By AppleInsider Staff

Published: 10:00 AM EST (07:00 AM PST)

Digg founder Kevin Rose, whose first-generation iPhone rumors fell short of their mark last Spring, is citing different sources this year in predicting that the 3G version of the handset will boast video chat capabilities.

During a 90 second segment of his weekly Podcast show "Diggnation" this past Friday, Rose told viewers that Apple may be restricting third parties from authoring applications that run in both the foreground and background partly because it doesn't want a competitor to its own mobile iChat application that will do just that.

More specifically, he claims that a 3G version of the iPhone hardware due in a few months will employ two digital cameras situated back-to-back -- one on the front side of the unit behind the transparent touch-screen, and a second one on the back of the handset as it exists today.

Combined with the mobile iChat application, the front-mounted cam will pave the way for live video conferencing over AT&T's high-speed 3G wireless network with computer-based iChat users, as well as other second-generation iPhone owners, according to Rose.

In the week's leading up to last year's iPhone introduction, the Digg founder cited sources in saying Apple would introduce the handset with a slide-out keyboard, two separate battery compartments, and make it available for both CDMA and GSM networks -- all of which turned out to be false.



Despite those misses, Rose has made some accurate predictions in the past, most notably his last minute reports of an iPod nano ahead of the player's inaugural release in 2005.