Monthly Archive for August, 2011Page 10 of 14
BlackBerry App World 3.0 has launched and is up in Beta Zone. The latest version, according to RIM, makes “discovering and downloading apps, games, and themes easier than ever.” We’ve tried the new App World on both a well-established device, the Torch 9800, and a brand new device, the Bold 9930. There are some major pros and cons about this latest version and we thought we’d put together a beta review since App World has become such an important part of the BlackBerry experience. To recap, App World 3.0 features:
Sleek New Design – The BlackBerry App World experience has been enhanced to help you discover the latest and greatest apps and content, starting right on the BlackBerry App World home screen where rotating spotlight banners show off all that’s new and exciting.
New Channels – Apps, Games, and Themes now have their own channels so you can get to what you want even faster. Each channel offers up a whole range of Categories, Top Lists (for Paid, Free, Rated, New Arrivals) and a Search Bar.
Introduction of My Account – My Account makes managing your BBID and payment options easy with direct access to all of your account information from the home screen.
New My World Features – My World gives you a streamlined view of all your apps and their status, and now at a glance, in addition to seeing which apps are installed and uninstalled, you can manage your subscription content and services. When new updates or subscription renewals are available for your apps, you’ll be notified using push technology.
App Social Sharing – When you find an app you can’t live without, share it with your contacts directly from the app details screen through BBM, Facebook, Twitter, email and SMS.
Evolved App Details Screen – At a glance, you can get a quick summary, check out reviews and star ratings, take a look at screen shots, and more.
More Search Options - Quickly find apps with a Search Bar now appearing on the storefront home screen and search results are presented across Channels as well as My World. Search Bars are also within each Channel and users have the ability to filter by App Name, Price, Rating, Newest, Best Match, or Popular.
Both developers and consumers are crucial end users of this product so it’s important to review App World 3.0 from both perspectives. Click through for more about how App World 3.0 may impact both of these user types.
Continue reading ‘Beta Review: App World 3.0 From a Developer and User Experience Perspective’
This screen would look much cleaner if the font size wasn’t set so high.
When we announced the BBM Hackathon winner for BlackBerryCool was Smarter Apps, we didn’t mention what the app actually was. Well the app was hacked together at the hackathon and will be going live in App World soon. The app is called Who’s Around and the concept is really awesome and simple. The app duplicates the BBM experience but uses the BBM Social APIs on top of location to make BBM location aware. This is just like what Wikitude does for Augmented Reality but instead of needing OS 7 and Augmented Reality, you get a similar experience on a wide range of devices.
Once you have downloaded the app and connected it to BBM (make sure you have BBM 6), you can now set your name, avatar and preferences. Everything about the app is intuitive because it’s made to look just like BBM. The major difference in your profile settings is that you can tell the app what you’re interested in, whether it’s sports, business, investment, dating, drinks, movies etc. You can select from a list of preset preferences or customize it with your own interests. The app will then let you search for other BBM users that have the same interests. This is going to be especially cool when we start to see the overlap with BBM and Twitter and connecting users by hashtags. Are you at a conference with the hashtag “network2011″? Then set that as your profile preference and you can search for others at the conference on BBM.
Continue reading ‘Coming Soon: BlackBerry Messenger + Location = Who’s Around? By Smarter Apps’
Remember Riz? He was that guy that started his career with a song called “Ping!!! Me baby!” and we think it was popular enough that it landed him a record deal. Having recently checked out his site, it doesn’t look like he’s doing songs about BlackBerry anymore but he does have a line of t-shirts that he’s selling with custom QR codes and his famous “PING!!! ME BABY” written on the shirt. It would be cool if Riz could sell these shirts over BBM, but from what we hear, you can’t sell physical goods with RIM’s in-app purchase APIs.
Check out Riz’s new line of BBM t-shirts at this link.
Also, if you’re curious about what he’s using to sell his shirts, check out Shopify.
Cocky Culture recently came out with a couple themes that give you the full version of the theme for free and then after 3 hours will put a watermark on the theme asking you to upgrade to the premium. These themes are great because you can get the full version of the theme to check out what it’s like, and if you don’t mind the watermark you can continue to use it without paying. Of course, if the watermark bothers you, you can always pay to upgrade. Hit the links and try and check them out.
