Filed under: Social Software, iPhone
BeeJive iPhone app gets AIM chatroom support, sort of
I once called BeeJive the best chat client for the iPhone, and for good reason: it supports several different chat services, offers push notifications, and has a user interface that makes chatting on the iPhone about as easy as it can feasibly be. BeeJIve just keeps getting better, too. The latest version, 3.1, now supports group chats in AIM ... almost. Group chats are a great feature that I'm sure Beejive will fully implement soon, but I'm not a fan of the way they work now. To start a group chat, just click the plus button and add multiple contacts. So far, so good, but here's where things get sticky: the only option is a private chatroom. You have to invite contacts to allow them in.
There's also no control over the name of the room. It's just Beejive plus a random string. Also, you'll want to turn notifications off if your room is very active, because having your phone beep or buzz for every message in a fast and furious chat is a wee bit obnoxious.
I know these are all minor quibbles, but it would be great to have a separate "start group chat" button, with the ability to create and name a public room. For now, though, I'm not complaining too much when an already-excellent chat client adds a useful feature it didn't have before.
Facebook Chat has been a bit slow to catch on. Since it's been relegated to being opened from the web in a Facebook Tab, it hasn't been able to compete with chat services that have their own dedicated clients, like AIM, MSN and Yahoo. Although some third-party apps - like Adium - have made the extra effort to support Facebook Chat, it's not widespread. That's about to change, though, when Facebook ...
We recently reported some bad news for Hackintosh enthusiasts: Apple's upcoming OS update, OS X 10.6.2, had removed support for Intel Atom processors. None of Apple's hardware uses Atom, but some of the most popular netbooks do, so that news affected a big chunk of the unauthorized OS X installs out there. With the latest developer build of 10.6.2, though, Apple seems to have flip-flopped and ...
Hot on the heels of my roundup of 15+ great extensions for Google Chrome, I've already found some more that deserve to be mentioned. First on the list: ChromedBird. You probably guessed from the name, but yes, it's a minimal Twitter client which you can access from Chrome's main toolbar. It hides inside a little birdie button until you want to check your stream or post an update. ChromedBird ...
Over the past few years, Microsoft has had to contend with increasing competition from free, web-based office suites such as Google Docs and Zoho Office. And when I say contend, I mean, maybe start taking notice of. There's no doubt that MS Office is still the 800 pound gorilla in the word processing, spreadsheet, and database field. But free competitors including those online applications and ...
How can a Digg story make the front page without making the front page? Digg is about to show you, by placing some highly-active stories on the homepage for 10 minutes at a time before they have enough diggs to be there. By putting these trending stories up front, Digg intends to have a higher volume of users digg or bury them, as a sort of filter to decide what belongs on that coveted ...
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
