Posted on April 19, 2010, at 11:01 AM .
A recent article in the NYDailyNews talks about a stealth marketing campaign that RIM, or one of its outsourced marketing firms is employing to get BlackBerrys in the hands of young, good-looking professionals.
Julia Royter, a 26 year old actress employed in the stealth marketing campaign, says “I was with a bunch of hot girls and we would just walk into bars, whip out our BlackBerries[sic] and try to get guys to look at them by flirting. We’d say, ‘Put your number in my phone and I’ll totally call you. We’ll go out on a date!’ But we just wanted them to try the BlackBerry. I definitely didn’t call anyone.”
The article suggests the marketing campaign is “ethically dubious” but it’s really just a waste of everyone’s time. So you manage to get a BlackBerry in the hands of one good looking person, who might influence 20, great. Wouldn’t it be better to just build a great product that looks good and performs better than the rest, which in turn influences several million people to buy? This is exactly the sort of thing that happens when companies have over-inflated marketing budgets.
Posted on April 19, 2010, at 10:42 AM .
The T9 BlackBerry Pearl 9105 is making the rounds again and this time we get a glimpse at some of the T9 input options including compound words, context learning, auto word learning, using contacts as a data source, predictive spelling and including spell check variations of words in predictive typing. Another picture after the jump.
Continue reading ‘More Pictures of the T9 BlackBerry Pearl 9105 with Input Options’
Posted on April 19, 2010, at 9:59 AM .
Reuters put out more details about the TD Newcrest technology conference where Mike Lazaridis spoke about the smartphone industry and where he believes it’s heading. One of the major topics of discussion was regarding data compression, and the fact that smartphones are increasingly being used to consume rich media.
Devices such as the iPhone and DROID are great for browsing the web and watching video, but these smartphones use as much as 30 times as much bandwidth as regular mobile phones, and I’ve heard about 3-8 times what a BlackBerry uses.
Continue reading ‘Mike Lazaridis on Data Compression, Video and the Competition’
Posted on April 19, 2010, at 9:01 AM .
The above document has been circulating the blogs and it shows the upcoming pricing of the Bold 9650, which is the rebranded Tour2. This device has been in the oven for a long time and it’s going to be a solid phone for any QWERTY smartphone user. The above doc shows some pricing, and I think it’s safe to assume that the price columns reflect the contract discounts. According to the sheet, sans contract will run you $449, a 2yr contract gets you $299 and with a mail-in rebate the phone would go for $199. There are also rumors that this device will launch May 16th, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Posted on April 19, 2010, at 8:46 AM .
Tungle, the easiest way to schedule meetings, have officially launched their free BlackBerry app to the general public. This application provides the same core services as the Tungle.me web app, allowing users to share calendar information in order to find a time to meet that suits both parties.
The Tungle for BlackBerry app allows users to:
- Create, send and receive meeting invitations;
- Share calendars with other Tungle.me users;
- See others’ free/busy status at a glance to know if they are available to meet;
- And sync calendars and contacts.
Head over to the Tungle site and grab the free download.
For an idea of what to expect, see the beta review.
Posted on April 18, 2010, at 2:51 PM .
UPDATE: Eric Zeman over at InformationWeek makes a good point that Flash 10.1 isn’t technically delayed. Adobe has confirmed for InformationWeek that it is in fact on schedule to deliver Flash 10.1 to smartphone manufacturers. Adobe spokesperson Stefan Offermann told InformationWeek via email, “Adobe is still on track making Flash Player 10.1 for first mobile platforms including Android available before the end of the first half of 2010.” When Narayen spoke to Fox Business about Flash 10.1 arriving on BlackBerry in the 2nd half of 2010, what he really meant was that it will take some time for the companies to actually deploy. So a minor correction here, and we’re still looking forward to seeing Flash on BlackBerry.
Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, was on Fox Business talking about the latest CS5 announcement but the real news was when he was asked about smartphones and BlackBerry in particular. Previously, we reported that Adobe Flash 10.1 would be coming with general availability expected in the first half of 2010, and now it seems this has been delayed to the second half of 2010.
Flash 10.1 on BlackBerry is going to do some great things for the BlackBerry user experience, as we’ll not only be able to view Flash video content, but applications written in Flash are also expected to be able to run on BlackBerry. I’m hoping somebody ports Robot Unicorn Attack to BlackBerry as soon as it’s available.
Watch the full video above from Fox Business.
