Riots in London fueled partly by messages sent via BlackBerry Messenger

 

A few short years ago, if a riot broke out somewhere in the world, you found out about it the next morning when your newspaper was delivered, or on the 6 o’clock news. Nowadays, news spreads at the click of a button, with millions of smartphones connected to Twitter and Facebook. Riots in Vancouver less than two months ago were seen almost instantly through pictures and videos as people used smartphones to record what they saw and upload to social networking. As a result, police were able to apprehend many people who were involved in the looting and destruction.

This weekend rioting again broke out, this time in London. Stemming from a peaceful protest over the shooting of a man named Mark Duggan, things quickly escalated and the gathering erupted into violence. As seen in Vancouver, the destruction and looting was spread across social media and in moments the whole world knew what was happening, including pictures of the people responsible.

10 Reasons Why BBM Is What It Is

The most beloved BlackBerry native app is hands down BBM. As one of the most used apps on each of our BlackBerry devices, BBM has become a staple in the success of BlackBerry. Many users swear that one of the main reasons they still have or have gotten a BlackBerry is solely based on RIM’s popular instant messenger.

Through out the last couple of years though many companies have come out with their own versions of BBM for other platforms. Apps like Qik, WhatsApp, and others have tried to take a bite out of the instant messaging monopoly that is BBM. Most have failed at prying users away from BBM to use their own apps though. Other instant messaging apps that are still to be released, like iMessage for example, aim to copy BBM’s look and feel but still lack that certain “je ne sais quoi.”

So why is it that BBM has been so successful? What is it that makes it so addicting and fun to use? Here are 10 reasons, in no particular order, why this is the case:

New Jim Jones song asks Whats Your BBM?? [NSFW]{Explicit}

[ youtube video link for mobile viewing ]

If you managed to get Swaggberry out of your head already we have another BBM song to implant in your mind for the day. This time Jim Jones asks What’s Your BBM? No fun video to go along with this one (yet!), but the tune is pretty sweet and you’ll most likely be singing this one for the rest of the day. The song speaks on the fact that many just want to use BBM – “don’t text, don’t call me honey” – and not SMS, email or phone.

It actually makes a pretty valid point in the process. As my buddy Anton Wahlman pointed out recently, many “a-listers” really rely on BBM for secure conversation and won’t be switching away from BlackBerry anytime soon. Since they don’t have to give out their actual phone number or email address, giving out their PIN for BBM only to people they want to talk to is a pretty solid solution. Users obviously have the ability to approve or decline requests so as opposed to having anyone who wants to call or SMS, BBM gives you control over just who can contact you. Hit the video above to check it out. The video does contain some foul language so its pretty much NSFW.

via:cb

How precious is your BlackBerry PIN?

For quite a while now, we’ve seen BlackBerry ads focusing on the power of BBM. One that stands out is what many like to call BBM Flirt. I don’t know if it’s me, but I couldn’t see myself walking up to a complete stranger and asking for their PIN (I know my wife would have something to say about it). As soon as I think about that, I then wonder how many times I’ve added someone from the BlackBerry community to BBM and I have never even met them. I think many of us are like that. We use BBM to keep in touch with colleagues, friends and family –people that we’ve come to know and trust in some way or another. The idea of someone I don’t really know, having something, as unique as my BlackBerry PIN, scares me; especially if I was single. What if it didn’t work out? Sure you could delete them from BlackBerry Messenger, and ignore future invitations, but they can still send PIN to PIN messages (very creepy). It’s easier (and more cost effective) to switch phone numbers than to buy a new BlackBerry.

Blackberry 101: Word Substitution: possibly the best feature on a BlackBerry

BlackBerry 101: Word Substitution/AutoText

For me I’m asked one question almost every day “Why do you use a BlackBerry?”  I’m asked it by friends, family members, clients and in radio interviews. Unlike many people I can’t give the easy answer “It’s what my company gave me” no, I need a real answer.  I fully understand the question from those who don’t know how cool a BlackBerry really is.  I have strayed over to other devices over the years but my BlackBerry has always been near by.  Last summer I wrote an article that was well received about my unexplainable love affair with BlackBerry Messenger.

Side-by-Side to many an iPhone looks shinier and more sexy but there are still a few things that other platforms just don’t have.  This week Apple rolled out iMessage and other enhancements to iOS at their ‘iClone’ event in San Francisco, but in my opinion still fell a little short.  Kevin did a head to head video with Rene from TiPb and speed wise BBM and iMessage pretty much tied, but BBM stayed out front with a more feature rich experience that comes from BBM being a mature platform.

For my money, the real killer app in the BlackBerry is AutoText, now called Word Substitution.

Back in 1998 I got my first RIM handheld called the Interactive Messenger which was quickly replaced with the BlackBerry 950.  Even back than my Interactive Messenger and BlackBerry had AutoText and what’s really incredible is the number of people that own BlackBerry devices and don’t know what it is.

         

Even if you’re not clear on what Word Substitution is, you’ve used it.  My pal Joseph scratched the surface on a recent rant about his BlackBerry PlayBook typing skills; press the space bar twice and the BlackBerry inserts the period and auto-capitalizes the first letter of the next sentence for you.  It will also complete your contractions for you – cant becomes can’t.  Or my favorite is when someone asks for my PIN to add me to BBM, reply to their message with mypin and press space and pin:1a2a3a4a appears as if by pure magic.

You can create your own personal Word Substitutions as well.  Think “bb” becomes “BlackBerry” or “pb” becomes “PlayBook”.  The sky is the limit, you can create as many as you like and they can be as long as you like.  For example say I was telling someone about a new OS leak available on CrackBerry.com and I wanted them to remember the ‘leaked OS disclaimer’ and I’ll be damned if I’m going to type all the out.  I create a Word Substitution called “osdisclaim” and simply type osdisclaim plus the space key and voila!

        

So how do you create this BlackBerry Magic?  It’s actually quite simple and can be quickly explained.

OS 6 – using Universal Search type “Word Sub” and tap on the wrench “options” and tap “Word Substitution
OS 5 and lower – from the Home Screen scroll to and select the wrench “options” and in the options list select “AutoText”

From here press the BlackBerry Menu button and select “New” and you should see something that looks like this:

Now in the “Replace” field enter what you’re going to be typing in the message screen to trigger the Word Substitution.  For example “bb” or “osdisclaim” or “pb” – again you can put anything here.

In the “With” field this the the text you want.  Again for example “BlackBerry” or “PlayBook”, I’ve never typed an entire novel here but have never been constrained by the number of characters here.  I’ve had 9 paragraph canned messages here before.  Perhaps I’ll attempt paste Kevin’s PlayBook review in my device one day to test worst case scenario.

The last option here of note is the “Using”, you have two options “SmartCase” or Specified Case”.  The difference being how you want the BlackBerry to deal with capital letters.  If you select “SmartCase” if the Word Substitution occurs at the beginning of a sentence it will capitalize the first letter and if it is in the middle of a sentence than it will leave it not capitalized.  For Word Substitutions using product names like say BlackBerry, the case is specific regardless of where it finds itself in a paragraph, so you would want to select “Specified Case”.

OK! So that’s Word Substition/AutoText (one of my most favorite BlackBerry features) in a nutshell.  Look for Steve Jobs to ‘invent’ this feature at a future WWDC event 🙂

Via:cb

Find BBM Contacts on Facebook With SearchBBM.com

 

PIN sharing is still going really strong. We can see a great example of it on our facebook page where every day users comment their PIN. It seems to be most popular in Asia and South America, where users may not have the same worries about privacy as in North America. SearchBBM is a new site that connects BBM through Facebook and potentially other social networks (we assume Twitter is on its way). So if you’re in the mood to find a new BBM friend, we suggest you check it out.

To give it a shot, head over to searchbbm.com.

via:bbcool

Upcoming BlackBerry ID API for Developers – One ID to Rule Them All

RIM’s vision of BlackBerry ID is slowly taking shape with more and more services coming under its umbrella. More and more RIM services are starting to use BlackBerry ID and it will be an integral part of BlackBerry OS 7 just like it is on the PlayBook. Right now when a developer wants to identify an app user they can either use the users PIN number or maybe query one of the email addresses associated with the device. RIM plans for BlackBerry ID to replace that as single point of identification for a BlackBerry user.

I spoke to Mike Kirkup, Director of Developer Relations @RIM, about this upcoming API that is either shipping with BlackBerry OS 7 or coming as a service after launch like the Advertising or BBM service. Developers can potentially use that BlackBerry ID data as a form of identification to uniquely identify a user. For example, developers can use that ID to verify app licenses against their own registration list and other customizations based on a single identity. I am hoping that means the end of registration codes and painful PIN transitions.

 

On top of that RIM has a long term vision beyond the original use case for BlackBerry ID. They envision leveraging it in the future for 3rd party devs to store information about the user like app registrations or even app settings in the cloud. I can see quite a bit that devs could benefit from especially for making the transition between devices simpler. It could store a quick backup object for each app with basic settings to make device switches a piece of cake sort of like what BlackBerry Protect did.

What do you think about the BlackBerry ID API?

Oddly enough I found that Adobe Developer Evangelist, Renaun Erickson, posted a whole tutorial about working with the BlackBerry ID API on the BlackBerry PlayBook. The weird part is that I can find no reference to the different API’s Renaun talks about though I can now confirm that they are coming. Renaun pulls in this ID information from the following classes:

• net.rim.blackberry.bbid.BBIDProfile
• net.rim.blackberry.bbid.UserProperty
• net.rim.blackberry.events.BBIDEvent

Except for Renaun mentioning them I cannot find any other reference to them. Let me know if you figure out more!

via:bbr

Five Tips for BlackBerry Smartphone Power Users

Just the other day I realized that I’ve been using a BlackBerry® smartphone for over six years. During those six years, I’ve learned quite a few tips and tricks that have allowed me to maximize my smartphone experience. Today I’d like to share five of my favorite tips that I use daily, so grab your BlackBerry smartphone and let’s get started.

Locating the PIN and serial number on the BlackBerry PlayBook

Recent news over the weekend came out of a problem batch of about 1,000 PlayBook tablets released into the market. Supposedly only a few of those tablets may have actually ended up in the users hands, according to a recent statement put out by RIM. Sources also say that the tablets were headed to Staples stores.

So, if you happened to purchase your PlayBook from a Staples store you may want to check out our tutorial on how to find the serial number on your tablet, and see if it matches up with one of the serials numbers released from RIM from the infected tablets. If you do end up with a bad tablet, contact RIM support immediately, and let us know as well.

Justin Bieber Has Entered The Building With A Blackberry In Hand

A loooootttt of girls must want his PIN….. WE DO NOT HAVE IT! Sorry

via:cbs