The ever-so-elusive, all-in-one, BlackBerry social inbox, SocialScope, has finally said they plan to send out more invites to their private beta later this week. People have been clamoring about SocialScope invites since the app was initially released in late 2008. It has been in private beta ever since and slowly growing hype. People are always @ replying SocialScope on Twitter begging and pleading for an invite, offering up their limbs and first-born. I’ve had SocialScope since early 2009 and it’s the only client I’ve used on BlackBerry since. Every update launches them leaps and bounds ahead of Twitter for BlackBerry, UberTwitter, and the other competition out there, and they’re about to make the jump cross-platform onto Android and iPhone.

If you’re interested in getting SocialScope, you have to sign up for the private beta, here. Let me tell you know, you are signing up for a private beta and are just now adding yourself to the end of a very long list. Let’s just hope the SocialScope team sends out a lot of invites this time. Before, when they said they would send out invites, it didn’t appear as if they had sent out too many, but there’s no way for us to really know. Sit tight and we will all see as the week is already drawing to an end!

The new SocialScope update adds:

Full Facebook Experience – We’ve upped our Facebook experience 1000x with Facebook Friends list, Facebook pages, Full Facebook Profiles, Private Messages and Notifications.  SocialScope is the best way to use Facebook on your BlackBerry.

Inbox Integration – Powerful inbox integration allows you to select exactly which messages appear in your BlackBerry inbox.

Mute – Tired of hearing from a user, application(farmville!) or topic? Now you can block those updates.

Reduced Battery Usage – We’ve tuned, tweaked and optimized SocialScope to dramatically reduced battery usage. The most powerful social networking app now also the most power efficient.

Interface Tweaks – SocialScope is faster and easier to use.  We’ve made interface tweaks through out the app based on your feedback.

Invites (coming later this week!) – You’ve been asking for a way to share SocialScope with your friends and we’ll be delivering that later this week.

Lots of Bug Fixes – We went bug hunting and fixed many issues including url shirking, removing Twitter accounts and location lookup.
These are only the first set of changes!  We’ve been hard at work to enable a whole new set of experiences with Socialscope.  Keep an eye out for them in the coming weeks.

Who already has the update? How do you like it? How does it fair against older versions or other clients? Bark it up pups!

via: BBSync

It’s been a long time coming. There was once a rush by many developers to produce the best Twitter client and get it out to the public as fast as possible. Along came some heavy hitters like UberTwitter, Seesmic, and even RIM gave it a swing with Twitter for BlackBerry, but there were some far superior teams working on clients that give you more than just Twitter at your fingertips, they gave you Foursquare, Facebook, and more. SocialScope, the elusive BlackBerry private beta application is one of those, and Hootsuite is the other. Now SocialScope is becoming more and more available and spreading out to other platforms, and Hootsuite is in private beta. Few are lucky enough to have a taste of the Hootsuite beta, but I am hearing good things about it. Only to rub that in our faces, Hootsuite themselves have given us a peek at what the application looks like, and I am fully impressed. They kept it clean and simple, unlike many others, and it looks like they could be bringing the heat to the SocialScope team. I’m glad to see there’s still room for competition in the Twitter client world. It seemed almost as if everything had leveled out for good, but the SocialScope starts updating and you see features you never thought of. Eventually, TweetDeck for BlackBerry will also release, let’s just hope their BlackBerry app launch doesn’t go quite like it did for Android.

If you have your hands on the Hootsuite beta, let us know how you like it. Share some screenshots, give us the good, the bad, and the ugly.

via: RIMarkable

Source: Hootsuite

That was fast! There are apps out there that never seem to leave their beta. When I first found out that Trillian was coming to BlackBerry, I wasn’t all that thrilled. I wasn’t that much a fan of the computer-version. When it came to beta, I tried it and was impressed. As of now, we get the officially released version available for download through BlackBerry App World. It’s available for $4.99 as an introductory offer, so grab it as soon as possible if you’re interested. I really think this one might get a little price increase in the near future.
No free trial available and no “light” version available, which is sad, for some users might not want to buy it just to try it. I really hope Cerulean Studios might consider a future trial or light version. I’m not going to purchase it, I’d rather go with a light version.

How about you? What do you think of Trillian?

via: CrackBerry

On a day where a juicy story is difficult to come by, we like to throw our readers a delicious bone to chew on while we wait for RIM to fill up our doggy dish.  But let’s get back to this review, eh?  PingChat is a multi-platform application, similar to BBM.  It allows you to create a unique username (similar to IM but without all the additional setup) and send messages to anyone who has a PingChat ID.  We over here at BlackBerryDog have found this application invaluable, as not all of us have access to our BlackBerry at any given time (possibly due to our hands being tied up with chopsticks, right Taylor?) and most of us have additional phones.  More after the jump!

PingChat’s user interface is rather straight-forward and easy to use.  Most of the functions are accessible only through the BlackBerry menu, where things can get a little confusing at times.  If you start a new chat, you will not be able to add from your contacts list (which I will get into in a moment).  You must either a) remember their PingChat ID, or b) Ping them from your contact list.  A handy little feature that comes alongside PingChat is the ability to link a specific ID with a contact in your address books.  This allows you to go to ‘contacts’ as opposed to trying to remember each individual ID.

All in all, I would give PingChat a 9/10.  It is a very easy app to use and invaluable for those of you without SMS plans who would like to be able to contact those with BlackBerry, Android, or iPhone.  PingChat is now available in the BlackBerry app world as a free download.

If you’re anything like me, you listen to very obscure music.  If at any given time you can be listening to Animal Collective, the Wu-Tang Clan, or Ratatat, then this is the application for you.  More after the jump!

As you can see, Graffiti’s UI is relatively simple and easy to use, although it can be laggy at times.  Graffiti is a legitimate radio station (for those of who use an hd radio, you may already to listen to it), so you don’t get to ‘choose your station’ such as you would on Pandora or Slacker.  Despite this, Graffiti plays a laundry list of interesting hiphop, electro, freak-folk, experimental, and folk bands to keep even the biggest music snob happy.  Not only will you hear the aforementioned, but also the music that inspired that particular band.

As a whole, I’ve grown to like Graffiti.  It plays a lot of music that I like, but has also opened my eyes to different bands or new music that I have grown to like quite a lot.  If your music taste is diverse enough to match mine, you will love the variety that this application puts into the palm of your hand.  Grafitti can be found in the BlackBerry app world for free (and deleted just as easily, so it’s worth a try).  If you give Graffiti a shot, let us know below whether you liked or disliked it.

Since you probably already know I’m a tweep and that I am an ÜberTwitter advocate, I will cut right to the chase.  Beta-8 was recently upgraded, bringing about some minor bug and aesthetic fixes.  You are now able to not notify on new tweets and still receive notifications for your DMs, replies, and mentions.  To do this, go to your sound profiles, set ringtones/alerts. other and find the three ÜT options (new tweets, mentions, DMs) and modify the settings how you wish.  Also, the DMs and @ replies are no longer the solid greens and yellows they once were.  Now, they are both a gradient with their respective color on the outside fading into white in the center.

Both the bug fix and the aesthetic improvements are aces in my book.  The bug fix allows me to finally be notified when I receive a DM, reply, or mention.  The aesthetic improvement made it generally easier to read said DMs, et al.  To emphasize this, you must think that I am a relatively young guy with 20/20 vision.  If it helped me read that which was directed at me, those of you who wear glasses or have a visual impairment of some kind will find the aesthetic improvements invaluable.

Finally there’s an update for Facebook for BlackBerry that is said to improve load times. The update was supposed to come out in May but it seems it took quite a while longer. You can get it from App World here. Unfortunately the update doesn’t show up for some people. I double checked but it doesn’t show up for me as well. It’s not sure what’s new here but it’s said to bring faster load times, video uploading and replacing BIS-E notifications with Blackberry Push APIs.

Sounds neat to me. I’ll be getting this one right now, make sure to get the update and let us know what you find in the new version and what you think of it.

via: BerryReview

First, I must establish that I am a twitter fanatic (@lovexxreverie , people!).  I absolutely love twitter, which makes it difficult for me to find a twitter client that fits all of my needs. Sadly, with all the options out there, Seesmic does not make the cut for me.  Seesmic is good for those new to twitter, the casual twitter user, or those with lower standards as to what their client must offer.  If you want the best (in my opinion) BlackBerry twitter client out there, I will point you in the direction of ÜberTwitter. But, back to Seesmic.

Seesmic boasts a very plain interface (this being my favorite part) which is a simple black text on a white background.  I found that reading text was extremely easy, although tweets are annoyingly huge which takes up a massive amount of screen real estate.  On average I could fit between 1 1/2 and 2 tweets on a page, unlike Ubertwitter’s 3-4 minimum. This seems to be a common problem among Twitter clients, and with a smaller screen like that of a BlackBerry, the real estate doesn’t come cheap. The less scrolling, the better.

You can view another user’s profile, but on a rather antagonistic note, you can look at the amount of people that someone follows, as well as those following them, but you cannot actually see who the people are!  I don’t know about you, but I like to see who is following me when I gain a follower. I like in-depth information on my followers and the people I follow.

While packed with a decent amount of features beyond the basic ‘tweet’, it is still lacking in functionality when it is stacked against competition like, ÜberTwitter. I will, however, give a lot of credit to Seesmic for making the distinction between a quote and a retweet.  I will also say that those with sight-issues will find Seesmic to be a match made in heaven.  While the aesthetics and ease of use will appeal to a new tweep, a seasoned twitter user like Taylor or a twitter addict like myself will find themselves rather unimpressed with Seesmic.  Oh, and the icon may or may not leave you dry heaving from an overdose of cute.  Tell us if you like or dislike Seesmic and why!

As a Twitter user (wait for it… wait for it… shameless pimp out time! @lovexxreverie) I have had a lot of trouble finding the right twitter app.  Believe it or not, I have 3 installed on my phone.  Twitter for BlackBerry, Seesmic, and Ubertwitter.  When I heard from a friend that Seesmic had recently seen an update, I felt the need to jump on it.  As per the Seesmic Blog, the following can be expected in v1.4:

Sound profile management.

The ability to set different sound profiles for new tweets, mentions, and direct messages.

Support for Ping.FM groups.

An improved UI.

Picture thumbnails can now be found in the photos explorer through media explorer.

Use of XAuth to log into Twitter (provides safer login).

To get your own copy of Seesmic, you can either pay a visit to the App World page, or Seesmic’s BlackBerry download page. Please feel free to comment below with which app you use, as well as your opinions on the new Seesmic.  Check back for an app review, coming to a computer screen (or phone screen) near you!

via: Seesmic