BlackBerry Cool

Bang With Friends CEO Says His Co-Founder’s Mom “Loves It”

2013-06-19T18:38:45Z

In a completely serious interview, Business Insider sat down with the CEO of Bang With Friends to talk about what it’s like being outed as the creators and developers of the app. Previously, the developers remained anonymous, and they wanted to know if it’s embarrassing or stressful now that people know they’re the creators of a controversial hook-up app. In what seems like a genuine slip of the tongue, the CEO said “my co-founder’s mom loves it.” Watch the interview because it’s amazing everyone didn’t burst out laughing and stop the interview right then and there.

View the original article at Business Insider at this link.

Solve Touchscreen Maze Puzzles on BlackBerry 10 and PlayBook with NeverMaze

2013-06-19T18:37:44Z

Krungie Factor has released its first mobile game, NeverMaze, for BlackBerry 10 smartphones and the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The game allows players to solve simple and complex maze puzzles using the touchscreen. It’s a great game for kids or adults who want to feel nostalgic about the days when you used to solve mazes with crayons.

NeverMaze is available for download as of now in BlackBerry World for $0.99. Check it out at this link.

The Voltmaker: A Smart Charger for a Smartphone World

2013-06-19T18:22:22Z

Since phones started getting more powerful their increased thirst for battery power has created an industry of alternative chargers. This kinetic changing solution by Voltmaker proves that there are products being conceived that are elegant enough to find in someone’s handbag and essential enough to need to take travelling.

The Voltmaker is a portable charging solution for your smartphone, iPhone, camera, or any other low voltage 5-volt USB device. It generates power through kinetic energy with a simple twirl of the wrist or by plugging it in to a wall or computer. This means that you can plug it in at home, and then carry it out with you as a portable charging pack. Once it no linger carries a charge, its designed to be spun in your hand while its arm cranks around and around, generating free energy to be used to charge your devices.

Part of Voltmaker’s competitive advantage is the efficiency of the kinetic charger. First it can be operated in a fairly casual way using just one hand, a step up from the crank chargers that need the full coordination of two hands. The Voltmaker’s unique charging mechanism allows the tethered weight to build up momentum giving you a much better charge rate than unforgiving hand cranked units, thanks to it’s unique twirling motion and Microcontroller.

The Microcontroller serves two major functions. First, it helps maximize the amount of energy you get out of each rotation depending on the velocity. For example, on a regular charger if you spin the crank at 1x speed you will get 1x charge. If you spin at 2x speed you will get 2x charge. The Microcontroller can interpret the increase in velocity and, for example, if you put in 2x speed you might get 3x charge output (not the actual ratio). Essentially you can get more charge with less effort.

Second, the Microcontroller has the ability to “speak” to other devices. For example, if the Voltmaker is plugged to a computer to be home charged, the Voltmaker will tell the computer to have more power and be charged five times faster. If the Microcontroller recognizes a device that is plugged into the Voltmaker a smartphone for instance, it can give it information like remaining energy on the Voltmaker, how fast you are spinning, or how much power you are generating. The Microcontroller is one of the smartest features of the Voltmaker because of the multiple ways it helps charge your devices faster and manage your energy intelligently.

At the core of the Voltmaker unit is a 2,000 mAh Lithium battery that has the ability to take on a charge five times faster than a traditional portable charging pack thanks to the Microcontroller. The LED display tells you exactly how much charge is left. These features, combined with those provided by the Microcontroller, are what really separate the Voltmaker from its competition.

The Voltmaker is currently raising funds via crowd sourcing at indiegogo. You can preorder it now for $69 USD.

Sector Strike Strategy Guide and FAQ for BlackBerry 10, iOS and Android

2013-06-13T18:02:33Z

Sector Strike is a hit multi-platform side scrolling space shooter smartphone and tablet game by Clapfoot Inc. The game’s simple gameplay and straightforward levelling of your ship is as rewarding as it is difficult: A winning combination.

How to play:
1-Shoot bad guys and earn currency
2-Upgrade your ship and clear sectors
3-Repeat if desired

Gameplay in a Nutshell: The upgrade powerups that come among with the coins give you an extra hit point, but only one extra hit point even if your weapon’s level is at 4. Every 5th sector is a hard one so don’t feel bad if you die 10 times in a row on level 50 Hardcore Mode. Oh yeah, there’s 2 flavors of hardcore modes after you stomp the first 60 sectors over 4 futuristic perspective-laden backgrounds. In BlackBerry World it’s rated 4.5 stars which is about where is should be: a legitimately awesome mobile space shooter with rewarding long-term play.

Weapons and Powerups and Upgrades Explained:
There’s not a whole lot to screw up in terms of upgrades. You can get the basics like tractor beam, and critical hit, but your main goal is to work your way to the Higgs Shielding. The shield gives you an extra hit in-game, recharges after a short time and is all but required equipment when going into the game’s second play through AKA Hardcore mode. Higgs Shielding is by far the most important upgrade of the game. I find the recharge rate quick enough to only have paid for the first upgrade. Your ship is crazy fast and you should not be afraid to move your finger faster than the game allows the ship to move.

The different ship skins cost of lot of coins, do they do anything for you in-game?
No, they just look pretty. I bought the 2000 coin one and I love how the skin transforms the splash page. Everybody else has a stinky old blue ship but I’ve got a shiny red ship with flames on it: Badass.

Glossary of Enemies:
The moron-managed alien space fleet consists of crude single-purpose ships that team up to form especially difficult to defeat teams. The only thing you have to advance is not to blow your space dollars on useless upgrades.

The Drones: Drones fly slowly in a variety of formations and fire a slow bullet directly at you. they tank damage such that you’ll just barely be able to kill them all with your primary weapon alone. With powerups grunts are easily dispatched and pose almost no threat.

If you find yourself dying to an enemy Drone it’s a sign that you need a break from Sector Strike.

The Interceptor: Accompany grunts, are a bit smaller and do a lot of fancy formations like loops, rows and the flying V to try to ram your ship.

The Fighter: This fires three bullets along the same lines of fire that your ship can shoot with your positron cannon. Just bob and weave between their slow projectiles until they’re destroyed. If there’s a lot going on on the screen, save the fighters for last as they are probably the hardest to kill and the least of a threat.

The Rocketeer: This unit is only a treat when combined with other units. Often times the problem with them being on the field is that they’re tanking your shots giving the real threat more time to gun you down.

The Destroyer: This is the first ship that scared the crap out of me. fires bullets extremely fast but targets you a moment before it fires. This enemy is especially lethal when combined with any other unit. But easily defeated by not making jerky movements and always keeping your ship on the move.

The Sentry: The dreaded sentry spits out tons of bullets at a furious pace in all directions. When you read in the Sector Strike info it says “survive bullet dodging hell”, this is the unit they were talking about. When you come to a wave of Sentries without your powerups prepare yourself for bullet dodging hell but more likely death.

The Carrier: Carriers are not dangerous alone and they are never alone. Every unit type gets thrown in with the carrier and it all spells pain. The interceptors from the carrier kamikaze into your ship so fast that if you don’t focus all your attention on killing them before they kill you. The carrier itself also shields fleets of cruisers. Suddenly units that you thought were non-threatening before gain a certain fearsomeness when the carrier is on the field.

Gold Rocketeer: The same as the Rocketeer except this thing tracks for way longer making it a real threat. The missile can be outrun by you moving round the map but the Gold Rocketeer appears on later levels when they want to ramp up the difficulty.

The Phase-Boot: Not much to mention here other than they cannot be hit while they are using their phase cloak. To cope with it simply fire at the non-cloaked ships while you wait for the cloaked ones to reveal themselves. Also watch out for their explosion after they get taken out. The name has got to be a typo, for the record I think the proper name is Phase-Bot.

The Final Boss: ?

…Sorry but this is a spoiler-free website.

Click here to download Sector Strike for BlackBerry 10 and Playbook.

Google to Acquire Waze Free Traffic App for 1.1 Billion

2013-06-11T19:27:20Z

Waze is an Israeli crowd sourced traffic app that has the ability to show you the quickest route and redirect Waze users around traffic, essentially outsmarting the traffic jam. The yet to be finalized deal is potentially valued around 1.1 Billion US.

Waze with over 50 million users, uses it’s users’ location data to paint a live map of traffic. The system is especially good at adapting to changing traffic patterns and can suggest alternate routes on the fly. All the mapping systems try to map out traffic but Waze is pretty far ahead of the competition in terms of coming very close to showing you the actual traffic conditions.

Waze’s traffic technologies will be a huge asset to Google Maps’ existing traffic feature and big impactions of future navigation apps. Google has traditionally dissolved Israeli acquired companies, part of this deal seems to be that Waze offices will remain in Israel and continue to develop their system.

Click here to read more from Israel National News.

Click here to download the Waze traffic app for Legacy BlackBerry OSes free from BlackBerry World.

Facebook Version 10.2.0 Now Available With Refreshed UI and Enhanced Photo Experience

2013-06-10T17:18:33Z

Facebook v10.2.0 for BlackBerry 10 is now available for download from BlackBerry World. The latest update features a refreshed look and new ways of interacting with your Facebook photos.

It’s not clear what exactly is new in this update. The “exciting” new look and feel definitely doesn’t look differently. Perhaps it now has ads and promoted posts.

According to BlackBerry, the updates are:

A Refreshed Look and Feel to your Newsfeed – Facebook 10.2.0 has an exciting updated look and feel with refreshed icons to make navigation and communicating with your social network even easier.
Enhanced Photo Experience – Facebook 10.2.0 provides new ways of interacting with your Facebook photos. With Facebook 10.2.0 you can now create Photo Albums from your photos page, upload your photos to an existing or new photo album, add photo tags to your current photos and easily toggle between all of your photos and photo albums.
Version 10.2.0 also contains additional enhancements to improve the overall Facebook experience. Staying connected and sharing what matters to you has never been this easy.

Download the latest version of Facebook for BlackBerry 10 at this link.

Neil Gaiman and BlackBerry Launch A Calendar of Tales

2013-06-07T20:18:08Z

This week Bestselling author Neil Gaiman wrapped up his chapter in the BlackBerry Keep It Moving Project. Gaiman launched A Calendar of Tales, a collaborative collection of a dozen short stories, inspired by fan suggestions over Twitter.

Gaiman’s short stories also received 9000 fan made artwork submissions which accompany the short stories. I really like the style of these Keep it Moving campaign ambassadors. The campaigns are really about these artists and their craft and so far 6.3 million people have been visiting the BlackBerry Keep Moving Hub to participate.

Click here to check out Neil Gaiman’s A Calendar or Tales.

The Woody: Real Wood Cases for the BlackBerry Z10 with Custom Engraving

2013-05-27T19:51:43Z

A short while ago the good folks at The Woody sent me an all-wood bamboo BlackBerry Z10 case. I’ve always though of wood products for high tech to be a bit of a novelty but the truth is nothing beats the feeling or the look of real wood.

The case is light, sturdy and easy to put on and take off the BlackBerry Z10. The case fits tight and has a bit of felt on the inside so that it doesn’t scuff the back of your device while being protected from impacts.

The only drawback is that some of the larger-plugged micro USB chargers won’t fit through the wooden port holes. The problem is easily remedied by cutting some of the excess plastic and rubber from the plug itself, or using the official BlackBerry BlackBerry Charger Bundle that comes with a slimmer micro USB cable.

The Woody is a Canadian company based in Ottawa Ontario that can also give your wooden BlackBerry Z10 case a custom laser engraving of your own design for an extra ten dollars. They also make wooden iPhone cases so send your jealous iFriends their way too.

Click here to buy the Woody for $34.95 for the BlackBerry Z10.

Click here to buy Woody with a custom laser engraving of your design for $44.95 for the BlackBerry Z10.

Ottawa Companies and Gamers: Register for Ottawa’s Got Game and Play for Charity

2013-06-07T20:24:30Z

Companies and gamers in the Ottawa and surrounding regions should really check out an amazing event coming up called Ottawa’s Got Game. The event is a full day of game tournaments and casual play with prizes. Proceeds of the event are going to the charity Child’s Play which is a really great charity that puts video games in hospitals and children’s wards to provide some fun in an otherwise depressing environment.

So check out Ottawa’s Got Game and register your company or go as an individual. There’s also a huge Star Wars exhibit going on at the same time so there are plenty of reasons to attend.

Go to this Eventbrite link and register. Individual passes are only $10.

Mobihand/Mobireach Assets Sold to OpenMobile Worldwide for $15,000

2013-05-22T19:56:00Z

There’s a lot of BlackBerry and Android developers out there that still possibly have money owed to them by Mobihand. The company went bankrupt back in September of 2012 and recent court documents obtained by BlackBerryCool show that the company has sold to OpenMobile Worldwide for $15,000. It doesn’t look like developers will be getting their money any time soon as many are owed in excess of $15,000 and the period to recoup your loses has likely expired. It’s not really clear what OpenMobile does, but its about page suggests it works with app stores to improve their core technologies.

There’s also an overbid procedure so if you’d like to buy Mobihand/Mobireach, you can do so for at least $17,500. For that price, you get a native app store client for Android, as well as a host of other technologies such as APIs and update management systems. It actually seems like a really good deal.

Use Your BlackBerry 10 Camera to Scan Text in to a Document

2013-05-22T16:45:08Z

Scan to Text is a BlackBerry 10 app by Yuri Salnikov that uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to turn words on paper into an editable document on your BlackBerry.

Ideal for scanning a whole page of text in one go, the app responds particularly well to high contrast text. The OCR processing happens on your device and the photos of the pages of text get deleted after scanning so they don’t get mixed up with your photos.

The app works with flash or without, you’ll get better results with higher contrast so use your judgment. Scan to Text can also correct for rotation and skew so you don’t have to make sure you’re 100% dead on with your camera.

Combine a number of pages and send them via email, copy the text to the clipboard to bounce around to other apps or share them with your BBM contacts.

The App supports mostly European languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Tagalog andTurkish.

Click here to download the demo version of Scan to Text.

Click here to buy Scan to Text for $2.99 for BlackBerry 10.

BlackBerry Achievement Awards 2013 Winners Announced

2013-05-21T17:24:16Z

The BlackBerry Achievement Awards (formerly the Wireless Achievement Awards) recognize excellence in entrepreneurship and development on the BlackBerry platform. This years winners were announced in Orlando Florida during the BlackBerry Live conference.

App of the Year: PriceCheck Mobile for BlackBerry
Scan barcodes to make comparison shopping a breeze. The app started out in South Africa and has grown their barcode inventory to over 30 million items.

Click here to download PriceCheck Mobile for BlackBerry 10 for free.

Putting Customers First: ING DIRECT Canada
I first saw ING DIRECT showcase their app during the BlackBerry 10 launch event. The app features “Orange Alerts” that deliver banking notifications directly to your device.

Click here to download ING DIRECT for BlackBerry 10 for free.

Mobile Innovation of the Year: DIRECTV Latin America
Managing technical support for 5 million clients in Latin America and the Caribbean is no small task. Thankfully they’ve built a BlackBerry 10 app that helps over 4000 technicians to manage service calls using their device and also connect to set top boxes via Bluetooth to validate access, diagnose problems and check signal strength.

Making the World a Better Place: e-Cycle
e-Cycle makes it easy for companies to securely recycle old devices. Instead of shredding the device e-Cycle wipes and resells the device via their buyback program to recoup a bit of the costs of the upgrade.

Entrepreneur of the Year: Nobex Technologies Inc
Nobex has developed one of the highest rated apps on BlackBerry World. Nobex Radio and Podcasts allows users to listen to tune in to online radio and subscribe to Podcasts using a polished BlackBerry 10 app.

Click here to download Nobex Radio and Podcasts for BlackBerry 10 for free.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners!

Flurry App Analytics for BlackBerry 10 Arriving Q2

2013-05-21T16:25:52Z

Flurry is an analytics tool that delivers user and usage data to the developer to help them improve and polish their apps. With over 170000 apps already in the BlackBerry 10 ecosystem, Flurry is sure to raise the quality and user experience of these apps over the long term.

Slated to be ready for action by the end of Q2, the powerful development tool features audience demographics and a consolidated dashboard even across multiple platforms. Flurry is indispensable when developing monetization and retention plans. Flurry will support apps made with cascades and the Native BlackBerry 10 SDK.

Flurry can easily spot dead ends in menus and show you where users are hitting snags while navigating the app. It can also reveal larger problems, let’s say that you notice the average session time for a specific device is almost zero, you’ll be able to assume that there’s a stability or crashing issue that’s keeping people from using your app as intended.

Click here for more info on Flurry.

Endomondo Sports Tracking App Launches on BlackBerry 10

2013-05-15T18:41:47Z

Endomondo is a free or premium cross-platform sports tracking app that uses GPS and other techniques to track workout session. The company ported their iOS/Android app over to BlackBerry 10 due to overwhelming customer feedback.

The best part about Endomondo is how thorough the app is. With over 15 million users the company has developed and polished their app to a high degree of functionality and features.

Here are a few of the features found in the free version:

GPS tracking for lots of activities
Workout history
Route mapping
Pep talk delivery to friends
Access to the social community

Here are a few of the features found in the premium version:

Interval training
Workout graphs
Beat yourself challenges
Weather info
and more…

Click here to download Endomondo for BlackBerry 10 free from BlackBerry World.

The premium version is available for a $2.99 monthly or $19.99 yearly subscription.

BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 Gaining Traction in North America

2013-05-15T17:59:13Z

The successor to BlackBerry Enterprise Server, BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 is a cross-platform mobility management and deployment solution that gives you all sorts of options for smartphone and tablets wether they be corporate issued or BYOD.

As BlackBerry 10 continues to roll out and ship new handsets, BES 10 has been adopted by more and more companies. A BlackBerry deployment is known for being able to be managed with minimal effort by IT support staff and BES 10 extends that ease of use to iOS and Android phones and tablets.

A couple of years ago, BYOD was one of the bigger talking points when discussing BlackBerry’s waning market share. The company seems to have reversed that trend by embracing the competing platforms when managing mobility for the enterprise.

Click here for more info on BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 including their latest 10.1 update.

Vox Mobile VoIP App Coming to BlackBerry 10

2013-05-15T17:54:23Z

Vox is a mobile VoIP client for Android that will soon break out to other mobile platforms including BlackBerry 10. Expected to launch at the end of 2013 it looks like BlackBerry 10′s VoIP, IM, and video conferencing options are becoming plentiful.

Vox originally launched in 2005 as a competitor to Vonage and has been transitioning to the mobile ever since. By next year they should be running on all cylinders and supporting the top 4 smartphone platforms. The app also has the ability to call mobile phones in certain regions like the UK, Mexico, India, Pakistan and Vietnam.

Click here for details on the current Vox app on Google Play.

harmon.ie Launches SharePoint and Office 365 Client for BlackBerry 10

2013-05-14T21:13:37Z

harmon.ie is a cross-platform SharePoint, Office 365, SkyDrive Pro and Yammer client. It currently supports iOS and BlackBerry 10 with Android support to follow in Q3. harmon.ie makes it easy to connect with colleagues and collaborate on projects.

harmon.ie is currently the only native Office 365 app available for BlackBerry 10. Collaboration happens without overlap by sharing links to documents in the cloud instead of emailing attachments and worrying about having the latest version. Be notified in real-time when a colleague makes an update to a project or document. You can also check up on all the historical edits or changes.

The free version which gives you read-only access and should be used personally to test drive the software. For untethered access, click here to go to the harmon.ie mobile product page and subscribe to their BES edition which costs about $4 per user per month.

Click here to download and try out harmon.ie Lite for free on BlackBerry 10.

Alicia Keys to Webcast the Keep Moving Experience Concert Tonight

2013-05-14T17:09:43Z

Tonight as part of BlackBerry Live, Alicia Keys as well as musical guests Alabama Shakes, Miguel, Maria Gadu and Cedric Gervais will be webcasting a concert beginning at 7:30 pm.

The show, called the Keep Moving Experience is produced by Alicia Keys and will be performed at the BlackBerry party at Universal Studios Florida. I’ve seen a lot of musical guests that BlackBerry has hired over the years and Keys seems to be the most invested: designing a custom show from the ground up.

Click here to tune in to the Keep Moving Experience tonight at 7:30pm Eastern.

Secure Free Instant Messaging for Enterprise: BlackBerry IM 3.0

2013-05-14T16:47:39Z

BlackBerry Enterprise IM 3.0 is a secure, enterprise-grade instant messaging service that borrows a lot of functionality of the popular BBM service. The service can communicate with desktop enterprise chat systems like Microsoft Lync, Microsoft Office Communication Server and Lotus (IBM) Sametime.

BlackBerry Enterprise IM 3.0 launches with BES 10.1 but will also support Legacy BlackBerry devices that are deployed on BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.3 and above. Some of the BBM-borrowed features include presence status like “I’m free” or “Out of office” and your presence can even be controlled by your work calendar. Search though your employee database to add contacts using LDAP, Active Directory and Global Address Lookup. Messages are securely delivered using either HTTPS or 256 bit AES encryption.

Click here to learn more about the new BlackBerry IM 3.0

Wikitude Places Beta Launches on BlackBerry 10

2013-05-14T15:35:01Z

Augmented Reality leader Wikitude launches Wikitude Places for BlackBerry 10. The new service provides Location Based Services to Wikitude users and helps to build their LBS database of sights, restaurants, hotels and shops.

Along with the launch of the Places beta, Wikitude on BlackBerry 10 is also the first mobile platform to sport their redesigned user interface. Ever since BlackBerry started putting accelerometers and magnetometers in their phones, Wikitude has been there on launch to utilize the new tools.

One of the more exciting features that they’ve added is the BBM AR Chat allowing you to see where your friends are as you message them. This feature becomes even more compelling when BBM goes multi platform later this year.

Click here for more info on the Wikitude SDK.