Vlingo… speak life into your bb…
So I just downloaded a new app for my Crackberry called, "Vlingo". This app so far is pretty awesome. Vlingo allows Crackberry users to send text messages, emails, facebook updates and twitter updates through voice! So instead of typing out your twitter udpates or text messages, you can speak them into existence on your phone! Its pretty neat. The only downfall is that there are two different versions. There is a free version and there is a paid version. Of course the paid version allows you to experience all of Vlingo's capabilities to the fullest compared to the free version, which is a bit more limited! Either way the app is pretty sweet and I encourage any Crackberry user to check it out! One perk of the free version is that if fellow bb friends have the free Vlingo version on their phone, they can send texts back and forth using the app. (Vlingo does also work on iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian Beta) Check out Vlingo's website for more details... Below is the comparison chart....
| Features | Vlingo | Vlingo Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Search the Web |  |
 |
| Dial your phone | |
|
| Update Twitter and Facebook Status | |
|
| Create "Notes to Self" | |
|
| Open 3rd Party and Native BlackBerry Applications | |
|
| Send Text Messages to Contacts who have Vlingo for BlackBerry | |
|
| Reply to Text Messages from Contacts who have Vlingo for BlackBerry | |
|
| Send Text Messages to any Contact | _ | |
| Reply & Forward Text Messages to any Contact | _ | |
| Send Emails to any Contact | _ | |
| Reply and Forward any Email | _ | |
| Free | $17.99 one-time To upgrade to Vlingo Plus, download Vlingo 3.0 and then upgrade within the application. |
Popularity: 8% [?]
Are you a Slacker…
Have you ever been in a situation where you have been board and wished you had some tunes to listen to? I know I have and that's why when I found the app called SlackerRadio for my Blackberry, it was an instant bond! SlackerRadio allows you to turn your mobile phone into a live radio station! It really is cool app and I encourage any Blackberry owners to check it out. It kind of works like Pandora, for any of you who are familiar with that on your personal computer. With this app you are able to click on a category or a music artist of your choice and Slacker will start streaming live music to your phone and it will also play live music just like a radio station! Check out SlackerRaidio's website to get the download.
Here are some other cool features for this great app.
- Unlimited free music on your BlackBerry
- Over 100 expert-programmed genre stations
- High-quality stereo sound over any connection
- Listen even when not connected
- Music plays even while using other applications
Popularity: 8% [?]
Discover what’s been there all along…
It was about 3 years ago when I was first introduced book called Strengths Finders 2.0. This was a short book that came with a test that each reader was suppose to take. Through the way you answered the multiple questions, the end would reveal a list of 5 top strengths that the test taker would receive. These strengths are something that helped put language to certain things that I already knew was inside of me. You see for most of my life I only focused on certain aspects of my life that I wasn't good at and spent most of my time trying to fix those negatives. For some reason I failed to take the things that I excelled in and allowed them to go to waste. Since then I have changed the way I allow my strengths to play out in my life. I no longer choose to put those strengths on the back burner and focus on my weaknesses, rather I choose to focus on those strengths which ultimately has been a lot more gratifying. You see, when you act out of the purpose in which you were created, you feel a sense of excitement and become alive inside. This is something that I believe is missing in most humans. They are too busy living out the things in which they were not created to do and become stagnant in life and their souls are left unsatisfied. Now this book does not help you find your main purpose in life and explain why you were created, but it will help you discover some of the strengths that dwell inside of you and help you to magnify those strengths. When this takes place, I almost guarantee that will start to feel more alive than you ever had when you are able to exercise these natural strengths that dwell within you! So if you are aspiring to be a great leader or are in charge of a team of some sorts, check out the book and take the Strengths Finders test and discover what's been inside of you all along! Check out www.strengthfinders.com to learn more what this is all about.
Below are my top 5 strengths in no specific order.
Activator
People strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.
Adaptability
People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to “go with the flow.” They tend to be “now” people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.
Command
People strong in the Command theme have presence. They can take control of a situation and make decisions.
Ideation
People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.
Strategic
People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
Popularity: 22% [?]
iPhone/iPod Touch update…
Unless you live in a cave, most of the world is aware of Apple's brand new software update for the iPhone 3G along with the iPod Touch. Being that I am a Blackberry Man through and through, I do own a iPod Touch and am quite excited about the new features that the update comes with. The two main ones that I am most excited about are the Peer-2-Peer gaming along with Bluetooth connection to wireless headphones! Overall the update is pretty sweet for the Touch. Good friends tell me though that the update for the iPhone itself is even better! With the new release of the iPhone 3G S, the new 3.0 update is solid enough to make faithful iPhone users hold off one more year for the next big release! AT&T still have a ways to go when it comes to providing a network that will allow the new iPhone 3G S to be used to maximum efficiency. By the time this actually takes place I am sure the iPhone 4G will be on the market and the consumers that were unable to update this year will be glad they didn't!
Below are some details of the new update for the iPod Touch taken directly from Apple's main website page:
-Buy Movies, TV Shows, and
Audiobooks via Wi-Fi
Download movies, TV shows, music videos, and audiobooks over Wi-Fi from the iTunes Store on iPod touch.
-Stereo Bluetooth
Enjoy music and other audio wirelessly. Pair your iPod touch with compatible Bluetooth stereo headphones.1
-Peer to Peer Gaming
The newest games will make it easy to play head-to-head with a friend — whether your friend is sitting next to you or across the country.2
-Landscape Keyboard
Want more room to type? Rotate iPod touch to landscape to use a larger keyboard in Mail, Notes, and Safari.
-Spotlight Search
Find what you’re looking for across your iPod touch, all from one place. Spotlight searches all your contacts, email, calendars, and notes, as well as all your music and video.
-Cut, Copy & Paste
Quickly and easily cut, copy, and paste text from application to application. Select blocks of web text with a tap. Copy and paste images from the web, too.
-Shake to Shuffle
Just give your iPod touch a shake and it shuffles to a different song in your music library. You’ll always be surprised by what you’ll hear.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Uber…
For all you Crackberry, Twitter fans out there, we have lift off! There are many different twitter browsers that you can choose from these days such as Twitter Berry, Tweet Genius, Ubertwitter. (bb twitter apps) My personal favorite is UberTwitter due to all the navigation routes that you can perform. Now UberTwitter just got even better with its new release of UberTwitter ver. 3 (0.75) Version 3 seems to have a slightly different look to the main pages but overall has many new and exciting improvements! For those of you who own a Crackberry and want to check out the app, post this link in your bb browser and check it out. ubertwitter.com/bb/download.php
Here are some more facts on the new UberTwitter, ver 3 from UberTwitters main website page!
- Integrated ability to upload pictures to a site dedicated to serving ÜberTwitter users
- Ability to optionally update your Google Talk status with your last tweet, making your tweets reach a wider audience then just people following you on Twitter
- Automatically update your location based on the cell tower information provided by your phone, no GPS hardware required,
- Send videos embedded in your tweet
- See everyone who is tweeting near you
- Cleaned up and modernized the user interface. The timeline interface, tweet update, and tweet view screens have changed substantially, please see the screenshots above.
- Reduced battery drain!
- You can now delete your tweets
- If you are using the internal GPS, we added an icon in the title bar showing if you have a GPS lock (blue icon) or not (gray icon).
- Fixed bug such that ÜberTwitter will now properly fall back to using cell towers for location if you don't have a GPS lock.
- The ability to follow a thread of replies. Once we added this we kicked ourselves for not having it earlier, it is SO useful! On one of the screen shots above you'll see the 'in reply to' button on the view tweet screen.
- You can now select to merge both @Replies/Mentions as well as Direct Messages into your timeline
- Direct messages now have their own notification profile. Note that for @replies and DM notification to work you MUST select to have these merged into your timeline
- Integrated Google Maps when viewing a Tweet, works just like the myloc.me web site. This will view the location of the tweet if it includes a 'myloc.me' or 'mypic.me' or 'myvid.me' URL, OR will use the location in the profile if it includes a latitude/longitude pair. This includes support for the iPhone twitter clients which routinely put the geolocation in the Twitter profile location field! Click on the screenshot below for a detailed view. We backtracked on using BlackBerry Maps due to the lack of universal support on all devices/carriers.
- When viewing a tweet that has an embedded picture from mypict.me, you can see how many times the picture has been viewed by either ÜberTwitter users and from the web site.
- When viewing a tweet which contains a latitude/longitude pair in the location field we will now provide the 'human readable' address of that location, also works for iPhone geolocations in the Twitter profile location field.
- Fixed the search screen to make 'search' the default menu item and make the 'enter' key start the search.
- Added a separate font/size/style selection for viewing and composing tweet text
- Added the ability to make the timeline font bold
- Added support for the shrinking your tweet through an integration with TweetShrink.com. This will be an option when composing your tweet.
- Added a 'Copy Tweet' menu item so you can copy/paste entire tweets into other BlackBerry applications
- Timeline scrolling is MUCH snappier!
- When viewing a DM, the only reply option is with another DM
- Added touch screen gestures for the Storm to go to the top and bottom of the timeline. Swipe 'east' goes to the top, and a swipe 'west' goes to the botom. Note that we did not use swipe north/south as we are planning to use these gestures in the future to support 'flick' scrolling.
- Fixed bug where the selected tweet in a timeline was basically 'random' when the timeline was updated. The currently selected tweet will now remain selected after adding tweets to the timeline.
- At the bottom of all timelines there is a row that says 'Load More' which will retrieve older tweets for that timeline.
- Fixed bug where the location being reported was 'stuck' to a previous location.
- Fixed bug where spaces at the front/end of a username would cause it to fail validation.
- Resolved bug where the small gray time of tweet text would sometimes overwrite the other text in a tweet.
- Added support for tweets that contain Moby Pictures (mobypicture.com)
- Fixed bug where selecting ReTweet from timeline menu makes the tweet a reply, so not everyone could see it.
- Fixed bug in WiFi support, on some devices/carrier combinations this would cause a network failure
- Fixed a bug in the reporting of the number of new tweets, the count on the home screen should be accurate now
- Fixed bug where escaping from writing a tweet gave a misleading prompt to save or discard the tweet. Selecting save actually exits without saving the message anywhere. Prompt is now accurate.
The list below includes features and capabilities which just didn't make it into this release (not enough time in the day!). We will be working on these for the next release though.
- Automatic and manual URL shortening - All URLs found in the tweet will be shortened
- Integration into the BlackBerry browser such that URLs can be included directly in a tweet from the menu.
- Saved searches - integrate the new Twitter saved search API. Searches saved via the Twitter web site will be useable on ÜberTwitter and vice versa
- Optional automatic scaling of pictures in order to greatly reduce picture upload times.
Popularity: 100% [?]
lets go on a Tour…
For all you Crackberry users out there, get ready. Verizon is getting ready to release their brand new phone called the Tour very soon it seems. The Tour is basically equivalent to AT&T's Bold, which is probably one of the best Blackberry's on the market right now. The Tour is a great mixture of the Curve 8330 and the World Edition 8830.
My first Crackberry was the Storm and I impressed with how the Blackberry worked in general but was highly disappointed with the phone itself. Since then I have switched to the Curve 8330 and I love it! Little did I know though that on the horizon was this brand new, beautiful phone! Of course it is no iPhone, but faithful Crackberry users are committed to the quality and uniqueness that only a Blackberry can bring! So if you were looking into getting yourself your very own Crackberry, hold off til this bad boy comes out and I am sure that you won't be disappointed! Although there is no official release date, it is a very good sign that the Tour is coming soon through the profile pages that are up on Verizon's official website!
- Size (L x W x D): 112 x 62 x 14.2 mm
- Weight: 130 grams
- Battery: 1400 mAh removable/rechargeable cryptographic lithium cell
- Memory: 256 MB internal Flash memory
- Expandable Memory: microSD located under the battery door cover
- Keyboard: 35 key backlit QWERTY
- Display: High resolution HVGA 480×360 pixel
- Battery Life: TBD
- GPS: Assisted, autonomous and simultaneous GPS enabled with preloaded Blackberry application for e911 capabilities
- Camera: 3.2 MP camera, flash auto focus
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth V2.0; mono/stereo headset, hands-free, PBAP
- Headset: 3.5mm stereo headset capable
- Media Player: Video format support MPEG4; Audio format support MP3, AAC AAC+ etc
- USB Port: Enables charging and high-speed data synchronization via USB “A” to micro USB “B” cable
- Network Support: Quad-band 850/900/1800/1900MHz, GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks
- Single-band: 2100 MHz UMTS/HSPA networks
- Dual-Band: 800/1900 MHz CDMA/EVDO Rev A networks
Popularity: 6% [?]
