lite is limited to only 15 messages a day and that number could change at any time for the better or worse. If you’re subscribing to AT&T’s minimum plan, that’s already a considerable increase in your texts per month. Textfree Unlimited is unlimited for a year.

Either of these options may work for you. In fact, both may work for you. You can ease into the elimination of AT&T text messages over time by using Textfree Lite initially. Then upgrade to Textfree Unlimited when you’re ready to go whole hog like I did.

When you install one of these apps you are prompted to sign up for a unique username@textfree.us account name. I went with my name (which was luckily still available) so that people can easily identify who the text message is from.

Textfree doesn’t use a password because it somehow identifies your unique iPhone. So if you reinstall or delete the app your account is still attached to that iPhone. When you reinstall the app you’re already logged in.

I installed Textfree Lite last week on my original iPhone and then needed to transfer the account to my new iPhone 3GS when it arrived. To do that I had to send an e-mail to support@pinger.com and they took care of transferring the account within 48 hours.

Textfree supports the following carriers in the United States. From Pinger’s Web site:

You can send a text message to just about any carrier in the US. This means AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Alltel, Virgin Mobile, US Cellular, Cellular One/Dobson, Boost Mobile, Metro PCS, Unicel, Sun Com Wireless, Cincinnati Bell, Cellular South, Tracfone, NTELOS, Cricket Wireless, Centennial Wireless, Midwest Wireless, Surewest, Alaska Digitel, Northcoast PCS, YC, ACS Wireless, and Advantage Cellular.

I know you can send text messages through AIM or Google Talk, but I found Textfree to be a much more seamless solution. A unique username that’s my actually name really makes all the difference. There’s also an option in Textfree to receive an e-mail copy of every text message you receive. I have them going to my gmail account where I have a filter set up that automatically archives the messages. Now I’ll always have them no matter what happens to my phone. If there’s something I need they’re just one gmail search away.

I should also note that MMS messages are not possible with Textfree and the app doesn’t currently have the option to send to multiple people at once. You have to retype (or copy and paste) the message.

Cancelling/Downgrading Text Messages

I simply called AT&T up and told them I wanted to opt out of being able to send or receive text messages. There’s no way for me to send or receive them now using the built-in messages app.

However, I also could have just cancelled my $5/month for 200 messages plan and moved to a per message plan that costs 10 cents each. In fact, I’m going to do that on my fiance’s iPhone.

I have a feeling if you’re resistant to getting rid of text messages this may be the tip that actually gets you to do it.

My fiance is more concerned than I am about missing text messages from friends who didn’t get the memo about messaging her at her textfree account. So she’ll pay 10 cents per incoming message but she’ll always reply from her textfree account. This way we’ll train our friends and family over time

We’re gambling that she won’t receive 50 incoming messages in a month. If that’s true, we’ll still be saving money. After a couple months, when all of her friends have hopefully become accustomed to her new account name, we’ll opt her out of text messages altogether too.

Conclusion

I’ve been pretty satisfied with Textfree Unlimited thus far. I’ve never sent a lot of text messages, so I expected to go gradually from Textfree Lite and going to a per message cost to Textfree Unlimited and opting out of messages entirely. That plan only lasted a week though and now I’m full on Textfree-only. And it’s the first time I’ve ever had unlimited text messages and now I know what I’ve been missing. It really changes the way you think about communication if you don’t have that ever present limit hanging over your head,

Also, I signed up for an AT&T Premier Account (you need a school or a work e-mail address that works to activate it) in order to take advantage of that 35 percent off the iPhone 3GS using the Bing.com promotion.

What I didn’t know is that because I signed up for a Premier Account I’ll somehow be charged a couple dollars less per month for the 3G iPhone Data plan. That, combined with $5 less per month for text messages, means I’m paying $3 net more per month for the iPhone 3GS than the original iPhone.

How do you like that, AT&T? I’ll never pay you for tethering either.

Let us know in the comments whether you’re considering canceling your text messages.

Related Posts

• A New Page In The Jott Notebook
• The Inanimate Object Of Your Affection-The Disturbing Relationship Between Man and Phone
• I AM NINJA Available For Free Until Tomorrow
• Is It Too Early To Label iPhone OS 3.0’s Marquee Feature As “Fail Notifications”?
• NimbleBit’s Sky Burger Is Available For Free, Today Only!

Are My Sites Up is an easy to use website monitoring service that notifies you when your website is down and when it comes back up.  The service is currently available in multiple tiers, with each account offering a different speed of notification.  A free account will check to see if your site is down about 25 times per day, while the most expensive Pro account checks about every 15 minutes.  Until today, Are My Sites Up only offered an iPhone app for their paid accounts, but now they have a Lite version of the app for their free accounts as well.

Are My Sites Up Lite allows you to quickly and easily check to see if your website or websites are up and running the way they should be.  Unlike its premium counterpart, however, the app can’t receive push notifications and it is also ad supported.  Well, actually, the premium Are My Sites Up app still doesn’t support push notifications due to a bug, but it will eventually, and the Lite version won’t.

So, if you are currently using the free account from AreMySitesUp.com, you now have a free iPhone app to go along with it.

You can also check out the snazzy chart at AreMySitesUp.com to see what each account has to offer.

Related Posts

• Apple Removed Hottest Girls, Nudity Not Allowed In App Store
• Hornymeter - The Name Says It All
• iPhone OS 3.0 App Re-Download Mystery Unraveled
• New Message Discovered When Re-Downloading Promo Code Apps
• Low Latency Drum Pad ‘Bare Drums’ Now Available, $500 Contest For Best Jam

We witnessed NimbleBit’s first gameplay demo video for their new casual game Moon Drop about a week ago, and today they released what looks to be the final gameplay video for the game since it is ready to be submitted to the App Store.

The goal of Moon Drop is to get as many lunar landing pods safely onto the surface of the moon as possible.  The catch is that you won’t be controlling each pod directly.  To land the pods you will be touching general areas of the screen to sort of push the pods around.  If your finger is located to the bottom left of a pod, the pod will fly up and to the right.  The gameplay mechanic seems simple enough at first, but as multiple pods enter the screen, it becomes a fairly tricky affair as pods begin to scatter.  Pods must also land at a slow enough speed so they don’t just bury into the surface of the moon.

As with most NimbleBit games, Moon Drop will feature some sort of statistical tracking system and the ability to upload your scores to Twitter.

Moon Drop doesn’t have an official release date or price yet, but we will do our best to keep you updated.

Related Posts

• Video Preview Of NimbleBit’s Upcoming iPhone Game Moon Drop
• Win A Free Download Code For Bluebird
• NimbleBit’s Bluebird Takes To The Sky
• NimbleBit’s Sky Burger Is Available For Free, Today Only!
• Id Software Has Lots More In Store For iPhone

AOL’s touchTXT is an app designed specifically for all of you iPod touch users out there.  The app simply allows you to send and receive SMS and IM messages without a lot of fuss, and now it also supports the ability to receive push notifications.

touchTXT features a very basic interface.  At the bottom of the screen there are options for messages, contacts, and settings, and that’s it.  You can go straight to writing a message and manually input your recipients AIM screen name or phone number, or you can pull that information from your address book.  You can also choose to leave your account active for up to 24 hours so messages can be sent to you while the application isn’t open, and since the app now supports push, this feature is even more useful.  Along with the addition of push notifications, the app now allows you to view your buddy list and compose a message in landscape mode.

touchTXT is powered by the AIM infrastructure, so you will need to have an account on the AIM network, including any AOL, AIM, .mac, or MobileMe account.  Since the application was specifically designed with iPod touch users in mind, it only operates over Wi-Fi and it absolutely will not work over EDGE or 3G.

touchTXT with push notifications is now available in the App Store for free.

We have also added touchTXT to our Apps That Push You AppList.

Related Posts

• eBuddy - Another Push-Capable Chat App Option
• Developer Warns Push Apps Not As Useful On iPod Touch
• Are My Sites Up Lite Now Available In App Store
• Remember The Milk - First To-Do List App To Feature Push
• Apple Removed Hottest Girls, Nudity Not Allowed In App Store

TrustedReviews

Apple Seeds iPhone SDK 3.1 To Developers Information Week Weblog, NY Today Apple began pushing out iPhone Software Development Kit 3.1 to developers of the iPhone platform. The new SDK has several new features that should make it easier for developers to create applications for the iPhone. The biggest new development is … Apple Releases iPhone 3.1 and SDK Beta to Developers the iPhone Blog The iPhone 3GS: Should You Get It? TechCrunch New iPhone dogged by shortages and overheating reports CRN Australia MacDailyNews - Manolith all 508 news articles

Product Reviews

Hawaii Church Becomes First to Stream Live Video to PRNewswire PR Newswire (press release), NY HONOLULU , June 30 /prnewswire/ — Less than two weeks after the release of Apple's iphone 3GS and iphone 3.0 update, Honolulu -based New Hope Christian Fellowship (http://www.enewhope.org) has announced that it will begin streaming its weekend worship … Remember The Milk Becomes First To-Do App With Push Notifications TheAppleBlog iphone OS 3.0 apps: What ones have you found to be good? Phones Review 2009 Apple Design Awards MacApper TMC Net - GeekSugar.com all 98 news articles

Techtree.com

Doom Resurrection for iPhone and iPod touch Examiner.com Sometime this month we're expecting the release of Doom Resurrection for the iPhone and iPod touch. The project is being supervised by John Carmack himself - creator of wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. Carmack is considered by many to be an innovator … Doom Resurrection for iPhone Hits the App Store, Costs $10 Gizmodo.com Carmack: 'Quake,' 'Quake 2,' 'RAGE' Coming To iphone, 'Quake 3 … MTV.com Doom Resurrection Now on iTunes App Store Tom’s Guide Shacknews - Kotaku.com all 66 news articles

The DIY iPhone tripod made simple, cheap IntoMobile, CA The dedicated do-it-yourselfers out there will probably have already slapped together an iPhone tripod using some spare toothpicks and a fork, or two. The rest of us haven't even considered making a DIY iPhone tripod. For those of you in that second …

The Sims 3 for iPhone Macworld, CA Some game companies try to build games for the iPhone from the ground up. Others take titles from other platforms and try to cram them into the small iPhone box. EA Mobile is definitely of the latter category, and attempts once again to cram the …

« Previous entries