Personally, we’re fans of the text-only e-mails you get on your BlackBerry. It’s simple, it’s effective, and the load time is minimal. However, there is a new wave of non-business BlackBerry users, and we can understand their desire to want fancy-looking e-mails like they get on their computers. Mobylo understands this, too. That’s why they’ve released Empower, BlackBerry software that allows you to view your e-mails as HTML.
There are customizable features, like the family of fonts you use and whether you’d like smileys to appear as icons. Normal shortcut buttons still work.
The upside for everyone is having links built into the e-mails. The downside is long loading time — oh, and it costs money. Plus, there is a default signature attached to all outgoing e-mails that advertises Empower. We understand the viral marketing possibilities, but, uh, you should tell people when you’re adding a signature to their e-mails. You can, however, turn it off.
It’ll cost you $9.99, which we suppose is worth it if people e-mail you links all the time. However, as we said, this is definitely not designed for the business user.
