iPhone Applications: JiveTalk for iPhone

One of the biggest disappointments of the iPhone is the lack of instant messaging support which is the reason we have seen a flood of web-based IM clients for the iPhone.

If you are looking for alternatives to Trillian Astra, Flick IM, eBuddy and Mundu IM iPhone Edition that have already been reviewed here before, then you should check out JiveTalk for the iPhone.

Beejive's Jivetalk is also a web-app that supports 6 IM protocols: AIM/iChat, MSN, Yahoo!, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and Jabber. The iPhone application is currently an alpha version but user reviews have been quite good so far.

The IM client provides conversation bubbles just like iChat which can be scrolled up and down with your finger. There's even chat icons on the top which represent tabs, so you can toggle between different conversations quite easily and is also quite fast. JiveTalk for iPhone seems to bring true desktop Instant Messaging experience to your iPhone.

JiveTalk for iPhone (alpha) Features (from their website):

• Multiple IM networks, multiple accounts per network: AIM/iChat, MSN, Yahoo!, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and Jabber
• Automatically reconnects in case of data service disruption, including phone calls, loss of cell coverage
• Real-time chats, quick switch between multiple simultaneous chats, intuitive chat interface:
  • click to browse, call, or send an email directly from the chat screen
  • full emoticon support
• SSL encryption of all over-the-air data transmission
• Control your own availability, set custom status messages, be invisible, change privacy controls

They also plan to introduce the following features soon:

• Manage your buddy-list, including add/remove, nicknames, groups, block, approve/deny requests
• Email & save your current chats

To check it out point the Safari browser on your iPhone to: iphone.beejive.com and let me know if you liked it in the comments below.

Thanks Castle for sending this in!

More images of JiveTalk for iPhone UI below:

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