Yesterday I downloaded a messaging application called Ping! from the app store, following a recommendation by a friend. Earlier in the day I had been looking at WhatsApp, but since I wasn’t too keen on sharing my phone number with online friends, I gave Ping! a whirl.

Above is a shot of a section of my iPhone home screen. As you can see, Ping! is there. My home screen is reserved for my favourite and most opened apps only. You can see where this review is going.

Ping! is an iPhone to iPhone messaging app, oh and the iPod touch. A cross between IM and SMS. Unlike the latter, it doesn’t incur any additional carrier charges. It works over wifi and 3G on the iPhone and wifi only on the iPod touch. A friend sent me a Ping! notification via GPRS yesterday. Worked a charm. Ping! works with push notifications so that messages can be delivered anywhere in the world, instantly.

The great thing about Ping! is you don’t have to share your phone number with anyone. Once you’ve downloaded the app you simply pick an ID (choose carefully, this can’t be changed currently) then tell your iPhone/iPod touch using friends about the app and once they install it you can send messages to eachother for free.

One of the refreshing things about this app is it’s unique notification tone. A lot of apps out there use the default text messaging sound which can cause confusion, but Ping! gives us a lovely “ping ping” sound which I have recorded especially for you to sample, here…

I’ve been messaging a few of my iPhone using friends over the past 24 hours and it’s a great way to keep in touch or just send a reminder to eachother. Nicky notified me via Ping! when the news about Tweetie 2 broke, since I wasn’t going to be at the computer, so as soon as I heard my Ping! I knew he was bringing good news.

I wouldn’t say the app was perfect just yet, but I expect future updates will change that. I had a couple of app crashes when deleting a typo and the timestamps aren’t reliable. But, all the time I was using it, the server status remained green and OK. There appears to be a character limit per message but at the moment I’m not entirely sure what that is. I sent a message more than around 200 characters to a friend last night but was told it got cut off at a certain point. I’ve e-mailed the Ping! developer to ask what the maximum character limit is and I’ll report back once I get a response. So, to be on the safe side don’t natter for too long, like me

[UPDATE]

The character limit per message is 150. In the absence of a character counter within the app, you’ll have to rely on guesswork. I hope we can expect a character counter in a future update.

Overall I am absolutely and totally impressed with Ping! It’s currently free for a limited time only, so head over to the app store and grab it today.

Rating:

As a huge advocate of Tweetie for iPhone and Mac, I was excited to hear what developer Loren Brichter was going to announce today, regarding the next version of the iPhone client. Some people were anticipating an update to the Mac version which was released back in April, but I can’t say that there’s anything I’m waiting to be improved on that. It’s already way ahead of the other Mac apps for Twitter, IMO.

Loren has explained in depth what features will be coming in Tweetie 2, including video recording from the 3GS, drafts manager and threaded conversations like the Mac version – a feature I love and have been desperate for on the iPhone client. I’ll let Loren tell you about the whole heap of other features.

Tweetie 2 for the iPhone will be submitted to Apple this week and we’ll impatiently await the approval. Tweetie 2 is a complete rewrite and a whole new app which will cost exactly the same as it does now, just £1.79/$2.99, for new users and old. I have been following mentions of @tweetie on Twitter and have been surprised to see people complaining about having to pay for the new app. I have been using Tweetie on the iPhone exclusively for almost 10 months and I still can’t believe that this, my most used and loved app on the iPhone, cost only £1.79. That won’t buy you much, nowadays, but it will buy you the best Twitter app you’ll ever need on the iPhone.

After many years of waiting and wondering why there is no Apple Store in the great British city of Newcastle upon Tyne, yesterday we found out that the wait is (almost) finally over. Apple Store is coming to toon! It will be opening Spring 2010 in Eldon Square South, which is currently under construction.

You can see the brochure with the floor plans for the new mall and where the Apple Store will be located, here (PDF).

Apple now have job opportunities listed for the Newcastle store on their website.

I’m very excited about the new store. Finally no more ordering online and waiting days for shiny things to arrive via UPS – just a very short journey into the city centre instead to pick things up as and when I want need them. Thank you, Apple, for making this Geordie Geek very, very happy.

After a very long 7 months, my Gadget abstinence has come to a shuddering halt thanks to the new iPod nano with video camera. I opted for the very juicy orange in the largest 16GB capacity, which cost £135. I ordered from the Apple Store online at around 1.30pm yesterday afternoon and it arrived via UPS at 3pm today. That’s probably the quickest delivery time I’ve experienced from Apple in 4 years.

I was feeling quite underwhelmed before the ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’ Apple Event last Wednesday, knowing the entire event was going to be devoted to iTunes and the iPod range – something that I wasn’t too excited about. That was until the One More Thing where the new nano with video camera was announced.

I’ve been wanting the iPhone 3GS since it’s launch a couple of months ago. However, due to being tied into my existing iPhone 3G contract until March, all options to get around that were hardly attractive. Pay up the rest of my contract and upgrade/sign a new 18 month contract, or buy the Pay & Go iPhone 3GS for £440 and pop my existing SIM in. The latter was the more attractive option, but word from some 3GS upgraders was “wait until next summer for the next new iPhone”. So, the new iPod nano is my go-between – with a more attractive price-tag.

The video functionality of the nano was the selling point for me as it was the biggest thing I wanted from the 3GS. Okay, so I can’t upload directly from the iPod itself to the internet like with the 3GS, but it takes moments to sync to iTunes/iPhoto so I can quickly trim a video in QuickTime and then upload to iTunes, MobileMe or YouTube.

I am very impressed with the quality of the video on the new nano. Due to time constraints today I have been unable to capture a large amount of video, but did manage to get this up on YouTube as a test for people who asked me via Twitter. I hope to get some more footage out in natural daylight soon. My initial impressions are very positive, considering it’s such a tiny device. It seems to perform extremely well when going from light to dark conditions which is something that past (and more expensive) camcorders I’ve owned were unable to do very efficiently.

I shall be posting a more indepth review soon. I am in the middle of some major home improvements right now which has slowed my Fruit Bytes dedication down, but if you have any specific questions about the new nano or a request for a test video then please feel free to ask me in the comments or drop me an e-mail and I’ll do my best to assist.