Here at the BlackBerry Developer Conference we got a sneak peek at the upcoming Xobni app for BlackBerry. The app features a ubiquitous search bar that is seamlessly integrated into your mail, contacts and social networks. The app gives you a great deal of data about each contact including basic contact information as well as updates from that contact’s social networks. The app will also show you possible connections from within these networks.
One of the most impressions features is the way Xobni organizes your contacts across all your email services. The Xobni demo showed how easy it is to take a common name, for which there could be tens of entries, and efficiently move between the Xobni app and your email. Also, for those names which could have multiple entries, Xobni uses a ranking system that means your most interacted with contacts are at the top.
Xobni isn’t currently available but it looks like they are very close to a launch. Stay tuned because this app looks great.
Elertify is a great new app that sits on your PC, and allows you to preview messages without the need to take out your BlackBerry and check.
Elertify will display a popup message on your PC when you receive incoming email, SMS and calls on your BlackBerry. You can even get audio alerts of who is texting, or emailing you.
MessageSchedule allows you to send SMS or email messages at whatever time you would like. There is a clean user interface where you can keep track of your message schedule, and templates make sending the same message much easier.
The application has recently been updated as well. Some updates in version 2.0 of MessageSchedule include:
Email service to be used for sending out message can be selected now. So the right email service is used for sending a message.
Schedule messages to be sent out regularly on daily, weekly and monthly basis.
Ace Email Viewer is an add-on for your BlackBerry Email client. Ace Email viewer allows you to view photos and links within emails as well as auto-converting smileys into graphic smileys.
With Ace Email Viewer in your Blackberry phone, emails appear much better than in native email (Messages) application. It displays the images that were sent in emails, smileys, colorful text, customizable background patterns, font style, size etc. It offers several options that you can customize as per your needs.
The free trial is full featured – as good as the purchased version. The only difference in trial and full version is that the Trial version is for limited period and when you buy it, you do unlock the same to use it forever.
Features:
Fast download and installation – takes less than 2 minutes
Seamless integration with native email (Messages) application
Makes emails more readable
Shows images in email
Shortens the hyper links for convenient reading
Add emails to Calendar as new appointments
Add emails in ToDo list as new tasks
Cache images on sd-card or in internal memory of the phone
Supports BIS, BES, APN and Wi-Fi connections
Fully customizable font style, size colors, background patterns, etc.
Shows in-line replies in separate color to make emails more readable
You can choose different colors of email headers for different email accounts
Citysearch is a leading online lifestyle guide with up to date info on businesses, from restaurants and spas, to hotels and retail. Mobile by Citysearch has been updated to include access to over 15M business listings and trusted Citysearch editorial recommendations which list more than 75,000 US neighborhoods.
The new version gives users access to over 15M business listings and trusted Citysearch editorial recommendations and lists across more than 75,000 US neighborhoods. It is one of the only applications of its kind that offers relevant information at the neighborhood level nationwide. Mobile by Citysearch is one of the only location-based applications for BlackBerry smartphones to enable users to post real-time business reviews on the go, instantly sharing their favorite restaurants, boutiques, bars, salons and more. New features added to the Mobile by Citysearch application include calendar and email integration and Twitter functionality that enables users to tweet reviews and tips to followers instantly.
Yesterday, customers all over North America were experiencing problems getting BIS email.
There are a number of reasons why your BlackBerry BIS email me not be working. For example, it’s possible that the NOC has gone down. The NOC is the Network Operations Center, and it is where messages go when they leave your device before being passed to the carrier. If the NOC goes down, your email will stop sending and you have to wait for RIM to fix the issue.
You may also stop receiving email if the carrier’s BIS server farm is having issues. This could be for any number of reasons. Other reasons include server hardware failure at RIM’s end, or a software bug.
Due to the complex nature of the architecture it’s impossible to speculate without some kind of hint from RIM. Sites such as Dataoutages, are great for providing updates and they had the following on yesterday’s issue:
Reported by: Multiple sources across Canada and USA. Trouble Ticket Number: TT000011677021 Severity: 2-Medium Description of Issue: Degradation of RIM BlackBerry BIS service. Location of Issue: All Regions ;All Markets and surrounding areas Start Time: Sep 09 2009 12:06 PM PDT Symptoms you MAY experience: RIM BlackBerry BIS customers may experience delays in sending/receiving email. Estimated time of repair: Unknown
Technicians are working towards resolution as quickly as possible.
S4BB generally puts out quality software and they have recently released MessageSchedule for BlackBerry.
MessageSchedule allows you to prepare an SMS or email, and schedule them for automatic delivery at any time and date.
Features of MessageSchedule include:
* Create, view, edit and deleted scheduled SMS and E-mail messages.
* Send an SMS or E-mail at a specified time.
* Record the sizes and number of SMS and E-mail messages sent.
* Keep track of the total cost of all SMS and E-mail messages which have been sent with MessageSchedule.
* Schedule a reply or forward easily from the BlackBerry SMS and E-mail application.
* Create message templates for quick scheduling of previously scheduled messages.
When we last wrote about elog.com, the service that lets you create web pages from emails, the company was on the fence about offering attachments. Well they’ve opened up their service to include attachments so you can add pictures and video to your webpages.
elog.com is a simple and non-invasive service. Your website looks exactly like the email you send and it can serve a variety of purposes. To create your own web page, just send an email to newpage@elog.com. Your email can have pretty much anything you want in it and your new web page will look just like the email you send. You will be issued a public web page, e.g. 1993.elog.com, that others can view immediately. To update your web page with new content, just send an email to it, e.g. 1993@elog.com.
Another feature includes includes the ability to have your emails sent to Twitter. If you have a Twitter account and you send an email to tweet@elog.com, your tweet will be posted and an auto-generated webpage contains the body of your email, completely unadulterated.
Xobni is a must-have application for those using Outlook. Simply put, it connects your Outlook contacts and emails with the major social networks, thus giving you an additional layer of detail to your mail and contacts. The service also provides better search functionality to the Outlook platform. Bill Gates called it “very, very cool. The future of social networking.”
With Xobni Plus, you get all the functionality of the free version, with some new features including:
Advanced search query builder
Ability to search within conversations and networks
Support for phrases and Boolean queries
Xobni Rank-powered autosuggest
Advanced conversation and network filtering
I’ve been told by the company that Xobni for BlackBerry will be available this summer. I’ll get some updates about the BlackBerry product as soon as possible, and you can register to be notified when it launches.
To date, the Gmail experience on BlackBerry hasn’t met the standards that most users expect. According to a few screenshots leaked on BlackBerryForum(de), RIM is going to be improving the experience with an upcoming Enhanced Gmail Plugin. As you can see above, it includes:
* See your Gmail based emails in Conversation View for simple topic management
* Add and remove labels and stars to emails to keep inbox organized
* Archive and report as spam actions for mailbox management on the go
* Search your entire Gmail inbox
