If you're looking for an alternative to the normal texting services offered by your local mobile carrier, Brooke from Apple iPhone School recently introduced everyone to a new homebrew application which allows you to purchase credits and use them in place of your phone's mobile carrier to send SMS messages anywhere in the world.

Entitled "biteSMS", this third party program for Apple's iPhone gives you an option to send your text via biteSMS or your mobile carrier when you select a conversation. There's even an option to make biteSMS your default text application if you find the rates more reasonable, as well as the ability to reset the counter.

Buying credits from the biteSMS site is based on the currency you will be using for the credits. Payment methods include PayPal, Visa, or Mastercard and cost approximately US$ 0.10 per text. Once you purchase your credits, you might have to restore your iPhone before it reflects on your mobile phone.

Here are the complete list of changes included in the current build of biteSMS:

• Ability to forward text messages by swiping on the text in a SMS Conversation.
• Auto correction now visible.
• Improved scrolling of text field when entering or editing a message.
• Support credit voucher SMS delivery to China.
• Changed 3 retries to 2 when sending via biteSMS, and improved information text when offering to switch to Mobile Carrier.

The program can be downloaded from the Ste Packaging community source (http://repo.smxy.org/iPhone-apps/), which you can add to your Installer.app's list of repository sources. In any case, we hope you find biteSMS relevant to your interests.