BlackBerry PlayBook Bridge to be Opened Up to Developers!

Yes you read that right! Mike Kirkup, Director of Developer Relations at RIM, and Chris Smith, Senior Director for the BlackBerry Development Platform, confirmed at BlackBerry World this week that the BlackBerry PlayBook Bluetooth Bridge will be opened up to 3rd party developers. This will allow developers to pass information back and forth between BlackBerry Smartphones and the PlayBook. RIM will be opening up API’s to allow things like making a phone call or sending a link to the browser.

Mike and Chris took it a step further saying that they plan on even giving developers access to the Bluetooth stack to be able to create their own “bridge” interface for anything they can dream up. That means that apps like Tether might have a future on the BlackBerry PlayBook. It also means RIM plans on a tighter integration between the two devices even in third party apps without the limitations imposed in the current smartphone OS.

They didn’t mention a time frame but did mention that they will have a ton of surprises in store for DevCon this year!

via:bbr

RIM Announces BlackBerry Mobile Voice System 5 with Voice Over Wi-Fi Calling for Avaya and Legacy Nortel Communications Systems

Press Release

VoIP and SIP Compatible Platform Enables Integration with More In-Market and Legacy Phone Systems; Extends BlackBerry MVS to Unified Communications Application Development

Waterloo, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM, TSX: RIM) is helping more businesses bring together the desk phone and smartphone. RIM today announced plans to make BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System 5 (BlackBerry MVS 5) available to more corporate phone systems and unified communications applications. BlackBerry MVS 5 with voice over Wi-Fi® calling will soon be available for Avaya Aura® 6.1, Avaya CS1000 Communication Server, as well as legacy phone systems such as Avaya Communications Manager and Nortel Communication Server. It is also currently available for Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Call Manager Express, and Mitel Communications Director. BlackBerry MVS 5 has also been re-architected to be more extensible with third party applications and phone systems.

NORAD Tracks Santa for Christmas

NORAD Tracks Santa for Christmas By Courtesy of 21st Space Wing Public Affairs

Officials from the North American Aerospace Defense Command have begun tracking Santa Claus’ via their web site that went live Dec. 3, 2010.

U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Carlin Leslie

 

PETERSON AFB , Colo., Dec. 6, 2010 – For the 55th consecutive year, the men and women of the North American Aerospace Defense Command are preparing to track Santa. The NORAD Tracks Santa web site,www.noradsanta.org , went live Dec. 3 and features holiday games and activities that change daily.

The web site is available in seven languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese. The web site will stream videos, captured by NORAD “Santa Cams,” from cities along Santa’s journey Dec. 24.

This year, children are able to track Santa through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and TroopTube. To follow NORAD on these Santa-tracking tools, type in “@noradsanta” into the search engine to start your tracking.

Also, beginning at midnight MST Dec. 24, visitors to the website can watch Santa as he prepares his sleigh, checks his list, and goes through all of his preparations to ensure he has a successful journey.

As soon as Santa takes off from the North Pole, children can also track him with up-to-the-minute updates on Google Maps and Google Earth through the NORAD Tracks Santa web site.

Santa trackers will begin answering phones and replying to e-mail at 2 a.m. MST (4 a.m. EST) on Dec. 24 and will continue until 3:00 a.m. MST (5 a.m. EST) Dec. 25. Children of all ages can then call the NTS toll-free number 1-877-Hi-NORAD (1-877-446-6723) or send an e-mail to noradtrackssanta@gmail.com.

The NORAD Tracks Santa program began in 1955 after a phone call was made to the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. The call was from a local youngster who dialed a misprinted telephone number in a local newspaper advertisement. The commander on duty who answered the phone that night gave the youngster the information requested — the whereabouts of Santa. This began the tradition of tracking Santa, a tradition that was carried on by NORAD when it was formed in 1958.

The NORAD Tracks Santa program has grown immensely since first presented on the Internet in 1998. The web site receives millions of visitors from hundreds of countries and territories around the world. In addition, a live operations center is occupied for 25 hours with more than 1,200 volunteers each year who receive hundreds of thousands of phone calls and e-mails from families around the world.

 

Officials from the North American Aerospace Defense Command have begun tracking Santa Claus’ via their web site that went live Dec. 3, 2010. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Carlin Leslie Download high res image

BlackBerry Empathy Concept Phone is Plain Creepy…

The Empathy concept phone is a brainchild of a project RIM sponsored at the Art Center College of Design. The design of the phone is pretty slick if RIM could pull something like that off but I would never want to drop it… On the other hand the concept behind the phone is really odd. The idea is that it is supposed to “detect emotional data” through some magic ring and show both your emotions and your contacts and social graph.

 

Here is how the designers Kiki Tang and Daniel Yoon describe the interface:

It is of course touch based and all the user’s connections are shown graphically so you can see who is connected to whom. Each contact has an avatar that is encompassed by two colored rings. The inner colored ring shows the contact’s previous emotional state, and the outer ring represents the contact’s current emotional state. It is important to show the shift in emotions in order to see how an event has affected that contact.

Another important feature that we felt was important was the “Emotional Health Chart”. This chart would monitor the user’s emotional health through an indefinite period of time. One would be able to see how a certain event, or phone call/ message has affected the user. Obviously, if the chart shows someone is always upset, there would be a problem… If permitted, a user would be able to view other user’s charts as well.

The issue I have with the concept is that I have never heard of any smartphone user anywhere saying “I wish my smartphone knew how I felt!” It just seems like a solution looking for a problem. My concept phone for RIM has a 1 week long battery and a does away with spinning hourglasses. On the other hand I really do like the circular context menu. That would be cool on my Torch and much more useful than these useless action menus.

I am not sure what to make of the Empathy but let us know what you think in the comments after you watch the video below or check out more shots and mock ups at Yanko Design.

 

Desktop Video Link | Mobile Video Link

Qwell takes call monitoring to the next level

Call monitoring applications can be your best friend or worst enemy, while they keep away the calls you don’t want to come through, they can just as easily be keeping away some of the extremely important calls that you do want to come through. Setting up lists that allow and don’t allow certain calls to filter through at various times can be a bit of a daunting task since you don’t want to miss any on the allow list that could possibly cause you to miss that important phone call from the school or a doctor. Qwell is a new BlackBerry application that will change the way users have to monitor their calls since there is no longer and allow and do not allow list that has to be created.

Instead of creating lists, users will activate the application which then is good for all inbound calls. Now don’t fear, this does not mean that you are then rejecting all the inbound calls, instead it gives the caller a chance to decide the importance of the call. While the application is active it will give the callers a message stating that you are not accepting calls currently but if it is important they can then chose to have the call connected anyway which sends the call to your device. If the caller decides it is not an urgent matter they are then able to leave a voice mail for you to return their call at a later time. While your device is in “Qwell Mode” it keeps track of any missed calls or voice mails that took place during that time so that users are easily able to view this log once they are done with the activity they were doing. Be sure to check out the video after the jump and for more information on this service, as well as a download link head to the Qwell site.

OS 6 – Create Shortcut Icons On Homescreen

The ultimate shortcut manager for the BlackBerry OS6. No need to create special Launchers for shortcuts on the home screen ever again.
Use Shortcut Manager to manage all your shortcuts for email, sms, pin, email, website, phone call, appt, memo, task, video, mp3 songs, search YouTube and more. You can even create a complete email, sms or pin message and then send the message by just Launching the shortcut and then select Send.

Designed specifically for BlackBerry OS6

• Create over 12 different shortcuts
• Can change shortcut names
• Can change shortcut icon and rollover
• Can compose a complete message for email, sms and pin and then just launch shortcut and send it
• Supports Contact lookup for phone, email, sms, pin and website
• Export shortcuts to SD card for OS upgrade or backup
• Import shortcuts from SD Card
• Delete all shortcuts
• Refresh all shortcuts
• Shortcuts created are placed into a specific folder

• Pick up this innovative new app in BlackBerry App World

Check your BlackBerry address book while on a phone call

“By any chance, do you have Kim’s phone number?”

“I’m pretty sure I do. Let me look through my address book. I’ll call you back in a sec.”

For a while there this was a common slice of conversation. Of course, that was about eight years ago, before the revolution. Now, though, it’s easy to get to your contacts screen. Not only that, you can send the number via SMS while you’re still on the call.

For OS 5.0

I’m not sure what OS version this started with, but getting to your contacts screen is pretty simple. On the phone call just hit Menu, and select View Contacts. From there you can get the contact information. In fact, you can browse around your BlackBerry by hitting the Escape button.

In other words, if you go into your contacts and find the number you want to send, you can copy and paste, and then open up a new SMS message, paste in the number, and send it off. That works even on CDMA networks, which do not allow data usage while a phone call is in progress. GSM users might find a few more options for sending, including BBM.
For older OS versions

From what I understand, you can view your contacts by hitting the Send button, which will bring up your call log, and then pressing and holding the Send button. That will bring up your contacts. Since I no longer have a BlackBerry with an older OS I’m not sure exactly what you can do while on the call. Anyone want to weigh in?