BlackBerry Rocks! » News & Rumors

More Pictures Of The BlackBerry Pearl/Striker 9100 [Rumor]

Mauricio — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:41:41 +0000

It looks like it’s one of those leaky Fridays. The guys over at Tecnomovida were able to get their hands on a BlackBerry Pearl/Striker 9100 and have posted some great photos. Here is what I got from their post:

Carrier a “secret”
3.2 megapixel camera with flash
GPRS, WiFi and 3G
Runs OS 5.0.0.449
SureType keypad and Trackpad
Dedicated media buttons on top

Nothing we didn’t already know except this one has a newer OS version than the last one we saw. Check out the 9100 Archives for more about this device or view the rest of the images after the jump.

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This story originated from BlackBerry Rocks! and is sponsored by the BlackBerry Rocks! Store. Mobile App Store download at blackberryrocks.com/appstore.

Follow @blackberryrocks on Twitter and check out the Facebook Page!

Facebook Versions 1.8 And 2.0 For BlackBerry Coming This Year? [Rumor]

Mauricio — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:58:30 +0000

The good folks over at BBNews.pl have received some info regarding updates coming to the official Facebook for BlackBerry application. According to them, Facebook versions 1.8 and 2.0 will be released this year (translation courtesy of Google Translate):

In May this year, so now for about two months, to be released in the next scene FB for BlackBerry, version number is 1.8, and if it will not change in the interface, it will introduce a very significant change – from now to ‘capture’ Notification emails will not be used as a standard push the BlackBerry, which will significantly improve application performance and speed of downloading new information. Do so can put videos straight from our facilities.

By the end of the year should also be able to comply with the next update, this time to version 2.0, which offers among others, changes in appearance (which is not yet known), and the ability to search people on the site.

That last sentence of the first paragraph should probably say you can upload videos right from Facebook 1.8, which would be awesome! Anyone else hear anything about these new versions?

By the way, have you joined the BBRocks! Facebook Page yet?

Thanks @Raptor464!

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Push To Talk Now Available For Verizon BlackBerry Smartphones [News]

Mauricio — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:23:05 +0000

Verizon Wireless has updated their webpage to include their new Push To Talk (or PTT) service. The PTT service is available for $5 per month, per line for unlimited usage. Not a bad deal if you’re constantly using it.

If your business depends on instant communication, choose Verizon Wireless Push to Talk. Whether in the office or across the country, you can quickly connect with one or multiple team members at the same time with just a push of a button. Plus, you can make regular voice calls on the America’s Most Reliable Wireless Network.

Make quick exchanges.
Push one button to contact team members or clients.
Place group calls.
Hold conversations with as many as 50 total participants.
Check team member status with Presence.
See who is available for a Push to Talk call.
Manage contacts for the entire company online.
Add, delete and assign contacts, create groups and more.
Use one number, one device.
Make and receive voice calls without needing a second device or phone number.
Enjoy coast-to-coast coverage.
Connect on our nationwide broadband network, and get expanded coverage across the United States within the National Enhanced Services Rate and Coverage Area.

The Verizon PTT service isn’t limited to BlackBerry smartphones but there is a dedicated application available in the Verizon App Center. For more info visit the Verizon Push to Talk page and don’t forget to let me know how/if it works for you in the comments.

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Leaked Images Of BlackBerry OS 6.0 – Real Or Fake? [Rumor]

Mauricio — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:02:09 +0000

BBLeaks is at it again. This time they claim to have gotten some leaked images of BlackBerry OS 6.0 from one of their “best connects”, but I’m not so sure. Something just doesn’t feel right about these images and I wasn’t the only one to pick up on it. Engadget points out how BBLeaks’ images are a bit similar to the screen grabs from one of RIM’s recent webinar where they had some mockups. If you were able to attend that webinar then you might recognize some of the elements in these screenshots.

Then again these could actually be images of OS 6.0 since BBLeaks also shared some images of the BlackBerry Slider, which is rumored to run OS 6.0 upon launch.

I’ve included the screenshot Engadget posted after the jump. What do you guys think, real or fake? Let me know in the comments!

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“Mr. T” RIM BlackBerry Slider Launching Next Month? [Rumor]

Mauricio — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:18:34 +0000

RIM’s rumored BlackBerry slider seems to be popping up across the web often lately. The latest rumor to hit the web comes from Engadget where they offer a translation of the “Mr. T” device being mentioned by a CEO of a RIM parts supplier, Woojeon & Handan:

“The Canadian company RIM famous for BlackBerry smartphones is releasing a new model next month. Known as the “T,” The new model is an ambitious product aimed at competing against iPhone’s storm of success. Rim will present it (“T”) as its flagship model to compete in global markets such as the U.S. and Europe.”

While this may excite many of you (including myself), my buddy Al over at CIO points out that the launch of the BlackBerry slider is unlikely in favor of the new Tour2/Bold 9650 or Pearl/Striker 9100:

First of all, the BlackBerry Slider launch is going to be very important for RIM, and it can’t afford another mishap similar to its BlackBerry Storm launch in late 2008. That means the company will (hopefully) take its time prepping the device, which has been in the works for a while…but probably not as long as a few other BlackBerry devices we know about, yet RIM has not announced.

Also, RIM will likely launch the device at/around a major wireless trade show, and even though both CTIA and RIM’s own Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) are right around the corner, I think the BlackBerry-maker is more likely to announce its new BlackBerry Pearl 9100 and/or the BlackBerry Bold 9650, the BlackBerry Tour 9630 successor, before the new BlackBerry slider.

I would have to agree with Al on this one. If RIM is hoping to make this new BlackBerry slider their flagship device, they need to take their time and not rush it like the first generation Storm. With CTIA, WES and April already around the corner, we don’t have long to wait and find out. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Sidenote: I found the CEO of Woojeon & Handan’s word play “iPhone’s storm of success” a bit amusing .

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RIM’s BlackBerry Push Services Made Available To All Developers [News]

Mauricio — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:37:51 +0000

RIM just announced via their BB Dev Blog that they are opening up the BlackBerry Push Service to developers. This is great news for both developers and those that use their applications!

The BlackBerry® Push Service is an essential component of the real-time, always-on experience of BlackBerry smartphones. It offers an incredibly efficient and reliable way of sending information to your users. It also allows your application to process information in the background and alert users.

Use the BlackBerry Push Service to incorporate the characteristics smartphone customers love into your applications, including improved battery life, applications that run in the background and the ability to get instant information.

There are two Push Service options available:

BlackBerry Push Essentials
- Free service at all tiers
- Support for BlackBerry® Internet Service Browsing Data Transport
BlackBerry Push Plus
- Annual service fee, tiered based on the number of pushes sent per day
- No yearly fee for services with less than 100,000 pushes per day
- Annual subscription includes BlackBerry Internet Service Browsing Data Transport

For more info about the BlackBerry Push Service you can visit blackberry.com/developers/pushservice.

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Exciting Things Coming For BlackBerry Messenger – Do You Have The Latest Version? [News]

Mauricio — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:03:59 +0000

It seems like RIM is starting to “announce” things on their Facebook page before their blogs or anything else. Last time it was about the Tour 9650, this time it’s about something for BlackBerry Messenger:

There are some exciting things coming for BlackBerry Messenger in the days (and weeks!) ahead. Make sure you have the latest version of BBM so that you can be a part of it!

No details about what’s “coming” for BlackBerry Messenger but I’m happy they said days and weeks instead of soon. Anyone care to guess what it is?

If you don’t have the latest version of BBM you can pick it up at blackberry.com/messenger.

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Fandango Launches ‘Mobile Ticket’ Program At Movie Theaters In Eight Markets [News]

Mauricio — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:52:41 +0000

I’ve used the Fandango BlackBerry app to purchase almost every movie ticket since it came out. The app is very convenient and offers great features that you’d appreciate if you’re a frequenter of movie theaters.

The latest news from Fandango is being able to send movie tickets as barcodes to their mobile phones. Their calling this the “Mobile Ticket” program and are introducing it in the following eight markets within the Reading Cinemas circuit, including:

New York: City Cinemas 1, 2 & 3, Angelika Film Center, East 86th Street Cinemas, Village East Cinema, Beekman Theatre, The Paris Theatre.
New Jersey: Manville 12 Plex.
Houston: Angelika Film Center.
Dallas/Plano: Angelika Dallas; Angelika Plano.
San Diego: La Mesa Grossmont Center, Clairemont Town Square Stadium.
Bakersfield: Valley Plaza 16.
Sonoma County: Rohnert Park 16.
Hawaii: Ward Stadium, Kahala Theater, Kapolei 16, Mililani Stadium.

More markets will be supported soon. Right now you can purchase tickets through the Fandango BlackBerry app but you still have to pick up the purchased tickets at a kiosk or box office. With a Mobile Ticket you can go straight to the ticket taker and they’ll scan you in, allowing you to skip the box office and kiosk.

This is a great option especially if you’re anticipating a line at your movie theater. What would make this Mobile Ticket program even better is if it was somehow integrated into the BlackBerry app. You would just load up the app, go into purchase history and bring up the movie ticket barcode. I’m sure they’ve thought of this already so I hope it’s included in the next version of their app.

For more info or to download the Fandango application visit fandango.com from either your BlackBerry or desktop browser.

via Tech Crunch

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Tweetsii For BlackBerry Coming Soon – Connect With People, Places And Networks In Real Time With The Power Of Twitter [News]

Mauricio — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:12:18 +0000

Lots of “coming soon”s for BlackBerry lately. What a bunch of teases! This latest “coming soon” is GyPSii’s new Tweetsii application, unfortunately initially being launched on the iPhone with a BlackBerry version to follow. Tweetsii will allow users to connect, create and share with the power of Twitter.

Tweetsii™ is a radical new way to use social media and the mobile Internet that breaks down the barrier between the real place-based world and the digital world, providing a real time connection between a user’s social graph, places around them, and Twitter. It is a real time app that supports a mobile lifestyle, with user created tweets, images, reviews, comments, checkins, tips, and more. It builds an aggregated real world index of places, not a corporate created index, with updates from Twitter users and location-based services, including GyPSii, Gowalla and Foursquare, among others. All content contributes to a place-based index that delivers real time, mobile, location-specific content creation and search to connect users with the people, places, activities and ideas they’re interested in.

Some feature highlights:

Streams – View the Twitter world in a new way: the latest tweets from who you are following, see who’s nearby and what people are saying about the area you’re in, hot places, and what’s trending. PlaceStreams provide real time trending and a record of events at location-enabled places.
Explore – Tweetsii provides an “Explore” feature that utilizes GyPSii’s core PlaceRank™ search technology to combine Twitter streams with millions of place-based points of interest and events. Explore results are based on not only the trends people tweet about, but also the places and events they go to, and their social graph. The places and content come from users, including other networks like GyPSii, Gowalla, Foursquare, and an index of tens of millions points of interest. Users can also search by interests – on everything from bagels to burlesque – for an instant view of what’s nearby and what people are saying about it. Explore results reveal a treasure trove of contextual tweets, photos, events, and points of interest sorted by proximity, ratings and time.
Location-based Tweeting – users geo-tag tweets, they can easily add a photo and tie it to a location and their Twitter timeline. Check-in and be heard – allows users to “check-in” to places and share their experience, add to an existing conversation about the place or start a new one and check out relevant content around you. It provides an easy interface that helps users tweet, check-in, make recommendations, or send alerts all in a single screen. Tweetsii™ extends the GyPSii vision of user created content, by providing an easy way for users to create their own personal places and experiences, all tied to a location and their Twitter timeline. Tweetsii couples your real-world place-based life to your virtual-world Twitter experience, and brings more relevance and context to the Twitter experience.

Tweetsii is not yet available for BlackBerry devices but you can check out their site and blog at tweetsii.com or the press release after the jump for more info. I’ll also be posting about Tweetsii as soon as it’s available so be sure to keep an eye on BBRocks!

Any thoughts about this application (as it’s described) compared to the ones you use now?

Press Release

Launch of New App Tweetsii™ Delivers on Promise of Real Time Web

Tweetsii™ to connect people with places and networks in real time

Combines real-time events and places with the power of Twitter

Brings “Hot Spot” place-based search to the forefront

Company Closes $11 Million Funding Round

Adds 1M New Users

SXSW 2010

AMSTERDAM & AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–GyPSii, the leading real time location-enabled social media platform, today launched a new app named Tweetsii™. The app epitomizes the real time web and connects people with places and networks, by bridging the Twitter experience with mobile social media, the social graph, location, and contextual mobile-based search: all in the palm of your hand, accessible anytime and anywhere. Initial availability will be in the Apple Appstore for iPhone, followed by Android and Blackberry platforms.

Tweetsii™ is a radical new way to use social media and the mobile Internet that breaks down the barrier between the real place-based world and the digital world, providing a real time connection between a user’s social graph, places around them, and Twitter. It is a real time app that supports a mobile lifestyle, with user created tweets, images, reviews, comments, checkins, tips, and more. It builds an aggregated real world index of places, not a corporate created index, with updates from Twitter users and location-based services, including GyPSii, Gowalla and Foursquare, among others. All content contributes to a place-based index that delivers real time, mobile, location-specific content creation and search to connect users with the people, places, activities and ideas they’re interested in.

The application gives Twitter users a richer experience by allowing them to tweet, check-in, send alerts and tips, create places, and geo-tag them with comments, photos and other rich media content. Updates made via Tweetsii appear in users’ Twitter feed making it simple to share content with friends and followers. It’s inherently mobile, and in addition to the expected Twitter Timeline features, it delivers real-time “PlaceStreams” and “EventStreams” to users, directly tied to their location and social-graph connections.

Tweetsii feature highlights include:

Streams – View the Twitter world in a new way: the latest tweets from who you are following, see who’s nearby and what people are saying about the area you’re in, hot places, and what’s trending. PlaceStreams provide real time trending and a record of events at location-enabled places.
Explore – Tweetsii provides an “Explore” feature that utilizes GyPSii’s core PlaceRank™ search technology to combine Twitter streams with millions of place-based points of interest and events. Explore results are based on not only the trends people tweet about, but also the places and events they go to, and their social graph. The places and content come from users, including other networks like GyPSii, Gowalla, Foursquare, and an index of tens of millions points of interest. Users can also search by interests – on everything from bagels to burlesque – for an instant view of what’s nearby and what people are saying about it. Explore results reveal a treasure trove of contextual tweets, photos, events, and points of interest sorted by proximity, ratings and time.
Location-based Tweeting – users geo-tag tweets, they can easily add a photo and tie it to a location and their Twitter timeline. Check-in and be heard – allows users to “check-in” to places and share their experience, add to an existing conversation about the place or start a new one and check out relevant content around you. It provides an easy interface that helps users tweet, check-in, make recommendations, or send alerts all in a single screen. Tweetsii™ extends the GyPSii vision of user created content, by providing an easy way for users to create their own personal places and experiences, all tied to a location and their Twitter timeline. Tweetsii couples your real-world place-based life to your virtual-world Twitter experience, and brings more relevance and context to the Twitter experience.

“Tweetsii™ is an extension of the GyPSii vision to connect people and places across networks,” explained Dan Harple, Founder and Executive Chairman of GyPSii. “The Tweetsii app breaks down barriers between the real world and the digital world, by making real time social media easy to create and interact with. The GyPSii technology takes us beyond ’search engines’ and shows what we need are real time place-based ‘connection engines.’ In the age of mobile we can return the Internet to an experience of discovery, but more personal, relevant, and place-based. Mobile technologies have achieved more connectedness, but not deeper, more profound connections – that’s what we’re hoping to do with Tweetsii™.”

Renowned social media pundit, Twitter character, and founder of #140conf, Jeff Pulver, got to recently see a beta version of Tweetsii, and said he’d, “discovered a product I think reveals a true post-Web 2.0 real time web vision. It goes beyond Web 2.0, mash-ups, website-based search, and delivers the app that to me, epitomizes the ‘State of Now.’ I believe Tweetsii is the next big step in the real time web experience.”

GyPSii’s OpenExperience API powers mobile lifestyle and location based applications for the largest telecommunications companies on the planet including China Mobile, China Unicom, Telefonica and others. The company is now bundling on hundreds of millions of devices from Samsung, LG, HTC, Lenovo, and on the Apple iPhone in China among others. GyPSii is supported by over 400 devices and on 11 major platforms worldwide. The API was used to build Tweetsii into the Twitter eco-system.

In the latter part of 2009, the company added over 1 million new users and is on track with continued exponential growth. To support marketing and additional development of GyPSii applications including Tweetsii, GyPSii is also announcing that it recently closed an $11 million private funding round led by U.K.-based Schroders. This latest infusion brings total fundraising to $40 million to propel the GyPSii business forward.

Tweetsii can be downloaded for free on iTunes. For more information, visit www.tweetsii.com.

About GyPSii-

GyPSii provides real time mobile web technologies and products that connect your world in real time. GyPSii connects people, places, communities, content and advertising across networks and devices, with patented and patent applied-for technologies for the transfer and publishing of location based information between mobile devices. GyPSii provides apps and Open API solutions to a wide range of companies, such as Samsung, LG, RIM, Wind River, Garmin, China Unicom, China Mobile, China Telecom, and others. GyPSii apps are available on Apple’s iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, RIM Blackberry, Android, Java, MID/Linux, Palm webOS, and accessible via most well-known mobile app stores. Based in Salo, Finland and Amsterdam, The Netherlands, GyPSii operates offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, visit www.gypsii.com © 2010 All rights reserved.

The GyPSii and Tweetsii related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of GeoSolutions and/or its business units. All other brands, product names, company names, trademarks and service marks are the properties of their respective owners.

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BlackBerry Rocks! » News & Rumors

More Pictures Of The BlackBerry Pearl/Striker 9100 [Rumor]

Facebook Versions 1.8 And 2.0 For BlackBerry Coming This Year? [Rumor]

Thanks @Raptor464!

Push To Talk Now Available For Verizon BlackBerry Smartphones [News]

Leaked Images Of BlackBerry OS 6.0 – Real Or Fake? [Rumor]

“Mr. T” RIM BlackBerry Slider Launching Next Month? [Rumor]

RIM’s BlackBerry Push Services Made Available To All Developers [News]

Exciting Things Coming For BlackBerry Messenger – Do You Have The Latest Version? [News]

More Photos Of The QWERTY Slider BlackBerry – Coming To Sprint As The 9900/9930? [Rumor]

Fandango Launches ‘Mobile Ticket’ Program At Movie Theaters In Eight Markets [News]

via Tech Crunch

Tweetsii For BlackBerry Coming Soon – Connect With People, Places And Networks In Real Time With The Power Of Twitter [News]