There have been some important upgrades to Agile Messenger [iTunes Link] since I last wrote about the multi-client chat app. Notably: a "walk and talk" feature that uses an iPhone camera to give you a view in front of your phone if you want to chat and walk at the same time. That's useful if you're going to type and walk around, but the under-the-hood upgrades are worth a mention as well. The biggest update for me was the ability to search contacts. If you have dozens of contacts, being able to search by name is essential; scrolling a huge set of lists is a chore. Searching works great in Agile Messenger, I'm happy to report. Push notifications work exactly as they did before.

There are some cosmetic tweaks and performance tweaks, and I noticed the performance seemed snappier overall. Still, BeeJive recently added (somewhat limited) chat room support, which Agile still lacks. The iPhone IM wars are still on!

Agile Messenger is only $1.99 for the next couple of weeks, which is a steal for the normally $9.99 app. If you use IM a lot, it's a great experience.

Today Twenty08 released a new instant messaging client for the iPhone/iPod touch. MobileChat (iTunes Link) allows you to connect to multiple IM services, including:

• AIM/ICQ/.Mac/MobileMe
• Windows Live/MSN
• Yahoo
• GTalk
• Jabber

In many ways, this application for the iPhone looks like a cross between Adium and AIM for iPhone. This application is feature rich, allowing you to take and send images or IM a phone number from any of your 10 supported IM accounts, Most notably, MobileChat allows you to use Apple's forthcoming "Push Notification" system for notifications when the application is closed. This feature is built into this release, but will not be active until Apple "flips the switch." You can download MobileChat today from the App Store for $2.99 (USD).

[via MacRumors]

Google has just announced Google Talk for the iPhone (and iPod touch). You won't have to wait for the App Store to use it, since this is a web app designed for the iPhone's browser (remember when Apple wanted us to believe that web apps were just as good as fully native apps? My how times have changed).

All you have to do is point your iPhone to www.google.com/talk and soon you'll be chatting away with your Gmail contacts. Since this is a web app, Google Talk for the iPhone only works when it is the active window in Mobile Safari. Close the web broswer, or switch to a different window and you'll show up as unavailable in Google Talk.

[via Lifehacker]

Meebo, the reigning champion of web-based chat, has just released their entry into the iPhone app arena. I had a chance to speak with meebo's CEO, Seth Sternberg, earlier today about the release, and they truly do have a surprisingly innovating iPhone app on there hands. Simply point MobileSafari at meebo.com and the site will send you to the iPhone portal (a technique about which our own Scott McNulty had a few thoughts to share) where you can sign into any of Meebo's supported services - including AIM, Yahoo!, MSN and Google Talk - or you can sign in with an account you have already registered with meebo. From there, things get very interesting (note that the screenshot below was snapped in Camino since I'm just not cool enough to get Erica's iPhone screenshot utility up and running).


First, if you registered an account with meebo and added your credentials for one or more chat networks, you'll appreciate the fact that everything transfers over to the iPhone app. Custom status messages, your buddy icon, even the history from chat sessions on your desktop computer - they all appear in the iPhone app. Your buddies are listed alphabetically, but any current chats float to the top of the buddy list for easy access, and this is a bit of UI where meebo has some unique innovation going on: the entire iPhone meebo experience centers around a home screen that is your buddy list; it takes up the entire display, and it even rotates and scales gracefully for landscape mode. No tabs here, which can be a mixed bag for the experience.

Tapping on a buddy slides over to a new chat window with nothing but an icon to get back to your buddy list, a box to type in and the send button. Chat history (if there is any) populates pretty quickly, even over EDGE, which is an area that Seth said the company focused quite a bit: ensuring the entire app was light on data, simple to use and ultimately fast. Tapping the buddy list icon of course gets you back to the list, and any chats you started automatically float to the top. This is where the lack of tabs can be both a blessing and a curse: while the buddy list is nice and large, making it far easier to to read and navigate than any previous iPhone chat apps, it still takes at least two taps - not including any potential scrolling - to get out of a chat, back to the list and into another chat; more taps if you need to scroll. It's a unique approach to solving this kind of a problem, but ultimately, I think meebo made the right choice.

All things considered, meebo's iPhone chat app is hands down my new favorite. I haven't been chatting much on my iPhone yet, but meebo's streamlined experience, fast load times and easy navigation make this a slam dunk that has finally sparked my interest in trying out mobile chat. I was even more surprised about how well they've done on this 1.0 app when Seth shared that this is meebo's first mobile app of any kind. While the company has done web-based chat for years now, they've never ventured onto any mobile device platforms. That said, I think they just about knocked this one out of the park. If you own an iPhone and need to chat, meebo.com is easily one of the best options available.

TUAW reader varun submitted a good question for an Ask TUAW session on the topic of multi-network chat clients. varun has tried out the likes of Fire, Adium and Proteus, but hasn't come up with a compelling reason to use one over the other.

I thought this would be a nice opportunity to ask you readers to sound off on which multi-network IM client you prefer, and why. When commenting, be sure to mention how the client fits into your workflow, what you like about it and why. The more clients you can bring to the table above and beyond the ones already mentioned, the better.

So what say you, TUAW readers? What is your favorite multi-network IM client, and why?

Proteus, the chat client for the Mac by Defaultware, is now free! With Proteus, you can simultaneously connect to AIM, Yahoo!, MSN , ICQ, Jabber (including Gtalk), Bonjour, Gadu Gadu and Sametime chat services. Plus, it sports a customizable, Mac-like UI and plays well with Address Book.

When you download the current version 4.12, you will have to go through the registration process, but there will be no charge. Defaultware has stated that a new version that does not require any sort of registration will be made available soon, as well as a universal binary.

You may have heard that Google Talk has been integrated into Gmail, making it a web application. This is very cool in my opinion, however, Safari (surprise, surprise) isn't supported at the moment. It is true that I can just use this nifty new feature in Firefox (or any of the other Mozilla derived browsers) but luckily Safari support is being worked on, so one day I will be GTalkin' and Safari-in' at the same time.