Archive for: App World
- February 24, 2011 7:53 pm
Social butterflies on RIM’s BlackBerry platform have some new and exciting things to look forward to in Facebook 2.0. Pictures of the new v2 app leaked out onto the interwebs tonight showing among other things, a much needed UI redesign that makes the app more pleasing on the eyes overall, and less like a 2003 mobile app. But besides the added eye candy, v2 of Facebook for BlackBerry adds in support for Facebook Chat, the ability to view friends’ profiles, information, pages, and other lists, as well as improved core app integration to the BlackBerry OS as a whole.
Release for Facebook for BlackBerry 2.0 is slated for May 2011 — quite the wait for those chomping at the bit for an updated Facebook app. What do the CrackBerry users of GS think? Like what you see?
- November 10, 2010 12:30 pm
When Facebook Places first debuted, it was an iOS-only affair. Android joined the game not too long after. But BlackBerry users have thus far been left out. Thankfully, that streak of solitude now comes to and end. Facebook Places is now live for BlackBerry! The news comes on the heels of news regarding the Facebook for BlackBerry standalone application being updated to version 1.9. Perhaps the greatest thing BB users will enjoy is a pretty similar feature set compared to the iOS and Android counterparts:
- Check in to Facebook Places within a 1.25 mile radius of your location
- GPS and BB Maps Integration
- View Places where friends have checked in
- View Places, “Here Now”, “Nearby” and “Elsewhere”, that friends have checked in to
- Tag and comment on a friend’s check-in/li>
- Select a Place from the available Nearby Places or add a Place if location does not already exist in the Places database
- Check ins will appear in the News Feed
- View a map of the location you’re checking in to and get directions to and from friends’ locations
While I can see the benefit of having your location-based check-in service tied closely with your Facebook friends, Foursquare already integrates rather well into Facebook, and plenty of people are already loyal users. Nevertheless, Facebook Places users is sure to rise as more platforms jump on board.
- September 27, 2010 6:37 pm
While all the news of RIM’s keynote today may be centered around the PlayBook, RIM has many other fish in their basket. One aspect of the BlackBerry OS that has constantly grown year after year is that of themes. Custom themes give the aging OS a fresh face that can at times, hide the wrinkles and blemishes. With that said, the BlackBerry Theme Development kit has been heavily tweaked. Theme developers can look forward to new added support for BlackBerry OS 6 elements, the ability to customize Facebook/Twitter/BBM updates in the today screen, options to configure time-based wallpapers w/ an accompanying wizard, a faster batch process for importing pictures, and an easy to use BlackBerry App World export option that automatically zips everything up in the appropriate file type.
BB Theme Designers chomping at the bit yet?
If you haven’t heard yet, Dropbox is a great cloud storage solution accessible by many different traditional desktop and mobile platforms. In most cases, dragging and dropping (or highlight copy, highlight paste) are the only commands to get your important files to and from the all knowing cloud. Simple. East. Fast.
Today we’ve finally gotten a look at the official Dropbox for BlackBerry app. Much the same as other Dropbox apps, the BlackBerry version is straightforward and to the point. Mind you, the version of Dropbox that we’re looking at is 1 of 500 extremely limited beta copies floating around. On that note, several kind of “obvious” features are missing — upload files (non-picture files), moving/deleting files, move/delete folders. Kind of odd they’d leave what I’d call “basic” functions out of the official app. But again, this is an early beta. Hopefully said features will squeak in before the tag comes off.
Either way, it’s a very promising app that will no doubt streamline many a BlackBerry users’ lives. Hop on past to see a nice collection of screenshots.
Apple may have sidestepped the issue by calling out other manufacturers’ devices, but that doesn’t mean other manufacturers are taking the issue lying down. The humorously titled “Death Grip Meter” developed by Xtreme Labs and Fixmo does just what one would expect — tests the resilience of your BlackBerry’s signal when putting that strangling hold on it.
It’s nice to see RIM at least allowing the software to exist and not going all commando on it, axing it from App World and all. It’ll be interesting to see if the reported drop in signal strength actually coincides with any real-world call quality issues as it has on the iPhone. Think we’ll see a follow up iPhone version? Yeah, I think not…
Go ahead and give it a shot. Anyone dropping calls while choking the life out of your Berry?
Hulu is currently on a war path of sorts, with it’s content owners closing up holes, cramming in advertisements and effectively killing all the reasons consumers loved the service in the first place. Even worse is the fact that those same content owners (motivated by greed of course) are butchering Hulu’s transgression to mobiles. Bad for them, good for us.
Where Hulu is letting us mobile users down, Fox’s new “Bitbop” will pick up the slack…
- February 11, 2010 11:39 am
It’s been a long time coming, but it looks like the official BlackBerry Twitter client is *almost* finally here — in picture form at least. Hey, you can’t touch it yet but at least it’s a more thorough gallery than what some of the leaked images have been showing, right? Anyway, the big deal with the RIM Twitter client is that it will more tightly integrate with the BlackBerry operating system while also running leaner and meaner. Does it live up to the hype? Good question, I don’t have a preview copy. The lucky folks over at BerryReview do, however. So it’s best that you bug them with your questions for now. But before that, a quick rundown of the features:
- Push push push! Instant notifications
- Tweets/@mentions/DM’s directly integrated into BB message list
- Twitter send/share options located in BB menus
- URL shortening provided by BIt.ly
- Tied into BlackBerry App World app as to allow tweeting about apps — like comments. (Very cool!)
So what do you think? It’s not the prettiest mobile application I’ve ever seen. That’s understandable though seeing as how RIM hasn’t really ever been the greatest UI designers. It’s function over form mainly. And you know what? That’s not a bad thing in some instances. RIM’s Twitter app faces an uphill battle though. Reports from TechCrunch writer Leena Rao dock the app as super slow and rather bland. Uh oh.
Like it? Excited for it? Want it?
BerryReview
BlackBerry users: Wishing you had some real mobile productivity on the cheap compliments of RIM? Do you have a library full of WMA music that you can’t get rid of for any rhyme or reason? Good news…maybe. A new rumor has cropped up that pegs BIS 3.0 as providing Open Office and WMA file support among other things. For the mobile road warrior in a suit, having Open Office on your Berry is a blessing of epic proportions. Likewise, not having to transcode (by the way…don’t ever, ever transcode music unless it’s from a lossless file to begin with) WMA files into other formats is a big time saver and stress reliever.
Hopefully this rumor holds out to be true as I know a few Berry users myself who would admire such revelations. Now if only the Berry toting population could get real, native, *full* Gmail support. 3.1 anyone?
Berry Review
- January 20, 2010 12:31 pm
It’s easy to imagine that those with BlackBerries are generally pretty addicted to digital communication in quick and easy forms. I mean, the BlackBerry is still one of the best tools for doing just that. With that go go go lifestyle and mentality, Twitter has grown off of and built up it’s popularity by relying on that exact same philosophy — quick and easy sharing of information. It seems like the two were a match made in heaven, right?
You’d think. So far however, even though RIM has pushed out official apps for other services such as IM and Facebook, Twitter has remained solely in the 3rd party realm. And then someone leaked that RIM was working on a native Twitter app…
Gazing at the image above, we can see what appears to be a legit image of what the native Twitter BlackBerry app will look like. To me, it looks a lot like the Facebook app but with some different colors — not a bad thing by any means. As far as actual hands on time for the masses goes, it’s still a crap shoot with no hard timeline or release date. Though if we go by recent chatter, a February-ish release doesn’t seem to implausible.
Keep gazing away folks.
CrackBerry
