Pocket BLU have released a BlackBerry app that lets your BlackBerry communicate directly with your Blu-ray player. The app has some decent features and it seems like it can replace your Blu-ray remote, which is great because I personally lose remotes all the time. Features include:
View select content (deleted scenes, bonus content, etc) anywhere by streaming, over the internet, directly to the mobile device or downloading to the device to enable viewing even when not connected to the internet. This feature is only available on high-end devices.
Control playback and on-screen menus of the movie just like a traditional remote.
Simplify chat and registration by entering text directly onto the on-screen edit boxes using the keypad on the mobile device.
Tyler Shields, senior researcher at Veracode Research Lab developed a proof-of-concept spyware package that demonstrates how simple it is to retrieve private data from a BlackBerry.
The above video demonstrates the spyware package, which he calls TXSBBspy, and uses it to take some very confidential information. In the demonstration, he uses some basic, publicly available functions to remotely dump all email and SMS messages, send the contents via e-mail, and conduct real-time monitoring of phone messages. He also remotely listens to a room using the BlackBerry’s mic, and follows the a user unknowingly by listening to their GPS updates.
This is a hot topic right now for BlackBerry as more users are downloading applications and accepting permissions without fully understanding what they’re allowing the app access to. Personally, I think RIM needs to give very specific instructions to the user about what they’re allowing an app to access. The permissions screen is far too vague.
RepliGo Reader 2.0 is an app that displays PDF files on your BlackBerry. You can open PDF email attachments as well as PDF files that reside on the device/SD Card.
A while back we told you about a free Tetris game for BlackBerry called BBTetris. The game is a decent free alterternative to the Tetris that I believe EA has the rights to distribute for BlackBerry. The free version is now called BlockBerry, and is on version 5.78. The latest version saves your sound settings and improves the Storm experience.
Pic of my Bold after buying some OEM parts for it.
I’m a Bold 9000 user and the last time I saw an official release was in early January when OS 5.0.0.411 came courtesy of Bell Mobility. Zain Kuwait has officially launched OS 5.0.0.464, and I’m looking forward to seeing some performance improvements. On that note, has anyone noticed any serious battery drainage with .411?
IDC have announced the top selling smartphones in America and BlackBerry accounted for 5 of the top 10. While this is pretty significant, I’m sure RIM isn’t too happy about growth rates. RIM was significantly stronger than its competitors in terms of pure sales, but Apple’s growth far outpaced all others, with a unit sales increase of 97.7% in Q4 of 2009. Overall in 2009, Apple still dominates in terms of growth by 81.9% compared to RIM’s 46.2%. Continue reading this article
The latest data to come out of Mplayit is about smartphone gaming trends. I’ll stick to the data about BlackBerry, but it’s also interesting to see how other smartphones are making out. Obviously iPhone is dominating the mobile gaming space, as the most popular apps for iPhone are almost 100% games.
Mplayit’s findings, drawn from live data collected from over 50,000 users of its Facebook app store over a two week period ending January 29, highlights the kinds of games that were popular for each of the three major smartphone audiences. The most active game categories on all three platforms were largely identical: Arcade, Casual, Card/Casino, and Puzzle. However, there were some significant differences in taste across platforms.
Music games were particularly popular on the iPhone, befitting its media-centric iPod heritage. Android users showed a predilection toward ‘geeky’ games making innovative use of things like the GPS, camera, and augmented reality. And the BlackBerry audience gravitated toward television and movie tie-ins. Continue reading this article
SeeClickFix is an interesting concept that helps individuals improve their communities and report emergencies. The site and BlackBerry app, allow users to take a picture of a problem (pothole, unsafe building, potential accident), leave details, and upload the problem to a community board where it hopefully gets dealt with.
The SeeClickFix service brings a measure of transparency and accessibility to the service request process. Reporting an issue takes only a few seconds, and the ability to view, comment on, or express support for issues raised by others makes it much easier to stay in touch with what’s going on in the community.
To download the SeeClickFix app for BlackBerry, visit m.seeclickfix.com/ from your device.
Sidebar is an interesting app that pushes recommended content to your BlackBerry as well as it has some content-related features. The app reminds me of Genius or Pandora, in that it is supposed to learn about what you enjoy reading, and push more of that content for you to read. According to the Sidebar team, “the more you use Sidebar, the better we get at picking stuff you like.” Content comes in the form of applications, music downloads, podcasts, RSS feeds, video, wallpaper, ringtones and more. Sidebar also includes a QR code scanner, which can be used to compare prices for goods, just like with Edocrab.
This application is going to have to strike a good balance between sponsored content and content the user will actually want. I can see the monetization of this app killing the user experience, if a large percentage of the content is an ad for ringtones or Amazon products. Nonetheless, I’ll give it a shot.
Sidebar is available for the Storm, Storm 2, Tour, Curve 8900 and Bold 9700, with other devices soon to follow.
Generation Media Group have launched a cool app for browsing vBulletin forums called BerryBlab. The app is really great at delivering a mobile version of a vBulletin forum, but there are some catches. First, the forum obviously has to be powered by vBulletin, and second, the forum owner must install a plugin.
The app is available as a freemium service, with the free version allowing you to add multiple forums, view threads, as well as read private messages. The premium version ($2.99) allows you to reply to threads, subscribe and unsubscribe to threads, view images, as well as reply to private messages
