Blackberry Software

Well we kicked off our 3rd birthday celebration, and you can be sure that next week we’ll have a TON of awesome stuff to give away. A few contests this past week for some cool apps, and we continued our perfect streak for the podcasts. Not too much great news as of late, but if you missed any action this past week, hit the links below to see what went down.

CrackBerry Editor Fun: The Olympic Hockey Bet: The Vancouver 2010 Olympics wind down today, but before the closing cermemonies take place the sporting action will end in epic style with Canada vs. USA in men’s hockey. The United States prevailed in the first Canada/USA encounter at these games and for those who follow Adam (@azeis) or Kevin (@crackberrykevin) on twitter know the patriotism for our home and native lands escalated through the three periods of action. For the finals today, we’re putting our wallets where our hearts are with a friendly little wager…. if the USA wins, Kevin is sending Adam down a Macbook (good for CrackBerry Nation, since he’ll use it to pump out videos and posts like crazy). But if Canada wins, then Adam is hooking up Kevin with a year’s supply of his favorite alcoholic beverage, Campari (you can also follow @camparikevin on twitter). It’s going to to be a tale for the ages. Let us know you who you’re cheering for in the comment and be sure to tune into the game and into twitter for all the fun! 

What You May Have Missed

• Leaked: OS 5.0.0.530 for the BlackBerry Tour 9630 >>
• CrackBerry Podcast 048: MWC Debrief on WebKit Browser, BESX and Super Apps; Olympic Talk and More! >> 
• BIS 3.0 Coming As Soon As Next Week? >> 
• Fixmo Tools for BlackBerry Now Available for Purchase: ALWAYS Save When You Buy it From CrackBerry.com! >> 
• Turn Your BlackBerry’s Camera Flash and LED into a Customized Flashlight with FREE FlashOn App >> 
• Ultimate BlackBerry Twitter Client Roundup: The Conclusion >> 
• Verizon Gets Ready to Bid Farewell to Storm 9530, Curve 8330, 8830 and Pearl Flip 8230?! >> 
• Slacker Radio 3.0 Goes Live In The USA! >> 
• BlackBerry Name Games: New BlackBerry Tour 9650 to hit the Market as a BlackBerry Bold (9750? 9650? 97xx?)?!! >> 

Contest Reminder

• BlackBerry App Roundup for February 26th, 2010; – 25 Copies of Vorino Clock to be Won! >> 
• HoneyComb Theme by JMal and AHaz Designs – 50 Copies to be Won! >> 
• Contest: 50 Free Copies of Office Hot Shots Up For Grabs >> 
• BlackBerry Accessory Roundup: Enter to Win a Jawbone Icon >> 
• BlackBerry Theme Roundup for February 22nd 2010 – 25 Copies of Big Picture HD to be Won! >> 
• Just10Minutes Review and Giveaway – 100 Copies to Be Won! >>
  
• CrackBerry Turns 3 Birthday Contest: Win a Custom-Painted ColorWare BlackBerry Smartphone! >>
• CrackBerry Turns 3 Birthday Contest: Free Slacker Radio Plus Subscriptions up for Grabs! >>
  

CrackBerry.com’s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. CrackBerry Reminder: What You May Have Missed This Week; CB Editor Fun – Tune into Twitter for the Olympic Hockey Bet!

Next up in our string of CrackBerry Turns 3 Years Old Birthday Contests our friends at Slacker have hooked us up with some awesome prizes.  We have 10 1-Year subscriptions and 15 3-month subscriptions to giveaway. To enter into this one, just leave a single comment to this blog post. Entry ends Sunday, March 7th at Midnight PST.

If you’re not familiar with Slacker Radio Plus, it takes the free Slacker streaming radio experience and makes it much better by offering:

• No Audio or Banner Ads
• Unlimited Song Skips
• Complete Lyrics
• Unlimited Song Requests
• Mobile Station Caching

An annual subscription to the service is .99 per month (billed annually at .88) or you can go month to month for .99. For more details on Slacker Radio Plus visit slacker.com/radio and for more details on Slacker for BlackBerry click here. Gooood luck!!

CrackBerry.com’s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. CrackBerry Turns 3 Birthday Contest: FREE Subscriptions to Slacker Radio Plus Up For Grabs!

Some people just can’t find a theme that suits their personality. Other times, you would like to have a specific theme that no one has come up with, or you just have a great idea to improve one specific aspect of the UI. Whichever the reason is, the truth is, some of you would like to do your own themes. Well you can! I know a few people that started creating themes because they had a great idea that no one had thought about. You don’t need to be an expert, you don’t even have to know how it works, just patience is necessary, really. The magic about the internet and computer related stuff is that if you have patience, you can pretty much learn whatever you want: hey, I didn’t have the most remote idea how to set up a website, and here you are, hopefully I did a good job creating the Storm blog.

There are two excellent tutorials on how to start theming for your Blackberry. You can check part 1 and then part2.  Remember you will need the Theme Studio, and probably Photoshop or GIMP if Photoshop is too expensive (it is).

Related posts:

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2. Free Blackberry Storm Themes: Lush! A Green Theme To customize your Blackberry Storm, you can add multiple themes…
3. Free Storm Themes: Vitreous Free Blackberry Storm Theme! Download Here There are now a lot of free Blackberry themes coming…

I always thought that the homescreen from the Blackberry Storm could be more useful, it could have something more than the app shortcuts. And when looking at other platforms, Blackberry does need to do something, other manufacturers offer cool desktop screens with several screens and widgets.

Looks like RIM is working towards this, they are thinking about a better homescreen for different devices. A new image showing a Blackberry Storm with a whole new homescreen has been floating around the internet after it was used at the ”Super App” Blackberry-official webinar where developers were given a conference on how to make their Blackberry App, a Blackberry Super App. The pic shows a different homescreen where the user can access SMS, Calendar, Events and different social networks all from the homescreen. The image might have been used as an example for developers on how create better apps, but it also means that in fact RIM is looking forward to a new homescreen. Anyway, in whatever way a new homescreen might come, either in an app or an update, the Storm will surely thank for it.

RIMarkable

Related posts:

1. Storm Software: Get NY Times, Washington Post and Other 5 Newspapers on Your Blackberry Storm We all want to be up to date with the…
2. Blackberry Storm2 Review: The Storm2 Review From The Storm Blog I have been using the Blackberry Storm2 for now two…
3. Free application and Viggo Contest Here at the Blackberry Storm Blog, we have talked you…

Certainly seems that way. Above you can see the AT&T download site where BlackBerry Desktop Manager is to be downloaded for AT&T customers. This list, not too long ago was filled with versions as far back as 4.0 but no longer offers anything less then 4.6. Now while some might just say that’s just AT&T pulling them off of there to avoid confusion the same thing can be witnessed across multiple carriers.

Even the Research In Motion website has abolished all versions except for 5.0 iterations on their download page. I’m quite certain this is nothing more than just a little bit of house cleaning, but it was rather surprising to see for the first time. It should help some folks out, that’s for sure. Rather then 10 different items users nowhave less chances of downloading an incompatible version.

[ Hat tip to Banthon ]

CrackBerry.com’s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. Research In Motion Removing Older Versions Of BlackBerry Desktop Manager?

I just read a cool article over at PCPro about 5 GPS-based games you can play with your BlackBerry. While most of the newer devices have GPS, the ones that don’t can use cell-tower triangulation which in urban centers is just as reliable.

1. Geocaching

Geocaching is probably the best GPS-based game you can play with your BlackBerry. It has a huge community and you can get involved at geocaching.com. The idea is simple, drop a package, log its coordinates, and someone else will find it. Blackstar for BlackBerry is the app to check out for this game.

2. Geodashing

Geodashing is a game about points not prizes. The goal of the game is to visit as many randomly selected locations as possible, which are chosen by the Geodashing computer. To score points, you must come within 100 meters of the coordinates, and be able to describe the location or prove you’ve been there with a picture.

3. Waymarking

Waymarking is a scavenger hunt for interesting places and unusual objects you may not have noticed before. Waymarking.com lists 229,982 sites around the world that its users have marked as notable, and each is logged with coordinates, photos and a description.

4. Travel bugs

Travel bugs takes elements of Geocaching, Geodashing and Waymarking. Travel bugs involves purchasing a dog tag, to which you assign a mission and drop in a geocached location. A geocacher finds the tag, logs it and follows the mission assigned to the tag. Once completed, you can assign it a new mission. Travel bugs can be purchased here.

5. Degree Confluence Project

Have you tried any of the above?

© Matt Cameron aka W4LNUT for BlackBerry Cool, 2010

The Covertec Premium Leather Case is a convenient and protective solution to carrying your BlackBerry Tour 9630 while presenting a unique European style to your device!

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Loic Le Meur of Seesmic gave us the heads up that their twitter client for BlackBerry Smartphones will be getting a big update today (should be live soon). You can visit seesmic.com on your BlackBerry’s web browser to download or checkout their BlackBerry product page here. As for the update, it brings multi-account support as well as support for up to 50 social networks thanks to Ping.fm integration and their partnership with TweetPhoto. Full details below. And if you’re torn between which twitter client to use on your BlackBerry, be sure to check out Adam’s Ultimate BlackBerry Twitter Client Roundup.

• Learn More about Seesmic for BlackBerry >>

read more

CrackBerry.com’s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. Seesmic Twitter App Gets Updated: Supports Multi-Accounts, up to 50 Social Networks with Ping.fm and TweetPhoto

 

Cruising the forums I came across this thread with a request for pig emoticon. I obviously had no idea there was one, but just a few replies into the thread, it turns out there are a load of hidden emoticons deep inside BlackBerry Messenger. I’m still not sure where they came from or how exactly they were discovered, but they are definitely loads of fun. Among the list is a pig, cheesburger, dog, cat, sports stuff and tons more. To get the new set, you’ll have to copy the text from the thread an post to BlackBerry Messenger using AutoText (check out our Mini-101 on how to get symbols into BlackBerry Messenger). Now I couldn’t personally get these to show up on my 9700 (running OS 5.0.0.423) but I’ve tested with a few others and it seems like most devices aren’t having any issues. Leave a comment and let us know if they work for you. Jump into the forums to get in on the fun!

• Check out the cool hidden BBM emoticons in the CrackBerry forums >>

CrackBerry.com’s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. Loads of New BBM Emoticons Found in Hiding