I’ll admit. I’m a huge fan of textPlus by GOGII. It allows me to send texts to multiple users, groups and best of all… it’s free. textPlus just got better.

Texting has become a sight to behold. After reaching over 8 million downloads for its popular free group texting application textPlus, GOGII unveils today textPlus 4 Pics Edition, a visually rich social mobile application that uses the power of pictures to take texting to a fun, social level. Free to download and use, textPlus 4 Pics Edition is available on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

textPlus 4’s unique picture capabilities turn iDevice text exchanges into powerful photographic conversations. Here’s how:

• Picture Communities: It’s show and tell for texting – a group of users texting in one Community chatroom can easily send and receive pictures to illustrate their live discussions.
• “Face Text:” Eye-roll, giggle, growl or grimace. Texters get emotive by using iPhone 4’s front-facing camera to snap and post their own real-time facial expressions; make a face, click the button, 3, 2, 1 – it posts instantly into the conversation flow. It’s like texting from a photo booth.
• Real picture messaging: The #1 most-requested feature from textPlus users, picture messaging lets users send, receive and save photos in one-to-one, private, community and even app-to-SMS conversations – all for free.

Yep… you can finally send and receive photos from people within the textPlus groups or your Apple iPhone contact list… for free. Look for a review in a bit.

[ Links: textPlus 4.0 ]

Coding an application from scratch is an intense affair. Libraries, references, classes, includes, programming patterns and if you’re not a programmer, it’s an uphill battle to even get started on a concept.

You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like WhackAMole or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend’s faces. You can even make use of the phone’s sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.

But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android’s text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud.

To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.

Via Google Labs, App Inventor for Android allows easy access to the GPS, desktop, SMS and web portions for even the non-programmer. The inevitable fart or banner app that announces your name from across the room will pop-up, but this is a very quick way to start out programming and overcome the hurdles of learning Android from scratch.

Based on Java and able to connect to your Android phone, this looks like an impressive way to start out.

[ Links: Google Labs App Inventor ]

The makers of the cool and free textPlus have released a game based on texting, textRace for the Apple iPhone and Apple iPhone Touch.

Fire up those texting fingers and prepare to do battle — the ultimate texting throwdown is here. From the creators of the free, unlimited texting app textPlus, comes textRace, a no holds barred texting game that pits challengers against the clock in a test of speed and accuracy. textRace is free to download for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

The premise is simple: a message appears in the app, and users must accurately retype that message to beat the clock. The faster and more precise they retype it, the more points they earn and levels they unlock. The app’s speed clock and pounding music get the blood pumping, and the fiercest competitors can boast about their high scores by posting them to Facebook.

Bound to be fun for the texter in your family, textRace is in the Apple iTunes Music Store right now for free too.

[ Links: textRace, textPlus ]

AT&T is once again dropping hints that the carrier wants to change (read: increase) wireless data pricing. Many investors have been pressuring the company to ditch the $30 unlimited iPhone data plan and instead replace it with some kind of metered billing model. That’s largely because as carriers begin to open their networks to push IM clients and mobile VoIP, they’ll be losing a lot of money on voice and SMS. The only way to counter those losses will be to charge more money for mobile data. Enter AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who this week tells Reuters the changes will be coming soon:

Stephenson expects changes in how the wireless industry prices its mobile data services going forward, with heavy data users being charged more. Smartphone users currently pay a monthly fee of about $30 for unlimited data. “For the industry, we’ll progressively move toward more of what I call variable pricing so the heavy (use) consumers will pay more than the lower consumers,” Stephenson said.

What Stephenson calls “variable pricing” is confused by many to mean per-byte billing. While the idea of only paying for what you use sounds great to those not paying attention, the plans AT&T and Verizon actually wind up implementing are very carefully crafted to drive most user bills ever higher. Verizon for instance now offers users the option of paying either $9.95 for a phone data plan with a 25MB cap (20 cents per additional MB, 125 MB maximum), or $30 for “unlimited” (which actually means 5 GB a month) service. This is in addition to SMS, voice, and other monthly fees.

These plans really aren’t about making “heavy users” pay more, they’re about getting everybody to pay more. Since most users consume much more than 25 MB per month, they’ll all wind up upgrading to the more expensive plan in the belief it offers a better consumer value. But suddenly, here you are paying more than $100 a month for voice, data and SMS plan when you’re really not a particularly heavy user. Most users are somewhere around 200 MB a month, though you’ll note the absence of a $20, 300 MB plan.

Meanwhile, you’ve got AT&T and Verizon also now requiring that everybody have an SMS and data plan on their phone — whether they actually use data or not. What’s designed to look like value and choice is in most cases the exact opposite. When thinking of 3G pricing, picture a giant invisible funnel that propels users toward one inevitable outcome: paying more money.

Whatever pricing emerges, eventually users will realize they want to connect multiple devices to these 3G and 4G networks without having to pay a subscription fee for each and every device. While some people think the $15 for 250 MB a month or $30 for “unlimited” 3G pricing of the iPad is a “great” deal, most people simply aren’t going to want to pay yet another monthly fee just for iPad bandwidth after shelling out for both home and wireless connections. Amazingly enough AT&T agrees, Stephenson saying he sees the iPad as a largely Wi-Fi device as a result

“My expectation is that there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription,” he said during a webcast of an investor conference, adding that the device would be a mainly “Wi-Fi driven product.”

Even the company that’s providing the iPad’s 3G functionality doesn’t think you’re willing to pony up the extra cash, which is saying something. Whatever changes AT&T has in store for their bandwidth pricing, make absolutely no mistake that the end result is going to be you paying more money for mobile bandwidth, regardless of whether you use 100 MB a month, or four gigabytes a month. It’s absolutely essential to carrier execs and investors eager to compensate for lost voice and SMS revenues. Anybody claiming otherwise is either selling you something or not reading the fine print.

Link to the original article…

Last week Verizon informed customers that if they wanted to buy certain types of phones customers had to buy a data plan. Previously, both AT&T and Verizon had only made data mandatory for smartphones. Apparently, neither carrier wants you buying an Internet-enabled phone, then only using free Wi-Fi instead of their pricey 3G networks. From the sound of things, now carriers don’t want you using free IM services instead of SMS, either.

The Boy Genius Report indicates that messaging plans are mandatory for feature phones:

Phones that require a messaging plan at time of purchase include: Pantech Reveal, Pantech Impact, Motorola Karma, Samsung Flight, Samsung Impression, Samsung Magnet, Samsung Solstice, Samsung Mythic, Samsung Propel, LG Xenon, LG Neon, and the LG Vu. It looks like the minimum monthly cost when buying a “Quick Messaging” phone is around $20. That’s a $5 200 SMS/MMS plan and a $15/month unlimited data plan. It doesn’t look like you can walk out of the door without paying less than $20/mo in features in addition to your voice plan.

To add insult to injury, the leaked AT&T leaflet assumes you’re an idiot, informing customers that the decision is being made to bring users the “best possible experience” with their phone. There appears to be two lessons to be learned here. One, don’t try to save money if you’re a Verizon or AT&T customer, because they’ll just outsmart you. Two, don’t try to save money if you’re a Verizon or AT&T customer, because they’ll just outsmart you.

In the wireless industry, it sometimes feels like for every step forward toward openness, there’s a corresponding two steps back in terms of pricing.

Update: AT&T offered this comment to their plan changes:

The requirement is only for our Quick Messaging Devices, not feature phones. Nearly all of these devices now have full Web browsing capabilities, and as such, customers are more likely than ever to surf the Web on them. In light of this increased usage, a data and/or text plan will enable customers to enjoy a plan that does not involve paying as you go charges. We still offer a large number of feature phones – those do not have a data plan requirement.

Broadbandreports.com has asked AT&T for a definition of what exactly distinguishes a “quick messaging device” from a “feature phone.” and inquiring (again) why it’s necessary to force any users into an SMS or 3G plan if they simply want to use Wi-Fi and free IM services. If it’s to simply make additional revenue, it shouldn’t be dressed up as an “experience enhancement.”

Link to the original article…

Wireless carriers did a great job last week fund raising for Haiti relief, drumming up millions of dollars in user donations in very short order via SMS. Normally, there’s a ninety day window in between the user donation and the relief getting delivered, as user billing cycles must complete, payment must be verified, and then handled by an intermediary. Stepping up to the plate, Verizon Wireless has issued a statement saying they’ve immediately transferred $2,987,560 to the American Red Cross to expedite the aid process. Sprint meanwhile tells the New York Times they’re immediately forwarding 80% of their received donations, while AT&T is examining the possibility. Meanwhile, Comcast says they’re pledging one million dollars in support to the Red Cross and to the American Red Cross and to Télécoms Sans Frontières (Telecom without Borders), a nonprofit agency that brings telecom services to crisis areas.

This seems to go against the Neowin report where Cell Phone Companies are Withholding Support, but any support is better than none.

Link to the original article…

Not too long ago I was talking about the GOGII textPlus 2.0 update for the Apple iPhone [ article here ] but GOGII added some worthy updates to this version that remains free and is a free way to send SMS between up to 50 folks in your contact list at once.

GOGII, Inc. takes another giant step toward revolutionizing the way people text today by making it possible to reach out to and communicate with up to 50 people at a time using a single free text message. The company’s flagship next generation texting application, textPlus, now lets users create “personal communities” that can be reached in a moment’s notice via text – today’s most ubiquitous mobile communication mode.

“People have used email group messages, listserves and the ‘reply all’ features on email to coordinate organizations and groups for years,” said Scott Lahman, CEO and Co-Founder of GOGII. “But the fact is emails aren’t received or read as quickly as text messages. We’re bringing email-like functionality to texting so that every member of every work softball team, soccer parent group, high school clique, book club or Saturday night bar crawl can be reached in an instant.”

Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users can download the free textPlus 2.1 app from the Apple App Store, then become “community managers” by creating names for their various groups within the app. A community manager can invite up to 50 members to join a group (members don’t need to have the app or use an iPhone – they simply need to have a phone that is text-enabled), and send one text to the entire community name to initiate a conversation. In textPlus’s chatroom-like environment, everyone in the group receives the text and everyone sees all the replies.

GOGII (pronounced “go-jee”) has upped the ante for this free app that allows for free text messaging between now communities of folks now. Just… hint hint please add a method to text people overseas and I’ll be 100% happy(-ier). Go get it now.

[ Links: textPlus 2.1, GOGII ] [ Related: textPlus 2.0 ]

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably still stuck on the anemic AT&T SMS package of 200 text messages and find yourself over each and every month. It’s not that I’m cheap, but that overage per month adds up over time and I’ve wanted a good, reliable way to send messages to people and do it for free. Some methods of sending “free SMS” via the web can’t be replied to by the person you’ve sent a message or they might not know that it is indeed you that’s doing the sending.

GOGII, Inc. [ site here ] has recently updated their textPlus Apple iPhone application to version 2.0 and added the ability for people to simply respond to your free username via textPlus 2.0 and you’ll receive the message whether you’re in the app or via the Apple iPhone 3.0 enabled push notifications when you’re not in the app.

textPlus 2.0’s highly anticipated usernames give non-app users in the U.S. the ability to start text conversations with their friends using textPlus. All they need to do is text a friend’s username to 60611, and the conversation begins. In fact, with usernames, textPlus users no longer even need a phone number to send or receive texts from inside the U.S.

New to users outside the U.S., textPlus 2.0 offers a convenient, cost effective alternative to international texting. Because textPlus 2.0 usernames are accessible worldwide, textPlus users who have registered a username can send and receive text messages for free to and from other textPlus users, anywhere. So, a textPlus user on a WiFi network located in the United Kingdom can now engage in a username-to-username text conversation with another textPlus user in the United States, Japan, France or anywhere else in the world, for free.

Not only is this a way for me to save money per month on my constant SMS overages, but my friends – one or groups of more than one – overseas or on other cellphone networks can easily contact me for free directly as well. This is definitely a new model for texting.

There are a few, unobtrusive ads that are included in the app, and normally I avoid ad supported apps. But they’re seriously not in the way… and besides, the app works great and is free, but textPlus 2.0 is definitely worth a download for your Apple iPhone. Setup to get my account up and running and my phone number verified took less than 2 minutes. All for free.

[ GOGII ] [ textPlus ] [ Related: Apple iPhone 3GS ]