Posts Tagged ‘Sd Card’

Review: Audible For BlackBerry

March 12th, 2010 BBerryNews

Audible for BlackBerry

In 2001, faced with a 70-100 minute commute to work each way, every single day, I figured I needed to do something to make that time worthwhile. Remembering back to an account that I was given to test the usability of Audible audiobooks on the Compaq iPaq, I renewed the account, joined the Platinum Listener Club at Audible.com and have never looked back.

I was just a little bit shocked last night to see that I have 588 purchased books in my account all these years later. And no, I have not yet listened to them all, but between my wife and I, we have. This retrospect came about because my wife carries a Blackberry Tour 9630, and is trying to figure out ways to un-complicate her life, and not having to carry an iPod for Audible content would really help. In fact, I am in the same sort of situation myself, because there is not yet an application that allows me to listen to Audible content on the Android platform. It’s coming, and soon, I believe, but not yet.

Blackberry Support

While support for Windows Mobile and iPod/iPhone/Touch has existed forever, support for the Blackberry platform has not. It was released in 2009, while I was still carrying the Blackberry Storm. Invited to beta test the solution and then after initial release, I was not impress. The app was buggy, inconsistent, and unreliable. It was essentially impossible to download audiobooks directly to the device (remember the Storm has no Wi-Fi), and even when you got them on the SD Card, the player was prone to jump, skip, and forget where you were, if you stopped and came back later. In essence, unusable.

Trying It Out

It was with some trepidation that I went to www.audible.com/bb on the Tour and downloaded version 1.45 of the Audible Player for Blackberry. It loaded quickly, and in just a moment, I was able to enter in my user name and password. A little bit of clock spinning, and I was presented with a screen offering access to my Online Library or the Online Store. Checking out my Online Library, I was very please to note that all 588 books appears (in groups of 25, I believe) and I was offered the ability to sort by date, by title, or to just search. One of the things I detested about the previous version is that it always came up sorted by oldest purchase first, which is backwards for how we read books. The new version correctly sort for newest first. So far, so good.

Downloading

The Blackberry Tour 9630 also lacks Wi-Fi support. In the previous version, it was impossible to actually download a audiobook OTA. This isn’t so surprising, since using the Audible Format 4 (the level supported on the Blackberry platform and the one I prefer), each part of an audiobook will be between 80-120MB in size and in a large unabridged book, it is not uncommon to see 4 or 5 parts to an entire book. All that being said, it was supposed to be possible. I think it is a waste of bandwidth, as I prefer to just move the audiobooks to the device using USB, but I can imagine myself purchasing a new audiobook and wanting to get it immediately. To test it out, I downloaded the two parts of a recent audiobook purchase OTA (a total of 185MB in two files) and while it did take about 10 minutes, they transferred without incident and were then immediately available to play locally. I will also note that it is possible to stream a book direct from your personal Library at Audible.com, without downloading locally, and the player will also remember where you left off. That’s a nice feature, but a little hard to use on an airplane.

Listening

After testing the player repeatedly, stopping, starting and changing books, I am very pleased that the previous issues with skipping, jumping, and losing the bookmark seem resolved. My wife especially likes the ability to listen to the audiobook without having to have headphones plugged in. The speaker on her Blackberry Tour was very capable of playing an audiobook at an acceptable level. The only real issue I see now is that the 8 GB MicroSD in the Tour is just not going to be enough. Happily, that is easy to resolve.

Support

There are actually quite a number of Blackberry devices now supported with the Audible for Blackberry application:

  • Bold™ Series: 9000, 9700
  • Curve™ Series: 8300, 8310, 8320, 8330, 8520, 8900>
  • Pearl™ Series: 8100, 8110, 8120, 8130
  • Pearl™ Flip Series: 8220
  • Storm™ Series: 9530, 9550
  • Tour™: 9630
  • 8800 Series: 8800, 8820, 8830

I have a renewed hope now that I will soon see an Audible for Android application, and frankly, I can hardly wait. I had decided to stop carrying my iPod Touch in anticipation of this happening, and frankly, the books are backing up. If you haven’t tried Audible before, give it a try. Audible.com is currently offering a free copy of Thomas Friedman’s excellent book ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded’ for new customers. I highly recommend it as a good place to start. Enjoy!

If you’d like to check Audible for BlackBerry out you can download it from http://audible.com/bb.

Review: Audible For BlackBerry is a post from: RIMarkable



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Remotely Secure Data with the Updated Free BuddyGuard Beta App

March 2nd, 2010 BBerryNews

BuddyGuard let us know that they have released their Beta 5 of their app. BuddyGuard allows you to remotely secure and wipe your device in the event of theft or loss.

The app feature set includes:

  • ALERT: Helps you find your misplaced phone by playing a loud tone, even if the phone is in silent or vibrate-only mode. In addition, it secures your phone by locking it and displaying your contact information.
  • LOCK: Displays a screen contacting your contact information and locks your phone. BuddyGuard Will keep your BlackBerry locked until you enter your password, even if your phone is rebooted.
  • LOCATE: Finds your BlackBerry using it’s GPS and sends you a link to the mapped location of your device.
  • LIST: Sends you a listing of the data on your BlackBerry, which allows you verify what a Wipe will remove without actually deleting your data.
  • WIPE: Remotely wipes your personal data from your BlackBerry, preventing unauthorized persons from accessing it. Removes Calendar, Contacts, Emails, Phone Logs, Memos, Tasks and Files on your SD Card and in Device Memory.
  • HELP: Sends you a listing of the available commands via SMS or email. Useful when you’ve forgotten the set of supported commands.

Check out the free Beta of BuddyGuard in the BlackBerryCool Store.


Beta 2, v0.6.1.4:

  • Added the Locate command which will reply with a link to the mapped location of your BlackBerry (requires device GPS support).
  • Support sending command by email. message. BuddyGuard will detect the email, process the command and delete the email to ensure that no one can use it to discover your password.
  • The Alert volume is now louder and tone is more noticeable.
  • When using SMS to send messages, CDMA devices will now correctly send the response SMS. Previously in some cases the response SMS was failing.
  • Several bug fixes, including a fix for email addresses of the form first.lastname@company.com.

Beta 3, v7.0.3:

  • Uses your BuddyGuard password for the Lock command, enabling it to work even when no system password is set. Will display a screen with your contact information and a “Call Owner” button.
  • Alert will now lock your BlackBerry and display the same contact information screen as the Lock command.
  • The Wipe command has been enhanced to delete the files in Device Memory and on the SD Card.
  • A “Welcome” email is sent to first time users, with how-to-use instructions and the list of available commands.
  • More descriptive commands replies, including suggestions for other commands that may be relevant.
  • Various bug fixes.

Beta 4, v0.7.1.6:

  • Enhanced Alert sound to be more noticeable.
  • Fixed exception that occurred during the phone reboot.
  • Fixed Alert not playing on the 8330.
  • Allow using the email subject line to send commands.
  • Made the Locate command more reliable.
  • Fixed Lock screen not being displayed.

Beta 5, v0.7.2.0:

  • Enhanced Wipe command to delete entries for Calendar, MemoPad and Tasks.
  • User is prompted if a BIS account is used for the Notification email (not recommended).
  • Fixed “Send Us Feedback” menu item failure.
  • No longer send “invalid password” replies on device reboot.
  • Miscellaneous fixes.

These guys have clearly been hard at work so be sure to give the app a try and let us know what you think.

© Kyle for BlackBerry Cool, 2010



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Stress Test: How long can the BlackBerry Bold 9700 play music?

November 17th, 2009 BBerryNews

BlackBerry_bold_9700

UPDATE: It is 16:57 EST, a little more than 4 hours into it and we still haven’t gone through a full bar. Going to give it a while longer before another update.

UPDATE (14:26 EST): It has been 2 hours and we’re still running on full battery. This could take a long, long time.

So here’s the deal: The BlackBerry Bold 9700 has some battery optimizations that make it last so long it makes the Energizer Bunny look impotent. That, combined with some OS optimizations specifically tailored to the music player, means the Bold 9700 can play music for a long time.

But just how long can it play music on a single charge? Well I’m going to put this thing to the test. The test will involve 2 parts. The first part, will be playing music with the radio off and playing it directly from the SD Card. This will give us an idea of how long the battery will last, solely playing music without being interrupted by calls, emails and network searching. The second part of the experiment, will be playing the music from Slacker, to test the 9700’s ability to stream music while on the network. This will be an incredible strain on the battery but I have a feeling the Bold 9700 will surprise us.

So lets get started with Part 1 of How Long Will the Bold 9700 play music for?

Comment your predictions! Remember, the following conditions:

  • Radio is off.
  • Full battery charge.
  • Full volume with headphones.
  • No audio boost.
  • No headset equalizer.
  • Songs on continuous play so it won’t have any interruption.

© Kyle for BlackBerry Cool, 2009



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UberTwitter Beta 4 is now available to download!!

August 14th, 2009 BBerryNews

Details:

This release deepens support for Twitter features and takes further advantage of the capabilities available in your BlackBerry device and includes two important integrations with third party services; TwitVid for sending your Über videos embedded in tweets, and Bit.ly for shortening the links you might include in your tweets.

ubertwitterlogo

Below is the list of features and bug fixes that made it into this release. See Below for future additions.
* Multiple Accounts – You can now configure multiple accounts, each with their own set of on-device preferences.
* You can now BLOCK people!
* Video Integration – We have partnered with TwitVid.com to offer you an outstanding video integration.
* Goto user – You can now enter twitter users name and go directly to their timeline
* URL Shortening – we’ve integrated with bit.ly so you can easily send those long URLs now and not bump up against the 140 limit
* MUCH faster photo uploads, significantly improving the user experience.
* Use of the internal GPS is now solidly supported with proper fallback to cell tower based location when GPS isn’t available.
* Icon Caching If you have and SD card, we will cache avatar icons on the card, increasing the speed of timeline displays and reducing network traffic.
* You can now select pictures and videos that have already been take and are on your device. The interface shows the most recent at the top and offers a preview so you can verify it is the picture/video you expected!
* When composing a tweet you can now insert symbols from a large selection of commonly available characters such as smiley’s, hearts, etc.
* Integrated advertisements – Please note, the ads are there to support the freely distributable version of ÜberTwitter. Users that purchase ÜberTwitter will not have advertisement in their version.
* We’ve streamlined the friends and followers lists
* You can now see both the number of friends, followers, and tweets sent when viewing the details of a tweet.
* Replying to a DM from the timeline will now correctly send a DM and not a regular tweet
* Fixed the bug in reply all where it would truncate some twitter user names
* Added reply all to the menu when viewing a tweet

Being worked on for next release:
* Notification icons on the homescreen! We have heard you loud and clear, we will be adding this.
* Integration of a high functionality third-party photo service – We are VERY excited about this as we believe that it will bring an extremely rich photo sharing experience to our users.
* Integration into the BlackBerry browser such that URLs can be included directly in a tweet from the browser menu.
* Saved searches – integrate the new Twitter saved search API. Searches saved via the Twitter web site will be use able on ÜberTwitter and vice versa
* Twitter name menu – Type ‘@’ and a list of your friends automatically pops up allowing selection

To pick up UberTwitter Beta-4 go HERE!

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State of the Mobile Music Industry

June 29th, 2009 BBerryNews

Bonnie and Clyde Freestyle picture copyright of Tricia Gosingtian and Dae Lee

Bonnie and Clyde Freestyle picture copyright of Tricia Gosingtian and Dae Lee

It’s no secret that a slow response to the digital age has caused serious problems for the music industry in recent years. Sales have been in decline and most experts see no reason for that trend to slow. However, GigaOM recently covered a Juniper Research report in which mobile music had, “a larger piece of a shrinking pie.” Juniper identified mobile music as the bright spot in an otherwise dismal forecast for the music industry as a whole. Already a multi-billion dollar industry, mobile music is likely to grow at a substantial rate in the coming years as the technology that supports streaming and mobile downloads becomes more affordable and available.

Those of us who can’t live without our BlackBerry can’t help but notice that we are part of a growing community. BlackBerry manufacturer RIM reports that they shipped 7.8 million BlackBerry handsets between December 2008 and February 2009, bypassing Apples as the leading supplier of smartphones. As carrier deals, falling prices, and aggressive marketing have placed smartphone technology at virtually everyone’s fingertips, the expansion of 3G networks insures the reliability of the investment. Over the past year, carriers such as AT&T, Alltel, and T-Mobile greatly expanded their 3G networks and set the stage for the expansion of mobile music. Smartphone users accustomed to Internet music options have found themselves unshackled from their PC and application developers are seeking to meet their mobile needs.

Slacker.com’s radio app for BlackBerry allows users to listen to over 100 expert programmed radio stations or create a personalized station of their own. In addition to free streaming music, the application provides artist bios and album reviews as well. Best of all, Slacker’s app allows you to cache stations to your SD card for listening even when network reception intermittent. In March, the popular internet radio application Pandora released a BlackBerry version of the popular service. Just like Pandora for your computer, the Pandora for BlackBerry application allows you to create personal radio stations based on music preferences and uses its music genome data to feed you songs you might like as well. In addition to free streaming radio, the increased speed and storage capacity of smartphones has increased the number of mobile full-song downloads. Such downloads have undoubtedly contributed to the transfer of music sales profits to the mobile arena.

Perhaps the music industry’s best chance for an increase in overall revenue through the growth of mobile music can be found in ringtone and ringback sales. Unlike full-song mobile downloads, ringtones and ringback might complement traditional sales instead of replacing them.

Companies like SendMe Mobile and Mobicious have been getting an increasing amount of funding over the past two years. SendMe launched SoLow, an online sweepstakes site in July 2007 and acquired the online mobile community mbuzzy in October 2007. In 2008 SendMe Mobile expanding their ringtones catalog through licensing deals with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Both deals provided SendMe members with ringtone access to songs owned by both companies. Investors like the looks of the ringtone/ringback market and in March of this year SendMe announced the acquisition of an additional $12 million in growth capital financing.

The Massachusetts based startup Mobicious is also tapping into the ringtone and ringback market but has ambitions to become something larger. Mobicious allows users to create a ringtone by uploading an mp3 from their desktop and download a 20 second clip as a ringtone to their smartphone. Mobicious also caught the attention of venture capitalists to the tune of $5 million in funding and in 2008 was honored as one of the most innovative companies in the Northeast. Mobicious has set out to become the go-to portal for mobile content, and in addition to ringtones they provide over 400,000 items of free and premium content.

The music industry will undoubtedly continue the attempt to adjust to the digital and increasingly mobile world, and smartphone users can expect innovative applications designed to deliver the music they want, when and anywhere they want it.

© Caitlin Douglass for BlackBerry Cool, 2009


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