Posted on June 8, 2009, at 7:21 AM .
Recently, BlackBerry Cool wrote about a product called NetworkAcc, which claims to speed up your mobile network. A lot of BlackBerry sites have published their skepticism about the product, and rightly so.
NetworkAcc seems like a very cool concept that would certainly be of use to many. Unfortunately, none of what they claim to do is currently possible to the publicly exposed APIs.
The limitations of 3rd party access to API’s
Third party applications are fairly limited in what they can achieve in terms of network manipulation. For the most part, much of this is handled by the underlying framework, and most of it is handled at the OS layer. It is important to understand the overall architecture of the software on the device. At a high level, it looks something like this:
Operating System: Written in C++, this layer handles hardware interaction networking, process management and memory. Code written at this layer is compiled into machine code and run directly off the processor.
Virtual Machine: Also written in C++, the virtual machine is what runs all of the Java software on the phone. It sits just above the OS, and handles all Java related tasks, like interpreting byte code, managing program memory and all the other fun tasks that programmers would much rather ignore.
Keep reading about how a BlackBerry application is developed and what it can do
Posted on June 8, 2009, at 6:58 AM .
The latest version of Facebook has been out over the weekend and there are some great updates.
The first thing you’ll notice is the navigation experience is much more fluid. The homescreen and subsequent pages have been updated so everything is just a click away. All of your friends’ recent status updates are located on the first screen, and you can click into each profile to see pics uploaded and tagged, calendar events as well as interact with your friend via comments, pokes, messages and a phone call option.
The photo viewing experience has been great improved as well. As you browse a friend’s photos, you get a nice slideshow of the album pics. You can scroll easily through the pictures which are displayed in full at the top, and thumbnail preview at the bottom. To comment on a photo, just click the picture and select the comment option.
There’s some additional language support that will be of great interest to the international user. The app now supports:
- Thai
- Indonesian
- European Portuguese
Download Facebook from your BlackBerry Browser or from the desktop at www.blackberry.com/facebook.
Posted on June 6, 2009, at 8:07 AM .
President Barack Obama is an avid BlackBerry user and in a recent book published by Kasper Hauser, we get a hilarious look at what his message folder might look like.
The San-Fransisco comedy troupe, Kasper Hauser, have compiled and published a collection of messages between Mr. Obama and his various presidential colleagues, including Vice President Joe Biden, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The messages aren’t real and it’s all in the name of comedy. The BlackBerry software from Genesis Key, as well as the NSA, would never let these messages actually be published. It’s all just fun and jokes.
Here are some excerpts from the book
Posted on June 6, 2009, at 7:35 AM .
Bplay now offers the Click and Buy payment option. Click and Buy could be considered the European equivalent of Paypal. It will therefore be interesting to see how popular this payment option is with European customers.
Charles Fränkl, CEO of Click and Buy, is a big proponent of mobile content channels such as Bplay. He argues there is a growing opportunity for e-payments to become a preferred way of paying on the mobile internet, even though the big mobile operators already have their own billing systems in place – another potential channel for payments via the mobile.
“The vision that everything will go through the mobile bill in future is I think slightly exaggerated,” he said. “I don’t think that the mobile operators are very good at dealing with merchants – that’s a completely new area for them.”
Bplay is a leader in providing mobile content, being the first to offer BlackBerry Premium SMS billing via MX Telecom. I have also heard that Bplay will be adding PayPal payments soon.
Read more about how smartphones will change the future of money.
Posted on June 5, 2009, at 12:51 PM .
The BrightKite blog has announced an open source BlackBerry app called BrightBerry. The code was made open source by Chris Hallgren, and is available with OS 4.5 and higher.
BrightBerry currently lets you:
* View and navigate your streams (Friends, Nearby, Universe, Mentions, and User)
* Post a Note to your current location
* Check in to Placemarks
* Send and receive Direct Messages
* View and post comments on a post
The following features are not yet available with BrightBerry but are currently being worked on:
* Posting photos from camera capture and media viewer
* Sending and responding to Friend Requests
* Creation of Placemarks
* Viewing a Place Stream
* Improving load times on streams
* Creating a better GUI based on the iPhone app
Download BrightBerry by visiting bbhn.mobi from your BlackBerry Browser.
If you’re a developer, feel free to contribute to the project and visit the GitHub project profile for more info.
[Via]
Posted on June 5, 2009, at 12:39 PM .
I’m using the Curve 8900 right now and although I love the device, I can’t help but dislike EDGE. One application which aims to help is NetworkAcc. NetworkAcc is a mobile network accelerator specially designed for BlackBerry devices.
Although I’m skeptical, NetworkAcc could help accelerate all your mobile network activities, which include browsing, downloading, uploading, streaming, online gaming, sending and receiving email, etc. The app uses optimization technology to fine-tune several key network parameters to prevent data fragmentation and to improve data throughput. All the above techniques translate into a speedy internet/network connection: faster browsing, faster downloading, faster email, and faster online gaming.
[ED NOTE: Please write me if you've purchased this from BlackBerry Cool. The company's claims are under investigation. kyle at blackberrycool dawt com.]
