Guardly Personal Safety App Coming to BlackBerry Next Week

Guardly CEO Josh Sookman demos the app for iPhone.Guardly will be launching its mobile personal safety app for BlackBerry next week. The app turns a BlackBerry into a next-generation mobile personal safety service and has been available for iPhone since April. The app is geared towards students, young professionals, travelers, seniors living alone, or anyone who frequently walks alone at night, and people who may find themselves in abusive relationships or faced with medical conditions. Friends and family can also use Guardly to watch over each other during natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, floods and tornadoes.

The app provides 1-tap connection to a trusted safety network via conference call, email, text message, the web and real-time location tracking. Guardly can even auto-dial 911, campus security or other first responders as part of the alert. The app includes a free basic alerting service and a premium version that includes powerful collaboration features.

Interestingly, the founder and CEO, Josh Sookman, is ex-BlackBerry Partners Fund so he clearly knows how to raise money for the startup.

Stay tuned to guardly.com for the app announcement.

via: bbcool

Students in Waterloo declare war against Android

Looks like Kevin’s timing for a trip to Waterloo couldn’t have been better. Aside from attending Research in Motion’s annual shareholder’s conference, Kevin is walking right into rallies today and Tuesday put on by students from the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University. Their cause? “to galvanize Waterloo as a community to fight Android.” and take Android down from the inside:

It’s WAR! RIM and Waterloo are under attack by Android. You can counterattack. Help build an ad directory that will destroy the Google ad model, which funds Android.

They’ve even gone ahead and set up a website for the figh — rather, mission control at FightAndroid.org. We here at CrackBerry certainly support their efforts so we’re going to see if we can send Kevin on over to one of the rallies to find out more since it seems a little misguided. He has a long standing history of attacking Android but only when it’s good cause.

Source: Android Central

New BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing Beta Download Available in Beta Zone

All organizations and people that use the BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing App will be happy to know there’s an update available in the BlackBerry Beta Zone.

For those of you unfamiliar with the app this is directly from the BlackBerry Beta Zone site:

What is BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing?BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing is an application that provides users the ability to easily join hosted audio conferences with convenient reminders and a “Join Now” button to enter the conference with minimal input. If the call is dropped, it offers to join the conference again. It stores conferencing profiles so frequently-used conference numbers and access codes can be easily included when setting up a meeting.

While most of us might not to make us of this app, it is still another solid update to a great lineup of native BlackBerry apps.

• Download the BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing App in the Beta Zone.

Introducing the BlackBerry Resource Center

This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mike of our Communication & Collaboration Services group to discuss the new BlackBerry® Resource Center and all that it has to offer. Check it out below!

Can you give me some background on yourself and your role at Research In Motion® (RIM®)?

Press Release: Research In Motion Reports First Quarter Fiscal 2012 Results and Revises Full Year Guidance

Here are the numbers!

 

Press Release

Research In Motion Reports First Quarter Fiscal 2012 Results and Revises Full Year Guidance

Announces Plans to Streamline Operations and Accelerate New Product Introductions

Board of Directors Approves Share Repurchase Program

WATERLOO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – June 16, 2011) – Research In Motion Limited (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM), a world leader in the mobile communications market, today reported first quarter results for the three months ended May 28, 2011 (all figures in U.S. dollars and U.S. GAAP).

Highlights:

• Revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 grew 16% over the same quarter last year
• International revenue1 in Q1 grew 67% year over year
• Gross margin in the quarter was approximately 44%, slightly higher than expected due to product mix
• RIM launched the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in North America and shipped approximately 500,000 units in the first quarter

Q1 Fiscal 2012 Results:

RIM Says 4G PlayBooks Delayed Until Fall, BB7 Devices to Miss Back To School Specials

Today RIM announced their Q1 earnings where they addressed some issues and their plans for the future. I had the chance to listen in and took a few notes and below is some of what I remember from it.  Some things said were not much of a surprise to everyone is that RIM is having a tough time with their transition from their old software system to the QNX system to power what they are now calling QNX Super Phones.  Both Co-CEO’s were present during the earnings call which is a bit out of normal for them and they both also answer questions during the Q&A session.

Some of the key points from the call include:

• A head count reduction – most likely this will translate into lay offs and possibly restructuring within the company.The two Co CEO’s said this was not the case but they did not seem to have good words to explain the announcement.
• RIM shipped an estimated 500,000 BlackBerry PlayBook’s
• RIM encountered problems with the new OS7 during the certification process which caused delays
• BlackBerry 7 and device launch will see a better world wide launch consitency
• 4G PlayBook is delayed until fall
• BB7 devices will miss back to school specials
• QNX is the future platform for RIM- meaning the OS for the next generation of high end devices is on the transition stage and they are making progress on it which is being developed based on the same platform of the PlayBook tablet OS.
• The company has grown fast and the job of Co-CEO’s has increased in demand especially managing the acquisitions.

RIM’s guidance for the future looks a bit cloudy, with expected earnings of  $4.2 – $4.8 billion in revenues, with earnings per share dropping to $0.75 – $1.05 . If you like to listen to the call yourself there will be a replay of the conference call will also be available at approximately 7 pm by dialing (+1)416-640-1917 and entering passcode 4445546#. This replay will be available until midnight ET June 30, 2011.

via:bbr

RIM to Announce “PlayBook Results” Tomorrow With Financials

Tomorrow RIM is going to be announcing their financials for the first quarter of fiscal 2012. There is much speculation on exactly how many BlackBerry PlayBooks RIM has moved since the launch in April. While RIM has not come out and specifically said they will announce the sales numbers for the PlayBook tomorrow but they have committed to “provide a business update on BlackBerry PlayBook results on June 16th.”

So I thought we could have a little fun with it before RIM makes it official. How many BlackBerry PlayBooks do you think RIM has sold? A Bazillion? Eleventeen? a hundred thousand? Brownie points if you give a good rationalization/reason for your vote! As I said before I hope Balsillie can announce somewhere near 400/500 thousand devices moved.

If you want to listen in to the conference call you can on the 16th starting at 5pm ET. Details…

Research In Motion Limited will be reporting results for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 on June 16, 2011 after the close of the market. A conference call and live webcast will be held beginning at 5 pm ET, which can be accessed by dialing 1-800-814-4859 or by logging on at www.rim.com/investors/events/index.shtml. A replay of the conference call will also be available at approximately 7 pm by dialing (+1)416-640-1917 and entering passcode 4445546#. This replay will be available until midnight ET June 30, 2011.

via:bbr

RIM is Also Collecting Location of Its Users’ BlackBerrys But Doing it Right

At the Where 2.0 conference it was announced that Apple was secretly collecting the location of every iPhone and weren’t telling users. This led to a Senate hearing of Apple and Google execs who had to explain themselves and answer to why they are collecting the data without the user’s knowledge. Recently, SmrtGuard decided to do some digging around to see if RIM collects this same data for a BlackBerry, and yes they do. The difference is that RIM does it in a very transparent way that users can opt out of, which is exactly how Apple and Google should have done it.

Many of you have noticed this option but in case you haven’t, go to Options > Device > Location Settings and scroll down a little. There, you’ll see the Enable GPS option with a message that says: “Anonymously collects data to improve the speed and accuracy of future location services.” The intent is pretty clear and RIM is building a database of location data in order to be able to improve their software. RIM is explicit that the data is anonymous and give the user the ability to disable. Again, if Apple and Google had been this open about their location data collection, it probably wouldn’t have turned into such a debacle.

Read more over at SmrtGuard’s Resource Center where they’ll have regular content in the mobile security space.

via:bbcool

Research In Motion just got out-fruited

Look, people that know me know that I’ve been a BlackBerry fan from the beginning. The entire reason BGR was started was because I was breaking information on upcoming BlackBerry devices, mainly because I was obsessed with RIM and wanted to share that information. As we’ve all seen, however, RIM isn’t the market leader any longer. The company really isn’t innovating, and even worse, it’s not even competing with the titans of the smartphone space now: Google and Apple. All three companies have different product strategies, with Google and RIM being the most similar — they view devices as products, and features as check lists. Apple views devices as windows, and features as end-to-end experiences. Hit the break for the rest.

The real problem with RIM is that it hasn’t innovated for years. In that time, RIM’s entire product portfolio has been arguably lackluster, reduced to meaningless hardware upgrades and meaningless software upgrades. The company has tried to right its path by transitioning to QNX, an OS it purchased that will not only run the company’s tablets but smartphones as well in the next year to two. And the PlayBook by itself isn’t a bad product — but compared to the iPad, it’s a non-starter. RIM’s BlackBerry OS 7 (also known as BlackBerry OS 6.1, also known as the same OS as BlackBerry 6, also known as the same OS as BlackBerry OS 5, also known as the same OS as BlackBerry 4.7, also known as the same OS as BlackBerry 4.5, also known as the same OS as BlackBerry 4.3, also known as the same OS as BlackBerry 4.2, also known as the same OS as BlackBerry 4.0…) isn’t an overhaul, but just another stop-gap solution until QNX.

So the question now becomes: if a company that hasn’t shown any leadership in the smartphone space hasn’t caught up to where it needs to be today, then how will it ever catch up? As it stands, RIM offers decent hardware with borderline-terrible software. In the future, judging from the PlayBook, RIM will offer decent hardware with mediocre software.

A high-level source at RIM told me that co-CEO Mike Lazaridis’ biggest fear was Apple creating a BlackBerry Messenger competitor. Today, Apple introduced iMessage, an app and service that not only looks better than BlackBerry Messenger, but probably works better as well. RIM’s push email and corporate integration pitch is losing steam, and the company pretty much just got out-fruited. We exclusively reported the company was planning on launching an Android and then iPhone BlackBerry Messenger app, but that was supposed to be at least 3-4 months out for Android, and possibly a year for iOS.

I’m sad. Sad because RIM doesn’t get it — and I’m not sure it ever will get it — and sad because RIM had the opportunity to once again be that innovator that it was in the past. It’s still possible… but with each day, each press conference, and each product introduction from elsewhere in the tech community, that chance looks smaller and smaller.

You know what was the other thing Mike Lazaridis is scared of most from Apple? A hardware keyboard on an iPhone. Shit.

 

BGR

RIM Launches BlackBerry Conferencing App

RIM let us know that they launched the BlackBerry conference app that has been on the BlackBerry Beta Zone available only to a select testers but now is available through app world. The application makes conference calls on your BlackBerry much easier.

App Description

Conference calls on a BlackBerry® just got easier.

BlackBerry® Mobile Conferencing application is designed to work with your existing conferencing system to make scheduling, joining and rejoining conference calls from your BlackBerry® smartphone quick and easy from almost anywhere. BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing is conveniently integrated into the native BlackBerry® Calendar application, allowing you to:

• Join Now – when it’s time for a conference call to begin, the reminder notification will allow you to join the call without having to remember or dial lengthy telephone or access numbers. Join anytime from the calendar appointment.
• Reconnect – it’s just one click to rejoin if you are disconnected from the call.
• Easy Scheduling – store your personal conference bridge details in the Calendar to easily schedule conference calls. Your host code is hidden so participants only see the information they need to join.

It may take a while for it to show for everyone but you can check and download through app world at this Link

You can find the full press release here.

More details about the app can be found here.

 

via: RIM and BBR