Whatser is a cool company that was at SXSW representing their location based service that lets you collect your favorite local spots and share them with your friends. The app is available across all three platforms: iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and it’s a fun way for local scene mavens to share the coolest spots in town with friends.
One of the more useful aspects of Whatser is discovering great new places from people you know in cities that you don’t live in. For example, I may live in Ottawa and have a friend in New York City whose opinion I value and thus can check his Whatser account for a list of places that would be great to visit. A downside of the service is that like any location startup, it’s generally big cities that gain first while smaller cities that may not have as many early tech adopters, will not get as much value out of the service. Continue reading ‘Collect Your Favorite Spots and Share Them With Whatser’
Alexia Tsotsis interviewing an iPad 2 owner. At one point he said “I’m so excited I can’t talk.” I think that perfectly sums up Apple fans.
While SXSWi was mostly about apps and software, there was still some buzz about tablets. The three big players were there showing off their tablets: Android had the Motorola XOOM, Apple had their iPad 2 and RIM was present with the PlayBook. All three players had different strategies at the show and some were by far more effective than others. Continue reading ‘Tablets at SXSWi: How the Big Three Were Positioning Themselves’
Xobni has announced that they’re coming to Gmail, Android and iPhone. The company has opened up Beta and Alpha testing and you can head over to the respective pages and sign up for the Gmail Beta, Android Alpha and iPhone Alpha.
Xobni for Gmail beta comes as a browser plugin for Chrome and Firefox that shows up as a sidebar in Gmail and helps users search and manage their relationships effortlessly. It creates rich profiles for anyone you’ve ever emailed in Gmail, similar to what users have come to expect in the Outlook product. These profiles include name, picture, job title, company, and full social network details. Xobni is also introducing new features such as relationship history, predictive autosuggest that suggests related contacts and a multimedia module to view social insights. Continue reading ‘Xobni Expanding to Gmail, iPhone and Android – Sign Up For Preview’
Zeebu has announced the release of the full-featured version of ArtGo Coloring, the coloring book app on BlackBerry App World. Building off the success of ArtGO Coloring Lite, which has been downloaded several hundreds of thousands of times, the full version will sport lots of new features including:
Art GO coloring keeps your coloring within the lines, making coloring fun and easy
Optional toddler-lock mode keeps little ones from exiting the app
100 different coloring pages included with the app
Coloring page pictures are now bigger, filling more of the screen and making coloring easier
Lots of new colors to choose from
An all-new crayon mode with realistic crayon texture
A new texture paint mode, letting kids color with fun images like grass, fur, rocks, water, stars, and more
Essential erase and undo functions
Zeebu is really awesome company that’s carving a new niche in apps for children on BlackBerry. The apps are great because children see the parents spend so much time with these devices and naturally want to hold them. So why not give them a fun app to play with? Perhaps RIM should consider making them a category in App World.
GetGlue, the entertainment checkin network, has recently launched their BlackBerry app in App World. By checking in to your entertainment with GetGlue, you unlock stickers and can even have real stickers sent to you.
Get Glue has been gaining steam in terms of entertainment checkins and has won the support of movie studios and major TV networks alike, who release official GetGlue stickers as a part of their promotional campaigns. GetGlue for BlackBerry has been in a private beta since early February. Using all the feedback from the BlackBerry community, they’ve been able to quickly work out the bugs and make it publicly available.
RIM has announced that it’s rolling out version 2.0 of Facebook for BlackBerry through the Beta Zone starting today. The new version has a significantly redesigned UI as well as includes Facebook Chat. Some of the other features you can expect include:
Improved News Feed - Improved News Feed interactions enable you to scroll through your News Feed without accidentally clicking “Like”. New Navigation Control – The new version utilizes a drop-down navigation control that is scalable to support new features in the future. Notifications Bar – The notifications bar offers an easy way to access your Facebook Notifications, Messages, Friend Requests and Chats from anywhere in the Facebook application. External Notifications – The external notifications header lets you see when you’ve received a new email message or BBM message without having to leave the Facebook application. New Profile UI and Profile Information Viewing – The Facebook app now includes the ability to view key information on Profiles and Pages, such as contact info, basic info like birthdays, hometown and relationship status, and likes and interests. Continue reading ‘Facebook for BlackBerry Version 2.0 Rolls Out in Beta Zone’
