Posted on July 14, 2009, at 12:22 PM .
Rhomobile is a company building an open source framework for business mobility solutions. This framework provides a new approach to mobile application development, that offers a comprehensive, modern, highly adaptable, and low cost solution for today’s smartphone app developer.
Tomorrow, Rhomobile will be announcing Rhodes 1.2 with support for push data on BlackBerry (and iPhone). The news is thanks to RIM making the push API’s available to developers, thereby imbuing BlackBerry applications with the power to instantly synchronize data.
Rhodes Features:
- Allows developers to write apps in HTML and simultaneously build as native apps for all smartphones
- Supports iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android
- Makes developers five times more productive for even a single smartphone OS
- Support for Push Synchronized Data on iPhone and BlackBerry
- Full access to device capabilities: GPS, PIM contacts, camera
- Allows users to work with synced local data for rapid access and ease of operation when disconnected or offline
One of the complaints I hear from developers in the BlackBerry space, is that the BlackBerry development platform has fallen behind its competitors, in its ability to develop applications fast and with minimal overhead. While this is true in the consumer space, the development platform also provides a framework to develop robust applications that can service the most complicated of enterprise needs. Rhomobile could be just the framework needed to bring consumer application development up to par with the rest of the industry, while also giving enterprise a much needed boost of productivity.
The Rhodes framework is available at a flexible pricing range suitable for a variety of smartphone application efforts.
Posted on July 14, 2009, at 10:54 AM .
UPDATE: Here is the screencap of Ka-Glom free on App World. I’ve emailed the company asking why you guys aren’t seeing it. I’ll let you know.
Ka-Glom was one of the most addictive games for BlackBerry I’ve ever played. The best part of it was that it first launched at a time when almost nobody was playing BlackBerry games. I remember burning through my 8700′s battery playing it and competing for high scores with my friends.
The game is now free in App World in tandem with the company making the game available for App World.
Published by Magmic, Ka-Glom is a classic BlackBerry title and it will be interesting to see what sort of revenue the company sees from the Apple App Store.
Posted on July 14, 2009, at 10:26 AM .
You know a company is doing something right in the BlackBerry space when they’ve received funding from the BlackBerry Partners Fund. The most recent company to catch the attention of the BlackBerry investment group is Nexage.
Nexage announced that it has closed US$4M in Series A funding from the BlackBerry Partners Fund and GrandBanks Capital.
Nexage’s initial product, AdMax is a mobile ad mediation and optimization solution that enables mobile publishers to maximize revenues from mobile ads while reducing internal operating expenses by connecting to multiple ad networks.
With investment from the BlackBerry Partners Fund, Nexage will build out its mobile advertising platform, which supports fragmented media types (mobile web, SMS, in-game and video advertising) in a single solution.
This is a great opportunity for BlackBerry in that mobile advertising is growing at a steady rate, and advertisers are seeing very favorable click-through rates. Mobile advertising is seen by many as a way of reducing the price of software while recovering development costs through advertisements.
Posted on July 14, 2009, at 9:00 AM .
We’ve written about buzzd several times and today they have some great news for Canadians. buzzd is now optimized for Canadian locales as well as made available to BlackBerry Storm users.
If you haven’t heard, buzzd is a location-sensitive city guide and social network. They have had great success on App World with over 200K downloads in the first 30 days of being available in App World. buzzd is an easy way to discover what’s going on in your city and it leaves you rarely asking “what should we do tonight?”
The social aspects of buzzd mean editorially driven event and venue information, along with up-to-the-minute reviews and ratings from other members of the buzzd community, are available constantly. Users can browse and search continuously updated event feeds, which include pricing, location, and event details as well as the firsthand ratings and reviews posted from the event by other members in real-time.
Event and venue information is courtesy of Citysearch, Flavorpill, Time Out, MyOpenBar, last.fm, Upcoming.org and many other local content providers. User-generated feedback for “real-time” activity about venues and events is also layered at the top of event listings throughout the platform.
Download buzzd by visiting http://mobile.buzzd.com from your BlackBerry browser or download buzzd from your PC.
Posted on July 14, 2009, at 7:53 AM .
My TELUS BlackBerry Tour 9630 has been unlocked by the good folks at Cellfservices.com and it’s working smoothly. It’s still relatively expensive to get your device unlocked, but that’s just because it’s such a new device. It’s expensive being an early adopter. Unlocking your Tour costs:
Verizon BlackBerry Tour 9630 – $21.99
Telus and Bell BlackBerry Tour 9630 (0-72 hours) – $71.99
Some other unlocking prices include:
All AT&T phones except Nokias – $7.97
All Fido phones except Samsung – $9.99
All Rogers phones except iPhone and LG Neon – $9.99
Verizon Storm – $17.99
Telus and Bell Storm 1-3 weeks – $56.99
T-mobile Blackberrys – $7.97
Telus and Bell Storm Express 24-72 hours – $74.99
Verizon Tour – $21.99
Telus and Bell Tour 0-72 hours – $71.99
Get your BlackBerry unlocked at a great price.
Posted on July 13, 2009, at 3:14 PM .
Bla1ze from CB has been using Skyfire for BlackBerry and it looks to be a huge improvement for the BlackBerry internet browsing experience. While the browser is still in Alpha testing, it’s looking really slick.
According to the company, some of the new features added include:
- New Keyboard Shortcuts: We mapped the keyboard shortcuts to be similar to the ones in the native BlackBerry browser to offer a more familiar user experience.
- Switch to Skyfire: Once Skyfire is installed, you’ll see a “Switch to Skyfire” option show up in the options menu of the original Blackberry browser. We added this feature to help when users click on links in email and SMS and end up launching the native browser instead of Skyfire or when you navigate to a web site that is better viewed in Skyfire.
- Text Entry in Thumbnail view: You now don’t have to zoom-in to enter text. We resolved that issue and now enter text directly in the thumbnail view of pages.
- Contextual zoom with camera corners: Similar to the other Skyfire platforms, we now support contextual zoom. Thus we detect areas of interest (say articles or images) and allow you to zoom-in to areas easily by fitting the area of interest to the screen dimensions.
- Faster zooming: You’ll see a great improvement in your ability to zoom. Unlike Alpha 2, the page displays text at all zoom levels, without any redrawing of the screen. Less checkerboards.
More details, screenshots and impressions after the jump
