After months of speculation (and frustration) MMS for the iPhone 3G and 3G S is officially arriving on September 25, AT&T has confirmed. This is a full 3 days after summer officially ends (AT&T’s original deadline was “late summer”) as our own MG pointed out earlier today, but like a lot of things with Apple/AT&T, better late than never.

AT&T posted the following comments on its Facebook page:

An Update on iPhone MMS for our Mobility Customers

We know many of our iPhone customers are eager for an update on our rollout schedule for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). We’ve been working for the past several months to prepare our systems and network to ensure the best possible experience with MMS when it launches – and that launch date is: September 25 for iPhone 3G and 3GS customers. MMS will be enabled through a software update on that day.

We know that iPhone users will embrace MMS. The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end.

We’re riding the leading edge of smartphone growth that’s resulted in an explosion of traffic over the AT&T network. Wireless use on our network has grown an average of 350 percent year-over-year for the past two years, and is projected to continue at a rapid pace in 2009 and beyond. The volume of smartphone data traffic the AT&T network is handling is unmatched in the wireless industry. We want you to know that we’re working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our network to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come.

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For anyone who has ever wanted to develop a mobile web-app but lacked the specific technical skills, Betavine’s new Mobile Widget platform may just be what you’ve been waiting for.

So what is a Mobile Widget? Betavine defines them as:

Essentially, Widgets are the new touchpoint for how users will access the internet on their mobiles. They are mini Web applications that reside on the phone but can be personalised to easily fetch relevant information from the web and present it to the user. They require a device to have a Web Run-Time (WRT) environment which enables them to behave like applications (rich GUI, can be used offline) yet are as easy to code and update as a mobile internet browser site. Consequently, widgets can deliver relevant, ‘always on’ services to users – they are typically based on 1-2 use cases, for instance, a simple weather forecast or an Amazon search feature.

Take Carsonified’s “Slimline Twitter Search” Mobile Web Widget, Twiggy, for example (screenshots above). Ryan Carson and Co. built Twiggy in just 4 days (as opposed to the multiple weeks and/or months that a “full” app might take). Twiggy “is a simple mobile widget that allows you to search Twitter, right from your phone.” According to Carson, Mobile Widgets like Twiggy are the future of mobile app development:

The importance [of Mobile Widgets] is that [they] offer web developers and designers a whole new market to build for: non-iPhone devices (1M+ and growing). Also, the widgets, because they’re built in open web technology (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) will work on any device that has the Web Run Time. There is an exciting initiative called BONDI which is helping all the device manufactures agree on a set of API’s that will be consistent across all devices, that will give mobile widget developers access to device level functionality, like location and contacts. This means someone could build a mobile widget and it would work on a huge array of devices.

Furthermore, Vodafone (via Betavine) is currently offering mobile developers a chance to win £20,000 in its new mobile widget contest. Not only do they walk home with that hefty chunk of change, but:

The winner will receive a commitment from Vodafone to promote the widget to users in one of Vodafone’s major markets. Two runners up will also receive a £1,000 cash prize.

All developers submitting widgets will also have an opportunity to make their entries available through the Vodafone Widget Manager Beta application, which is currently being rolled out across a range of 10 popular S60 handsets in Germany, Italy, South Africa, Spain and the UK.

The competition started began back on Feb. 2 and runs through April 30, 2009. For specific rules and more detailed information, head on over to the Betavine contest site. What are you waiting for? Start Mobile Widgeting!

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While the mobile world has been patiently waiting for the Pre since it was first teased back in January, Palm has apparently been hard at work on the (clandestine) Post as well.

According to Palm’s press release:

We’ve put an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources into the development and production of our new flagship device – the Palm Post. Rather than rush our highly anticipated Palm Pre to the market, we thought it was in the best interest of both our customers and our company to perform extended R&D on our new hardware and software.

Not only does this ensure that consumers will receive the highest quality mobile device possible, but by moving our top engineers to a new facility – The Orchid – we’ve been able to do what no other company has been able to achieve until now…we’ve preemptively included all of the features and technologies that our customers (and Sprint) will want come 2011 in the Post! In other words, thanks to the DHARMA Intiative, we no longer have to wait for months of testing and feedback, but instead can rely on the needs and desires consumers will develop in the not to distant future. This enables us to provide the best, most comprehensive smartphones available anywhere on planet Earth.

The Post’s most spectacular features include:

• 3.5G / 4G / 5G octo-band radios
• WiFi / WiMax connectivity
• 21 MP digital camera with 1080p video recording
• 4.1″ AMOLED / E-ink “reader” dual-mode display
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Wireless USB charging/syncing
• 128GB flash memory
• Hydrogen-cell battery: 2 weeks talk-time / 2 months standby
• HD pico projector w/ 5.1 channel surround
• T10 predictive thought text auto-correction

That’s right folks. You heard it here first. Palm, by utilizing nontraditional means, has developed and will soon release a mobile device – the Post – with features that you didn’t and couldn’t even know that you wanted! The Post is expected to be available online and in Sprint brick-and-mortar stores by April 10 for the fantastically low price of $49.99 w/2yr contract.

In other related news, Palm still plans to release its pending Pre smartphone by April 30 in an effort to beat out iPhone 3.0 / other new Android devices to the market…if anyone still cares in light of this incredible announcement.

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Available in two tasty flavors, free (”AIM Free”) and paid (”AIM Paid”), AIM 2.0 for iPhone now provides SMS notifications, has location-aware services, and supports multiple accounts (among other updates). It appears as though all of the application updates have been included in both the free and paid versions, with the major (and obvious) difference being the inclusion of ads in the buddy list of the AIM Free app.

So, what’s the big deal here? What do all the changes mean? Well, for one thing, now when you first sign in, the app will ask you if you want to share your current location:

Want to see where your friends are hanging out? You can share your location with your Buddies (or everyone) and see Buddies who are sharing their location.

Users are given three options: 1. No, don’t share location (default); 2. Share only with people on my Buddy list; or 3. Share with everyone. Once you’ve made your selection (let’s say we pick option 2 or 3), a new Group will be added – “Near Me” – showing other contacts within your vicinity. As Ars Technica points out, “there is no control over how large one’s nearby radius is” and thus, it is not exactly clear how near or far any of your contacts may be from your current location. What you can control, is the frequency of your location updates by navigating to: My Info > Preferences > (scroll down) Frequency. Here, you can select between 3 options: 1. On Startup; 2. Every 5 min. (default); or 3. Every 2000 feet.

Beyond location-awareness, AIM 2.0 also features SMS capabilities. Users now have the option to send an IM to a screen name, or alternatively, can send an SMS to a contact’s phone number (works on both iPhone and iPod touch). The app now includes both a buddy list and a contact list, to take advantage of these new features. Also, you can now stay logged-in for up to 24 hours, even if the AIM app has been closed. This allows you (iPhone users only) to get notifications via SMS when you receive a new IM and offers a work-around until Apple enables real Push notifications.

Other notable new features include the ability to use photos (taken with an iPhone) as buddy icons and the option to configure/switch between multiple screen names at any time. Are these new features enough to take down competing IM apps such as IM+, Fring, Truphone, and others? Only time will tell.

AIM Free (2.0.1) is currently available for download, while the cleverly named (but as yet unpriced) AIM Paid is still pending approval (at the time of this writing).

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