The Palringo Team

Palringo 1.1 has now started to appear on the App Store.

Alex’s recent post on this blog showcases the new functionality.

We’ve been busy putting the final touches on a new release candidate of Palringo for Windows and Windows Mobile.

Since the last public release, we’ve added a number of user interface tweaks. These should make Palringo easier and more pleasant to use.

The services on the overview screen are now displayed in a clearer manner, with the icon changing to indicate the connection status. We’ve added new icons which show contacts who are using the iPhone or Mac versions of Palringo.

We’ve revamped the wizards used for adding services, joining groups, and adding contacts. We’ve made the experience of adding Google Talk and iChat services even easier, and we’ve introduced the option to specify a port when connecting to Jabber servers.

Shortcuts have been added for common menu features, and we’ve fixed some glitches affecting scrolling of minimized windows when new messages are received. Support for VGA-resolution mobile devices has been improved further.

In addition, we’ve made some major changes which improve connection reliability and reduce data usage. Now, if the connection drops temporarily, the session is resumed seamlessly without the need to re-synchronize contact lists and messages.

Battery life has been improved a little, and the security of logon credentials has been enhanced by utilizing strong encryption during the authentication stages.

We’ve improved voice message playback and previewing, by introducing a streaming preview feature for incoming messages, and improving application stability when voice is used extensively.

Finally, we’ve continually been optimising both the size and speed of the Palringo client. We’ve managed to implement all these new features without increasing the application size.

The new version will be rolled out shortly - your client will update automatically. In the meantime, curious users may enjoy a test version at http://beta.palringo.com.

We’ve just ported the iPhone’s chat bubbles to OSX too!!

We have just sent version 1.1 to Apple for approval, so hopefully you will find the update in the App Store in a few days from now.

Here’s a little breakdown of what’s new and some screenshots for the impatient ones!

Vocal Instant Messaging

Finally catching up with the other platforms, you can now SEND short voice messages!

Signing out of IM services

This feature has been frequently requested by our users, and is now part of the new release. It’s possible to sign out of IM services from within the Palringo overview screen.

Improved User Interface

This goes without saying. We’ve revamped our interface making commonly used functionality easier to discover and access.

Other Changes

We’ve been listening to your comments and have made a number of other improvements to the usability and feature set of the Palringo iPhone application.

• Improved stability and speed
• Encryption of account details
• Higher resolution picture messaging (up to 640×640)
• Support for landscape pictures
• Does not stop the iPod app from playing on start
• Support for Internet Links directly from within Palringo, no need to open Safari and get disconnected unless you absolutely have to.
• Ability to save photos to your photo album

• Direct access to the FAQ and the Palringo Forums
• More customisable options!! You can now tailor the user interface and Palringo’s behaviour more to your liking.

As always, keep your feedback coming on the Palringo forums at http://forum.palringo.com!

We’re currently deploying an experimental update to the Palringo servers.

This update will reduce the time needed for users to reconnect upon a disconnection, in addition to laying the foundations for some functionality we’ll be launching in the near future

Users may experience intermittent connectivity issues while the update is being deployed.

As a way of staying in touch with our ever-growing user base, we’ve launched the Palringo Team Blog.

We’ll be posting product news, tips, announcments, and sneak previews of upcoming functionality. Stay tuned

The issue of battery life when using mobile instant messaging applications has cropped up from time to time on various discussion forums. As it’s clearly important to our users, I thought I’d dedicate this blog post to explore this topic in more detail.

We take battery life seriously at Palringo. It’s one of our key design considerations. We’re constantly evaluating and implementing ways to reduce Palringo’s impact not only on battery life, but also on CPU usage, memory footprint, and data usage.

We invest time in scientific measurements and analysis. We regularly carry out battery run-down tests on multiple devices, logging the discharge curves and analysing the impact of changes we make. We have developed some clever algorithms that make sensible selections of power saving strategies and optimise sleep/wake duty cycles to optimise battery efficiency. We constantly refine these. The exact findings and algorithms we use are Palringo trade secrets, however I can assure you we’ve developed a thorough understanding of power management across all our supported platforms.

Sometimes we need to make trade-offs. For example, increasing the interval between “keep-alive” packets reduces data usage and improves battery life. Unfortunately, it also causes loss of connection to be identified and handled in a less timely fashion. We’ve analysed our statistics and selected optimal settings which maintain good battery life without compromising the ‘instant’ nature of Palringo.

Some general points:

Power Management on Windows Mobile Pocket PCs (not smartphones) sucks. Pocket PCs use a lot of power unless they are in ’suspended’ mode. Counter-intuitively, letting the Pocket PC suspend too often wastes power - the transition between modes requires several seconds of intense CPU activity. While Palringo makes educated guesses on when sleeping is likely to be beneficial, there’s only so much that can be done. Hopefully, things will be improved in Windows Mobile 7.

3G is a major battery killer. Keeping a 3G data connection open drains the battery in record time, even if no data is sent across it. Hopefully the next generation of chipsets will be better. Until then, some users may prefer to disable 3G whenever they don’t need it.

Activity also has a large impact. Being a member of many busy groups, or having hundreds of contacts which constantly change status requires more notifications to be sent down the wire. We have some great ideas for negating some of these effects, and these will be implemented in future versions.

We’re committed to writing efficient, streamlined and robust code, an art we believe is sadly being forgotten. We’ve made some great innovations in this area, and have plenty of great ideas for future builds. Stay tuned.

Stay tuned for a public beta of the Mac OS X Palringo client, starting in June this year

We’ve just rolled out a sneak-preview of the next Palringo update to our select group of alpha testers. If you’re using one of the Windows builds, and are lucky enough to be on the alpha testers list, you’ll be receiving an automatic update this weekend.

This build features a preview of the shiny new “Deluxe” visual skin. It’s currently still a work-in-progress, with more visual tweaks in the near-term pipeline.

We’ve also refined the logon experience, by adding “Sign in automatically” and “Remember me” options to the logon screen, allowing you to control which parts of the login process are automated.

Under the bonnet, we’ve implemented over 50 performance, compatibility, and reliability tweaks. Our recent work, however, doesn’t end there. We’ve been steadily progressing with the development of some new killer features, due to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting planet in the not-too-distant future. We’d tell you, but then we’d have to kill you…

The latest beta of Palringo features experimental support for hiding offline contacts. This has been a frequently requested feature. Offline contacts are now presented in a separate collapsible section.

In the near future, we’ll be extending this grouping mechanism to enable users to arrange their contacts into custom groups eg. “work”, “family”, “friends”, etc.

So give it a shot! This feature - enhanced with your feedback - will make its way into the next public release.