Jun 22

Review: BeejiveIM 3.0 for iPhone with push notification

iPhone, Review, Technical Comments Off

What it is:
An IM client that supports AIM/Google Talk/ICQ/Jabber/MSN/mySpace IM/Yahoo & Facebook IM on your iPhone. The version that got published live today to the iPhone App store includes Push Notification. I.e. when you get a new IM, you’ll get an SMS/Text-like notification on your iPhone screen telling you who sent the message and the content of the message. You have the option to either close the message box or view, which automatically opens the application and opens a chat box in which you can chat with your buddies.

The good:
-Nice UI.
-Easier to chat on the iPhone than I thought it would be.
-Error correction works great and once you get used to typing, you’ll be chatting away fast on it.
-Supports landscape view.
-Push notification is very nicely implemented, although logging off before you go to sleep is recommended.

The bad:
-Yahoo IM doesn’t work. Every time I attempt to log in, I get the error message “Connection failed on all fallback ports”. Not sure if this is temporary or not, looks like it’s not specific to this version of Beejive based on a quick Google search.
-Frequent crashes. I’ve had it for less than a day and it has crashed 3 times on me back to the home screen.
-The cost. $9.99 for an IM app? If it had been $4.99 I wouldn’t have complained, but $9.99 is more than this app is worth right now given the issues above.

Recommend that you wait and see what Meebo is up to or for Beejive to drop the price.

Update: Now getting “error: received invalid data” when trying to log in to Yahoo

Update: June 24th – looks like Yahoo is working now, at least somewhat. I could log in to one Yahoo account, but not two at the same time. Log out of all accounts and log back in.

Apr 16

iPhone App Review: Blacklist

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I am in the unfortunate situation of having bought a new car. Unfortunate, you ask? Yes, because I’m getting 2-3 auto-calls per day from companies trying to sell me a worthless extended warranty. This is a known scam and not even being on the Do-not-call list stops them from calling.

Fortunately, there’s a solution for those of us with iPhones. The Blacklist application for $1.99 in the iTunes App Store.

Blacklist creates a contact named “Blacklisted Number” full of thousands of numbers (over 30,000 and growing) belonging to US telemarketers, scammers, and prank callers on your iPhone so that when one of these numbers calls, you know not to answer because it displays the caller as “Blacklisted Number”. 

Blacklist connects to callerdb.com’s extensive database of problem callers every time you sync. Since I installed it two days ago, I’ve avoided 4 calls. Installation and sync is painless if you’re on a high speed wifi connection.

With the minutes it saves you, Blacklist will pay for itself. If you’re getting telemarketing calls to your iPhone, you need this application. Why isn’t Vonage doing this?