Crunchgear is reporting that Till Schadde of Equinux has been noticing some weirdness with his AIM app and push notifications. Namely, Schadde has been seeing his AIM messages go to random recipients. He discovered this by being notified that a message he had sent to his iPhone version of AIM was redirected to a random stranger. That stranger then contacted Schaddle to let him know and to supply him with a screen shot of his message.

In the past, TiPb has speculated that there are indeed some issues with hacktivated iPhones. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with “hackivation”, it’s simply a process that tricks an iPhone into believing it has authorized itself with Apple via iTunes and is ready to be used, but is actually activated by other, non-Apple software.

These hacktivated iPhones are not being assigned a unique push ID by Apple the way iTunes activiated iPhones with legit SIMs are. One of our readers, Greg, summed it up best in the comments from our last push notification issue post:

The difference is hacktivation, not jailbreaking. There’s a fair bit of crypto involved in the activation process and the “fixes” so far involve taking certs from other phones. This will only work for so long; eventually people are going to have to be on official carriers and paying official plan rates for Push and YouTube and who knows what they’ll cert off in 3.1 or 4.0?

The Dev Team seem to be working on a fix but it does not appear it will come anytime soon as they’ve avoided even posting a fix on their blog. Instead, they quietly posted a link on their Twitter page to a very beta fix.

All of this is yet another part of the cat and mouse game, but it’s important to try and understand what’s going on: normal iPhone users should have nothing to worry about at this time.

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AIM Push Problems – Hacktivated iPhones to Blame?

Apple previously invited developers to help test the upcoming iPhone 3.0 Push Notification service using AP (Associated Press). Now they’re ready for some IM action, and have prepared a special, 7-day build of AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) to put push through its paces:

As a developer actively working with iPhone OS, we would like your help in a private test of the Apple Push Notification service. For this test, we have selected AOL’s AIM Developer Preview for iPhone OS 3.0 to create a high-volume test environment for our server.

Of course, as with most everything iPhone 3.0-related, at least news of the test didn’t stay private for long.

For a sampling of some of the screenshots we’ve received, check out the gallery after the break!

[Thanks to Rikimaru, and all the anonymous tipsters!)

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iPhone Push Notification Testing Round 2: AIM

Not sure when this went live, or how I missed seeing it the moment it did, but the snippet of video on Trism that Apple showed off in their iPhone 3.0 Sneak Peek Event is up in full on Apple’s developer site, and it’s brought along some friends. The full list includes:

• Werner Jainek of Cultured Code (Things)
• Dr. Ge Wang of Smule (Ocarina, Leaf Trombone)
• Steve Demeter of Demiforce (Trism)
• Christina Wick of AOL (AOL Radio, AIM)

The videos show not only some great insights into the personalities behind some of our favorite apps, but the development process as well.

(Via Cocoia on Twitter)

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Apple Videos Highlight iPhone Developers in Advance of WWDC

If you’ve never played around with BeeJive’s JiveTalk, boy, you don’t know what you’re missing! Even though third party apps such as AIM and Palringo are available, I still prefer the look and feel of the JiveTalk WEB APP. I’m sure Crackberry Addicts can attest to JiveTalk’s IM supremacy. And you know what? BeejiveIM (formerly JiveTalk) is coming to the iPhone and from the looks of it, seems to better than ever.

It’s planned for Beta Release in September 2008 but the Boy Genius got his hands on it early and gave away a few details. It supports most IM programs, we’re talking about: AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, Windows Live Messenger, MySpace IM, and Yahoo! Messenger. Plus, it looks like the clean look of JiveTalk extended over to BeejiveIM and it’s rock solid.

An added bonus, BeejiveIM is ready for Apple’s push notification, which will be a godsend for IM programs. Though there isn’t a current release date or price, BeejiveIM can’t come soon enough…AIM blows big time. Click on the Read Link for more pictures.

Photo Credit: Boy Genius Report

Read

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BeejiveIM (JiveTalk) coming to the iPhone? Sounds Good, Looks Better

Folks who’ve transitioned over from Windows Mobile (or BlackBerry) to the iPhone (or folks who, like me, are dual-wielding) take heed: one of our favorite IM apps from those other platforms has finally made its way into the App Store. It’s Palringo (iTunes Link) and it’s free. Palringo is an instant messenger app that’s able to talk to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, etc. It will also let you send media files (like photos). There is one downside — you do need to set up a Palringo account to get it all going, but for now at least, if you want multi-client IM, Palringo’s your best option.

That’s good stuff, but the better stuff is coming: Palringo’s custom ‘Vocal IM,’ which is somewhere between sending audio files and VOIP chat. We’re also hoping that Palringo will be able to add background notifications when the iPhone supports it.

I’m downloading now, but I tell ya, I’m excited for this app. Seems like an excellent idea for a lightning review, don’t it?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Palringo Now Available for iPhone: Multi-Client IM FTW!

When I picked up my shiny black iPhone 3G last Friday, I knew I was going to have to pay the inevitable rate increase for data (another $10 smackers a month).  I also knew I would (hissing a curse under my breath) lose my built-in 200 text messages per month.  AT&T’s SMS packages offer a laughable range of offerings:  $5 a month for 200 messages, then an Olympian leap to $15 for 1500 messages and $20 for unlimited.  What, no room for $10 a month for, say, 750 or 1000 messages?  But I digress.

The basic idea goes thusly: AIM (and thus your AIM app on your iPhone) is able to send free text messages by sending them to +13522225555 (or whatever the phone number is).  There’s a bit more to it, of course, so be sure to click on through and read Carlson’s walkthrough.

(Post updated since publication by request)

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Tip o’ the Week: Free SMS from your iPhone

As part of his piece on the continuing confusion surrounding the $99 iPhone SDK program acceptance/pending/rejection letters, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber also dropped this very interesting nugget about the equally continuing and confusing situation surrounding the apparent Apple ban on multitasking and background apps:

[A] source confirmed to me that the iPhone AIM client AOL demoed during the iPhone Roadmap event does not cheat by continuing to run in the background — it quits when you switch to another app, but doesn’t log you out of AIM automatically. Such a client can’t notify you of IM messages from the background (a la the way the iPhone notifies of you SMS messages), but when you switch back to the AIM app, messages you missed should appear. Be wary of claims that “An app that does X is impossible without background processing.”

If accurate then that, as they say, is that in terms of any hope for multitasking apps before June. If Apple didn’t grant AOL “special dispensation”, they certainly won’t give any to Johnny “Next Big Social Perpetual Ping App”.

But is a non-background running AIM of any use to you? A welcome break from the constant connection demands of IM? A way to keep AIM second class to an eventual Mobile-iChat Touch app? Smart thinking on Apple’s part or just a train wreck in the making?

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Multitask-Masters: No AIM Loophole

According to an exclusive by macapper.com, picture messaging and AIM could be in the works with the so-close-you-could-stab-it 1.1.1 update. I’ll grant that it could just as easily be a screw-up by AT&T, or maybe he’s got his iPhone on some non-iPhone plan and just temporarily forgot about it. Maybe, though, it’s the real deal. You never know.

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Possible AIM and Picture Updates?

Sorry, that’s misleading. But it grabs your attention, and it’s not too far from the truth. There’s a new chat application on the iPhone called MobileChat. Though it’s just out, it’s already ready for a 1.0 beta release. It’s an open source application, which is generally a good thing for projects like this, and it, ahem, borrows liberally from the iChat user interface. That is to say, that it looks very good. Not to be done, ApolloIM has released a new version of their software as well. Needless to say, both are only available if you’ve hacked your iPhone; the easiest way to do that is to install AppTapp Installer.app.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iChat on iPhone