BeejiveIM - push notification via MobileMe email

One of several iPhone disappointments is the lack of a subscription/notification API. So only Apple's applications can do background processing and notification. Since Apple doesn't want to give up its share of AT&T's massive texting profits there's no Apple application to support Instant Messaging alternatives to obscenely overpriced SMS messages.

Happily, some applications have found a workaround -- such as Beejive Instant Messaging ...

BeejiveIM - Review | whatsoniphone.com... Get notified instantly when you get a new message (requires with MobileMe or Exchange/ActiveSync push email)...

I presume it's routing an IM notification through email services. That's a bit awkward, but workable. Of course if you're going that route, why not just use email instead of IM?

Now that Google has an SMS/IM gateway it seems one could cobble something together with MobileMe and Gmail ...

Update: Yahoo has push email for the iPhone. I'd forgotten about that. There's a BeejiveIM client for Blackberry, where Push works. Maybe I can make this work ...

Update: I tested using a Yahoo! account I keep for junk email. If you add a Yahoo account to iPhone Mail.app you do indeed get Push services. That is, the settings for Push will show the Yahoo account. Problem is, it's incredibly slow push. Like over a ten minute delay. So Yahoo! email isn't worth bothering with. Just as well, Yahoo gives me a headache every time I visit. This time I see that their user account settings page doesn't render correctly in Firefox. Yahoo is the Detroit of cyberspace.