Blackberry Apps Update

When my son graduated from high school recently, I noticed he’d go without a cell phone for long periods of time, so as a graduation gift I added him to my cell phone plan. Included in the plan were matching 8830’s, which is really just a bigger version of the Pearl with more visual space.

ÜberTwitter a VERY function packed twitter application! I’ve talked about Twitterberry in a previous post. Using it for a while, I found uploading posts with pictures horribly unstable and difficult to do. UberTwitter handles this with ease. I’ve tried a lot of different twitter applications and Ubertwitter is the most stable, user friendly twitter application for Blackberry.

Qik – Quk is a free video streaming application. You can record live video, so I’m REALLY interested in this app. I want it to work more than it does. I’ve had problems with the uploading/live portion of the application. On the Curve it doesn’t seem ready for prime time.

BeeJiveIM is a multi-platform IM client for both Blackberry and iPhone devices. I recently reviewed Palringo, another multi-platform client. I searched for another program because Palringo has been plagued with connection issues that make it unusable for me. Enter BeeJiveIM. No connection errors, a more user friendly interface (though it does look like an AIM client from 1995), and it is packed full of features you can read about here. The downside is that BeeJiveIM isn’t free. On the Blackberry it’s 19.99 for a single phone and 29.99 for a transferable license. But it’s free to try for 30 days.

Wordpress for Blackberry – is a mobile blogging client that has a surprising number of features for an open source application. Not only can you write/publish/save drafts, you can upload pictures straight from your phone. This is truly mobile blogging. If you add twitter tools to your wordpress install you could actually publish to twitter and wordpress at the same time. Blogging couldn’t get much easier. You can see my test post at my test blog.

VR+ Voice – according to their website, with this application you can:

1. Record a voice note, lecture or an interview. With your mobile device record anything on-the-go.
2. E-mail your voice recordings for playing back on the PC or mobile. On-the-Fly conversion to Mp3.
3. Send the recording whenever and wherever you are. No typing, no printing involved. Mp3 format makes the recording easy to send and easy to listen to.
4. Share your recordings with friends in Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger.
5. Let your friends hear your notes by sharing them in major social networks directly from your smartphone.
6. Create your own podcasts on-the-go, upload and share them right from a mobile device.
7. Enjoy listening to podcasts? Well, now you can make your own podcasts, listen to them and let others hear your reviews, advice or impressions. Make your recordings public and let others hear you!

I really do like this application. It allows me to make a mobile podcast any time I want to and send it to twitter (and blogger, facebook, and myspace). That being said, it isn’t perfect in doing so. If you autopost to twitter you get a standard tweet that says:

“New VR+ voice recording URL: http://examplepodcastlink.com Listen to this voice note! I made it with VR+ installed on my BlackBerry”

I would rather post what the podcast is about, rather than a commercial for VR+, so I upload it to Shapeservices.com and then grab the the url via a saved bookmark to my public podcast area. Hopefully ShapeServices will fix this in the future. Free software I could kind of see having this limitation, but I paid for this app (it’s free to try for 7 days, buy for $29).

Google Voice for Blackberry
If you’ve recently signed up for the new Google Voice service and you have a Blackberry, you’re in luck!

“Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email, and lots of cool calling features like voicemail transcripts, call screening and blocking, conference calling and more.”

With the Blackberry app you can:

• Make calls and send SMS from your Google Voice number
• Listen to your voicemail and read voicemail transcripts
• Manage your Inbox and view Call History

Beware, it’s new so there are bugs.

Lastly, I just wanted to make a comment about the various app stores. I recently bought an Ipod touch. Many of the programs talked about in this post have iPod/iPhone versions. The only difference is… THE PRICE. The VR+ app at the iTunes app store is .99 and BeJiveIM is $9.99! Note to Blackberry, higher prices in your apps store won’t cause people flock to it.

Previous Blackberry posts:
My Top BlackBerry Pearl Applications
Updated: Another Reason To Love My Blackberry
Part Three: More Blackberry Pearl Applications

Updated: Another Reason To Love My Blackberry

My best friend having an iPhone has solidified my thoughts in my previous post about owning a Blackberry over the iPhone. Here are two reasons why

1. The iPhone has no expandable memory. I can buy multiple 16GB cards and smoke the iPhone’s memory into the ground. With the iPhone you’re stuck with 16GB for the life of your phone.
2. Probably the biggest problem I have with the iPhone is that without jailbreaking the phone you can’t run multiple apps.

A new application I’ve found that I’m loving on my Pearl is the Pandora like  Slacker Radio. With Slacker’s station caching on my phone there’s no reason for me to fill my phone with music from my library.

Thinking about Slacker is what made write this post. I like the fact that I can listen to music, read and receive email, and update twitter from my phone and never have to stop any of them to run the other.

The biggest hit I’ve heard about comparing the Storm to iPhone is that the Storm doesn’t have Wi-fi. I’m sorry, but isn’t that a tad redundant? If I have 3G, why do I need wi-fi?

For my lifestyle my Blackberry fits me perfectly.

My Top BlackBerry Pearl Applications

I’m kind of defensive of my Blackberry Pearl 8130. Listening to the most recent episode of TWIT, they bashed the Blackberry, saying that they aren’t really “smartphones” and that there aren’t a lot of good apps for Blackberry phones.

Maybe it’s a Ford (APPLE) vs. Chevy (Blackberry) kind of debate, but I love my Blackberry Pearl more than any phone I’ve ever owned. I wouldn’t own an iPhone because of its screen size. I had a T-mobile Wing (HTC 4350) and I ended up breaking the screen. I’m hard on phones (I end up dropping them a lot) and I don’t need that much visual real estate. With a wide screen portable device like the Wing there isn’t really a good way to protect the device and it still be usable. Besides, I have a MacBook that I can use if I want to watch movies or visit sites while I’m out (I have Verizon Broadband Internet through my Blackberry).

Really the only downside of owning a Blackberry is that there isn’t really a viable Blackberry apps store. But the suggestion that there aren’t good Blackberry apps is just bullshit. Here are my favorites:

Blackberry Media Sync – This is one of the most important applications for me. I listen to a lot of podcasts and music on the go. You can use up to an 8 GB microSD card which will hold 117 hours of music (at 128 Kbps)! That’s more than enough space for me.

Media Sync is a part of the newest update to Blackberry’s Desktop Manager. You simply make a playlist in iTunes and then open up the desktop manager and sync the playlist and the music on it to your phone. It’s just that easy!

Remember The Milk- Remember the milk is a task manager that is adaptable in many ways. You can add it to Gmail, Google Calendar or you can put MilkSync right on your Blackberry.

VZ Navigator- I’ve thought about buying a separate device for my car… but WHY? One less device is a good thing. Some might argue that the cost, $10 dollars a month, is a bit extreme. But I’ve not seen a good GPS system under 150 dollars. That’s 15 months worth of service of VZ Navigator. In 15 months the software will be better and I’ll have a newer phone (my two year contract will be up then). I see it like a lease vs. buy option with cars.  The cost of a new device (if I bought a GPS device I’d most likely buy a new one every 2-3 years to keep up with technology) would be close to what I’m paying for having the service and doing it with one device.

Google Suite- Where do I start? Google Suite takes all the good Blackberry products they have and roll them into one. Recently upgraded, Gmail runs fast and light. While I use VZ navigator for trips, I use Google Maps for finding stores or restaurants around me. The voice search function is very useful while on the road. A caveat though, when I tried using it like a GPS, I would get lost. It’s great on showing you the way if you know the area, but otherwise forget it.

Facebook- I LOVE this application! I can keep up with my friends anywhere I go! This is especially good when I’m in line at the store, at the doctor’s office, or any other place where I’m alone and have time to fill. It’s a lot more interesting than reading 20 month old Good Housekeeping articles! I can update my status (although I use twitter and the facebook/Twitter application to post my tweets to facebook as status updates), post pictures to my facebook albums, write on my friends walls, and more. If you like MySpace better, there’s an application for that too.

Twitter(berry)- This is the application I use to post my updates to twitter/facebook. It’s pretty minimilistic, but it does exactly what I need it to do… post tweets.

Opera- If you don’t like Blackberry’s web browser, Opera’s web mobile web browser rocks the house.

My Alarm Blackberry’s default alarm clock is lacking, but this free app does the trick with 6 different alarms, multiple snooze settings, and it supports multiple alarm rings (including midi and mp3s).

Wikipedia this application brings Wikipedia easily to your Blackberry.  Any time you are just dying to know about Peaches and Herb, it’s right at your fingertips (hey don’t laugh, there was a debate at work if it was Peaches and Cream or Peaches and Herb).

StopWatch – this application is good if you’re a runner. I use it to time my 2 mile runs. I set it, put on music, and let the road stretch out before me. You can read a full review of it here. Like the Twitterberry application, it simply does one thing and it does it well without a heavy memory footprint.

Orb – You can use Orb to remotely serve content to your phone. A good use for this is steaming content from Sirius (Usirius)  or XM (Uxm) with the directions for Sirius here and XM here. You can stream just about any kind of media stored on your home PC. For a full review of what Orb can do, read this review.

These are just a few examples of the useful applications that are out there. Granted you can’t play too many games on a Blackberry, but that’s what an Xbox is for.
The last but most important reason that I prefer my Blackberry phone over an iPhone is the cellular service. I’ve NEVER had a cell phone that would keep a call on an elevator, but my Blackberry on the Verizon network does just that. In fact, I’ve probably could count on one hand the number of dropped calls (in the last year) I’ve had with Verizon.

So to Leo Laporte and crew, you go ahead and pay a shitload of cash to AT&T and Apple. I’ll be rocking the road with my inexpensive but efficient and durable Blackberry Pearl (8130).  While you’re upping your nose at Blackberry, I’ll be over here counting my cash.