Where does the Messages beta pull the buddy picture/user icon from

How does an iPhone send iMessages to iPad:

1. Make sure iMessage is set "on" on both devices
2. On your iPhone, go to Contacts and find your friend's name to check whether or not you have his email address. If not, you need to add his email address.
3. On the iPad, go to settings>>messages>>recieve at>>add email. Put your friend's email address from step 2. It will say "verify".
4. Your friend need to verify by checking his email. There'll be an email from Apple. Open the email and he'll be asked to click on the verify link. Click on it and he'll be directed to Apple's homepage. Just follow the instructions there.
5. Once your friend has verified his email address, the word "verify" in step 3 disappears. Now you can iMessage him.
6. On your iPhone, go to contacts and choose your friend's name. Click on "send message" and choose the email address that was just verified. You're now directed to the message screen.
7. In the "To" field, you 'll see that the email adress is missing "@". Ignore it.
8. Make sure that the send button is blue. Now just type your message and send.

Hope this works!

I'm afraid that's not possible in the current iOS.

But there are a few work-arounds:

• You can define a specific vibrating tone for that specific contact person which will do almost nothing (unlike the default long and hard vibrating)
• or you can disable vibrating when you enter Silent Mode and when you start having this rapid-fire conversation, just switch your iPhone to silent mode and no vibrating will happen!