Archive for November, 2009

Research In Motion’s new BlackBerry Bold 9700 seems more than familiar, marrying the solid horsepower and good quality that characterized the original Bold 9000 with a form factor increasingly similar to other recent BlackBerry releases. A typically excellent RIM e-mail, contact and calendaring device, the Bold 9700 works in concert with the latest enterprise back-end software to add more features for enterprise users. That said, some of these new features are a little kludgy. It’s somewhat surprising that the new Bold 9700 bears the Bold moniker at all. Whereas the first Bold’s size and textured backplate made the device visually and tactilely distinct from other BlackBerrys, the Bold 9700 adopts a look overly similar to recent releases including the Curve 8900 and the Tour.

RIM representatives indicated that last year’s Bold 9000 was a little too butch (one went so far as to refer to it as the ManBerry), so the Bold 9700 was made smaller and given some cosmetic changes designed to make the device a little more appealing to women. The Bold 9700 is significantly smaller than last year’s Bold 9000, measuring in at 4.29 by 2.36 by 0.56 inches and 4.3 ounces, compared with 4.48 by 2.6 by 0.59 inches and 4.8 ounces for the Bold 9000.

From a design perspective, the Bold 9700 makes it seem like RIM is running out of design ideas.

While the original Bold 9000 was distinct (because of its size, heft, screen quality and the aforementioned backplate), the Bold 9700 feels pretty derivative. Take the Curve 8900 and tone down the shiny chrome a hair; slap the Tour’s flat-keyed QWERTY keyboard and bezel design on it; add a textured, leatherette strip on the back; move the side buttons and connectors around a bit; and reduce the profile with a trackpad instead of a BlackBerry’s typical trackball; and voila—you’ve got the Bold 9700.

NBA Lovers Now You Can Get Real Time Scores And News On Your Blackberry With NBA GameTime.The app is really smooth and has some great features like live scores, game summaries, and more. The best part is that the game comes in both a free and $9.99 version so you can choose what features you want. The downside is that they app is a whopping 2.4 Megabytes which will probably keep it off most older devices.Check out the free Lite version at this link and the paid version at Blackberry App World.

Thanks To My Good Friend Salomondrin ,We Have A First Look At The Blackberry Tour 2.The essex is still a CDMA/3G phone, just like the Blackberry Tour that’s out right now for sale, but with a few upgrades:

1) Trackpad: RIM is little by little getting rid of those annoying trackballs that cause problems to most Blackberry users. The Trackpad on the Essex is great, just like the one you can find on a Second Generation Bold (9700), and always reliable. No more sticky trackballs!

2) WiFi: Another very useful add-on by RIM, just like on the Storm 2. No, you won’t be able to make calls through it, but you can certainly e-mail, browse the web, and even send BBMs while on it.

3) 2 GB of internal Memory: Another sweet advantage over your regular Tour. In case you don’t have an SD Card in your Essex you will be able to take pictures and make videos without worrying about buying one.

Rumor has it that the Essex will come out for Sprint here in the US. And as a matter of fact, my Essex is a Sprint phone, but if you are a Verizon Wireless costumer there is nothing to worry about, because we will be getting the Essex too. I had a chance to talk to a “higher up” person from Verizon and they confirmed that they will be getting a “Trackpad Tour”, although they didn’t want to confirm the name or number of such device, they are aware of it already. They haven’t talked about a release date, but on some websites December sounds like a winner, although I wouldn’t hold my breathe on that one. From my personal experience, although I could be completely wrong, December is too close and there hasn’t been many leaks of this phone, so that tells me we might have to wait a little bit longer for its release (My guess is in between the end of Q1 and beginning of Q2 of 2010).
Check The Video Below:

It looks like some AT&T stores have already started receiving Bold 9700 units. The device is already available for business customers, and should be widely available on November 22nd. The Bold 9700 is one of the most anticipated devices to date, and in the words of Ferris Bueller “If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up”. If you haven’t already grabbed one up from T-Mobile, then you only have another week or so to wait so hang in there.

One of the first and most popular BlackBerry Twitter clients that seems like it has been around forever is TwitterBerry. With the release of the latest version, Orangatame Software, the company behind TwitterBerry, has changed the name of the application. Forevermore, TwitterBerry will known as OpenBeak.
OpenBeak features include:

* Post updates to Twitter, including a character countdown from 140 characters
* One-click access to view friends timelines, replies, your favorites, your own timeline, and the public timeline
* Post pictures to Zannel, TwitPic, Twitgoo, or yfrog
* Take a picture with a one-click embedded camera (BlackBerry® Device Software version 4.6+)
* Reply to tweets from each timeline view
* Send and receive direct messages
* Mark tweets as favorites
* Notification icon that indicates the number of unread messages, like new emails or missed calls
* Cache all avatar images to internal memory, thus saves network access and helps faster loading
* Search Twitter with a keyword or from a list of currently trending topics
* Active text recognition of @usernames and #hashtags
* New Setup wizard
* Two modes of list views: a “fixed height” view and a “variable height” view

OpenBeak is a free BlackBerry application and you can pick it up OTA by pointing your devices BlackBerry browser to http://m.openbeak.com…

Urbanspoon’s Blackberry app is a kind of restaurant slot machine. Just hit the space bar (or shake the phone if you have a Storm) and the wheels will spin, until they settle on a good nearby restaurant for you. You can also lock down the neighborhood, cuisine and price you are interested in. Keep spinning until you get a restaurant you want to try.

Urbanspoon on Blackberry also lets you search and browse restaurants, and uses your current location to identify the nearest restaurants to you.

Get urbanspoon for BlackBerry: The app should be landing in BlackBerry App World over the next few days, but you don’t have to wait to download it. Visit urbanspoon.com/blackberry from your BlackBerry’s web browser to download it.

iblipped is a cool little application/service spotted by Adam @Crackberry that aims to create a user generated coverage map. They provide a free application that measures coverage while using your GPS to find your location. This way they plan on creating a user generated coverage map like you can find at www.iblipped.com.The app runs in the background but since it is using your GPS all the time along with cellular connection to upload data there may be a battery usage constraint for users so keep that in mind. On the other hand a user generated coverage map could go a long way to proving to your carrier that reception sucks for everybody in your location.

Calling up Blips, you start out seeing a page that is acquiring sattelites. Pressing the Blackberry Button yeilds the options menu. Allowing you to set options such as recording mode, either Distance (good for driving) or time (good for walking). When you are done collecting your data, press the blackberry button, then press upload files. Pressing the end button sends the Blips program to the background where it continues to collect data while you go about your travels. Your data will show on our maps within 24 hours (but usually overnight if you get your files in before 9pm). So if you are going across town or across country, iBlipped.com needs your help to succeed.