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.

With SimulSays you still have all the regular voicemail features that you are used to. You can call into your voicemail as well as listen to and manage your messages. Additionally, you can listen to your voicemail via the web, as well as view the transcribed text of the message. You also have the ability to download a .wav file of each of your voice mail messages.

Installation and Configuration

The setup of SimulSays is pretty straight forward. Sign up for an account where you will be asked for your email address, a pin number, and your wireless carrier. Download and install the SimulSays BlackBerry client. Then forward your voicemail to the SimulSays servers using a code provided based on your wireless carrier. You can easily turn SimulSays off by entering in a code on your device that will revert back to your carriers voicemail system.

Once the your account is created and the SimulSays BlackBerry client is installed, open the client, enter in your email address and PIN, and you are good to go. (Note: This is not your BlackBerry PIN but the PIN you created when you set up your account.)

My take on SimulSays

SimulSays notifies you when a new voicemail message has come in almost immediately and transcription takes about 3 to 5 minutes depending on the length and clarity of the voicemail message being transcribed.

I’ve been playing around with SimulScribe for around three weeks or so. It, honestly, has become one of the most used third party apps on my BlackBerry, just this passed week I really got to put the service though the paces as I was in conference that lasted 2 days. Being towards the end of Q1, many, many voicemails came in, 80% of which I was able to reply back to with a simple email to the person that left the voicemail without ever having to get up and walk out of the meeting.

You even get a number that you can give out that will send people who call it directly to your SimulSays voicemail.

To say that SimulSays truly impressed me would be an understatement.

How much does SimulSays cost?

There are three different plans for SimulSays. SimulUnlimted, as the name implies gives your unlimited voicemail transcription for $29.95 per month. Simul40 gives your 40 transcriptions for $9.95 per month. SimulPerMessage doesn’t require a monthly fee and costs $0.35 per transcribed message.

Final Thoughts

As I said before, I am thoroughly impressed with SimulSays. The pricing initially seems a bit steep, however, is actually quite comparable, if not a bargain, to other services with similar features. I’ve noticed that the SimulSays client doesn’t parse incoming emails immediately, however, I believe this is because the client would drain your battery if it constantly polled incoming messages. You never notice it unless you see the SimulSays message come in and if you do, you can can simply hit the Reconnect Now button.

I would like to see a future update of the BlackBerry client with configurable tone and vibrating alerts. I carry my BlackBerry in my pocket so, I don’t know that I have voicemails until I either see the red light blinking or look at the today screen.

All in all, SimulSays is one BlackBerry application that I would actually pay for myself. If you want to try it out, there is a 7-day free trial that you can access directly from the SimulSays.com website, however, we have set up a free 30-day trial for RIMarkable readers.

Give SimulSays a try, and, as always, come back and tell us what you think via the comments.

BBSmart Email Viewer, as its name implies, is a BlackBerry email viewing application that allows you to view HTML formated email with support for graphics. As I have found out over the last week, however, BBSmart Email Viewer v2.3 is much, much more.

Installation and Configuration
Installing and configuring BBSmart Email Viewer is pretty straight forward. There are separate downloads for BlackBerry OS 4.2 devices, 4.1 devices, and everything else. Select the appropriate link for your OS and download BBSmart Email Viewer OTA to your device.

Once BBSmart Email Viewer is installed, you will need to reboot your BlackBerry. Configuration is just as simple as installation. Once you BlackBerry comes back up you will see BBSmart Options in your Email menu. From here you can set email display options such as “Set as Default Email Viewer”, “Display Images in Email”, and others.

There are also menus for Email Header Display Options, Email Text Display Options, Connection, Cache, and PIM Options.

Usability
BBSmart Email Viewer has some really cool features. The PIM integration allows you to to convert emails directly into calendar appointments and / or tasks. There is also an email template feature called SmartSay that allows you to save commonly used text that as a signature of sorts that you can apply to your outgoing emails. There are currently 3 templates save which you can modify to your liking as well as create new ones from scratch.

Final Verdict
All in all, BBSmart Email Viewer v2.3, is a really cool application that eliminates the nightmare of trying to read HTML formatted email natively on your BlackBerry. The only real knock that I have is that BBSmart is a bit slow when set as your default email viewer.

I would suggest defaulting your email view to the BlackBerrys regular view and using BBSmart view only when you need to parse an HTML formatted message. Other than that BBSmart Email Viewer v2.3 is an excellent application for you BlackBerry.

You can download a trial here…

The BlackBerry 8800 for the corporate business user is not a bad upgrade if you are coming from a device older than the BlackBerry 8700 and are already a Cingular subscriber. Outside of the BlackBerry Media Player and GPS, the 8800 doesn’t do much more than the 8700, however, has that sleek design to it that QWERTY BlackBerrys have been lacking until now.

If I would have been buying the BlackBerry 8800 purely for it’s GPS capabilities, I would probably return it and wait until the next version comes out where RIM has all the bugs worked out. It is slow compared to on-board navigation in my SUV and really slow compared to a handheld satellite GPS unit that a buddy of mine has. Actually trying to get BlackBerry Maps installed on the 8800 was a nightmare. Fortunately BlackBerry Forums Moderator, Stinsonddog, came up with a walk through to install the pre BlackBerry 8800 version of BBMaps on an 8800. I would have never figured it out on my own.

I am not impressed with the BlackBerry 8800 at all from a consumers standpoint. It looks cute, however, lack of Wi-Fi and a digital camera along with the archaic implementation of the Media Player really just miss the mark for me. There are other smartphone devices, i.e., the Q, the BlackJack, the Dash, etc. that for the same money or less, have lots more bells and whistles and seem to be better phones.

BlackBerry 8800

The trackball will become the dominant navigational device for mobile devices within two years.

The size and sophistication of the Pearl are enough to set it apart from the pack, but the namesake trackball is the piece de resistance. Think of the trackball as a 2-D scrollwheel on crack.

This is a prediction made by the author, Mike Elgan, and I think he may be on to something.

Elgan also believes that the form factor of the BlackBerry Pearl will be the size of choice for smartphones of the future and, once again, I have to agree with him.

The Pearl, at 4.2 x 2 x 0.6 inches and about 3.5 ounces, is about the size of a closed Motorola Razr — a “dumb” phone famous for how thin it is.

Future BlackBerry Pearl-like smartphones need to offer a better digi-cam, brighter flash, easily accessible removable memory, and better multimedia capability, however, the Pearl, being a ‘1.0 device’ as Elgan calls it is a great glimpse into the future of smartphones to come.

I recently had the opportunity to review UniquePhones, a remote mobile phone unlocking service that has generated over 2.9 million unlock codes to date.

UniquePhones has unlock codes for over 1500 handsets from most of the leading manufactures including LG, Siemens, Motorola, and many others, including my personal favorite, BlackBerry. The price range for unlock codes vary as greatly as the devices they support from as low as $1.99 all the way up to $25.99, which happens to be the price to unlock a BlackBerry.

I am being paid for this review, however, you will get my honest opinion as it is far from raving. It’s not a scathing review either, however, I do have a few concerns and maybe UniquePhones can take this review as a bit constructive criticism.

My guess is that the overwhelming majority of the 2.9 million unlock codes that UniquePhones has sold have gone off without a hitch. Most of the forums and blogs that I found that mention UniquePhones do so in a positive light and generally comment on how much cheaper UniquePhones unlock codes are compared to other services.

The few times that I found negative feedback, complaints seemed to revolve around two themes:

1. My Unlock Code didn’t work and I couldn’t receive a refund.
2. Support was very unresponsive or flat out didn’t contact me back.

Unfortunately, I am experiencing the latter issue as I type this. Before I ever use a service that I purchase online, I test out customer support. I noticed that the list of BlackBerry devices supported by UniquePhones is fairly dated with the newest device being the BlackBerry 7105t. I opened a ticket simply asking if any of the newer BlackBerry devices such as the 8700c or the 7130g are supported. After four days I still have yet to hear anything back from UniquePhones even after I updated the ticket asking for an update.

This type of delay is just not acceptable for a service like what UniquePhones offers and the company needs to improve in this area.

If you have had any experiences, good or bad, with UniquePhones, leave us a comment and tell us about it. Additionally, I invite anyone from UniquePhones to respond as to how they are improving support because I see this as being the one area that is holding them back.

You can find more information about UniquePhones by visiting their website at www.uniquephones.com.

*** The previous post was a PAID advertisement ***

I have a digital camera and take pictures of my kids all the time, however, one thing that I noticed about the pictures on my BlackBerry was that they were all pretty dated. When I think about why that was, it is because natively putting pictures onto your BlackBerry is a pain in the you know what.

Enter SplashPhoto for BlackBerry…

I have to be honest. I’ve known about SplashPhoto for quite a while, but, unfortunately have never gotten around to take a look at it. I definitely needed to update the photos on my BlackBerry so I decided to give it the once over after taking a bunch of pictures over the Thanksgiving holiday.

I’ve only had SplashPhoto loaded for a few days, however, I can definitely tell you that it is a cool BlackBerry application. As importantly, it is an easy application to use. Those days of having to use a photo editing program to crop and decrease the size of your photos then emailing them to yourself to get them onto your BlackBerry are over.

All you have to do is install the application to your desktop and BlackBerry, set it up to synch with your device, and drag and drop images from where ever they are on your computer to the SplashPhoto Desktop application and you are good to go.

SplashPhoto Desktop allows you to resize and crop, adjust the brightness and contrast, and add your photos to categories that you create. The BlackBerry application easily allows you to re-categorize, email, and view your images individually or via a slide show.

There is a free 30-day trial version that I recommend that every BlackBerry user try out. If you decide to buy it, SplashPhoto will cost you $29.95. Even if you buy and and decide that you don’t like it, SplashPhoto has a 60-day money back guarantee, which is pretty unheard of for that length of time on BlackBerry software.

SplashPhoto

Fortunately, however, Dale has seen the error of his ways and as he puts it, has “Swallowed hard and admitted his mistake.”

You can read Dale’s updated review and see when he is now the proud owner of a BlackBerry Pearl here.

Personally, I only use the free BlackBerry IM clients such as BlackBerry Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and Google Talk, however, I hear that some of the clients that allow you to use different networks from the same client are quite good.

Rumor has it that RIM is about to release a few more native BlackBerry IM clients and I am wondering if I should just wait until they come out or go ahead and get one of those integrated clients.

If anyone has any opinions on some of the integrated BlackBerry IM clients available, your comments would be much appreciated. I don’t want to shell out the cash for one before I know if it is worth it or not.

BlackBerry Software, BlackBerry IM Client, Instant Messaging

My first issue is with the quality of the video playback. It is quite grainy and difficult to see. Now, I am only running VideoPlayer on a BlackBerry 7130e and video quality may be better on the more powerful BlackBerry 8700, however, it is pretty darn bad on the 7130e. The sound quality is OK, however, I didn’t see a way to adjust the volume during playback.

Another big issue with CanWest MediaWorks’ VideoPlayer doesn’t stream content. This in itself isn’t all that bad, however, the limited memory on compatible BlackBerry devices will severely limit the amount of data that can be stored in your playlist.

I know this is the first multimedia player for the BlackBerry and that it is still in beta, however, RIM and it’s partners are going to have to “bring it” if they are going to start offering multimedia features on the BlackBerry that you have been able to get on other PDAs and smartphones for years.

SONA Mobile, CanWest MediaWorks’ VideoPlayer

I know that Google Local has been available on the BlackBerry for a while now, but, I have to say that out of all the free Blackberry downloads that I have on my 7130e, Google Local for Mobile has to be one of the most useful. I know that someone will undoubtedly tell us about a much better program that for 15 to 30 bucks can be yours. Just remember, Google Local is free and for a free BlackBerry download, it is a wonderful tool that I use at least two or three times a week.

I could go into a long review of the application but to make a long story short, it is Google Maps for your BlackBerry. You can search of any address in Google’s index which means pretty much all of them. What is really cool is that you can map directions to a location that you’ve searched for directly on a satellite photo of the roads that you will travel.

Another cool feature is that you can call any number returned from your search without having to exit the program. Sounds simple but try calling a telephone number from a browser based searched. The difference is profound.

Google tends to return more than one result for most searches. Google Local’s interface allows you to very quickly move between results with having to wait for additional pages to load as you would if searching the Google homepage directly from your browser. This makes finding the right location or the right telephone number very easy.

There is much more to Google Local for Mobile. It is a free download so grab it from www.google.com/gmm directly on your BlackBerry and give it a whirl.