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Archives for March 2008

Verizon BlackBerry Curve 8330 Officially Announced

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The Verizon BlackBerry Curve Is Officially Here!

CITA Wireless starts up in Las Vegas tomorrow and Verizon was first in line to make one of several pre-show handset announcements.

You’ve got to give it to Verizon on this one. They pretty much kept the release of the BlackBerry Curve 8330 under wraps. Most people thought that it would come out announce before the Sprint version, however, only few thought that it would come out be announced in March.

The announcement of the BlackBerry Curve 8330 will, unless RIM announces a BlackBerry with a touch-screen, will dominate the BlackBerry news until WES. I am going to try to hold off until then on getting one of these, hoping that that Verizon will announce it in black. I don’t know, however, if I am going to be able to wait that long.

Read the full press release here…

SimulSays Visual Voicemail For BlackBerry

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SimulSays Visual VoiceMailMost of the reviews of BlackBerry related products and services that we have done over the years here on RIMarkable are little more than a paragraph or two on what the product is, what it does, and link where you can download it and try it out for yourself. This is not the case when it comes to our review of SimulSays, a visual voicemail application for the BlackBerry from SimulScribe. We have totally put SimulSays through the paces and I have to report that I am thoroughly impressed.

What is SimulSays?

SimulSays is a visual voicemail application molded in the same vein as what you may have heard about the iPhone’s visual voicemail. Normally, when someone leaves a voicemail on your BlackBerry, you get a voicemail indicator icon that lets you know that there is new message waiting for you to listen to. SimulSays takes this a step farther by transcribing the voicemail message and sending it back to your BlackBerry as an email message. The SimulSays application running on your Blackberry recognizes the transcribed emails sent back to your device and allows you to scroll through and manage your transcribed messages in any order that you like.

What is really cool is that if SimulSays, via caller ID, can match the number of the person leaving a voicemail to a contact in your address book, you can easily reply to that contacts transcribed voicemail simply by hitting reply.

[Read more…] about SimulSays Visual Voicemail For BlackBerry

Verizon BlackBerry Curve Picture

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OK gang. This is either the first picture of the upcoming Verizon BlackBerry Curve that we’ve seen, or, a pretty decent Photoshop job. I’ll let you decide.

I am on the record, however, for saying that I cannot believe that Sprint, who is rumored to come out with their version of the BlackBerry Curve 8330 around mid April, will get this device before Verizon does. If the Sprint BlackBerry Curve rumors are right, Verizon has about 2 1/2 weeks to squeeze to get something out.

I’d be willing to bet that this is the first of many “leaked” shots of the Verizon BlackBerry Curve 8330 that will hit the blogosphere over the coming days.

[Source]

BlackBerry Tops Mobile Web Browsing Report

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Mobile web marketing outfit AdMob has released a report on global smartphone traffic for last month.blackberry-phone-mobile-web1.jpg

According to the report, 34% of mobile web traffic came from, you guessed it, a BlackBerry (and in most cases a Pearl). Running in a close second with 29% of handheld web access was global handset market leader (and our European friends) Nokia, and at the bottom of the scale it was another disappointment for Motorola who picked up just 1%.

Where the stats become a little more interesting is in respect of the iPhone where no actual figures were produced (iPhone pay off for a gagging order)?? Apparently iPhone traffic for February had “flattened” though, which falls in line with other reports that (now the hype and honeymoon is over) people have lost interest in the Jesus Phone.

Looking at mobile web ad requests in specific territories (which of course is what AdMob was most interested in) we can see that Motorola came top with 35% of all ad requests and, for my friends on this side of the pond, Sony Ericsson claimed the top spot in the UK with 37% of all ad requests.

Get 2 Free BlackBerry Downloads From Rove Mobile

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Rove Mobile, formerly Idokorro, is now offering two of its mobile applications as free blackberry downloads.

The first, Rove Mobile File Manager is an FTP client for your BlackBerry. Mobile File Manager supports Windows File Sharing, WebDAV, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Secure FTP (SFTP) connections can can so via the MDS service provided by BES or TCP/IP if you are not on BES.

The second free BlackBerry download is Rove Mobile Viewer for BlackBerry, an application that allows you to view the screen of your BlackBerry on your computer monitor. Mobile Viewer not only allows you to project your BlackBerry’s screen to your computer monitor, but, you can create screen shots or even record video from your BlackBerry.

If You Aren’t On BES, Do You Really Need OTA BlackBerry Synch?

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OK RIMarkable readers. I think that I am missing the point on something and I need you to set me straight.

BlackBerry Forums member Cory Scheuer wrote a pretty good review of ThinkPost’s new BlackBerry Sync, an over-the-air BlackBerry synchronization service that will allow BlackBerry BIS users to sync contacts, calendar, and notes between their BlackBerry and Outlook without having to do so through BlackBerry Desktop Manager.

I am not going to rehash the entire review which you can read for yourself here, however, it sounds like ThinkPost does exactly what it says it does. My question, however, is why is OTA sync such a big deal for BlackBerry users that aren’t on BES?

I admit that I have always been a BES user, so, I am sure that I am missing the point of this type of solution, however, if you aren’t on a corporate messaging system where others can add contacts to a global address list, see your free/busy availability, and request appointments against your calendar in real time, why would you need to synch those things before you get back to your computer and do it through BlackBerry Desktop Manager?

What am I missing?

Who Will Get The BlackBerry Curve 8330 First?

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BlackBerry Curve 8330There are pretty credible rumors that the BlackBerry Curve 8330 will appear on Sprint’s network on the 16th and 20th of next month for business users and individual consumers next month. The picture of the BlackBerry Curve that you are looking it is the Sprint branded version of the 8330.

I, however, just can’t believe that Sprint, with all the troubles that they have been having of late, will release the BlackBerry 8330 before the likes of Verizon, who usually is the first carrier to offer CDMA versions of BlackBerry devices.

{democracy:9}

India Isn’t Banning The BlackBerry… Just Possibly BlackBerry Email

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Remember a couple of weeks ago when we talked about how India may ban the BlackBerry, then followed up a few days later and said the the ban appeared to be off? Well, the Indian ban on BlackBerrys is definitely not going to happen, however, BlackBerry email may still be if deadlines for RIM to give the Indian government algorithms needed to decrypt messages aren’t met..

Telecom companies supporting the BlackBerry have been give 15 days to enable monitoring of the content transmitted on BlackBerrys or they will be ordered to stop the service. There are about 400,000 BlackBerry users in India and the will no longer be able to send or receive email or PIN messages from their devices if the deadlines aren’t met.

[Source]

Flooding In The MidWest Prompts RIM To PostPone Planned BlackBerry Outage

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Remember the scheduled BlackBerry outage that Research in Motion was supposed to be having this passed Saturday morning? Well, thanks to “outstanding cooperation” on the part of RIM with Missouri’s emergency response community, the planned BlackBerry outage for database upgrades was postponed.

The request for not taking down BlackBerry service early Saturday morning didn’t come in from Homeland Security until late Friday afternoon. By RIM keeping the BlackBerry network up and running, emergency workers were able to communicate without missing a beat.

I know that I’ve said RIM didn’t have a clue as to how disruptive BlackBerry outages are. In this particular case, they clearly did, and, I applaud them.