Category Archives: BlackBerry Messenger

RIM announced BBM Social Network

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If you’re like me, you love BlackBerry Messenger. According to RIM, 28 million users work with BBM on a regular basis and that’s quite a lot.

At DEVCON 2010, Research in Motion announced a BlackBerry Messenger Social Platform which allows developers to integrate BBM into their applications. That sounded boring at first, but there’s quite a possibilities that could turn out to be awesome. With BBM integration, developers could make their applications transfer media or invite for game play.

It’s as simple as it sounds. A 3rd party app will be able to use your existing BBM contacts and initiate social interactions, for example game play.
Let me quote Aaron from our friends over at PhoneDog to give you a list of what developers can integrate with RIM’s BBM Social Platform:

* Contact list – allows users to choose from their BBM contacts from within another application in order to initiate social interactions such as chatting or initiating game play
* BBM user profile – an application can insert application status updates into the user’s BBM profile allowing it to be launched or downloaded from BBM by the user’s friends
* Application-specific communities – users can create BBM friend groups specific to an application
* Data Transfer – allows users to transfer pictures, audio, video and other content directly from an application to their BBM contacts or groups
* Invitations – allows users to invite new friends to BBM, invite their friends to interact within or download an application, and accept invitations, all from within an application

The BBM Social Platform will be coming to market in the spring of 2011, and additional information can be found at http://devblog.blackberry.com.

What do you think? Give us your thoughts in the comments below.

RIM and Verizon announce new Curve 3G 9300 in two hot colors

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Earlier today, RIM and Verizon Wireless announced a new BlackBerry Curve 3G model. The 9300 series will be coming to Verizon in two new, snazzy, metallic colors. The new model will be available for only $29.99 after $100.00 mail-in rebate. As with all ‘Berrys, there is a required data package, but the packages are reasonable and are well worth it. The Curve 3G will sport the following features, most of which we are all familiar with:

  • A full QWERTY keyboard for fast, comfortable typing, as well as an optical trackpad for effortless navigation
  • Mobile access to RIM’s renowned e-mail services, as well as instant messaging applications such as the popular BlackBerry Messenger service
  • Access to BlackBerry App World, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones
  • 2.0 MP camera with zoom and video recording
  • Built-in Wi-Fi and GPS
  • Advanced media player for music and videos, dedicated media keys, and a microSD/SDHC card slot for expandable memory up to 32GB
  • Long lasting battery
  • Ships with BlackBerry 5, and is BlackBerry 6 ready

Verizon’s release claims to have longer lasting battery, we’ll see how good the battery is soon. Unfortunately, the 9330 ships with BlackBerry 5, but is BlackBerry 6 ready. The device will be available on September 16th online, and will be in Verizon stores in the coming weeks. Who is going to get one of these bad boys? Are you a fan of the Curve series, or are you hoping and praying something like the Torch will come to Verizon in the coming months?

BlackBerry Messenger upgraded to 5.0.1.138

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Mornin’ pups, we’re a little late to the party, and we apologize for the tarciness, but BlackBerry Messenger, a staple of the BlackBerry community, has just been updated. This time it’s version number 5.0.1.138, packaged with no changelog and I have noticed no  major differences, but this update could be purely focused on bug fixes.  If you’ve had problems or just like keeping up to date, I’d recommend downloading the update.  If you happen to stumble upon any changes, please let us know!

via: BerryReview

US Weekly offers celebrity news via BBM, nice concept

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I’ve never been one to give a rusty, dog fart about any celebrity or what they do in their spare time, but I know plenty of people who do and would love to follow a celebrity around for a living picking up the crumbs of food they drop when they eat, trash they throw away, etc. For those people, US Weekly has provided, in a way, for you do so all through BBM. I thought a long time ago that it would be a good idea for say, a local news station, a national news provider, or even worldwide news provider would offer news through BlackBerry Messenger. It’s instant  and can provide content to thousands of people, quickly, who will more than likely turn right around and regurgitate it on Twitter or Facebook. It’s an obvious way to spread news fast, but there is a drawback. CrackBerry has been the host of several BBM stress tests. BBM has its limits and either US Weekly is either unaware, or have a trick up their sleeve. Anyway, if celebrity news if your thing, scan the barcode and rock on.

You can learn more about the celebrity news provided, here.

via: CrackBerry

Source: US Weekly

UAE and Saudi Arabia to block BlackBerry data

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One of the major selling points of a BlackBerry to business and many exchange users is the fact that BlackBerry is about as secure as it gets for consumer devices. Very few see this as a problem, except for those that want to monitor the usage. United Arab Emirates fears that, since the BlackBerry data is encrypted and routed through RIM’s servers in Canada, they will not be able to monitor what the BlackBerry users in their country are doing. With security like that, someone could plan a terrorist attack without attracting any attention from the government. Saudi Arabia plans to follow suit for fear of the same security dangers. This will also affect people visiting the countries. So, if you plan on visiting UAE or Saudi Arabia and are a BlackBerry user, you might want to take a different World Phone if you plan on using data.

via: Mobile Burn

BlackBerry Messenger hidden emoticons, part deux (updated 9/7)

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Ever since I posted about the large amount of hidden BBM emoticons that had been unearthed, we’ve been receiving comments galore to send them to everyone’s PIN. Rather than leaving everyone high and dry, what I’m going to do is open the flood gates. Everyone who wants these emoticons for BBM, simply reply to this post with your PIN. On Friday, I will make an attempt to send them to everyone who has requested them. If you have already asked for them in the original post, you don’t have to repost, I will get those as well.

Update (9/7/2010): As you all know the attempt to send out these emoticons was one large fail. I stopped because I had a lot of people asking how I got their PIN. I would repeatedly get error messages back for invalid PINs and lots of other chaos. So, instead what I’ve decided to do is put these in a thread in our Forums so you can go and get them there as you please. If you want the emoticons, click here. You will need to copy and paste the weird looking symbols onto your device. I recommend saving them into a memo and setting them as AutoText entries for ease of use.

Also, if you’re not interested in having to copy and paste them, or set them as AutoText, there is an alternative. There is a paid application called Picticons for BlackBerry, which can be found in BlackBerry App World for $2.99. You have two days to decide which road you want to take. Go!


BBM TV add on BlackBerry’s YouTube channel

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In the midst of tough time for RIM (everyone bashing them for being so slow to change and what changes they do make are slight and very minor), it’s very nice to see them harvesting the one thing that truly sets them apart from everything else, BlackBerry Messenger. More widely known as BBM, this is the one thing that has kept many users with their original smartphone platform and brought many new users to the platform over the past few years.

From the video, it’s obvious that BlackBerry users love their BBM, and love the features that only BBM offers, like being able to see when someone has read your message and simply not replied. No other platform has their very own messaging service. Android comes close with Gtalk, but Gtalk just isn’t the same.

The one question I have to ask though, is will RIM alter BBM in BlackBerry 6 at all, or will they make the mistake of letting something that people love now wither to something they will hate, before they make anymore changes to it? That’s exactly what they have done with their OS, BBM in the past, and their device form factor. Sure, when RIM started, everything was fine and dandy. They progressed, kickstarted the smartphone industry, and kept their basic form factor for over ten years. Now that times are changing rapidly, RIM is having a hard time adapting. What I’m asking is, has RIM learned from their mistaktes? Have they learned to try to stay ahead of the curve with BBM and not let it get behind like they did everything else? One can only hope, but regardless of whether RIM has or hasn’t learned, we all love BBM and hold it dear to our hearts. Just don’t let this love grow stale, RIM. We just couldn’t bear it.

If you want to view more BlackBerry videos, you can head on over to their YouTube channel. They have BBM TV ads galore.