With mobile social networking booming (a recent USA Today article highlights this trend), to help you get your fix two companies are moving forward on their plans to bring advanced multi IM clients to webOS. The first comes by way of Agile Mobile, who unveiled a preview of their new app for the Pre; and the feature list is quite substantial. The app will include:
- Support for AIM, MSN, Windows Live, Yahoo Messenger, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and Jabber
- Full buddy list connectivity: Send and receive messages OTA, any time.
- Voice messaging push-to-talk: Use your phone as a walkie-talkie and send voice messages to your buddies.
- Picture messaging: Snap pics and then send them to any of your buddies.
- Video messaging: Video record and instantly send it to buddies on MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, or Google Talk.
The last point is particularly interesting, especially since video recording hacks for the Pre have proven rather primitive. Could this be the way to finally get video recording capabilities onto the device? If this pans out, it's clear that Agile has invested heavily in development to build up a framework for video recording and messaging, or have an untold partnership with Palm that could involve a future update to webOS and the Mojo SDK.
The other multi IM client in the works is coming by way of Mundu, whose messenger app for the Blackberry won the Handango Championship award for 2009; so we can expect a full-featured port to webOS. Support includes Google Talk, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and Jabber. Proprietary features such as Mundu Radio and Mundu SMS are also part of their lineup, and should also see the move to webOS. They already have a mobile specific webpage available for webOS devices.
There is still no firm release date for either client except "coming soon". As for when native Yahoo! support on the Pre is coming, there is also no firm date, although this feature will be standard on the upcoming Pixi handset.
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