BlackBerry Cool

Monitor Your Kids’ Phone Use With Mobile Spy for BlackBerry

2012-05-25T18:44:06Z

Mobile Spy is a discrete realtime system logging application that lets you monitor your child’s or employee’s mobile usage. Mobile Spy was recently updated support for all the latest social networking apps and instant messaging apps.

Mobile Spy, available across five different smartphone platforms, silently records smartphone user activity of children or employees. Logs are viewable online in real time. Standard features include monitoring of entire SMS text messages, actual GPS locations, call information and photos taken on the phone. Logs can be reviewed from any web browser inside a secure online control panel.

Adding the ability to view nine types of Social Media messengers allows the user to view conversations which happen in Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Messenger, BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry PIN Messenger, GTalk, Twitter and others. This gives the user the ability to make sure their employees are not sharing confidential material or that their children aren’t communicating with forbidden individuals using the BlackBerry.mobil

Mobile Spy offers the industry’s only LIVE Control Panel, which allows the user to instantly view the BlackBerry phone’s screen and a map of the current GPS location. This optional feature also allows users to perform administration commands instantly such as having logs emailed to their email address, initiating a silent call or SMS from the device or putting the device in lockdown.

Subscribe to Mobile Spy for as little as $8.33 per month.

Prank Cam for BlackBerry Uses the Camera App to Prank Your Friends

2012-05-25T18:08:33Z

Prank Cam is a fun camera app by Devcellent Solutions that makes it seem like you’re taking regular pics with your BlackBerry meanwhile the app is putting artifacts on people’s faces and distorting the photos in interesting ways.

Upon launch, the familiar BlackBerry Camera app shows up with an option to turn on the PrankCam feature. Select a prank you want to use out of the many that are available to you or move or size the prank to fit your shot. Take the picture while the artifact is visible on the live viewfinder. The better you prank, the more points you get when you share the pranked picture via BBM.

Here are some of Prank Cam’s features:

Comes with one FULL Prank Pack that includes many artifacts to begin with.
More packs are available for in-app download for free as well as for a fee.
Scrapbooks, Masks and many more to come.
Does not replace or reinvent the Camera app but simply plugs in to it.
Move around the prank artifact on the screen.
Make the prank bigger or smaller to fit your victim.
Share via Email.
Share via BBM by Setting as Profile Picture, sending it to a contact, inviting others to PrankCam, or send a paid Prank to a friend for Free!
Unlock achievements and show off your p-rank right on your BBM Profile.
More you share, more points you get.

Download Prank Cam for BlackBerry free from App World.

Watch My BAC for BlackBerry Playbook Calculates Your Blood Alcohol

2012-05-25T17:40:52Z

Just in time for the weekend is an app for BlackBerry Playbook by Chris Maxwell called Watch My BAC. I’m not sure if you’ve ever calculated you and your friends’ BAC while drinking but it basically turns the whole thing into a really fun game.

The app takes the time you’ve started drinking, what you’ve had to drink, gender and weight into account.

To ensure an accurate B.A.C estimate, Watch My BAC gives the user the option to add custom drink types to a database with specific liquid volumes and alcohol percentages. It is important to note that although Watch My BAC provides an accurate B.A.C estimate, without blood tests or breath tests an exact B.A.C level is impossible to determine.

Buy Watch Your BAC for Playbook for $0.99 form BlackBerry App World.

Free Restart Me for BlackBerry Makes Pulling Your Battery Easy

2012-05-23T21:47:45Z

Restart Me by S4BB Limited is a free restarting or battery pull app for BlackBerry. Every seasoned BlackBerry user knows the importance of a daily reset so that everything runs smooth and problem-free. The 99 cent pro version features the ability to schedule resets.

Here are some features of Restart Me:

Easy to Use: restarts your device with just a single click.
No-Brainer: avoids complicated key combinations to restart your device.
Quick Reset: you can auto-restart your device or do it manually.
Free your Memory: kills all the unnecessary applications running in background freeing your RAM.
Daily Restart Schedule: e.g. wake up with a freshly rebooted smartphone every morning at 7:00 a.m.

Download Restart Me for BlackBerry OS 6 or higher free from App World.

CAMultimate Camera Tools and Photo Effects Editor On Sale for a Limited Time

2012-05-23T21:36:37Z

CAMultimate is a camera tool and photo effects app for BlackBerry. It normally retails for $2.99 and is going on sale until June 5th for the low price of 99 cents.

Here are some of CAMultimate’s features and benefits:

Includes over 16 different Camera Filters Effects
Includes a Pencil Sketch Effect
Fat Face Effect
Camera Image Burst mode so you can take multiple shots in one go, ensuring that you dont miss that golden opportunity.
Camera Timer function that allows you to predefine a timer and set CAMultimate to take the photo image for you automatically after a few seconds!
Includes a feature that will allow you to crop and save any photo!
Also includes a CAMshout mode that gives a shout out to your friends to grab their attention for that all important ‘kodak’ moment.
Also includes a CAMmute mode so that if you find the shutter sound annoying, then why not take a quick simple capture of the camera screen using the CAMmute mode, see below for further details.
Includes a feature to GEOtag your images – A geotag gives your location and saves the location tag to the image of your photo in Standard CAM mode so your friends know the place where you took the photo!

Buy CAMultimate for $0.99 for a limited time from BlackBerry App World.

QFolio Free NASDAQ Portfolio Manager For BlackBerry Playbook

2012-05-23T21:04:02Z

QFolio NASDAQ OMX Portfolio Manager is a free Playbook app that helps visualize a stock’s performance and gives valuable data about a stock’s performance. With unlimited real-time quotes, expert charting and an exclusive heat map, QFolio is an ideal app for anyone who’s into the tech equity markets.

Take your real-time portfolio and watch lists wherever you go! Free, unlimited real-time quotes, pre-market and after-hours activity, charting and an exclusive, custom heat map. QFolio NASDAQ Portfolio Manager can also display your current portfolio’s performance.

Download QFolio OMX Portfolio Manager free for BlackBerry Playbook from App World.

Burn The City Game for Playbook Features Cute Art and Destructive Gameplay

2012-05-23T20:28:26Z

Burn The City is a cute, urban destruction puzzle game by Union. The object of the game is to carefully aim destructive volleys of dragon fire at buildings in order to raze them quickly or go for big points by unleashing big destructive combos.

Wanton destruction is easier than ever in Burn The City. Unleash the monster within in this fiery puzzle game that has you demolishing cities for points. Spit fireballs to raze buildings and send those puny humans packing. It’s not just about flinging fire, though—rack up combos for bonus points by exploiting the surrounding environment and maximizing power-ups.

Buy Burn The City for $0.99 for BlackBerry Playbook from App World.

BlackBerry Developers and Evangelists Get Codefaced by Helios Design Labs

2012-05-22T18:58:41Z

Helio Design Labs is based in Toronto, Canada and the company was commissioned to design a loop-able, ambient video featuring RIM Developers and Evangelists. The video was made by taking the employee headshots and processing them into an abstract mosaic of letters, numbers and code snippets using Cinema 4D. The animation was inspired by Tobias Muthesius’ and Juliette Champain’s project “Face to Face”. Check it out after the break.

Link the video on Vimeo at this link.

It’s not like this is news or anything, it’s just fun to discover some of your RIM friends and employees’ social networks and talents.

Recognize the faces?

Photo: My codeface. I’m in around 6:45 tmblr.co/ZXD2WyLxy7pr

— Alex Kinsella (@alexkinsella) May 22, 2012

Magmic’s Blackjack King is Having a Chip Sale

2012-05-22T18:00:40Z

Blackjack King is part of a series of free casino BlackBerry games from Magmic. Blackjack King is free to download and the game gives you 1000 (or more) free chips per day.

The chip sale is expected to go on until May 25th. If you’re a player like me who doesn’t do too well with the 1000 or so chips per day that they give you, you might be interested in buying some chip packs at a discounted rate.

Here are the Blackjack King sale chip prices:

250,000 chips – $6.99
1,000,000 chips – $14.99
4,000,000 chips – $39.99
10,000,000 chips – $79.99
50,000,000 chips – $99.99
200,000,000 chips – $299.99

Download Blackjack King for BlackBerry free from App World.

BlackBerry App World Drops Beta Category From App World and Creates New Categories

2012-05-22T16:53:03Z

Developers just recently got an email from RIM saying there has been some significant changes made to the App World categories. Some of the more notable changes include a Music Creation category (perhaps for more apps like Pace Maker), and the Beta category has been dropped. RIM has also added some new categories for children, which makes sense considering all the new Kids content for PlayBook.

We’re curious how Betas will be run with BlackBerry 10 and PlayBook. If RIM is phasing out sideloading and there’s no Beta category, either RIM will get out of the beta business altogether, or the Beta Zone will become more like Test Flight.

They key category changes and additions include:

News: The News category has been expanded to include magazines. This category is now called News and Magazines and includes Blogs as a subcategory.
Beta: The Beta category is discontinued. The apps located the Beta category have been moved to relevant categories.
Reference and eBooks & Education: The Books and Reference category has been divided in to separate categories so that these are now individual categories respectively. The Reference category includes Education. This new category is Education & Reference.
Shopping: The Shopping category has been renamed Lifestyle.
Maps & Navigation: The Maps & Navigation category now includes Travel and has been renamed Navigation and Travel.
Music Creation (*NEW*): There is a new subcategory Music Creation available under the Music and Audio category.
Children’s Categories (*NEW*): There are two new children’s focused categories:
New Children’s Games category within the Games Channel
New Children’s Books subcategory within the Books category

CupidRadar Online Dating Service Shows Off New Free BlackBerry App

2012-05-21T00:20:38Z

CupidRadar has recently launched their BlackBerry app that uses your phones’ location data to find you matches nearby. The dating service boasts a very healthy, nearly 50% women userbase that seems to be a bit rare among their mobile online dating competitors.

I recently asked CupidRadar a few questions about the app, here’s what they said:

Tell us about the CupidRadar BlackBerry App.

The idea is, wherever you are during your day, chances are there are other singles physically near you- whether a few feet or a few miles away. And since single people don’t wear t-shirts that say, “Hey, I’m single- please talk to me,” I wanted to develop something that enabled technology to do that for us more privately, discretely, and interactively. The advent of smart phones like Blackberry devices allows us to now have such a product. Once approved, you can log into CupidRadar and do a search- we’ll return your match results and tell you how far they are from you, rounding their distance for added security. You can then message the people you’re interested in. We never display or reveal anyone’s actual location, but rather just their distance from you.

What about the CupidRadar Service?

One of the thing we’re very proud of is how balanced our male to female ratio of users is. Many new dating companies or sites struggle with this because, as one might imagine, it’s easier to gain male users than female, and as a result, they end up with lopsided male-female ratios. We attribute our balanced user base to our robust and selective approval process and user screening. When new dating sites or apps launch, one of the most difficult challenges to overcome is growing the user base from scratch, and unfortunately to try to overcome this hurdle, many new sites and apps opt for severely relaxing their approval process all the way from “not verifying if user emails are valid” to “not requiring pictures or filled out profiles.” On CupidRadar, women respond positively to how much effort and work we’ve put into the privacy, security and legitimacy of our users’ profiles. So, in turn, more women sign up and refer us to their girlfriends, which balances our user base nicely.

Were there any challenges during app development?

One of the most important things is determining the trade-off between functionality and speed to market. You can quickly launch something simple with minimal complexity and functionality to get your foot in the door, but then users might complain about lack of functionality. Conversely, you can obsess over getting the “perfect” app and 27 yrs later be out of the market because everyone else passed you by.
Another common pitfall is at what point to launch an app versus going with a mobile site. With sophisticated smartphone browsers these days, many sites can run perfectly smoothly on smart phones without even needing an app. Each site has unique characteristics that lend better to one or the other option.

Download the CupidRadar.com BlackBerry app free from App World.

Scrapbook App for Playbook Gets Anaglyph 3D Content Pack

2012-05-18T18:19:07Z

Dust off those red-cyan 3D glasses; the free scrapbook app for BlackBerry Playbook was updated a little while ago with a few new templates, one of which is in glorious 3D.

Browse your saved and sent Scrapbooks from a cool “clothes line” list to create, share and enjoy your scrapbooks. Other than the new content packs, Scapbook got a BlackBerry Bridge update giving it Facebook connectivity while on the go. Prefect for roadtrips!

Get Scrapbook for Playbook free from BlackBerry App World.

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Hookt: Free Messenger for BlackBerry Updated to Version 1.6

2012-05-18T17:09:00Z

Hookt Messenger (created by airG) is a free, easy to use, cross-platform social messaging app. You can chat with anyone, anywhere in the world, on any smartphone or computer (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, tablets, computers, pretty much anything that has an internet connection).

Hookt’s integration with other social apps (such as Facebook and Twitter) makes it easy to add friends on Hookt, and also find and invite new friends. Everyone gets a unique Hookt ID that can easily be shared. Currently, the app has pretty much all the features you would expect of a messaging app, and we’re told it’s rapidly evolving and soon to have features such as the ability to play social games while you chat.

Here’s what’s new in the latest update:

Share your status with all your Hookt friends
Share your Hookt status on Twitter and BBM
Photos are now organized by folder so you can easily find which one you want to upload and share
French and Japanese translations have been added

Download Hookt for BlackBerry free from App World.

eBuddy XMS Free Messaging App Updated to Version 2.0

2012-05-18T16:58:04Z

eBuddy has announced the updating of their free messaging app: XMS for BlackBerry. XMS is a free cross platform messaging service that allows you to send video and photo messages. The service offers free unlimited messaging across all supported platforms complete with send/read notifications. XMS also uses your contact’s Facebook profile pic for avatars while chatting.

This release’s new feature is the addition of group messaging. XMS now supports chatting with up to 30 friends in a single conversation. In group conversations, users can still send each other IMs, photo and video messages.

Download XMS for BlackBerry free from App World.

Smarter Apps Discounts Vampires vs Hunter Game For a Limited Time Only

2012-05-17T22:38:23Z

Smarter Apps is a great BlackBerry game development shop that has made some of the platform’s biggest selling titles. The company’s strategy is pretty clear: find what’s popular on other platforms and bring it to BlackBerry. One of the company’s most recent titles is Vampires vs Hunter which is essentially Plants vs Zombies (a title that’s available for the PlayBook but not smartphones). Currently, the game is on sale for around 60% off the regular price and available for $1.99. So go buy it!

Features:

Engaging audio and visual experience
3 unique game boards
45 levels of intense vampire hunting gameplay
Progress and earn new weapons and defences to fend off more challenging enemies

Grab a copy of Vampires vs Hunter at this App World link.

How to Get Your Android App BlackBerry Ready: Fungitron for Playbook

2012-05-16T21:19:54Z

Fungitron is a very detailed resource on mushrooms, originally available for Android devices it has been ported to the Playbook platform. You’ve probably heard a lot about how easy it is to get your existing Android app working on the BlackBerry Playbook, Here’s Peter Kovacs’ first hand account of the whole process.

The reason the developer found the BlackBerry platform is through a “port your app to BlackBerry and get a free Playbook” program that RIM started to stimulate developer interest. Below is his process for getting his Android app working on the BlackBerry Playbook and soon enough: BlackBerry 10.

The Blackberry tablet promotion, earlier this year brought in cca. 7000 “new” (originally android) apps into AppWorld, and one of them is Fungitron, the definitive mushroom guide. It is present in the Google Play shop since March. This story is about the process how an android app became a Playbook app, also resulting in a free Playbook.

Fungitron is a mushroom guide originally for Android smartphones and tablets, which contains:

fine-grained search filtering,
own, high quality, zoomable mushroom photos,
descriptions written by fungi expert,
precisely designed icons,
and 70 freely available, detailed mushroom species.

And this is now available on Playbook!

The promotion was focusing on the capability of Playbook OS 2.0, that it is able to run native Android apps. Although the apps can not be loaded directly from Google Play (former Market), but their developers can transform them into an executable package, which can be published on AppWorld itself.

First step is registering onto AppWorld as a vendor, approval took a week in our case, maybe due to the overwhelming interest of fellow Android developers. When we looked into forum messages, there were frightening stories about providing scans of IDs, driving licenses but now none of them were required.

The least complicated way to the conversion from Android to Playbook is the web based BlackBerry Packager for Android Apps, which is a 3-step process, from compatibility check of the app, till conversion and signing. We met only one problem (not really problem with the site), that signing keys are very painful to move from a PC to another: only one computer is meant to be used for signing.

A bit sophisticated solution is enhancing Eclipse ADT development environment with another plugin. This makes our well-known tool capable of producing BAR files for Playbook. (Later we changed for a command line script, which automatically creates the BAR file whenever an Android APK is built.)

The only problem emerged during conversion of Fungitron were the high resolution icons, so they had to be swapped for some smaller.

Testing was a more tedious job: lacking a real device, we had to rely on RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook emulator (VMware image). Actually its display was flickering in big tiles continuously and Fungitron download was always stalling at 100 MB. We found some clue in the forums and it seemed that graphic problems were common amongst the testers, it tended to be a general issue. Downloading was not solved, so we had to make a workaround: we created a “streamlined” database (smaller than 100MB) and it was successfully downloaded into the flickering emulator.

At this point we have already spent roughly two afternoons (but compared to Android, it was sometimes more difficult) and as the promo was almost over, we had to hurry. We sent Fungitron for approval and in couple of days it was approved without problems, which made our very own Playbook seemed to be closer.

And actually some 2 weeks passed by, and we were then testing Fungitron on a real Playbook, which was not flickering, but produced a very stable look of our app. Download issue also solved itself and never occurred again in real. There was only one minor issue, that AppLauncher (Android framework in Playbook) had a lower tray which sometimes overlapped some of our icons in the gallery. It was fixed in no time, otherwise the app works perfectly, the extras, such as gesture in gallery, tablet layout, etc. were all in place, performance is flawless.

Getting back to the full database meant that we are able to provide the same, uncrippled version of Fungitron on the AppWorld. We hope that Blackberry reached its goal with the give-away and gained several new developers with their straightforward and productive app conversion process, we are happy to release every new versions and builds for Playbook, too.

And we are now eagerly looking forward to the Android capability of BlackBerry 10 OS.

Download Fungitron for Playbook free from BlackBerry App World.

Trendstop Fashion TrendTracker Premium Fashion App for BlackBerry

2012-05-16T18:53:12Z

Trendstop.com is the world’s leading online fashion trend forecasting and analytics service. They’ve done work with lots of fashion retailers and designers such as ASOS, H&M, Next, Marks & Spencer, Forever21, Bebe and Target. Essentially they’ll be able to tell you which styles are emerging, and which ones are loosing steam as well as lots of content from fashion show around the globe.

What’s the skinny on skinny jeans? The Trendstop BlackBerry app boasts lots of features:

Daily Fashion Trends highlighting emerging fashion trends and styling ideas from our global team of trend hunters spotted on the runways and in street style.
Daily Fashion News Features tracking what’s cool, up-and-coming designers, must-go-to art events, exhibitions, launches, and one’s-to-watch.
Runway commentary, photo galleries, and videos from the Fall/Winter 2012-13 runway shows.
Share trends with friends via Facebook, Twitter or email directly from the app, or save to favorites for easy access later on.
Complete access to Trendstop.com’s most exclusive features.
20+ premium trends throughout the month.
10+ exclusive premium news stories throughout the month.
All looks from Fall/Winter 2012-2013 designer shows.
Trend-worthy influential Editor’s picks.
Full screen image showing more views of each featured news items and trends.

Try the free version of Trendstop Fashion TrendTracker for BlackBerry.

Buy the Premium edition of Trendstop Fashion TrendTracker for BlackBerry.

Herocraft Announces They Will Be Releasing Games on the BlackBerry Playbook

2012-05-16T18:14:25Z

Game developer Herocraft has announced that they will be developing a number of games for BlackBerry Playbook and BlackBerry 10 platform. Herocraft is a game developer headquartered in Kalinigrad Russia, they develop games for several platforms like Google Play and Nokia Ovi and BlackBerry.

Here are a few titles that Herocraft plans to bring to BlackBerry 10 and the Playbook:

Majesty-The Fantasy Kingdom Sim: A highly acclaimed adventure game series
Majesty-The Northern Expansion: Another adventure-filled chapter
Romance of Rome: An adventure game with lots of hidden objects
Scrubs: A game based on the hit ABC TV show
Farm Frenzy: A popular mobile farming sim
Montezuma: A hit puzzle game
Yumsters: An action-packed puzzle game
Red Ball: A physics based arcade game
Catch the Candy: An action Puzzle game
Gibbets 2: A skill shot game
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: An adventure game based on the book
Tiny Bang Story: A hand drawn game with an amazing soundtrack

Herocraft has about 100 employees and they distribute games in 15 languages. This game developer is a perfect match for the BlackBerry platform as they support a lot of regions and languages that BlackBerry already has a strong presence in.

For more info on Herocraft, visit their web site. If you want to check out their current BlackBerry App World offerings, click here.

ReadOnTouch PRO Upgraded to Version 2.0

2012-05-18T15:38:56Z

ReadOnTouch PRO (formerly Read It Later) is an offline reader by Sven Ziegler for the BlackBerry Playbook. Ideal for reading whenever you find yourself in a spot that doesn’t have connectivity, it supports images and formats the articles for clear reading on the Playbook.

With ReadOnTouch PRO you have all saved content neatly arranged for later reading on your BlackBerry PlayBook. Simple in use the app fits all saved web-content for a pleasant connection-free reading experience.

New in this update is a tweak on some of the touch UI and improvements to the process of adding links by checking to see if there’s a link that you’ve copied.

Buy ReadOnTouch PRO 2.0 for Playbook for $1.99 from BlackBerry App World.

BlackBerry 10 Jam Videos From BlackBerry World 2012

2012-05-15T20:34:55Z

RIM has posted their BlackBerry 10 Jam videos from BBW2012. I think giving developers nearly a full 2 years head start before launching on smartphones is a sound strategy for the platform to launch with a critical mass of apps.

Lots of BlackBerry 10 Jam videos after the jump.

Here’s what the industry darlings have cooked up on the new platform:

Magmic: Texas Hold ‘em King Live

SAP Labs

Macadamian

Poynt

Cascades Demo

Wikitude

Marmalade: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Xtreme Labs

The developer focus was more than apparent at BlackBerry World 2012, I’ll be keeping a close eye on what’s being developed for Playbook over the next few months as we anticipate the launch of BlackBerry 10.