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iPhone 3G Getting MMS Support?
Posted by Jason Chen at 3:12 AM on June 27, 2008
iPhoneAtlas claims to have received an internal AT&T memo detailing what the iPhone 3G MMS app might look like. Even iPhoneAtlas doesn't believe that these photos are 100% real, and lookin at the button layout and the UI design, we can pretty much say that these things better NOT be real. The memo doesn't list what kind of pricing will be on this mythical MMS plan, but since the iPhone won't have any included messages on AT&T by default, expect to be paying a little extra for picture messaging if this pans out. Likelihood of this being true? Not so good. [iPhoneAtlas via Boy Genius Report]
The idea behind Nike's new PhotoID scheme is that you take a picture with your mobile phone and MMS it to Nike's computers. These grab the two dominant colours and send you back an image of a 1985 Dunk high-top basketball sneaker with the colours mapped on. Cool, but here's the neat bit: you can buy the sneakers. Clever bit of PR from Nike, but it does mean you could get a pair of sneakers in hues to match your fave photos... be that sandy yellow and ocean blue, or clean bedsheet white and nubile-skin pink if you're into that sort of mobile phone photography. Launches today, but you'll have to be in one of nine European countries if you fancy trying it out. [
Apple's filed a patent on their upcoming iPhone instant messaging app, detailing exactly what it's going to look like and how it's going to behave. While most of the images show an iChat-esque (and current SMS-like) interface, there are some interesting tidbits we picked up from the text. One, there's mention of "graphics, photos, audio files, video files and/or other attachments as are supported in a MMS and/or Enhanced Message Service," which points to possible MMS support in the future. At the very least, it might mean that their IM app will be able to transfer files. Two, there's also a reference to the user receiving "an instant message while the user of the device is in another application," alleviating fears that we wouldn't be able to IM in the background. Both these snippets are after the jump.
Big holes in the iPhone's SMS/MMS functionality have been filled with two apps, SMSD and MMS. SMSD allows you to forward old SMS messages to new recipients, as well as sending new messages to multiple people. MMS, on the other hand, lets you send MMS messages (but not receive them yet) from pictures on your phone. This one's still early beta, so be careful if you really need your phone to "not crash." Our only hope is that these apps can be ported over to the "official" iPhone third-party SDK once that's available next year. [
Say you're in Europe, standing in front of some medieval castle. You take a picture of it with your cameraphone and send it via MMS to Spellbinder. Soon you get a message back with your shot, only now there's a giant green fire-breathing dragon guarding the castle's gate. There are no elves in a sweatshop, magically overlaying images on top of your stuff. Rather there's a system that analyzes the shot, matches it to a huge database of other shots, then does what Spellbinder's programmers tell it to do. And it can do a whole lot more.
