Mobile photo sharing service Radar has announced today support for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile devices, and others numbering over 220. Cameras on phones tend to get a pretty bad rap in the quality department, but Radar’s doing some pretty cool stuff here. Think of it as Twitter, only with pictures. MMS isn’t a service available to everybody, but Radar seems to be a way to get around that. They’re boldly claiming that you can share not only your pictures, but also videos with any registered friend on any phone on any carrier worldwide. The producer, Tiny Pictures, has even got a Facebook app ready to rock. I’ll admit it; I’m a sucker for the Facebook and the social networking and all that. Stuff like Radar makes me want to trade in the 8800 for something with a camera.
Monthly Archive for August, 2007Page 3 of 13
Mobile photo sharing for your BlackBerry
A reader just let us know about a Zenprise report they were going over, which included some crazy numbers about e-mail and stress in the workplace.
The survey found that 36% of respondents indicated that their job is ‘stressful’ or ‘extremely stressful’. However, when email is down, 74% of respondents indicated that their job is ‘stressful’ or ‘extremely stressful’. Only air traffic controllers and police officers were viewed as having jobs more stressful than that of an IT administator whose email system is down!
Wow. Respect to the IT admins out there who are dealing with stress levels comparable to that of cops. The report had a few pointers that might help keep that blood pressure down, like “be ready to assemble a cross-functional SWAT team to quickly resolve BlackBerry issues” and “consistently monitor & audit your Active Directory infrastructure”.
Thanks, Chris!
If you tuned in to our WES podcasts, you might remember the name SpinVox, purveyors of some fine voice-to-text software. Today, Rogers announced that SpinVox’s services would be available to subscribers, notably transcribing inbound voicemail into SMS messages. Part of the reason for Rogers’ support of SpinVox in particular is the multilingual support. Here in Ottawa, it’s bilingual central and easy to see how including French language support is a good business move.
Gizmodo’s procured a press shot of Palm’s upcoming device, the Centro, and given a few extra details, Palm may be working its way where RIM’s presence is negligible. The Centro will be geared towards the youth bracket, with a pricetag to match: $99. Sprint will have an exclusive deal for 90 days before other carriers will start seeing it. EVDO speeds plus touchscreen and a full QWERTY keypad make for a decent package at that price. The picture also has MSN, Yahoo! and AOL IM clients all in tabbed view, which is another step in the right direction for capturing a younger market. Is the Centro something that a BlackBerry-toting dad would get for his kid over, say, a Sidekick iD?
$10.5 million is small potatoes for the service of a BlackBerry 8830, plus the limited-time private island offer is a nice extra. Well, says Sprint. YouTube’s down right now, but for whenever it gets back up…
Over on the BlackBerry Forums some screenshots of OS 4.3 on a BlackBerry 8300 have surfaced. As noted by BGR, one of the bigger changes is voice notes getting folded in to the media player, along with an added playlist function. The messaging side of things got a bit of a graphical tweak, but nothing especially exciting beyond that. The OS still isn’t out yet, so more features may still be included before release.
The release date for the Sprint’s BlackBerry Pearl 2 has been narrowed down even further, since BGR has it on good word that it will be out by November, but supposedly lacking in Wi-Fi. As far as I could tell, the Wi-Fi was what made the Pearl 2 - maybe it’s another device with the Pearl form factor? Maybe Sprint is disabling the feature so they can charge for it… who knows until it comes out. As an addendum, they also heard of a CDMA Curve coming out in the first quarter of ‘08.
I have a confession to make: although I’m really interested in the future of GPS, and I excitedly follow all the latest news in LBS, I have yet to really incorporate it into my life. The reason? I haven’t (yet) seen an LBS application that makes so much sense for my lifestyle that I’d be stupid not to use it. That’s why BlackBerry Cool has been so intrigued by Tele Atlas’ Maps in Apps developer contest (officially announced earlier this week), which almost seems specifically designed to make me happy by helping to create the LBS application I always hoped to want. We had the very awesome opportunity last week to talk to Tele Atlas’ Darrin Wilkey about GPS, their Innovator Series, and what RIM is doing to help grow LBS.
BBCool: So what’s the big deal about GPS and LBS?
Darrin Wilkey: When you look at mapping, it’s really become a part of our everyday lives. Think about how many new cars have navigation systems. There’s been incredible growth in the personal navigation device market. Think about how ubiquitous maps are with the Internet. It’s really a part of our overall lifestyle and the way we get things done. An interesting thing is that from an install base perspective; some analysts are estimating that by 2010 there will be 30 million in-vehicle navigation systems in use, and the personal navigation market could get up to 100 million.
BBCool: Wow, that’s, over 3 times the population of Canada.
Magmic continues to twang away on strings of nostalgia, now with their new game Duckshot. Think back long and hard to the last time you shot a pixellated duck. That’s right, you probably had a bright orange Zapper attached to a little gray box that you unloaded every time that damned dog laughed at you for running out of bullets. What kind of gun has three shots in it, anyway? Well, now that the dawn of mobile is upon us, we can be frustrated by evasive mallards while on the go.
We’ve really got to give props to the Engadget boys for their open letter to Palm. For a company that’s clearly having trouble, sometimes tough love is the only way out of the rut. It was even enough to warrant immediate response from Palm’s CEO. Now, given that RIM’s doing a hell of a lot better than Palm right now, a little constructive criticism never hurt, right? (Well, minus the bruised ego, the sense of hopelessness, the awkward re-adapting to new standards, the inevitable failing to meet them, and the tenuous reassessment which generally results in doing the whole damn thing over again).
Given RIM’s position, maybe some praise is in order, too. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So, BBCool readers, this week we ask: what’s in your open letter to RIM? Praise? Hate? What’s in Engadget’s letter that you would include? What could be left out? Feel free to either write the letter out in full, or just give the bullet points. Instead of the usual Bplay goodies for the best comment, this week we’re giving away our Impatica ShowMate, worth a whooping $249.99. Take a look at our review to see if it’s something you would get some use out of.
Here’s the clincher, guys. We know folks at RIM read the site. If you have a legitimate beef with BlackBerrys, odds of it getting heard are pretty high. As for you lurking RIM employees, maybe you’ve got something to say to the boss that isn’t quite working its way through the pipes. Now is your chance to don some anonymity and voice off on what needs to change internally or externally.
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