If you’ve got the IRC itch that only an iPhone IRC client can scratch, consider Mobile Colloquy your itch-relief cream. The alpha version of Mobile Colloquy uses the same core as the Mac OS X Colloquy project, but are not affiliated.

The Mobile Colloquy IRC client for the iPhone is available through Installer.app and will save your server information to make connecting to those IRC servers nice and easy.

Ok, first let’s clear one thing up. We have never, repeat, never had the occasion to actually put MMS picture messaging to use. With email-capable smartphones (are there any other kind?), why would anyone pay $0.50, or more, per MMS message?

Non-use aside, you never fully appreciate what you have until it’s gone - like MMS. We’ve never used it, or even wanted to use it, but we find ourselves wanting to use it now that it’s not available on our iPhones (Apple, where’s that damn update?!). Well, here’s a slightly involved workaround to get MMS-like functionality on your iPhone.

Given the iPhone’s ability to handle emails like a champ, wouldn’t it make sense to use the email function to send pictures to your friends? Sure it would, but there’s one problem - what if you want to send that random pic to your friend’s mobile phone? Not a problem. Every wireless carrier assigns their customers an email address based on their mobile phone number - and that’s the key.

Send a message to your friend’s mobile-phone-number-based email address and it’ll get delivered as an SMS text message. Attach a picture to that email and it’ll get delivered to your friend’s mobile phone as an MMS message. Voila! You now have an MMS messaging equivalent. If only there was a nice and convenient compilation of wireless carriers’ mobile phone email addresses. Hmmm. You mean like this?

Alltel = xxxxxxxxxx@message.alltel.com
AT&T = xxxxxxxxxx@mms.att.net
Boost Mobile = xxxxxxxxxx@myboostmobile.com
Cingular (AT&T) = xxxxxxxxxx@mms.mycingular.com
Einstein PCS = xxxxxxxxxx@einsteinmms.com
Sprint = xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile = xxxxxxxxxx@tmomail.net
US Cellular = xxxxxxxxxx@mms.uscc.net
Verizon Wireless = xxxxxxxxxx@vzwpix.com
Virgin Mobile = xxxxxxxxxx@vmobl.com

There you have it. Just ask your friends what network they use, and add their mobile email address as an extra email address under their respective “Contact” entry. Just replace the “xxx” with their mobile phone number. When you want to send them an MMS, just send them the picture to their mobile email.

Receiving MMS messages on your iPhone is not as elegant a solution. You have to tell all your friends to send all picture messages to an email address (we’d recommend setting up an email account specifically for picture messages) of your choosing, rather than your phone number (all mobile phones can send MMS messages to an email address). Whenever you get an email in that particular account, you’ll know it’s a picture message (set your iPhone to automatically check for emails every 5 minutes or so).

Until Apple hears our collective complaints and gives us an iPhone update, via iTunes, to enable MMS, this is your best (read: only) option.

[Via: iPhone Central]

came into beta form, and there’s the new MobileChat application - both available through Installer.app (go install it already, seriously!).

While ApolloIM and MobileChat both work leaps and bounds faster/better than any web-app client that we’ve tried thus far (Mundu, Meebo, JiveTalk, etc.), they both still have their respective drawbacks. MobileChat has more bugs than ApolloIM but it allows you to set an “Away” status and will display your chat convo in iChat-esque bubbles (when it works, that is). ApolloIM is way more refined and stable (only losing the keyboard once in a while - a quick trip to the buddy list will resolve that), but does not display your chat in cute, little bubbles.

For now the winner seems to be ApolloIM by a good margin. Stability and login credential storage are big plusses in our book. We can’t wait for MobileChat to get their next version polished and ready to go - it could end up being the natively installed, third-party IM client of choice for iChat fans.

Wow, Apple sure is busy on the European front these days. There’s been a lot (now that’s an understatement) of talk about which of the major European wireless players will get their chance to hock the iPhone exclusivly. Now we’re hearing that the Italian carrier TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile) may be getting courted by Apple’s people to carry the iPhone in Italy.

Now, this is as speculative as rumors get, so don’t get your spaghetti all in a knot just yet. It’s not like TIM execs have even confirmed the negotiation process like European counterpart T-Mobile Germany has.

Source

With the recent push to to create iPhone-specific (iPhone-optimized) websites, it seems that many have forgotten that the iPhone’s Safari browser was built to surf the real web. That’s the plain, old world wide web - no optimization, no lightweight versions, what you see on the desktop is what you get on the iPhone.

We’re sure iPhone-optimized sites are here to stay, but does that mean all web developers have to re-build an iPhone version of their website? Absolutely not. If a ground-up build-out of an iPhone-specific site makes you cringe, but you still want your iPhone fans to have a more convenient experience on your website, then we’ve got the trick for your.

Craig Hockenberry from IconFactory says that with just a simple little piece of code (presumably only read by Mobile Safari), you can specify the default viewport size for Mobile Safari. This will reduce the wasted space in Mobile Safari’s default, zoomed-out view. Adding a simple meta tag “lets the iPhone know how wide to display the initial page.”

For example:
meta name=”viewport” content=”width=808” / (within <>)
Will direct Mobile Safari to set the default zoomed-out view to 808 pixels. You’re going to have to find the perfect width for your own website, but a little trial and error never hurt anyone.

[Via: MacWorld]

We know Telekinesis already has their alpha software that allows Mac users to get desktop access on their iPhones, but what about the PC users out there? If you just gotta have remote desktop access to your PC, then you’re gonna have to do a little work. Natetrue has modified the open-source VNC application, TightVNC, to work with the Apple iPhone. The modded application delivers the PC desktop to the iPhone with amazing performance- complete with iPhone zooming and scrolling features. This solution preserves all the click, type, and drag-and-drop features that make remote desktop access so desirable - it really is a perfect mobile VNC client (dare we say better than Telekinesis). You can connect to the local or external IP through the iPhone’s Safari browser over a WiFi or EDGE connection.

You can get your hands on the instructions and code for free, but you definitely will need to get off your duff and actually do a little work to get TightVNC working. Get your hands dirty here!

[Via: EngadgetMobile]