It’s that time of the year again, folks — can you smell it in the air? BlackBerry 9000 Bold, Jim Dog, Mikey L., John Mayer: it’s the smell of the 2008 Wireless Enterprise Symposium. As we prepare to board our (soul crushingly early) flight to Orlando for the big show, we thought we’d take a minute to let you know how you can stay up to date on all the latest info.
BestofWes.com: Sponsored by Digby, this page is your destination to everything BBCool has to offer at WES 2008. Videos, interviews, podcasts, photos — you name it, it’s there. Be sure to hit the page early and often, or follow along via our mega RSS feed.
Vote Or Die. BestofWes.com is also where you’ll stay up to date on BlackBerry Cool’s first annual Best of WES contest. You can read about each entrant’s offering in all categories, find out who the winners are, and even vote your own favorite in our People’s Choice Award: it’s the most important vote you’ll make this year!
Keep In Touch! On top of our Flickr and YouTube feeds, you can also keep in touch with BBCool staffers using our WES Twitter feed. If that’s not enough for you, readers with a Twitter account can also participate in the conversation! Let us know what you want covered, or where the good parties are! We’ve also got an Event set up on Facebook through our fan page, where attendees can share pictures and get in touch with other WES-goers.
Meet The ‘Cool. Love The ‘Cool. Ever wanted to meet your BlackBerry heroes? You can, Tuesday through Thursday, from 5pm to 6pm at the BoxTone Lounge. We’ll be podcasting (sponsored by Cortado) at that time every day, so come on down to listen in, shoot the breeze, or get an autograph (we keed, we keed: BBCool Simon charges for those, anyways).
WIN SWEET PRIZES!! Did you know that Chalk is giving away $1500 in cash as well as a sweet BlackBerry Cool prize pack? Go here to find out how you can win.
Hope to see you there! Until then, check out some of the sweet schwag we’re bringing to WES after the jump.
WES-goers have a chance to win $1000 from Chalk for showing off their BlackBerry love, but BBCool is giving out a mean prize package to the home viewers…
Last show before WES! Exciting info about the 9100, and guests from BoxTone, Neverfail, SugarSync and Chalk.
I wouldn’t call it so much as a leak as a market analyst tabbing up parts prices and typical markup, but sources are speculating that AT&T will be busting out the BlackBerry 9000 for $300 in July, and September for Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile. They’re guessing T-Mobile will be $50 more, who knows why, but it all seems in the right ballpark. You guys have any particular opinions on the proposed prices?
Word has it Rogers will be shoving out the Wi-Fi Pearl sometime soon, doubling up on previous speculation. This would be pretty big news, as it would be a helluva great release valve for Canadian wireless data rates, and the first step towards their rumored UMA service.
Besides the food, we come to WES to give our readers the best possible coverage of what’s happening in the BlackBerry space. However, this isn’t something that we can do alone, which is why our podcasts usually focus on interviewing industry players far more intelligent than ourselves to help us connect the dots.
This year, we lucked out when we ran into Andrew Brown of Strategy Analytics at the BoxTone lounge. An industry analyst that has been following RIM for 10 years, his knowledge of the space is unparalleled. Join us as Simon and I ask Andrew about a range of subjects, including BlackBerry’s growing ecosystem, RIM’s future strategy and why they should be working with bloggers. I highly recommend that every member of the BlackBerry Cool Nation listen to this podcast.
Ronen spotted a new free app on the recently-revamped mobile BlackBerry site which seriously extends the default Password Keeper app. It’s almost stepping up to Ascendo Datavault, what with all its categories and fields available. Very cool stuff, and hard to argue with free, eh? Head on over here on your mobile to get the download.
We had a sit-down with Brian Reed from BoxTone about their lounge just as it was being torn down (pardon the noise). A big part of the conversation involved RIM’s set-up in Florida, how the convention went as a whole, and possibilities for the future. Brian’s been on our podcast before to talk about BoxTone, and they had plenty to show off on the showcase with their recent partnership with Neverfail. Big thanks to the BoxTone crew for setting up the lounge - it was a great spot to take a load off, meet people, and get ready to head off again. Only improvement I could think of is getting the Wii rolling like they were planning, and having the hotel set up some drinks there would have been sweet.
Yeah, we talked to ‘em back on the podcast about their partnership with Yahoo! Go OneSearch, but we thought you might want to see their app in action. Their system learns your voice, and uses the data from others to make it learn faster - a really impressive step in voice recognition on BlackBerry.
The new BlackBerry Bold is Sizzlin, Exotic and of course BOLD. It’s a delicious new flavor of BlackBerry that is completely hypnotizing. I want one so bad my mouth is watering. (more…)
We covered these guys when we first heard of their remote control app, so it was good to sit down and talk with Guido and Matthew about B*Nator, and their Remote Control feature available for free trial over here.
Although we recommend you check out Simon’s video preview of Zumobi for BlackBerry, we also wanted to show you some hi-res shots of the nascent application and its slick interface (grainy YouTube videos aren’t really the best for that). Hey, is that a BlackBerry Cool logo that I see? Why, yes it is! Zumobi for BlackBerry drops in June.
The Solutions Showcase is now closed for good at WES 2008, which can mean only one thing: It’s time to let your voice be heard! You’ve seen the products, listened to the interviews, and walked the showfloor (if you’re here). Now all that’s left is to choose your favorite company and product in all of our Best of WES categories.
You can either head over to our Best of WES page, or click the giant button above.
Let’s go, BlackBerry Cool Nation: Rock the Vote!
Many in the BlackBerry Cool Nation are familiar with the name NJBlackBerry. A BlackBerry Forums Super (Duper?) Moderator, NJBlackBerry has guided many a BlackBerry newb through the growing pains of memory leaks, device wipes, and forgotten passwords. This week he’s been kind enough to help us as a Best of WES judge for IT/Admin products and services. Watching him carve up the show floor like a seasoned pro has been a sight to behold.
However, while we asked NJB to give us the one name that stood above the rest, he refused: there was simply too much good stuff at WES 2008 to be ignored. So we asked him to give us a laundry list of everything a smart IT Admin would want.
This revolutionary trend in Web 2.0 will change the way the world blogs (and help keep us slim).
Zumobi is a promising new platform for content delivery, featuring a slick interface for widgets. Plop in your tiles, zoom in, get your fix, and zoom out to keep browsing. We take a look at the upcoming BlackBerry client.
I managed to talk with the guys from Unify4Life back on day 2, and got a sweet demo of everything in action. Stuff like this we’ll tend to throw out on QuicklyBored before anything else, so be sure to check ‘em out.
We had a chat with Chris Harold about his internal rollout of the Mobile Governance Council. It’s a private organization, but a very interesting way of establishing standards for IT setups. By determining what needs to be available from an internal smartphone rollout, such as remote wiping, availability, and all that jazz, Chris tells us how enterprise can outline their upcoming rollout. This kind of system also offers a way of solutions providers to squeeze their way into particular markets to solve specific problems. Take a listen!
With each passing day of WES 2008, my eyes become more bloodshot. However, our podcasts keep getting better and better. For example, today we have for your listening pleasure a two on one interview between Simon, myself and Irv Witte, Rogers VP of Business Marketing. Join us as we discuss Rogers relationship with RIM, the coming BlackBerry Bold, iPhone how mobile devices get made, and the growth of the BlackBerry ecosystem.
We talked for a bit with the glue that put SAP and BlackBerry together, namely involving the ability to push out approval requests over the SAP server. This was kind of a big deal at WES this year, and this interview really outlines the extent of SAP and BlackBerry’s partnership for integratin. Check out 3i’s site for more info, and you can download our interview here.
Meet BBDave, our Biz Dev manager and head of BlackBerry Jobs. He wanted to take some time out of his busy WES obligations to let everyone know that BlackBerry Cool’s job site, BlackBerryJobs.com has been relaunched and is offering a special promotion to celebrate the event. Companies looking to hire experienced employees from within the BlackBerry ecosystem can now post for free on BlackBerry Jobs until May 31st, using the “WES08″ promo code.
Check out the site and find the company or employee that’s right for you. Want a ‘RIM Job’ tee shirt? Try to find us at the BoxTone Lounge today and tomorrow from 5pm to 6pm to get one for free! Not at WES? Head to our Cafe Press page and buy one.
Straight-up press release copying in frantic mid-session post… This is essentially what Rob Picciano was invited to talk about today during the Keynote. It’s a huge partnership for RIM and shows that they’re really delivering on their claims to move beyond email. We’ll certainly have more coverage on this in the coming weeks.
"Today IBM and Research In Motion (RIM) announced that they have joined together to mobilize Web 2.0 capabilities and expand IBM’s managed wireless services for BlackBerry. The first joint initiative delivers the full line of Web 2.0-powered IBM Lotus® collaboration software and information on demand on the BlackBerry® platform to mainstream business professionals. The joint initiative enables customers to securely manage their communications, contacts and schedules and collaborate and network through social software, all from within the familiar, intuitive interface of their BlackBerry smartphones. This includes the general availability of the new BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Connections, IBM’s social software for business."
To make up for yesterday, I’m at the keynote early, and in great position right up front. Compared to yesterday, the general session room is nearly empty, but that’s not going to deter me from live blogging my face off. Keep refreshing this page for the latest updates!
1:58pm Now it’s starting to fill up. I guess everyone was trying to squeeze in one more hallway meeting before we get started. At WES, you basically have to do everything on the move, or you will never get anywhere or do anything.
2:02pm BBCool Simon has just arrived, a very tall head in the crowd. Same format as yesterday: I’m on the blog, Simon on the Twitter and the Flckr.
We just received notice that SkyLab’s has a special promotion running for their popular GPS application, MobileTracker. Until May 23rd, it will be available for 14.99 USD, a hefty ten dollar discount!
MobileTracker essentially records your movements via your GPS-enabled BlackBerry, and allows you to export the data to software like Google Earth. Version 1.4 of the application new features like elevation tracking and coordinate geotagging for pictures.
To purchase MobileTracker, go here.
Cortado (a division of ThinPrint) announced this week at WES the availability of their new corporate server. Along with “seamless integration into company IT environments”, Cortado is stressing their multi-use Present-to-Screen, which allows files of any format to be sent from a Blackberry to a notebook or PC screen. No special software is required, and users don’t have to convert their files to a different format.
The new version is available for download at www.cortado.com/ccs-blackberry. View the full press release after the jump.
Refreshed and back in tip-top shape, BBCool Simon and I return with one of our best podcasts yet, although you can probably attribute that to our guests: Rob Woodbridge of Rove, Will Hickie of WICKSoft and Dave Peak of LiquidTalk.
Listen in as we talk about the panel that these three gentlemen are participating in (”Every Laptop Should Be Left Behind”) and what it means for the future of mobility. Also, we talk about American political folk music, and why $150 million dollars isn’t that big of a deal.
Listen to the podcast via MP3, RSS/XML, or iTunes. To learn more about the Every Laptop Left Behind movement, head here.
This is fresh off the press folks: a friend at Rove just told me that they’ve given away their first of three $1000 Amazon.com gift certificates to one Jeff Kucaj, who was lucky enough to have the key that fit the magic box. There are still two keys left, so make sure to stop by their booth (#248).
Of course, if your key doesn’t fit, you still have another way to make a quick grand by participating in Chalk’s ‘How much do you love your BlackBerry?’ contest. Head to booth 114 for more info on how you can win.
Not at WES? Don’t worry! You can still win a sweet BlackBerry Cool prize pack. READ THIS POST to find out how easy it is to win.
Simon’s going interview crazy at WES this year, so I’m just going to let him roll with it. This time our 8′ friend interviews Viigo’s Mark Ruddok about Project Tango (video preview above), Enterprise Light, and communicating with open source platforms. You can listen to it over on the Best of WES page, or hit the streaming link below.
May 15: WES 08 Interview: BoxTone
May 15: WES 08 Interview: ISEC7
May 13: Patent Attorney or Patent Agent
May 13: DSP Software Developer
May 13: Mobile Application Developer
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