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.
While it isn’t yet available, Trilibis Mobile have sent over some details and a screenshot of a new social phonebook application that they’re launching in Q4 of 2009 called Orbit.
Orbit is described as a free social phonebook that cleverly organizes all of your communication channels: voice, text, e-mail and social networking.
The app has a unique system of prioritizing and organizing contacts in your social networks so you can decide how often and how much information you receive. The app syncs with your phonebook, and then you can add additional contacts from Facebook and Twitter.
The application is probably best described in the feature set:
Improved Core Controls – Use your Orbit phonebook just like your existing phonebook; make calls, send text messages and e-mails. Orbit includes an enhanced A-to-Z scrolling feature to greatly improve the navigation of contacts on touch screen devices.
Orbits – Create an “Inner Orbit” for your closest friends. Add additional Orbits such as college friends, colleagues or family members, making it easy and convenient to keep track of everyone’s updates.
Social Volume – With Orbit’s unique “Social Volume” control, you can control the level of communication from your groups of contacts whether by time of day, day of week, type of feed, birthdays, etc.
Connected Phonebook – Rest assured! Orbit’s contact information is always updating so you will always be “in the know.” Orbit organizes and consolidates your contacts and auto-generates a favorites list based on the people you communicate with the most.
While RIM assured us that MyBlackBerry would be available to the public this week, it still requires an invitation key. I’ve seen many people on Twitter asking to get an invite, so I thought I’d let you know what’s going on in the community, so you don’t feel left out.
As you may know, the focus of MyBlackBerry is around the forum discussions. The forum is divided into 3 categories: Applications, Tips and Tricks and General. Keep in mind, this is still very much in an early development phase and so the user base is small and the conversations are fairly bland. Read the most popular discussions on the MyBlackBerry forums
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.
UPDATE: Sorry folks, it turns out RIM actually hasn’t made it public even though a notice went out saying it was live at midnight. I’ll keep you posted.
RIM seems to be rolling out a full social networking plan. First, they launch their official blog, and now they have a forum and social network called MyBlackBerry.
The site is in a beta stage and the community is still relatively small, but RIM has an opportunity to grow it into something really big. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but if RIM could leverage the carriers’ help, they could message North American BlackBerry users and instantly make it the biggest BlackBerry social network out there.
While forums are already present in the space, and we already have some great BlackBerry blogs (ahem), the industry still lacks a social network with the numbers to make it what we want. A social network of millions of BlackBerry users, all exchanging BlackBerry related news and information, would be great for the industry.
XING is very much akin to the social network for enterprise, LinkedIn. The site has a similar look and feel while clearly targeting the same demographic.
The site has launched a free piece of software that keeps track of all the user’s contacts, and makes phone numbers and email addresses available online. Your contacts are automatically updated online by the members themselves.
XING has done a great job of recognizing their target market are on BlackBerry, while I still haven’t seen a BlackBerry app for LinkedIn. This app is sure to please XING users, and ideally help them better network in their industry.
The XING app requires an Internet-enabled BlackBerry smartphone running OS Version 4.2.1 or later with at least 64 MB internal memory and 170 KB of available memory.
When we last wrote about BlackBerry Ave., it seemed like a direct competitor to BBMNation. The site has recently had a complete overhaul and looks much better. At this point it stands to be a decent social network for BlackBerry users.
BlackBerry Ave currently has over 1000 members and they’re growing at under 50 users per day. Built on the Elgg Social Network platform, the site has been optimized for both desktop and BlackBerry viewing.
Palringo’s Webby Award-winning, multi-service, Instant Messaging application is newly available in the BlackBerry App World.
Palringo users exchange voice, picture and text-based messages with contacts on many popular messaging services including Microsoft’s Windows Live/MSN Messenger, Facebook, AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Apple’s iChat, Gadu-Gadu, ICQ, Jabber and QQ. This means that Blackberry users can chat, and share photo and voice messages, with all of their friends on many different IM and social networking services using just one application instead of switching between multiple, single-service applications.
Your BlackBerry can be used in a wide variety of ways for interacting with social media and networks. One of these ways is via email. There are several sites out there that allow you to send media to them via email, and have that media pushed to your facebook and social networks. I’ve taken the time to roundup 5 of these sites; my favorite being Posterous.
Posterous allows you to publish anything online via email and their facebook integration is terrific. I have it set so that every time I upload 3 or more photos, a new album is created in facebook. When there is less than three, they get published in a ‘Posterous’ album. In one particular album, I have over 250 pics!
vPost has been working hard at updating their product for both consumer and enterprise. The foundations of this application are very robust and the potential for it includes almost every industry, which is why the app has gone through so many updates. As the app evolves to provide consumers with new features and better functionality, the number of enterprise uses grows.
The most recent update to vPost, which is called version 2.2 tentatively, includes the ability to use your vPost app as an “email messenger.” The application lets you add a list of contacts to the app, where you can share a variety of rich media with the user in a few simple clicks.
What’s new in the next version of vPost:
Unlimited favorites (add pictures to contacts then from address book hit menu -> ‘vpost favourite’). This is the feature that can turn vPost into an ‘email messenger.’
The ability to move around and delete widgets.
Take screenshots. Once vPost is launched, an option to take ‘vPost screenshot’ will show up in the menu.
Full thumbnail view mode for attaching existing media.
Scribble mode. This will enable users to mark-up pictures with text, lines, and objects.
Restaurant review widget. Prepare your post and use this new widget to easily rate and review your dining experience.
