For BlackBerry loyalists, there is one feature that keeps them hooked to the device: BBM. It has long been the most popular BlackBerry feature, for obvious reasons. I’ve even had friends yell at me for text messaging them instead of BBMing. That’s how passionate users have become. RIM picked up on this idea recently and has worked to make BBM an even more comprehensive social tool. We saw the start of this with BBM 6, and now we’re starting to see it really take hold with BBM v6.0.1. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, or you haven’t had a chance to explore, here’s what you’ll find inside.
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Only a luddite doesn’t know that the state of mobile messaging has changed dramatically in the past few years. In the early 00s, during BlackBerry’s rise to dominance, email was the dominant form of mobile messaging. But the BlackBerry added something to that in the form of an instant messenger, BBM. Sure, IMers were huge, but they were mostly for kids swapping messages on AIM. Since then we’ve seen text messages step in for emails in many instance, and even more recently instant messages have gone totally mobile. Each new BlackBerry comes with a suite of instant messaging apps, but handling those accounts can become a cumbersome process. There are a few all-in-one messengers, but if you don’t have one, or don’t like the current crop, I’d recommend checking out imo.
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I’d like to say the hype has finally come to fruition, but we’re still not over the hype period yet. Yes, RIM officially released BBM 6.0, which includes social integration for many apps. Plenty of apps are compatible right out of the box, as you can see above with Backgammon King. Not only can you connect with friends to play the game, but you can invite your BBM contacts to download the game themselves (obviously, allowing you to play them). Chatting within the app is another great feature. There’s plenty more you can do with it, but there’s still plenty of room for the platform to grow.
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Remember all the hoopla last year over the instant messaging app Kik? The company spent plenty of time promoting the app, going so far as to call it a cross-platform BBM replacement. I though that was a bunch of hogwash at the time, and apparently so did RIM. They removed Kik from App World and then sued the company. I haven’t heard much about Kik lately, and personally know no one who actually uses it. That leaves us looking for the next big cross-platform IMing app. I did come across one such app, called mChat, but it certainly isn’t the next big thing. But it does provide plenty of features, including Facebook chat, that will entice BlackBerry and iPhone users alike.
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I’m willing to be that if you polled BlackBerry users on their favorite function, the predominant answer would be BBM. I know plenty of people who want to switch to Android or iPhone, but can’t live without their expansive BBM contact lists. RIM has constantly improved BBM, too, giving us new features and more intuitive ways to instant message. Yesterday we got another BBM innovation, though this one does not come from RIM. It’s from Fixmo, and it allows you to access your BBM while you’re at your desktop. In other words, it turns BBM into AIM, GTalk, and other popular instant messaging platforms.
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Earlier this year we saw videos and screen shots from BlackBerry Messenger 6.0. The app eventually leaked, so many of the super geeks among us already have a version of it running. This week RIM put it up for everyone, via the Beta Zone. Here’s what they’re listing as the new features in the new BBM:
- Updated BBM branding
- More “snappy” and responsive feel
- Visual distinction of message drafts vs. sent messages
- Any alerts set for SMS contacts are now preserved in BBM once an SMS contact is integrated with BBM
- Invite a Text Messaging Contact — it’s now easier to search contacts
- Location Search — you can now search for a location before sending, similar to the Location Search experience via SMS
- Location Sending — you can now detect your location with cell tower triangulation or GPS
- Appointment Sending — sending appointment or calendar events is now a similar experience to that of sending an appointment via SMS
To sign up, just head to blackberry.com/beta and log into your account. If you don’t have one, you can create one for free. Everyone is eligible to try this one, so you just need to select it from the right sidebar, accept the terms of service, and then navigate to the download link from your BlackBerry device.
I gotta hand it to AHazDesigns. Every day I flip through the new apps in the BBGeeks Store, and every day I see duplicates. This isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes the second app of a certain type is better than the original. But only AHazDesigns lets you know it right in the app name. Last month we looked at Chat on Facebook, which does what the name implies. The duplicate app is called Improved Chat for Facebook. Clever, eh?
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When you buy a new BlackBerry you get a host of instant messaging clients pre-installed. These include Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, and AIM. These, along with BBM, provide you with nearly all the communications tools you need. In the past few years another instant messaging platform has risen to prominence: Facebook Chat. Yet I have yet to see a freely available BlackBerry client for this service. In our store there are a couple of paid options, and today we’ll look at one of the better, and cheaper, apps.
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No matter how carefully you use your email address, they will find you. Spammers are everywhere, and they’re waiting for you to expose your email address so that they can tell you you’ve won the Swiss Lotto. Or to sell you Viagra. Chances are that unless you use an email service that actively filters spam, you see many of these messages daily. While they’re obnoxious on a desktop email client, they’re doubly so on a BlackBerry. Setting up some type of a spam filter is something of a necessity.
Read the rest of Rid your BlackBerry of spam with Antair Spam Filter Live…
