Posted on March 3, 2009, at 5:25 pm .
Nowadays, you’d be hard pressed to look around any public venue and not see a BlackBerry. It makes those of us that have rocked a ‘Berry since day one seem… a little less special. One solution: pimp your BlackBerry with ‘bling’ (that’s what the kids are calling it these days) to make you stand out.
Friend of the ‘Cool Al Sacco has compiled an image gallery of popular BlackBerry Bling. The bling in question ranges from the gold-and-diamond BlackBerry case above, to the ever popular ‘Pimp My Pearl‘ BlackBerry application. To see the rest, click the link below.
BlackBerry Bling: The Hottest—and Priciest—Pimped-Out BlackBerrys
Posted on February 16, 2009, at 6:27 pm .
Throughout the many stages of the BOLT BlackBerry Browser private beta, we’ve had a hard time keeping up with the demand for invites to make sure every member of the BlackBerry Nation got a chance to kick the tires, so to speak. Thankfully, Bitstream has answered the call with a public beta of BOLT Browser version .86. To download the latest version for your BlackBerry, hit the link below. Don’t forget to check out our hands-on impressions as well.
Download BOLT BlackBerry Browser
BOLT BlackBerry Browser Hands-On Impressions
Posted on February 13, 2009, at 6:18 pm .
We’ve talked about Poynt, a free local search service, quite a bit on BlackBerry Cool: as a BlackBerry Developer Challenge winner, in podcast form with developer Multiplied’s Peter Werry during BBDC and in recent releases on the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220.
Multiplied has now brought Poynt to the BlackBerry Storm and was kind enough to give us a copy early for a hands-on. After the jump you’ll find Poynt for BlackBerry Storm’s feature list, a bunch of screen captures, and impressions from our time with this nifty application. Or you could just download Poynt at the link below, considering this is one of the best applications out for the Storm right now.
Download Poynt for BlackBerry Storm
Poynt for BlackBerry Storm impression, features, screenshots
Posted on February 13, 2009, at 10:12 am .
Our fellow Canadian droogs over at MobileSyrup have uncovered a black and white image of some upcoming BlackBerrys on the Bell network. Ignore the ugly Palm device on the left and you will see Black and Pink versions of the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230. The image also displays a launch date of March 6th, but no pricing information. However, I think it’s reasonable to expect a ‘less-than-$100′ pricetag, or possibly even free, with a 3-year contract.
|via Mobile Syrup|
Posted on February 9, 2009, at 5:11 pm .
Those that know me know I’m a huge fan of music and particularly a connoisseur of Canadian music. The big story of the Canadian music scene recently has been all the great bands coming out of Quebec, and Montreal in particular (sorry Toronto and Vancouver, but you know it’s true). That’s why I was immediately excited when my friends at Telus tipped me off that their Mobile Music service now has 25,000 tracks by home-grown artists, making it the largest collection of Quebec songs for mobile phones.
TELUS will continue to expand its musical library by adding new productions from Quebec-based record companies, such as TACCA Musique, Audiogram, Indica Records, Déjà Musique, Sphere Musique, Vega Musique, Dare to Care, Grosse Boîte, K.Pone.Inc Music Group, Iro Productions, Tandem.mu and Abuzive Muzik, as soon as they are released. The most avid music lovers will be able to enjoy new releases in real time, without having to wait to buy their favourite artist’s latest album.
25,000 tracks is a lot. I was strolling through the list and found composer Coeur de pirate (shown above), which I recommend because I think her name translates to “Heart of a Pirate” or potentially “Heart Pirate”. Telus customers can find their own favorite artist at www.telus.com/music. Tracks start at $0.99 each, or for $20.00 per month, music fans can also download an unlimited number of tracks from a catalogue of over one million songs. The full press release is after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Telus Mobile Music now has 25,000 tracks from Quebec artists’
Posted on February 9, 2009, at 11:35 am .
After a few months of speculation, Fido has relaunched BlackBerry service with the BlackBerry Pearl 8100. That’s right, not the BlackBerry 8120 or even the 8110, but the BlackBerry 8100. However, Fido is Rogers’ low-end consumer brand, so there must be some sort of deal involved, correct? Well, the promo image above shows that the Pearl 8100 can be purchased for $25 with a 3 year Fido agreement/data plan. Hmm, three years is a long time, so what about some sort of month to month option? $400 freaking dollars? What about the data plans?
* $15 - Unlimited personal email and IM
* $25 - 500MB
* $30 - 1GB
* $60 - 3GB
Ok, at least that’s pretty sane. For the youth demographic, though, $15 a month for email and IM (what they want the BlackBerry for anyways) and another $15 for phone service (based upon their cheapest rate) isn’t that bad. But instead of paying $400 or signing a three year contract, swing by the BBCool HQ first: we have a box of old 8100s that we’d be willing to give away, guaranteed (guarantee void in Tennessee).
Fido BlackBerry Pearl Promo
Posted on February 6, 2009, at 3:59 pm .
Late last week YouMail launched Visual Voicemail Plus, a free visual voicemail application that works on the Blackberry Pearl, Curve, Bold and Storm. I like the sound of free, and a new visual voicemail application is always worth a try, but reports are surfacing that YouMail might not yet be up to snuff. Here’s what our main man Troy had to say over at BlackBerry News:
After 24 hours it is safe to say a lot work still needs to go into the application before it is ready for prime time much like the transcription service they charge for now. Many users including myself have experienced nothing but problems with the application… Maybe with all the ad revenue from placing ads on every aspect of your messages they can now put a little more money into their projects and refine their service. Time will tell.
We’re going to give YouMail our own thorough hands-on, but we recommend that you give it a try and post a comment on your experience. If you’re not willing to take the risk, however, post a comment and let us know of your favorite visual voicemail alternative.
Posted on February 4, 2009, at 1:27 pm .
It’s Wednesday today, which means people around the world are sitting at their desks thinking about the weekend. To help you get by, we thought this photo of a tasty AT&T BlackBerry Curve cake would help numb the brain until Friday comes. If you’re into mixing and matching your smartphone flavors, there are iPhone and Helio Ocean cakes after the jump as well. A bunch more interesting cake designs can be found here.
Thanks to @JeffHunt00 for the tip!
Smartphone Cakes
Posted on February 4, 2009, at 1:00 am .
Slacker today announced the availability of the free Slacker Mobile application for the BlackBerry Storm. Slacker Radio, which is optimized for the handset’s unique touch screen, and can be used in both vertical and horizontal modes, is available as a free download by visiting Slacker.com from your BlackBerry Storm.
Slacker station caching, an exclusive feature for BlackBerry smartphones, enables listeners to store favorite stations on a memory card, allowing the Slacker Mobile application to play without a network connection, reducing battery life consumption by up to 5 times that of streaming playback and enhancing application performance. In addition, BlackBerry smartphone enthusiasts can enjoy Slacker Personal Radio while doing other tasks such as emailing, instant messaging or web browsing (sorry iPhone).
As you know, I’m a big fan of Slacker. Now, my BlackBerry Storm friends can share in the same level of excellence from Slacker Radio that I have enjoyed for weeks. The link was scheduled to go live at 8 AM ET, but it appears to already be functional. If you’re in the USA (sorry Canucks), have a BlackBerry Storm or other BlackBerry with OS 4.3 or better, head over to www.slacker.com on your BlackBerry and download the free application. Hit us up in the comments with your thoughts.
Posted on February 3, 2009, at 1:58 pm .
When BlackBerry Cool became the first BlackBerry website on the Internet to provide free invites to the BOLT BlackBerry Browser private beta, we never thought so many people would have such rabid interest. After thanking you the readers for providing ’substantial feedback’ on the initial beta release, Bitstream let us know that an updated version is being pushed to users with BlackBerry-specific enhancements. You can find the full list of enhancements after the jump.
For those that haven’t tried the BOLT Browser yet, we have some great news: the ‘berrycool’ code now has unlimited referrals! So head over to the BOLT download page and tell Bitstream ‘berrycool’ sent you.
In addition, Bitstream has set up an email address for people who want to share their experiences using BOLT and possibly be quoted (with expressed permission) in BOLT’s PR efforts. The address is pr4beta@boltbrowser.com. Bitstream has also set up a support form for those with technical issues at: http://www.boltbrowser.com/support.html. So you have your task readers: download the new version of BOLT, keep providing great feedback, and help make a nifty BlackBerry Browser even better.
BOLT BlackBerry Browser Feature updates
BBCool AppStore
