You heard that right, folks. People complaining that Apple’s very-much-delayed push notification service might be delayed again can all relax — Beejive 3.0, the fantastic new version with push support will be going live in about an hour or so from now.

We exclusively gave you a look at Beejive for iPhone almost a year ago, and you have to give us some credit — we called it the best IM application for the iPhone, and were we right? Now think about push notifications and a whole slew of other additions and tweaks and you’re looking at a desktop-class IM application. We’ve been using a version with push for a pretty long time and can safely say it doesn’t disappoint. Here’s a breakdown of the new goodies and let us know when you try the new version!

• Push notifications
• Meta contacts (link IM buddies to address book entries!)
• Various UI enhancements, updated layout and color schemes
• Performance enhancements

Oh yeah, two more things… the price is now $9.99 (down from $15.99), and we’re testing a version that allows videos to be sent over AIM. (You could always send photos) Look for this in the near future.

Google rarely sends new features out into the wild before they are ready for prime time, despite the fact that it stamps just about everything with “beta”, but SMS via chat was something that apparently had one too many hiccups out of the gate. Google first announced SMS integration back in October but ran into a few snags early on and had to pull the service rather quickly. SMS is back however, and Google claims it’s better than ever. The service can be activated from within the Labs tab – it’s the item is near the bottom of the Labs list labeled “Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat”. By enabling the feature and ensuring you have mobile numbers listed with your chat contacts, you’ll be able to send text messages to your chat contacts right from within the integrated chat box in the Gmail UI. The service is completely free for Gmail users but there may be costs involved for your recipients so don’t go bombarding them with SMS unless you know they have unlimited plans.

Read