WES draws ever closer, but there are still plenty of companies left in the lineup; next up is PaperIQ. They offer an incredibly neat digital pen solution in both professional and enterprise editions. In either case, the software allows you to use an electronic pen and an electronic notepad to jot down notes in your own handwriting, and have it sent to your BlackBerry via Bluetooth as a memo or email. You can even use a feature called Smart Margins to indicate notes that should be converted into a task or contact. The enterprise edition allows businesses to push forms out to their users and have them fill it using the electronic pen and paper. They’ve also announced that they’ll be showing off new products and new BlackBerry functionality at WES in booth #646, which is definitely something to look forward to.
Author: Devin KentPage 4 of 19
WES Exhibitor Spotlight: PaperIQ
A new report on Electronista says that smartphone makers in the US are having a tough time keeping up with demand. According to Tavis McCourt, an analyst at Morgan Keenan, AT&T has had issues keeping the Pearl in stores since March, and won’t be stocking the 8120 for home users until the 24th. BlackBerrys aren’t the only phones MIA: Apple has been having supply problems and Palm’s Treo 755p is reported to have been missing from Sprint stores for over two weeks. Of course, a lack of supply is vastly better than a lack of demand, but hopefully RIM will be able to ramp up manufacturing.
Hey folks, we’ve got a survey up for anyone who wants a snazzy free icon theme. The survey should take 10-15 minutes to complete, and asks a few basic demographic questions, a few questions about your BlackBerry and how you use it, and finally your thoughts on BlackBerry Cool. We’re hoping to cover all of the bases with this survey, and share the information with some of the big players in the BlackBerry world so they can better tailor their products to you. It’ll also help us here at BBCool to provide better coverage for the topics you care about. At the end of the survey, you’ll be given a link to download a new theme with an icy blue design.
NOTE: The downloads are in a RAR format, which is a compression method like ZIP. You need to nab a program like WinRAR to open them. We’ll try to get a ZIP version up soon, since it’s a little more well-known. Our themes page gives a quick run-down on how to install themes once you’ve downloaded them.
A report from Millward Brown shows a whopping 390% increase in the BlackBerry brand value, up to a grand total of around $13 billion and giving them the #51 spot on top brands worldwide. BlackBerry’s value increased more than any other brand, followed by Apple with 123% and Amazon with 93%. Technology services were booming in general, with a value growth of $187.5 billion, or more than half of the total growth across the board. This is the first time BlackBerry has appeared on the list of top 100 brands, so congratulations to the folks at RIM and I hope they break out the champagne. You can check out the full report in PDF form here.
The Fast-Pitch competition, which AT&T held at CTIA Wireless, has finished up and they’ve gone ahead and announced the winners. Topping the list and winning $15,000 is eMobilePOS from eNabler, a point-of-sale app available for WinMo, followed by MedsTimer by JavaDive. The app, which won $5,000, can be installed on a patient’s phone during clinical trials of drugs, and remind them of dosage schedules and more. Three more category winners won $5,000 each: Activity Management Inc. won the best small-medium business category for their Insight GPS service, while BlueTech won most improved application category for FieldRanger, which greatly simplifies managing workers in the field. Finally, Opticon won best network device for releasing the Opticon H19, a new rugged smartphone for outdoor work. Too bad the guys at WebMessenger didn’t make the cut, but we’re sure they’ve got some good stuff lined up for WES.
Cortado has a bunch of solutions for consumers and enterprises. Right off the bat, they’ve got a free email offer for mobile phones, offering push email and a web interface. For enterprise customers, they have a server solution that allows you to copy files from the server to your BlackBerry and vice versa. This allows some neat applications such as saving emails to the server to share them, or picking any document on it and sending it via email right from your phone. They also have a printing app that will print off pretty much anything on your BlackBerry to a Bluetooth-compatible printer quickly and easily. There are way too many product to mention them all here, so be sure to check ‘em out at WES for some demos.
Sprint’s BlackBerry Curve 8330 is still on track for an April release, as per their original announcement, despite rumors flying around that suggested it had been pushed back to June 1st. There were some earlier rumors for a release on April 16th, which they’ve definitely missed, but Engadget checked with Sprint and they confirmed that the 8330 would be coming out some time “this month.” There isn’t a whole lot of April left, so keep your eyes peeled.
Despite the partial ban on BlackBerry services that was just announced, Indian carrier Tata Teleservices has gone ahead and rolled them out anyway. Tata was the company that started the whole mess in India when they tried to get government certification for the release. Funnily enough, other operators like Bharti and Vodafone never bothered with certification and have had BlackBerrys on the market for a while. Tata is, understandably, distressed by the “significant loss of business opportunity and recurring revenues” they’ve suffered, and said as much in a letter to the Department of Telecom that is behind the ban. There’s no word on just how the Indian government has responded to the move, so the next few days should prove quite interesting.
CoPilot Live is the flagship mobile product of ALK Technologies. The GPS navigator has all the standard fare with a few neat features such as their “Driver Safety” view in addition to regular 2D and 3D maps. The view gives large, colorful text directions and icons, so you can just glance at the display and keep your eyes on the road. In addition to constantly-updated North American maps, they’ve also got maps of Europe and Australia. There’s also CoPilot Truck available for business owners, but unfortunately it’s only for PocketPC at the moment. Who knows what we might see at WES…
DataViz specializes in document compatibility. Their Documents to Go software is being bundles with OS 4.5 when it’s released, and will allow BlackBerry users to edit Word, Excel, Powerpoint and other document types right from their phone. So far, Documents to Go is the only BlackBerry software they offer (well, plan on offering) so we’ll surely get to see it in action at WES.
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