Nearly three days after activating its multimedia messaging service (MMS) to iPhone 3G and 3GS, AT&T Inc. said today it was "pleased with the rollout" despite continuing user complaints on its own Facebook page.

Many iPhone users complained late into the weekend and early today about the service not working or taking too long to send a photo. The service was activated mid-day Friday nationwide, after AT&T took heat from customers in June about not having it available when the iPhone 3GS launched. The complaints began rolling in later Friday but there were also some praise for the rollout mixed in.

"We are pleased with the rollout of MMS" to iPhone, said spokesman Mark Siegel in an e-mail sent about 9 a.m, reiterating comments he made when the service launched Friday. This morning, Eric Mooneyham endorsed that view with his Facebook comment, "Everything went fine for me. Just sent a video to someone on Verizon, and it went through just like that! Thx AT&T."

Despite a deluge of complaints – some of them posted right here on this blog – AT&T says it is happy with the roll-out of the long-awaited MMS update for the Apple iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S. On Friday, the update was released to iPhone owners across the country, temporarily putting serious strain on the network.

Throughout the day, users experienced various problems with the picture-messaging service: Many couldn’t send or receive MMS text messages at all. Some reported that it was taking up to 20 minutes to send each message. Other frustrated users got halfway through dispatching a text, only to be greeted with an error message.

“Up and running in Atlanta,” one of our readers wrote early on Friday afternoon. “But when [the MMS service] updated it bricked my phone for a bit. Had to do a hard reset just to start it back running. VERY slow. Sometimes fails to send but guess it is from all the traffic.” Others were more succinct: “Updates phone. Tried to send a message. Failed,” reported a reader in Las Vegas.

Sweet Jesus, AT&T just told us that MMS for iPhone launches September 25. Which is emphatically not summer. It'll be coming via software update for iPhone 3G and 3GS (remember, old iPhones are getting left out).

AT&T admits they're late, saying "it was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one" so they needed the extra to "to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic." Which I think means if MMS doesn't work, everybody can ream the shit out of them for it. At least it's free.

The wait for tethering continues though, with "no set date." They simply "expect to offer it in the future." Again, 'cause the network isn't ready: "This function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect."

Twenty-one teens using a driving simulator while sending text messages or searching their MP3s slowed down, wove in an out of their lanes, and, in some cases, ran over pedestrians, according to a study presented to the Pediatric Academic Societies on Saturday, May 2. While the most significant finding was that the distracted teens wove and changed their driving speed dramatically (other teens ran over pedestrians as well at a slightly lower rate), those behaviors can clearly pose a danger both to the drivers and others around them. "It's good for us to increase community awareness that this can be a problem," said LaPrecious Harrold, M.D., a resident physician at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) and Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters (CHKD) in Norfolk, Va. This study comes as legislators nationwide debate how and whether to regulate texting-while-driving. The study restricted itself to teens, a population of drivers already at significantly risk. Motor vehicle accidents are leading cause of death for people between 16 and 20, accounting for more than 5,000 deaths each year, according to the CDC.

Alone in a room in his home in Bonn, Germany, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat at his typewriter, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper. As he went along, Hillebrand counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page. Each blurb ran on for a line or two and nearly always clocked in under 160 characters. That became Hillebrand's magic number -- and set the standard for one of today's most popular forms of digital communication: text messaging.

At long last, iPhone and iPod touch users gain cut, copy and paste features, thanks to the forthcoming iPhone 3.0 update. That led off more than 100 new features introduced on Tuesday during Apple’s iPhone 3.0 event in Cupertino, Calif. The new software will be in developer’s hands starting Tuesday, and is expected to be released this summer for users.Copying and selecting is accomplished using a double-tap technique, and you can drag to select a block of text or other content. You can also copy and paste between applications. The feature works for blocks of HTML and photos, also. As Apple demonstrated it Tuesday, cut, copy and paste only works in Apple applications, but the features will be available to all applications.