BB Geeks » BlackBerry Messaging

BBM v6.0.1 creates a robust BlackBerry social network

Joe — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:59:39 +0000

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.

As with old versions of BBM, it’s easy to communicate with your friends, relatives, and colleagues. You can chat, send files, and still do all the things that made BBM a top-notch messaging service in the first place. If you want to run down all the basic features of BBM, make sure to check out our ultimate guide to BBM.

When RIM released the new BBM, they put a focus on BBM-connected apps. There are two basic types of BBM-connected apps. The first allow you to play friends head-to-head. Already they have Battleship and Tic-Tac-Toe (which is really a test app, because who really wants to play tic-tac-toe?), and will have plenty more games that allow you to battle friends. While this feature is superb now, I can only imagine the ways it will expand on the BBX platform. It’s said to be primed for gaming, and you can be sure that those games will be BBM-connected.

The second type of BBM-connected app is one that lets you share content with your friends. Huffington Post is an excellent example. Find an article you like? You can share it with your friends within BBM. You can even share them with friends who haven’t yet upgraded to BBM 6, though they’ll have to upgrade in order to view what you’re sharing. It’s easy to imagine all the ways this can be come useful. Whether it’s an article, a screenshot, a movie listing, or a restaurant review, you can send it right to your BBM contacts.

RIM has gotten a lot of bad press lately, and last week was a testament to that. Whether it’s the delay of PlayBook OS 2.0 or a record number of trade-ins, things didn’t look too bright. Thankfully, they started off this week right with BBM 6.0.1. It’s the next generation of BBM, and it’s one of the best social networks out there. If you haven’t already, you can download BBM v6.0.1 here.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

BBM v6.0.1 creates a robust BlackBerry social network

imo brings together the world of instant messengers

Joe — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:30:09 +0000

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.

Back in the day there weren’t that many IM clients to choose from. Most of my real-life friends had AIM, while my message board cohorts appeared to favor ICQ. In either case, that was just two accounts to handle, and running both on my computer wasn’t that big a deal. But then along came MSN and Yahoo! Messengers. Somewhere along the lines Jabber came into play, as well as Google Talk. Later in the 00s social networking sites MySpace and Facebook added IM options. And there’s always Skype, which plenty of people I know use as their primary IM service. How is one to manage all of these apps and all of these accounts?

Again, your BlackBerry comes with a suite of IM apps, but from my experience they’re clunky and slow — I remember Google Talk as being downright unusable in late 2009, and I haven’t bothered to try it again since. An all-in-one app, then, could provide a better solution, especially for those who have accounts almost everywhere. Today at CrackBerry, Adam Zeis introduced us to imo, a new multi-IM app that is in beta. I gave it a quick download, and I’m pretty sold on its usefulness. The more IM accounts you have and use, the better it’s going to work for you.

Of course, the app is still in beta, so there will be some kinks to work out. Yet it still connects you to all of the major IM platforms: AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo, Skype, Facebook Chat, MySpace, Jabber, Hyves, and VKontakte. (Haven’t even heard of the last two.) Skype, by the way, is only for IMs, but there’s a chance that calls could come in a future, and official, version. Originally imo was conceived as a web-based messenger, so you can access your IM accounts from there, too. They even offer video chat as part of the free service.

There’s a chance that they could start charging for the app once it comes out of beta and becomes official — though on Android it is free. Still, it’s a nice opportunity to get in on the ground floor to what I’ve found, in my limited in-house testing, to be a very capable all-in-one IMer. You can get more information about imo at download imo OTA here.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

imo brings together the world of instant messengers

BBM 6.0 with social features officially available

Joe — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:30:41 +0000

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.

Once there is a more robust app marketplace, you’ll be able to discover new apps and games through your friends’ profiles. If they’re using something with BBM 6, you can give it a try, too. The only drawback is that there isn’t much developed for the platform right now. Inside BlackBerry has a list of 25 apps that are compatible, and only a few will stand out to the average BlackBerry user. That is, we don’t have a lot to work with at this very moment, though the available options — such as ScoreMobile, Poynt, and foursquare — are definitely of interest to many BlackBerry users.

And so, as with the PlayBook, we’ll have to wait for future developments to realize the full potential of the socialized BBM. Given the launch, it appears to be worth the wait. But as with any platform, it needs both the software and the users. So head to App World and download BBM 6.0, and start to spread the word. The platform is only as good as its users.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

BBM 6.0 with social features officially available

mChat brings Facebook chat and more to BlackBerry

Joe — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:30:53 +0000

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.

What makes mChat easy, and perhaps better than the competitors, is that you only need your Facebook login. That is, you don’t need to sign up for a brand new service. This takes one of your many existing accounts and uses that. After you download mChat you just enter in your Facebook login info, and then approve the permissions. You’ll then got o a screen that lists your contacts and their online/offline status, plus their latest status message.

From the app you can start a conversation with any of your friends. It works just like any IM application. Click on the name, type a message, and await a reply. When you return to the main screen you’ll see a list of your active conversations, making it easy to flip among many of them. You can also update your Facebook status right from the app. In that way it’s like a stripped down version of Facebook for BlackBerry. You don’t get your news feed, but you get to update your status and view the latest status of your friends. And, you know, chat with them.

My favorite part of mChat: it’s free, and there are no ads. You can find out more at mChat.com. If you want to download a copy, you can do so by pointing your BlackBerry browser to App World.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

mChat brings Facebook chat and more to BlackBerry

Access BBM from your desktop with Fixmo Web Messenger

Joe — Wed, 11 May 2011 13:28:33 +0000

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.

Here’s how it works. First, you install an app to your BlackBerry device. After you create an account on the device you head to Fixmo’s website, where you can log in and then access your BBM. You can keep that window open all day, coming back to chat with friends as you normally do on your BlackBerry. This is another way that office workers can get more out of their BlackBerry devices.

The service is currently in beta, and Fixmo does acknowledge that it has some issues to work through. For instance, it sometimes doesn’t work over WiFi, and the 3G connection can be slow. Still, it might be worth your while, so here’s how you can get it.

First, point your BlackBerry browser to http://fwm.fixmo.com:8080/WebMessenger.jad. You’ll get the whole download screen thing. Once you’ve installed, run it and create an account. Once you click Connect, you can go to http://www.fixmo.com/fwm and log into your account. Your BBM contact list should appear, ready for your instant messaging pleasures.

The only downside, as BerryReview notes, is that you’re sharing your BBM chats with Fixmo. Normally BBM is completely secure — no one can get to those conversations. So that’s one drawback. But if you’re just having innocuous conversations, it shouldn’t be much of an issue (unless you don’t like the idea on the principle of the matter). If you do give it a try, let us know in the comments what you think of it.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Access BBM from your desktop with Fixmo Web Messenger

BlackBerry Messenger 6.0 now available in Beta Zone

Joe — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:36:07 +0000

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.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

BlackBerry Messenger 6.0 now available in Beta Zone

Easy Smiley Pack gives you smilies for BBM

Joe — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:46:48 +0000

If you head to our store and look at the best selling apps, you’ll see one called Fancy Characters sitting at No. 3. We wrote about Fancy Characters last year, because so many people had asked us about inserting symbols and smileys into their BBM names and messages. It costs a buck ninety-nine, but it does bring a quick, easy way to get those symbols into your messages. We did document a free way to insert symbols into BBM, but some people considered that too much of a pain. Now there’s an app that combines freeness with an app, bringing you plenty of symbols for your BBM pleasure.

Via BerryReview I learned about an app called Easy Smiley Pack. The name pretty much says it all. As you can see in the screen shot to the right, when you want to insert an image you can select from the app’s library. It contains over 250 right now, and you can launch it right from BBM.

The drawback, as the screenshot shows, is that you don’t insert symbols by clicking on the symbol itself. Instead you click on a text description. This creates some trial and error situations, where you insert and delete a few characters before you finally get it right. Some people in the App World reviews have expressed a displeasure at this, and I understand. But it is free, and it does deliver as advertised. I find it tough to complain about free apps that perform tasks I’d otherwise have to pay for.

You’ll need BlackBerry 5.0 or 6.0. If you do, you can download Easy Smiley Pack from App World for free. If you’d rather pay for the easier interface, you can download the updated version of Fancy Characters for $1.99. Either way, you’ve got your BBM symbols covered.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Easy Smiley Pack gives you smilies for BBM

Chat on Facebook a bit cheaper with Improved Chat for Facebook

Joe — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:27:27 +0000

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?

The app functions as you’d expect any instant messaging app to. Log into Facebook, view your contacts list, and initiate chats. The app includes home screen notifications, both in the notifications area and on the icon itself. It even gets its own section in your profiles, so you can change the alerts from one place. In addition to chatting, you can also update your status right from the app.

As I’ve said before, one of these days we’ll get a free Facebook chat app. There is already Nimbuzz, which we’ll look at next week, but that’s not a perfect solution, either. I’d love to see RIM include a Facebook chat app with its instant messaging suite. I’m pretty sure it’s more widely used than, say, Yahoo! Messenger.

Until then, though, we’ll have to stick with apps. You can get Improved Chat for Facebook for just $1.99. That’s a bit cheaper than the original, if not a bit better.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Chat on Facebook a bit cheaper with Improved Chat for Facebook

Chat on Facebook on your BlackBerry with Chat on Facebook

Joe — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 14:25:08 +0000

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.

The main interface resembles BBM, which will make it more familiar to most BlackBerry users. From there it operates in the same manner as any other instant messaging client. Click on a friend to initiate a chat. Unless you sign out, the app will continue running in the background. The only feature I can see that goes above and beyond other instant messaging clients is that it has a dialog box to notify you when you receive a new chat.

Some day Facebook Chat will be free. For now, we’re stuck with paid clients. If you know of a free method that operates in a similarly user-friendly manner to Chat on Facebook, we’d love to hear it in the comments. Otherwise, you can get Chat on Facebook for $2.99. It works with BlackBerry OS versions 4.6 and above.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Chat on Facebook on your BlackBerry with Chat on Facebook

Rid your BlackBerry of spam with Antair Spam Filter Live

Joe — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:30:17 +0000

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.

It has been more than two years since we went over a way to filter spam using Gmail. This isn’t the most involved process, but it is a process nonetheless. You have to basically filter your email through a Gmail account, which filters spam pretty well. It’s not perfect by any means, but it does help keep those “Endeavor to use it for the children of God” emails off your BlackBerry. If you prefer, though, you can use an effective application to perform a similar function.

Antair Spam Filter is basically the BlackBerry standard for keeping spam away from your inbox. The messages still get delivered to your BlackBerry, but before they can make your LED blink Antair intercepts them. They then get stored in memory for a bit, so that you can check and make sure a real message didn’t get caught in the filter. Users also have the ability to set up whitelists and blacklists, which makes the filter even more effective.

Here’s an interesting feature: the filter can also block spoofed emails. You might notice these from time to time. They’re messages that appear to have been sent from your own email address. Apparently they can also come from email addresses in your contacts list, though I haven’t noticed that in my own email. They’re harmless, really — I know I didn’t send the email to myself — but it’s nice to have them filtered out.

The app, of course, isn’t free. Well, it is at first. You can get a free 30-day trial of Antair Spam Filter Live. That should give you an idea of how well the app works. After that, however, it costs $3.95 per month or $39.95 if you prepay for the year. Is that a worthy cost considering the free Gmail spam filter? That’s up to the individual user. As you can see, the first comment on the Gmail spam filter post actually advocates the more expensive, but simpler, Antair Spam Filter. If you are interested, it works with both BIS and BES devices, and is compatible with OS versions 4.2 and up.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Rid your BlackBerry of spam with Antair Spam Filter Live