Posted on June 12, 2009, at 9:07 am .
Recently, a BlackBerry Cool reader emailed me asking how to protect his daughter’s BlackBerry from adult content. His email was indicative of a growing number of parents whose children own smartphones and have access to inappropriate content.
Flash Networks provides mobile Internet Quality of Experience (QoE) solutions, which include filtering adult content from the mobile Internet. Their product has been around for some time now, and has evolved into a formidable solution for controlling content on both the traditional mobile web, as well as the more complex web 2.0.
Existing mobile Internet safety solutions, such as “URL Filtering,” rely on pre-classification of the Internet into several categories. Requests are matched to a pre-existing list and access is either granted or blocked accordingly. More advanced solutions are able to address the challenges associated with “Web 2.0”, categorizing content on the fly, thereby enabling filtering of user-generated content websites, such as MySpace, which are beyond the scope of URL Filtering solutions.
Continue reading about the Flash Networks solution for content control
Posted on April 8, 2009, at 10:39 am .
Makers of the popular Quick Pull and MessageScheduler have recently released IntelliBerry, a utility that lets BlackBerry users search their contacts, apps and files. Additionally, you can program shortcuts – Magic Words – into IntelliBerry that allow you to efficiently search the web for images, Wikipedia articles, books, and more. I’m fairly skeptical of universal search software, and I like using a variety of searches that are designed specifically for unique contexts. I’m not sure if it’s because I believe there is a void of excellent universal search software, or if I’m simply too accustomed to my ways. In any event, I decided to give IntelliBerry a try and in some ways, I was impressed; in others not so much.
Click through to read more about IntelliBerry for BlackBerry
Posted on October 15, 2008, at 11:16 am .
From time to time, people from outside of the BlackBerry Nation like to peer into our world to figure out exactly why we spend so much time using our thumbs. To help them along the way, we’re often interviewed to provide our (ahem) expert analysis and opinion. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with the San Antonio Express-News for an article entitled ‘Smartphones place the Internet in more hands‘. Because I’m an ego-maniac, I’ve decided to quote myself here:
“We’re in a world where a lot of people don’t work 9-to-5 in offices,” he says. “They go to meetings. They are at job sites, or at clients’ offices. Not everyone commutes to an office and sits at a desk. You need to be able to work from wherever you are now.”
“For the majority of people,” he says, “to access a few Web sites, check e-mails, read news, use a document, maybe watch some videos, is all they need. And the ability to have that in the palm of your hand, wherever you go, is huge.”
All joking aside, it’s an interesting article that investigates how something as simple as a smartphone can shift one’s lifestyle to focus on where they are, not where they need to be. Check it out.
(via MySA)
Posted on May 8, 2008, at 8:20 am .
Jonathan Zittrain, recent author of “The Future of the Internet”, has attacked closed internet-enabled platforms (such as Xbox, the iPhone and BlackBerry) for stunting the collaborative forces which got the internet going in the first place.
“The challenge to the technologists is to build technologies to let people of good faith help without having to devote their lives to it. … I don’t want to see a two-tier world where only the experts can survive … and the non-experts are stuck between something they don’t understand and something that limits them.”
There are certainly some people who take issue with the way BlackBerry development goes now… What do you guys think? Are the big names shooting themselves in the foot by creating such a high barrier for entry and potentially limiting broader collaboration?
Posted on March 20, 2008, at 7:21 am .
Evidence gathered from Google’s mobile offerings indicates that mobile internet usage is on the rise in a big way, reports Electronista. Google has seen mobile internet use increase since they released mobile versions of some of their products, like Gmail, Maps, and Search. A Reuters analyst, however, pointed out that it might a sort of selection bias on the part of Google, with people simply using their products more often rather than the internet in general. Still, some evidence points in the other direction: Google receives 50 times more searches from iPhone users than any other phone. Who would have thought a decent browser might actually get used more often?
Posted on March 20, 2008, at 7:18 am .
The RBC, or Royal Bank of Canada, has launched a new mobile site for their customers. A completely stripped down home page allows you to access your online banking with all the features that entails, the main RBC site, and their terms and conditions. For those Canadians banking from the Quebec side, it even has a French version. Last year RIM overtook RBC as the largest Canadian company out there. I guess if you can’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em.
Posted on September 4, 2007, at 12:27 pm .
We just got wind that Telus has this nifty new service called the Wireless Solutions Roadmap, launched on the basis that Canadian companies are willing to adopt new wireless solutions, but simply need some guidance in figuring out what those solutions are. This online service is pretty comprehensive, assessing a company’s mobile e-mail and internet access, navigation, asset tracking and dispatch, and a wide range of other facets vital to corporate operations. Additionally, Telus has some metrics in place to see how your company stacks up against others in terms of handling these things.
After running through a few of the scenarios, it’s clear that this program is designed to make companies seriously reconsider their wireless strategy. Now, this could be seen as a way for Telus to hawk their own solutions by convincing execs that their company has problems that they really don’t, but it could be worth their while if there is something that needs fixing.
Posted on June 27, 2007, at 10:22 am .
Whooboy, here’s a summertime surprise for ya. An “anonymous BBCool fanatic” (finally, no silly nom de guerre) sent this to us last night and man does it get the BlackBerry fanatic in us pumped. Web browsing on the BlackBerry is almost universally derided by smartphone users (and mostly with good cause) — anything RIM can do to improve what some would say is the second most important feature of their devices is a big step.
From what we’ve been told, the most important feature enhancement is “tabbed” browsing support. There is also a new browser “home screen” that sports a listed history (with favicon.ico support, no less) and “search provider” functionality, courtesy of Google, Yahoo, Dictionary.com, IMDb.com, and Wikipedia. Although we won’t be getting our dirty mitts on the new browser until the fall (hmm, just in time for a new BlackBerry launch), this might just make Opera obsolete for BlackBerry users.
Check out more pics after the jump.
