Of all the exciting announcements made at the WWDC keynote last Monday, two of the things I am most excited about are both part of the upcoming iOS 5 in the Autumn: iMessage and Notification Centre.

My friend Chris’ thoughts, over at techese, pretty much sums it up for me;

I think one of the larger benefits of iMessage will be interacting with several friends in the UK quickly and easily. There have been many times where I have a question for one of these friends, and a text message would be a fantastic medium. Sadly, I’ve had to resort to twitter or email. Twitter is great, but not everyone is constantly checking it, and email — well, no one wants more email.

Just last week during the Apple event, I wanted to ask Chris a quick question and immediately opened SMS.app before realising that we don’t and never have communicated that way due to the amount it would cost to text someone in the US. There are inexpensive texting apps on the App Store such as WhatsApp which open this particular channel up, but the app is in no way as quick and easy as texting in SMS/Messages.app. I certainly won’t miss using that thirt-party app when all my friends are using iOS 5.

Unlike my friends in other countries, in the UK it’s common for phone networks to provide UK to UK unlimited texts. I have this on my £15 per month iPhone Simplicity (o2) tariff and therefore I can text my friends on any other network as much as my heart desires without incurring any other charges. I love this as I’m quite a big texter and it’s by far the most convenient solution to stay in touch the friends I communicate with the most. To be able to do this freely and for free with my overseas friends will be most welcome.

I am really looking forward to using iMessage. I have several friends in the Apple Developer Program who are already raving about it and I must say it is rather tempting me into the program to give the new features a go. My biggest concern has been the reports of battery drain which I guess is quite normal for a Beta 1, so I’m hoping that Beta 2 will have at least helped that particular issue. If it has then you can probably expect some ooh-ing and ahh-ing from me on Twitter quite soon.