BlackBerry has built its reputation on its relationship with the business world. More than any other smartphone, BlackBerry’s long association with the corporate market has provided a good base for its success. The success of iOS and the growth of Android in 2011 has undoubtedly left manufacturer RIM in a weaker position in the UK, having been pushed into third place. However, the release of the new Bold range in 2011, with the Bold 9790 at the centre of the campaign, and the release of the new operating system, BB7, means BlackBerry is taking on its competitors and reinforcing its position in the business world.

The Bold 9790 includes many of the same features that have made BlackBerry a popular business brand, including the ability to set up different email accounts and instant messages, to multitask and browse the web while working on other platforms. It also includes some new features, like the ability to separate a personal and business profile within the one device. There are also different apps that can be downloaded to further utilize and maximise the ability of the Bold 9790 to meet the needs of the business community. Here are the top five.

Social Media networks like Twitter are becoming increasingly important for businesses as they allow people to share their commercial knowledge and connect their brand with consumers. Apps like UberSocial are ideal for BlackBerry as they allow users to manage multiple accounts and tweet easily on the move using the devices QWERTY keyboard.

Dropbox is a feature many will use day to day in work, allowing them to share documents and material remotely. BlackBerry App world has a version of the software that allows users to share and read documents on their drop box on their device.

Battery Booster is ideal for those who need their BlackBerry from the beginning to the end of the working day and might not have access to a charger. The app stops different applications which are draining the battery to ensure optimum performance and saving battery life for those apps you need most.

BlackBerry Traffic provides an up to date service which can be vital to make sure you get to meetings and appointments on time. The app gives information about roads that are closed and plans routes, gives an idea of traffic congestions and provides an estimated time of arrival making it easier to plan a journey.

The business day can be a busy one and often it is difficult to keep up to date with what is happening in the world. BlackBerry News is an app providing an RSS feed of the latest news headlines, allowing users to scroll through and get an update on developments. Easily to scroll through and read it makes it easier to catch up on the train or over lunch.

Apple and Android have both been making inroads into the business market over the last twelve months. RIM has seen its BlackBerry phone deals fall below a 20% share in the UK smartphone market. Their new launch of the Bold range, in particular the 9790 and the new OS7 is designed to catch up with its competitors and provide a new and improved platforms for the business market. These apps are designed for BlackBerry to make the working day a little bit easier.

Looking back on early January 2011, we catch a glimpse of an awesome experience of the Android 3.0 video teasers. Looking forward to what’s ahead of this year let us capture a vision of the great Honeycomb OS which will inevitably make Android the dominant Smartphone and Tablet platform of the future. The rapid ascent of Android has prompted Google to go ahead and announce the official release of its latest creation, made by Palm’s former UI designer, Matias Duarte, and best known as the Android Honeycomb – Google’s answer to many of tablet -based OS out there. And while there wasn’t much news about it, it is still worth watching – especially for those that widgets, finger gestures, or 3D rendering matters spark their interest. The one thing however, that caught most people’s eyes was Google’s Android Market which has finally turned official, as a web client, and gone live couple of hours ago with a very neat and simple Market catalog to browse (more than 50,000 apps inside) with both free and paid Android applications preloaded on board. Move forward after the break to catch up with Google’s full event.

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Since its launch two months ago, Apple’s iPad sales has already reached over one million units (in the US alone), with users downloading over 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore. As of today, there are almost 200,000 apps available on iTunes for all Apple devices, while more than 10,000 apps of them were written or redesigned for the iPad platform itself. Steve Jobs says “Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers…” – and he does, as Apple already announced its next stage of global roll out, which is allegedly slated to start on May 28. In this post, we have rounded up 11 great (free/cheap) iPad music apps that will let you feel like a pro DJ when using. You can scratch, create loops, remix your audio files, insert samples, play, produce and record your very own audio stuff on-the-go.  Check out each app, download it and you’ll be off and running with some great DJ tools in no time. Considering some of this apps can cost dozens, if not hundreds of dollars in desktop/laptops markets, paying a few bucks is a sound investment, in our humble opinion.

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Well, hello there…what do we have in here, a new tablet from Dell? I mean don’t get us wrong here, it’s not that we haven’t heard anything about it before, but this time it gets a lot more juicy details to share. First and foremost is the name – Looking Glass – which its creator apparently chose because of the glossy 7-inch display the tablet boasts. Screen resolution, BTW, is at 800×480 pixels only, which is kind of surprising, considering that Dell’s 5-inch Streak technically packs the same numbers. Still, you can’t go wrong when it comes to an android 2.1 machine, powered by Nvidia’s powerful Tegra 2 processor, can you? And if that wasn’t enough, how about 4GB of RAM, paired with a 1.3mp camera, an optional ATSC/DVB-T TV tuner, and 4GB of internal storage, expandable up to 32GB via an SDHC slot, that Dell plans to include inside – pretty cool, isn’t it? Unfortunately it is not due out until November of this year, so right now, you’ll have to settle with the line of specs, after the break.

[via engadget]

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Pasen has been known for years for its average line of PMP products, but now, as it looks, the company has finally managed to somehow move on the  right direction with its latest and hopefully greatest MID5 android tablet – is that a tablet? Anyway, this 5-inch MID/Slate Android device boasts a 800 x 480 LTPS LCD display, along WiFi, micro SDHC slot, USB hub, Rockchip RK2808 processor, a built-in speaker and HDMI output, supporting 720p H.264 video files, as well as other common formats like AVI, MOV, DIVX, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, VCD, DVD, RM, or RMVB and audio codecs such as MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, or OGG. Battery wise, you get to play up to 10 hours of music tracks or about 4.5 hours of video playback, so wouldn’t you want one, after all?

[Pasen]

Feel you’re running out of patient to get your new lavish iPad device? Already searching for content to fill it with? In that case, prepare to spend big bucks on this track, because according to these Apple iPad App Store screenshots that recently emerged, they won’t come cheap. In fact, only 8 applications out of the leaked images are free, while others will cost from few greenish dollars and up to $49.99(!) when it comes to OmniGraffle – at least there’s more functionality there, and apparently those apps would likely fetch a lot more money for developers rather than iPhone’s apps. One more detailed image after the break, to serve your appetite.

Update1: Checkout the cool video after the break and watch the iPad App Store browsing experience for yourselves.

Update2: Now it’s official, iPad apps cost a lot more than iPhone and iPod touch apps. In fact, for some of them you’ll have to pay more than double in order to enjoy the experience of a larger screen – but that wouldn’t probably stop Apple’s fanboys from getting one – would it? According to the good guys at The Consumerist who dug up this issue thoroughly, the price differences between equivalent applications on both devices is ridiculously bigger when you come to get’em for your soon-to-be-available Apple tablet compared to the ones you’d get for the cellphone machine. How big, you’re asking? $4.99 Flight Control HD vs. $0.99 Flight Control or $2.99 Flick Fishing HD against $0.99 Flick Fishing, etc. Overall, you’d have to pay $53 for iPad apps compared to JUST $27 on an iPhone or iPod Touch for the same list exactly. Checkout the comparing table right after the break.

Update3: And looks like the iPad apps are finally live at the Apple app store [iTunes Link], with 1,000 of them, already available for download/purchase, and many others which are yet to come. Prepare to open your wallets, it ain’t gonna be cheap, you know.

[via App Annie]

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We’ve already seen a glimpse from Archos’ 7-inch Android-powered tablet one month ago, but now things turn to be official at CeBIT 2010, with the French debuting their 600MHz ARM 9 Home Tablet machine, aiming the low cost market with attractive and very affordable prices – €149 in Europe and only $179 Stateside. And despite that unconvincing HD friendly resistive touchscreen, we can find a lot of reason for you to buy it. First and foremost, it’s cheap, second, it comes with WiFi so you can easily surf the net without the need for other device, third, it looks great at 12mm thin and weighs only 350g and fourth, it has 2GB of storage capacity inside and a microSD card extension slot. No, it doesn’t include an integrated accelerometer inside so you won;t be able to see your photos in landscape mode or read your favorite eBook vertically, but still, for that pricing level it sure worth a try, especially when it comes to the battery that delivers seven hours of video or 44 hours of audio playback. Checkout the hands-on video right after the break.

Update1: And just when things are getting busy within the tablet realm, the Android-powered Archos 7 8GB tablet device appears online in couple of places, available for a pre-order (and as an iPad alternative) for merely €200 ($270) on the German Amazon or at €180 ($240) on Redcoon’s website.

Update2: Looks like the Archos 7 Home Tablet is now finally available to order on Amazon for $199.99, with an official release date – yet to be determined (probably towards the end of April).

Update3: Unfortunately, the Archos 7 won’t be available in the market until early June of this year. That said, according to the French corp, those who pre-ordered the 7-inch, Android 1.6 tablet may get their piece of craft somewhere towards the end of May. Full PR after the break.

[via UMPC Portal]

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Asus has already proved it can go hand-to-hand with tech pace and bring up-to-date laptops that match the latest criteria one by one. And that is probably the reason the company has just released the Eee PC 1201PN, a Pine Trail netbook powered by Nvidia’s ION 2 graphics that suppose to replace the 6 months old 1201N which had the same looks, only with ION’s first chipset edition and a previous Atom N330 CPU version. The new one, which was spotted at the Taiwanese booth in CeBIT, packs a 12.1-inch 1366×768 LED display, along that Atom N450 Pine Trail processor, and NVIDIA’s Ion 2 for the graphics tone. Other than that, the 1201PN offers basic specs like 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi connection, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and 6 cell battery with working hours “TBD”. Stay tuned for more to come, meanwhile checkout Joanna’s hands-on video after the break.

Update: And looks like the 12.1-inch ASUS Eee PC 1201PN, powered by ION 2 chipset, is now available on Amazon for a starting price of $484, which seems pretty impressive if we take into consideration that really amazing lineup, which includes a Intel Atom N450 processor, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive and NVIDIA GeForce 201M for the graphics.

[via engadget]

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Mobile gaming is still in primeval stages – that’s unquestionable – but the foreseeable future is likely to be promising. In a rapidly growing market with over 20,000 iPhone and iPod Touch games available on Apple’s App Store, it’s not that hard guessing this is just a matter of time until portable games will start dominating our very own smartphones while overpowering desktop platforms. Especially now, when Cupertino teams up with more developing companies and Redmond that finally joins the party with Windows Phone 7 Series which suppose to integrate Xbox Live architecture in Microsoft’s coming machines. Still, it would probably take some time until substantial changes will eventually become real  – a year or two in our humble opinion. Anyway, ’till then, if you already play games on iPhones or iPod touch players, but  feel short in cash to start funding all those neat apps that show up in big numbers, every day and after, here’s a list of twenty one games, free of charge, for you to download. Please feel free to add your favorite “cost-nothing” apps, down in the commenting section.

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Chinese company RAMos has launch a new PMP lineup which includes the T17FHD and T13FHD models, both to handle 1080p videos adequately. Make no mistake, these are not MIDs or tablets, just media players with a built-in HDMI port and touchscreen display on top. Starting with the T13FHD, made of zinc alloy magnesium, you get  a 4.3-inch display along a USB host, TV output and a headphone jack, positioned to the left, while the second, T17FHD, literally sports the same screen size with 800 × 480 resolution, but also packs 16GB of flash storage, a microSD card slot, ebook reader compatibility and wide range of formats support, including H.264, MPEG1/2/4 decoding, MKV, RMVB, AVI, MOV, MPG, MPEG, DAT, MOV, MP4, MP3、WMA、WAV、RM、OGG、and JPG、BMP、PNG、GIF image files. No word about price or availability at this point.

[via imp3]

[tweetmeme]

The mystery behind Nexus One’s multitouch disparity between Europe and the US is finally about to end, as Google reports in its blog, suggesting imminent roll out of a software update, specifically tailored for the Nexus One and which apparently boasts some major add-ons inside, amongst you’ll find Google Goggle app that lets you take pictures through the integrated webcam and then generate search results about them, improved version of Google Maps with a special night mode and useful suggestions, general fix of 3G connectivity and last but probably the most important one, multitouch support, that would likely offer “a new pinch-to-zoom mechanism in the phone’s Browser, Gallery and Maps applications”. In case you were wondering about the timing of this update, here’s Google official statement, given to ReadWriteWeb:

Looking around the mobile industry, from Apple to Palm to HTC and Motorola – it’s clear that pinch-to-zoom technology has become a standard and popular way for users to interact with their mobile phones. Likewise, Android users can now truly benefit from this capability with the availability of Android 2.1, which powers a new class of devices with larger touchscreens and more interactive features. Unlike past devices, these phones have the processing power to deliver pinch-to-zoom, while still providing a great user experience. Based on these new capabilities and numerous requests from Android users, we decided to provide pinch-to-zoom capabilities with this new over-the-air software update for Nexus One devices.

Update: We’ve added a video that shows Nexus One new features in action, check it out after the break.

[Google]

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Apple just issued iPhone/iPod Touch OS 3.1.3, available on your iTunes right away, offering bug fixes to some of the few problems users were moaning about like improved battery level indicator, or third-party applications that failed to launch in some of the occasions. Other issues this update resolves include a Japanese Kana keyboard fix and security breaches related to CoreAudio, ImageIO, Recovery Mode and WebKit.

Update: And those of you, Mac OS X users, who’ve been patiently waiting for a hack ‘n crack to go out, it appears like Dev-Team‘s new Pwnage jailbreaking tool is now officially up and ready to grab. As usual, proceed with caution.

[digg-me]

Twitter Guide for Newcomers

Enjoy reading !

You can find me at  http://twitter.com/niron.

You can also read the PDF version in here.

Apple has finally released firmware update 2.2, available for downloading via your iTunes software, right away. The new 246MB update brings some neat stuff to your iphone/ipod devices, including Google Street View, over-the-air podcast downloads (which lets you listen to podcast, either through wifi connection or 3G network), public transit and walking directions, more stabilized Safari browser and even the ability to share your location via email. In addition, you get some Bug fixes, together with toggling auto-text correction function, better sound quality in Visual Voicemail messages and a new App rating feature, that allows you to rank any Apple’s App Store application, once you delete it.  Stay tuned !

This awesome application from David O’Reilly brings staggering 3D animation to your iPhone, thanks to the anamorphosis painting technic that has been used since the 15th century, and now combined with the iphone’s accelerometer and gyroscopes, to create an amazing 3D visual illusion in a constant viewing angle of 35 to 45 degrees, when the real drawings are actually in 2D. Check out the video, featuring a nice tangible 3D character walking along the screen path, almost jumping out of the phone.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.
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[via PMPToday]

It’s been four months since Snapture released their first revolutionary iPhone camera application with the abilities to capture up to three frames in a row, take self photos, take photos in different sizes, get a digital zoom, toggle Auto rotation and more. Now we hear that Snapture steps up with the new Snapture 2.0 version, adding features like self timer, 4 color modes, a clean UI, and multi-touch gesture zoom, all for free, in case you have a jailbroken device. You can also go Premium for $7.99 and get free-ads application with the ability to view, enlarge and delete recent pictures directly on the viewfinder, thanks to the QuickView system. Checkout the video after the break.

[Snapture]

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I bet you all been waiting for the official Apple App Store to make a debut and today it is finally available in both iPhone 2.0 and iTunes, running smooth, offering many applications to download, some are free some are priced. Among the assortment you can find applications like:

• eBay – cool application that lets you use the service from your iPhone device, search items, watch favorite stuff, place a bid and follow auctions, all for free.
• Loopt – a nice location-based application that lets you discover who’s hanging within your location range (don’t try to hide with this service ON).
• TypePad – one of the most popular blogging services, now available from your iPhone, allowing users to upload real time photos, straight from their handset, directly to their blogs.
• Associated Press – another free application, allowing users to upload their media stuff to AP service and contribute to the content.
• Band – a cool feature, developed by an independent insurance developer, allowing users to create their own music and play it from their own iPhone device, with the ability to choose from a various of instruments.
• MLB.com – a nice application, designated for baseball fans, allowing them to receive real time results and watch highlighted moments.
• MySpace – iPhone app that allows you to manage their MySpace social network account, including add friends, exchange messages, upload photos,and more, all for free.
• Kyte Mobile Producer – a great application that lets you upload images you take with your iphone, directly to your Kyte account or the available channels, including blogs, social networks (Facebook, MySpace) etc. You can make slides, conduct polls and add captions.
• AIM – Finally an instant-messaging application on your iphone, lets you interact with your friends and chat online via Wi-Fi. In additio, you can mark contacts as your favorites and can even send away messages.
• Twitterrific – The official twitter client to send your messages via twitter.
• Facebook - Manage your Facebook account from your iphone device. The application lets you view messages, search friends and even chat with them whenever you want.
• Pandora – The cool online radio service comes to your iphone, allowing you to play your favorite music while recommending similar bands and artists.
• Remote Control - Lets you control your iTunes or your Apple TV with your iphone device. You can play, pause, skip, and even search in libraries.

Some additional Apple App lists:

Engadget – preliminary list.

Gizmodo – variety of applications list.

TechCrunch -  Great applications list (with video).

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If you’re a proud owner of a jailbroken iphone device and want to take your favorite radio stations everywhere you go, uSirius will make it possible, free of charge for three days before registration. To start streaming, just find yourself a Wifi hotspot, log into the Installer.app, download the application, install it and get your tunes on the go.

 [via gizmodo]

iDial recalls long forgotten events, as this new application lets you dial from your touchscreen iphone device like old time telephone, swiveling the dial rotor and hearing the same tunes. I can’t be sure how useful it is, but there’s no doubt the guys have shown great originality with this one. Check out the blurry video after the break.

[via gizmodo]

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[tweetmeme]

Twitter is probably one of the most rapid growing tools to communicate and stay connected with your family, friends, co-workers or anyone else you wish to follow. It has changed the way we use the internet and turned the form of blogging into micro-blogging, allowing users to write brief text updates and publish them to the masses. To those of you who make their first steps with tweeter or those who already been using it for a while and look for services to enhance their usage, here’s a list of 69 web-based services you should know.

Update1: Twitter is growing fast, along with the new services which surface up on daily basis. And while starting with only 69 links, our list already crossed the 160 line, and counting.

Update2: Newcomers, please checkout our Twitter tips in here.

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