“I loved seeing at a glance my friends status updates. But I also really appreciated at the same time the dispatch aspect, where you’re out in the world doing something away from the keyboard and IM did not allow that,” said Dorsey. “I had a RIM pager, the 850, the first email device. I programed a system where I could fire off an email from that and set my status from anywhere. And it worked! And I was able to also at a regular interval pull my buddy list and get those updates sent to my email address. It was awesome! But the number of people who had those mobile devices was so minimal that the timing was just not right. This was 2001.”
The concept of automatic status updates is interesting and it’s lost on a lot of modern services. Consider the “check-in fatigue” that foursquare users experience. An automatic status update or check-in, is way ahead of its time and much needed for social networks that require manual input.
The BlackBerryCool/Bplay branded store is happy to announce we have Millionaire City by Digital Chocolate, available exclusively in our store. You won’t find this game in Mobihand or App World so be the first to own it through us.
You’ve probably heard of or played Millionaire City on Facebook. It’s an awesome game that is simple and fun to play. The game lets you build luxurious houses, crowded commercial skyscrapers, gorgeous decorations and unique world wonders. Make smart investments, take risks, care for your properties and watch your company grow. Features of the game include:’
Earn your riches as you build your company from the ground up as the CEO.
Purchase property, build houses, and sign contracts to help your company grow.
Complete missions to earn more and get hours of entertainment.
Discover a wide range of luxurious items in the marketplace.
There has been a pretty consistent narrative being told by both media and analysts: BlackBerry as a platform is falling behind in providing consumers with decent applications and developers aren’t interested in the platform. Media will have you believe that it’s too difficult to code for BlackBerry, or that there isn’t any money to be made, but this simply isn’t true. It’s not that difficult to code for BlackBerry, especially now that there’s support for HTML apps. But what attracts a developer to the platform? I’d argue it has more to do with success stories and the potential to make something great. There is something inherently wrong with not BlackBerry as a platform, but as an existing developer base, and probably the media supporting it (BlackBerryCool et al is also somewhat to blame), that the right stories aren’t being told. Where are the success stories of big download and revenue milestones? They’re ever present in iOS blogs, but it’s hard to find the same stories on the BlackBerry platform, even though they exist.
Analysts are getting ridiculous these days: making far fetched claims about the smartphone industry without adequately justifying their statements. Most recently, analysts have taken to saying “BB is ded, go get iphone insted.” The barely intelligible statement will probably hit RIM’s stock again, which is already taking a beating. It’s statements like these that don’t take into account the fact that RIM is quarter over quarter shipping millions of smartphones and managed to weather one of the worst recessions in history. In any case, see the above video for evidence of analysts spreading their bias, without giving us any long term statistical analysis that proves their hard line stance against RIM and its products.
We haven’t written about a BlackBerry OS update in some time and the news seems a little lame considering what is on the horizon (OS 7 and QNX OS). Nonetheless, it’s cool that carriers such as Verizon have started, and will hopefully continue, to provide changelogs along with the OS update. One of the more interesting updates includes support for BlackBerry Balance. This allows you to securely separate your business and personal data, applications and information.
It appears that in the fierce battle between the streaming music offerings, Slacker Radio is upping the ante. Slacker now offers three tiers of service that range from the entirely free Slacker Basic Radio service, to the ad-free Slacker Radio Plus to on-demand access with Slacker Premium Radio for $9.99/month.
Slacker Premium Radio now allows:
• Search, play and replay specific songs or entire albums
• Create specific playlists on mobile and on the web
• Off-line playback of stations, playlists and albums on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, Android and BlackBerry smartphones
• Replay specific songs on programmed and custom stations
• Browse and play “Favorite” songs, now collected in one location
• Unlimited song skipping
• Ad-free listening
• Complete song lyrics (when available)
• Browse Top Charts on all Slacker genre stations
• “Peek Ahead” artist, album and song preview
• Ability to skip forward and backward Continue reading ‘Slacker Radio Launches On-Demand Music Service’
