The BlackBerry Cool LinkedIn has some of the brightest in the industry. If you’re looking for a job in the smartphone industry, interested in networking with other professionals, or you simply want to support the group, we would like to welcome you to the group.
The official Facebook app has been updated to version 1.7.0.18 and it’s available for download in App World.
The Facebook application is unique in that it was developed by RIM in order to take advantage of APIs that aren’t available to third party developers. This gives the app much needed integration with your BlackBerry.
The latest version of Facebook has the following improvements:
News Feed Support – The ability to set the News Feed as the landing page.
News Feed Filters – The ability to toggle between ‘News Feed, Status Updates, Photos and Links.
Caching Improvements – The application uses the device memory more efficiently.
Feed Pre-fetching – The user will not be required to wait while their Facebook Feeds are updated.
View Profile Menu Option – Clients may easily view their own profile by selecting ‘View my Profile’ from the menu.
While the update brings some improvements in the way of efficiency, it is still seriously lacking when it comes to the user interface. Many users have complained that the icons are designed such that you need the icon caption text to tell you what you’re looking at. The app also has a less than stellar review in App World, with only about 2 and a half stars.
RIM released updates to their in-house Facebook and MySpace apps making them OS 5 compatible. This comes as good news for those who have been tinkering with OS 5 and accessing these sites via the browser as a workaround.
Check out RIM’s official download site and information page for the Facebook and MySpace apps.
The Facebook app for BlackBerry is rumored to get an official update to version 1.7 as early as in the next couple of weeks.
Some of the features rumored to be in the next release include:
The ability to set filters to customize your feeds. This includes only status updates, new pictures etc.
Faster page loads.
New navigation options.
The source of the leak also describes a feature translated as “Possibility of setting time of the news as the target customer for the FB-BB.” Google translator isn’t perfect.
It’s possible this update will coincide with the launch of OS 5.
While your BlackBerry has an incredible amount of Facebook integration with the latest build of Facebook for BlackBerry, there are still a few issues with the UI and managing your media. For example, if you want to upload a picture to Facebook from your BlackBerry, you can only do so one picture at a time.
Dazzboard is a free online service that allows you to drag and drop media between Facebook and your BlackBerry. The service also supports a variety of other web 2.0 initiatives such as Flickr and YouTube.
The product is currently only for PC and users with Firefox 3.x.
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.
The BlackBerry Instant Messaging & Social Network clients have been updated. Some of the updates include Facebook up to 1.6.0.21, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and others were bumped up to 2.1.48. As usual, there’s no documentation detailing the updates, so please let us know if you notice any changes in the comments. You can get the updates on your BlackBerry via http://www.blackberry.com/instantmessaging Thanks to Dave Peckens for the heads up!
Custom Alert App BerryBuzz Opens it’s 2.0 Beta with a slew of new features.
BerryBuzz extends your default Blackberry alert system. BerryBuzz allows you to customze the LED color for many alert type and keeps the LED flashing for longer than the default 15 minutes your BlackBerry does.
In the 2.0 beta you’ll be able to customize LED color and set repeating alerts for: Emails, SMS, Instant Messanging via instango (an Instant Messaging app by the same developer), Calendar Events, Missed Calls, PIN messages, BlackBerry Messenger, and Facebook alerts. Also there is a new disco LED sequence that is quite hot.
To join the BerryBuzz 2.0 private beta, send an e-mail with subject ‘BerryBuzz 2.0 Beta’ to customerservice (at) bellshare.com. For more info on the beta, visit Bellshare’s forum. Want BerryBuzz’s current offering? Head over to our nifty BlackBerryCool Store.
This Facebook theme is for the social networking and web 2.0 fans out there. Facebook is an awesome app for BlackBerry, mainly because it’s developed by RIM. Being developed by RIM, the app can use API’s that aren’t available to third party app developers. I’m expecting big things from future Facebook versions. This theme is a tribute to the great social network and useful BlackBerry app.
Currently, the theme is only available for the BlackBerry Curve sporting OS 4.5. Other versions are coming soon.
The latest version of Facebook has been out over the weekend and there are some great updates.
The first thing you’ll notice is the navigation experience is much more fluid. The homescreen and subsequent pages have been updated so everything is just a click away. All of your friends’ recent status updates are located on the first screen, and you can click into each profile to see pics uploaded and tagged, calendar events as well as interact with your friend via comments, pokes, messages and a phone call option.
The photo viewing experience has been great improved as well. As you browse a friend’s photos, you get a nice slideshow of the album pics. You can scroll easily through the pictures which are displayed in full at the top, and thumbnail preview at the bottom. To comment on a photo, just click the picture and select the comment option.
There’s some additional language support that will be of great interest to the international user. The app now supports:
