Yelp for BlackBerry updated to v2.0

Hey BlackBerry Yelpers, you will be happy to hear that the Yelp app for BlackBerry just got a huge overhaul bringing more features and functionality. The design has been updated, but that’s not all. Now you can sign in to your Yelp account, draft a review, add quick tips, take and upload photos, and check in to businesses. This is all in addition to the already existing features.

• Search for businesses near you
• Select quick links to find nearby bars, restaurants, cafes and more
• Narrow your searches by price and what s open now
• Browse reviews to read what s great  and not so great  in your city
• Look up addresses and phone numbers for thousands of businesses, then call or map them from your BlackBerry

Yelp is a free app and available for all BlackBerry smartphones. Check it out today, but don’t be surprised if you start yelping.

For more information/screenshots and to download Yelp for BlackBerry[qrcode pix=180]http://nhcbba.com/downloads/Yelp_for_BlackBerry[/qrcode]

Simple, simple way to install bar file applications on your Playbook without AppWorld

So, since AppWorld is taking forever to get applications built, and there are members of the community here that are developers of applications we would like to try out! An example is Searching for Humans, they provided a bar file for people to download so they can try their application before it hits AppWorld.

Problem is, most people don’t have the desire to install the entire SDK just to push an application to their PB. I decided to take out just the files needed to push a signed bar file to a development mode enabled PB. Also, I created a batch file to make the install process simple and easy from within Windows. (Shouldn’t need to drop to a command line to use it) This won’t let you load up development / debug bar files, only files signed by the developer will load through this tool.

Here’s what you need to do –

Set a password on your Playbook and turn development mode on. (Options -> Security)

You’ll want to make sure you have the latest Java Runtime Environment installed on your machine. Right now they’re at version 1.6 update 25, and you can download the latest for your system here: Java SE JRE 6u25 Download

And finally download the zip file provided below that has the needed libraries to load the application to your tablet, and a batch file to simplify the installation procedure.

Open the batch file (PB-Instaler.bat) in notepad and edit the lines “TABLETIP” and “TABLETPASS” up at the top to match the hostname or IP address and password on your playbook. (At homescreen press the person icon with the gear in their shirt at the top to get your current IP address) Save the file when you’re done.

Now all you have to do is drag a bar file onto the PB-Installer.bat icon. It will launch in a window and start attempting to push it to your device.

I’ve included my free app from app world, SimpleBrowser, with this zip file.
You can use this file to test the loading process listed below.

Let me know if you try this and how it works for you!

Download PlayBook_Tools.zip

EDIT:
Small change, included instructions in the ZIP file to make life a little easier for some people. Also included my free application, SimpleBrowser with the ZIP file so you have a file to test with right away. Changed the previous post to reflect the bar file being included. The forum software doesn’t seem to like a ZIP file with a BAR inside of it so I’ve made it a link instead of an attachment.

via: cb

Poynt User Base Growing Tremendously But at What Cost?

 

Poynt is easily one of the best BlackBerry apps ever built and we love writing about it. What we also love about Poynt is that it’s a public corporation so their financials are available to anyone who cares to do a little digging. The mobile industry is hot right now and Poynt serves as an interesting case study about what it takes to grow a large mobile company and how profitable a free app with purely advertising-based revenues can be.

Today marks a pretty big news day for Poynt as the app/company has surpassed more than 8.5 million unique users at the end of June 2011 across North America, Western Europe and Australia, after reaching 3.2 million at the end of June 2010. Of the over 700,000+ new users added in June 2011, 500,000+ were on the Android platform. Existing preloads contributed to over 300,000+ of these Android users in the month of June. So far in July, the average number of new daily users added has exceeded 25,000, putting the Company on track for another record month. Currently, Poynt has over 9.0 million unique users.

Here are the numbers Poynt would like us to focus on:

The last financials posted on Poynt’s site were the Q3 2010 Financial Statements. We should be seeing new filings coming soon but we can see the sort of cost it takes to get to almost 10 million users and the revenue one might expect.

Obviously as Poynt grows its user base, it’s also growing as a company. Traditionally, mobile companies are pretty lean but Poynt seems to be fairly heavy in terms of management and operating costs. Salary and consulting fees increased by $619,702 or 132% in 2010 compared to the same period in 2009. Another area where Poynt differs from a typical mobile company is in advertising. Most app companies will rely on the app stores and manufacturers for promotion, with some blog and inexpensive community outreach. Poynt on the other hand, has advertising and promotion expenses that increased by $692,932 (789%). Overall, a company like Poynt is cash intensive to operate. For the three months ended September 30, 2010, the Company used $1,388,590 (2009 – $2,594,534) cash in operating activities.

Revenue for Poynt has increased but it doesn’t come close to covering their expenses. Sales and licensing revenues for the nine months ended September 30, 2010 increased by 172% to $605,092 from $222,760 for the same period in 2009.

It should be interesting to see what the latest financials for Poynt bring but it would be surprising if revenues ever come close to covering expenses. Perhaps the lean, startup-style mobile company is the only way to truly be profitable in this industry.

via: bbcool

Latest OS Breakdown Shows 5.0+ Constitutes 68% of All BlackBerrys in Circulation

This breakdown by Eric at Ebscer shows OS 5.0+ makes up for 90% of purchasesRIM has released the latest App World OS breakdown numbers with the latest data from May. According to their numbers, OS 5.0 and 6.0 make up 68% of all BlackBerrys in the market. Some other interesting facts include the fact that 31% of free app downloads come from an OS 6.0 BlackBerry. Again, OS 5.0+ dominates and 88% of free app downloads in App World originate from them. OS 6.0 accounts for 54% of all paid app downloads, so it should be obvious to any developer that OS 6 support is a must.

Head over to the DevBlog to see the official numbers.

BlackBerry QWERTY Password Screen Trumps iPhone’s 10 Digits

An iOS developer, Daniel Amitay, recently released iPhone passcode data revealed by his Big Brother Camera Security application. The free app uses code to record common user passcodes, and because the BBCS app’s passcode screen is identical to the iPhone passcode screen, it’s highly possible users will enter the same passcode for both. What he found was that the vast majority of users used very simple passcodes such as “1234″, “0000″ and “1111″. All told, Amitay discovered that 15% of the over 200,000 passcodes captured by his app were represented by just ten different passcodes. Therefore, anyone who steals an iPhone, has a 15% chance of breaking into it with just 10 password tries.

Now compare this to the BlackBerry and it’s full QWERTY keyboard passwords. The possible permutations of passcodes that you could come up with are so vast it’s not even worth trying. Now, there are still some out there who will use basic passwords such as “BNM$ ENTER” because it’s fast to use, but for the most part BlackBerry passwords are probably pretty diverse. Even the way the keyboard is designed means you probably won’t use “1234″ as your password because it’s not as easy to remember when surrounded by letters and symbols. What’s probably more common on a BlackBerry is a name or simple word such as “password”. Still, we’re happy to be using a device that at least gives you the option for a complex and secure password. Four digit passwords are simple to break simply by their nature of only being 4 digits.

via:bbcool

Readers Ask: What are the differences between SmrtGuard and BlackBerry Protect?

Going back to March 2009 when NHCBBA first announced the public beta, SmrtGuard immediately become a popular choice among BlackBerry BIS users for its ability to backup device data remotely, and via a web dashboard, allow users to login and execute a number of actions, such as locating a lost BlackBerry. Since its launch, SmrtGuard has continued to roll out a number of new value-added features, offering the basics for free and premium features for a price.

Prediction: Eventually All Applications Will be Free

The app economy is growing at a pretty tremendous rate and one of the major innovations in the space is in-app purchasing. With in-app purchasing, users are downloading the apps for free, and purchasing upgrades or new features to the app. There’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with in-app purchasing like buy new levels in a game, buy virtual currencies or credits, or upgrade the app in a free-trial sense.

With in-app purchasing, developers will see far more downloads because there is no barrier to entry. With a free app, users can download the app and see whether it’s worth purchasing. Since there are far more opportunities to monetize the app, and users can choose what they want to pay for rather than put the money upfront, there will be more money spent and more satisfied users. We’re seeing a lot of growth with in-app purchases and my prediction is that this strategy is so successful, we’ll soon see the end of paid apps entirely.

The first to implement in-app purchasing was Apple. Apple enabled in-app purchases as far back as October 15th, 2009 and effective for free apps June 17th, 2009. The main difference between the way Apple and other companies implemented this system is that Apple is a closed ecosystem where other app stores leave a few payment options. Apple forces the user to use their Apple ID to pay which streamlines the process to some degree but in the end we know an open system will prevail globally where many different types of payment options are preferred.

RIM followed a couple years later and on January 17th, 2011, RIM announced their BlackBerry Payment Service SDK in beta. The payment service allowed developers to sell digital content, additional functionality and digital services to the end user from within the app. The service is still a little lacking in that developers can’t sell virtual currencies or in-app credits which are pretty crucial to the whole experience. This was the same when Apple launched their in-app system and it seems like it just takes some cleaning up of old policies and practices. We’ve asked about this and the reason RIM can’t sell in-app credits or virtual currencies is an accounting issue they need to rectify. It’s also probably tied to RIM legal which is an incredibly inflated department at RIM (thanks NTP).

The last of the three major platforms to implement in-app purchases is Google, who just a few days ago announced they had implemented. On the 29th of March, Google announced the Android Market In-app Billing to developers and users. As an Android developer, they can now publish apps that use In-app Billing and their users can make purchases from within apps. This will definitely help those apps that are free find new and interesting ways to make money on their apps.

Companies that have yet to implement in-app purchases are the affiliate and third party networks like Mobihand. For some reason Mobihand is trailing behind the rest when usually the small company has been able to lead in terms of what it can offer developers. Whether it’s a legal, accounting or technology issue, affiliate networks are going to have to figure out how to implement in-app billing or be dead in the water.

While Apple, RIM and Google have all implemented in-app purchasing, the effect so far has been prices dropping with revenues increasing. Here is a roundup of data collected by the people at Distimo that points to in-app purchases and free apps becoming increasingly prevalent.

This graph shows prices in Apple’s App Store dropping between December 2009 and February 2010 dropping in every region.

Apple app revenue share generated by in-app purchases has steadily increased over the course of 2010. The revenue generated by in-app purchases from the highest grossing free apps more than doubled for the iPhone and iPad. Remco van den Elzen, co-founder of Distimo, said he believes in-app purchases now represent about 30 percent of all iPhone App Store revenue.
Other than on Android, Distimo shows that every single app store has a negative change in app prices. Android shows a single percentage point growth because for a while the store didn’t support paid apps in many regions including Canada. Also, many app companies were placing their apps in the store for free because they wanted to see growth but didn’t expect any revenue.

So what does the growth of in-app purchases and free applications mean for everyone? Well for developers it means more work but bigger payoffs. In-app payments takes a little more creativity and coding to implement but it also creates more ways in which the user can purchase from the developer and creates more points of monetization. From a user perspective, this means trying more apps and spending money only on the content you know you want and will be happy with. All of this will result in better end user experiences and more dollars generated. The only question is, how long until there isn’t a single paid application left, and app stores begin to assume your app is free and you’ll charge the consumer entirely with in-app purchases.

A Closer Look At NetQin Anti-Virus v4.0, Free Anti-Virus For BlackBerry

It’s not that it’s a necessity for Anti-Virus at this point on a BlackBerry. But NetQin is more than just anti-virus. I’ve been using it since launch and wanted to share with our readers my impressions of it. So what is NetQin and what makes it an app you’d want?

Follow the NCAA Men's tournament with ScoreMobile on your BlackBerry

While there aren’t any specialized apps for keeping up with the NCAA men’s tourney this year, you can certainly get all the latest scores and updates on your BlackBerry. Once again ScoreMobile comes through for BlackBerry users. The just updated free app provides up to the minute scores and tournament standings right on your device. You can check out schedules, rankings, injury updates, scores and much more. ScoreMobile can help you out on the go when that TV or PC is out of reach. In addition you can check out all ScoreMobile has to offer from the NBA, MLB and more. So don’t fret – even when you only have your BlackBerry ScoreMobile has you covered so you don’t have to miss a beat. Grab it free from BlackBerry App World.

More information/download of ScoreMobile for BlackBerry

 

via: CB

Urbanspoon gets an update – Now compatible with BlackBerry 6

Urbanspoon is a great website for people that enjoy eating out. You can check out restaurant reviews from food critics, bloggers, and everyday people. In 2009 Urbanspoon released a free app for BlackBerry to help people like me, who can never seem to decide where to eat. It’s a simple concept. First you enter the area you want to search for restaurants or let Urbanspoon use your GPS location. Once it finds that area, it presents you a slot machine type interface with 3 tumblers. The first is for the neighborhood or area, the second is the type of cuisine, and the third is cost. You can choose for any of these categories to be locked, for example if you ONLY want Japanese restaurants to show, you would highlight that option and then click the little lock below. After that you can click or shake your device (depending on what BlackBerry you have, of course) and the tumblers spin. The application randomly chooses an area, cuisine and price range for you look at. If you click on the name of the chosen restaurant you can get details such as contact info, maps, and you can even open up the mobile version of the website which will take you directly to the reviews and information for that restaurant.

It’s a fun app that can help you make some very important decisions like what to have for lunch Tuesday or where to take that blind date your friend hooked you up with. Best of all, it’s FREE and there is a version for all devices running OS 4.2.1 or higher, and was recently updated to include devices on BB6. Urbanspoon is supported in Canada and the US as well as Australia and the UK. Pick it up today at the link below!

For more information and to download Urbanspoon from BlackBerry App World

 

Source: CB