Posted on June 25, 2010, at 6:14 PM .
We have been talking a lot about employee-liable versus corporate-liable BlackBerrys for a long time here on BlackBerryCool. Ahmed Datoo of Zenprise summed it up best in this article about BES Express. The idea is that smartphones have become so prevalent that every organization needs to deal with devices on their network that haven’t been explicitly deemed “corporate safe”. These devices are called employee liable, as in the employee is liable for the device as it hasn’t been approved. There is no way to stop the shift towards employee liable devices, as employees are becoming much more aware of the smartphones they purchase, and being a player in the mobile industry requires you understand all platforms available.
Continue reading ‘RIM Soft Announces New BlackBerry Feature for Employee-Liable Devices’
Posted on June 21, 2010, at 10:34 AM .
Recently, the BlackBerry Curve 8910 launched with Digital China. The success of BlackBerry in China is interesting because the market brings some incredible potential especially since trade with the country has been running at a deficit for most Western countries. If Research in Motion can sell a few million devices in China, they will set a standard for the smartphone industry.
Li Tong is RIM’s General Manager in China and he sat down with BerryTimes.cn for an interview during the BlackBerry Curve 8910 launch. The interview has some interesting questions from a Chinese user perspective that highlight a lot of what RIM is going to need to work on in order to be successful in the region.
Continue reading ‘BlackBerry in China: User Frustrations Such as Price and Native Input’
Posted on June 10, 2010, at 12:36 PM .
BES Admins can expect an update to BES 5.0 in service pack 2 that should be coming shortly as we’re now seeing leaked features. When BES 5 first launched, conversations with many BES admins about whether they’ll implement usually resulted in “we’ll wait for SP1 or SP2, but yes.” In SP2, some helpful updates include additional metrics, reports and notifications to help monitor the system health as well as user self-service tools and pre-population of messages is increased to 3000. BES 5.0 SP2 features listed after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Details of the Upcoming BES 5.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Leaked’
Posted on May 27, 2010, at 10:51 AM .
WICKSoft is a veteran company in the world of 3rd party BlackBerry apps. The company has been around for 4 years now, and has become the leader in SharePoint and Exchange integration on the BlackBerry.
Recently, WICKSoft launched a very powerful and exciting new calendar sharing solution, WICKSoft MoreCalendars, that is going to make some big waves in both the public and private sectors.
Traditionally, the BlackBerry has focused on personal information— PIM. Yet many organizations, using Microsoft Exchange or SharePoint, often share access to things like calendars.
Let’s look at two examples, which many of us can relate to – delegate calendars, and shared calendars:
- Delegates are when one person has access to another person’s calendar and is something built in to Outlook on the desktop. For instance, an executive assistant might have delegate access to an executive’s calendar so that they could check for availability and sometimes even schedule appointments on behalf of the executive.
- Shared, public, and group calendars. This could be something like a tradeshow schedule, a project planning calendar, a corporate events calendar, or even just the schedule for a meeting room in the company. Shared calendars are something also supported by Outlook, usually called Public calendars, and also by SharePoint.
Continue reading ‘WICKSoft Introduces Enterprise Calendar Sharing With MoreCalendars’
Posted on May 18, 2010, at 12:35 PM .
Multiplied Media has announced an enterprise build of their location based service app Poynt for users on a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). Poynt has had several updates over the past year and now features the ability to connect users to local businesses, people, restaurants and movie theaters. Users can also discover movie trailers and show times, book dining reservations, compare local gas prices, view directions on a map, click-to-call a business or view a website.
For the latest BES version, MM has turned off update notifications to ensure BES users do not need to download the app directly when an update becomes available.
More information about Poynt for BES available here.
Posted on May 18, 2010, at 9:57 AM .
A while back we heard that RIM would be entering the Chinese market but in a strange move, RIM has decided to launch with BES and the BlackBerry Storm. China is a pretty crucial market considering its size, and you would think RIM would want to launch with an affordable and reliable device such as the Curve 8520, but instead they’ve gone with a device with one of the worst brand reputations in RIM’s hardware history. Forget about what you think of the Storm (some love, some hate), it’s still a curious decision.
If I had to guess, it probably has something to do with beating Apple in the Chinese touchscreen market. There is probably a lot of market research that says Chinese consumers are looking for more touchscreen smartphones, and RIM has decided they’ll be the ones to serve the demand. Personally, I think this is going to result in a lot of dissatisfied users, and if you’re going to pioneer a new market, why not choose a device such as the Bold and Curve, which carries a solid brand and reputation.
Read the press release from RIM.
