We talked with Patrick Rousseau from BlackLine back at WES, and now we’ve had a chance to give their products a go. GPS was a big thing at WES, which worked out well for BlackLine, since they were finalizing their location sharing service at the time. Blip is software for your BlackBerry 8800 which not only allows you to share your location with friends through Google Maps, but it also lets you track BlackLine’s GPS puck, Snitch, from your handheld. The web-based client for Blip accessed through BlackLine’s website gives you a few more functions and account management, and is where your friends can do their tracking. The GPS Snitch offers e-mail alerts whenever it moves and the alarm is set, mainly so you’ll know if your car’s being stolen and can quickly find the ne’er-do-well’s GPS coordinates. We’ll be looking at all three (web client, BlackBerry client and GPS puck) for this review, so let’s get crackin’.
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Review: BlackLine Blip and GPS Snitch
OtterBox has become synonymous with ruggedized electronics since they got started back in ‘96, so we’re really glad to finally have the chance to check out their goods. On our plate we have the OtterBox 1930, fitting on the BlackBerry 8700, the OtterBox 1933 for the BlackBerry 8800, the OtterBox 1600 which is lovingly cradling our Garmin GPS puck, and the OtterBox 2500 to keep our SideWinder toasty warm. If you’re into the rough-and-tumble lifestyle and you’re checking out this site, you’ll want to see what’s behind the jump.
It’s just about that time to have another go at Handmark’s Pocket Express. We’ve been covering these guys on the ‘Cool for nearly three years now, and we can certainly start taking a look at the long-term evolution of their software. In a nutshell, Pocket Express is a suite of mini-applications that are all accessible from a single page, called PageOne. They offer a few of their channels for free (Travel, News, Sports and Weather), and the rest (like Stocks, Entertainment, 411 Search, Maps, Extras and a cool feature called MobileCierge, which puts you on the phone with a live person who can help you find information on just about anything you need) will cost you $9.99/month. Sounds good, right? Let’s take a look.
Magmic continues to twang away on strings of nostalgia, now with their new game Duckshot. Think back long and hard to the last time you shot a pixellated duck. That’s right, you probably had a bright orange Zapper attached to a little gray box that you unloaded every time that damned dog laughed at you for running out of bullets. What kind of gun has three shots in it, anyway? Well, now that the dawn of mobile is upon us, we can be frustrated by evasive mallards while on the go.
If there’s one thing folks hate about the BlackBerry e-mail experience, it’s the ridiculously long URLs spanning multiple lines, be they for images or links to sites. That’s why Empower caught our interest back when they were in beta. Since then, they’ve been working hard and have two full products now ready for the downloading. I also had the chance to check out their next app, InstaSpell, which provides an ongoing spell check for those of us not carrying a fancy-pants. BlackBerry 8300.
You might remember a review we did on Impatica’s ShowMate last month, and as it turns out, some of the difficulties we experienced were a little out of the ordinary. The fine folks at Impatica had their honor to defend, and so shipped us a fresh unit which worked way better and bumped the ShowMate’s score up from 3 to 3.5 out of 5. Check out our review for a few changes.
Even when we’re on vacation, the BBCool staff is still hard at work. That’s why when BBCool Simon went for a little R&R a few weeks back, we tasked him with reviewing the SideWinder mobile charger. Not only that, we made him film it! For those not interested in 3 minutes of Simon, we also made him do a full text review. Some vacation!
It goes without saying that all enterprise BlackBerry users are looking for ways to increase their uptime (although we’re sure that even enterprise users wouldn’t mind sweet ringtone action to go along with their uptime). For those among us who face long commutes to work or other car travel, those tiresome hours stuck behind the wheel can be an uptime/productivity killer.
Fellow Canadians Voice on the Go offer hope for wearied travelers with their hands/eyes-free solution that gives users voice access to their email, calendars, and contacts while driving. We’ve wanted to get our hands on Voice on the Go for a long time (and so have our readers), so check out our full review below.
We mentioned Magmic’s Transformers a few days back, and got a copy thrown our way to take a look at. I still haven’t seen the movie, but reviews have been pretty good if you’re into the action thing (who isn’t?). With plenty of the old toys kicking around from childhood, this was one bit of nostalgia that I could get hooked into. Robots are awesome, and this game could do well on that premise alone.
This post is more than meets the eye. Click to transform!
We saw this thing during WES and thought the idea was pretty cool, but $250 bucks for a PowerPoint brick seemed like a little much. Regardless, there is an ample market for salespeople who do a lot of corporate presentations to have something like this kicking around the office, making it a worthy investment. We had a brief look over the ShowMate a while ago, and thought it merited a closer look.
In short, the Impatica ShowMate allows you to review and conduct PowerPoint presentations from your BlackBerry. After installing a handheld and desktop client, you convert the presentations into a compressed format and transfer the file by USB to your BlackBerry. A bundled Impatica Slide Viewer lets you view the compressed presentations. Grabbing your ShowMate, you go to your presentation location, hook it up to the projector and pair up your BlackBerry to it via Bluetooth. From your BlackBerry you can change slides and view notes.
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