I read this article on GlobeSt.com yesterday and the first question that came to my mind was “Where in the world is Las Colinas?” I afterwards realized Las Colinas is in Texas (Geography-lapse moment). It seems like RIM has finally decided to setup shop this side of the border with this new location. They will be sharing the area with Sprint which may lead to some newer devices .

Jim Balsillie was quoted as saying that this new location was perfect because it has room for expansion. I guess RIM is hoping for some serious growth. Balsillie also mentioned that the location was prime because of the proximity to Mexico and South Latin America. The thing that always surprises me is that RIM’s PR firm does a terrible job of releasing timely press releases. They still have not released any mention of the new facility to confirm its existence. It usually takes them 3–4 days after the fact to release which is just annoying.

I guess it is a good time to live in Los Colinas since RIM will be bringing 1,000 jobs along with this new location. Training has just started for the first wave of employees and the office is set to open next week.

Hopefully RIM will use this location to house a new redundant data center to deal with all these recent BIS outages. I guess the only thing to do next is to plan a road trip!

I just read a post on GOS about a great feature that exists in Google Talk that I had never heard of before. It turns out that Google has translation Bot’s for over 18 different languages. All you have to do is add the translation Bot as a friend in Google Talk and send them what you want translated.

I get emails in Spanish and multiple languages all the time so this is a real score for me. The service is completely free and is not based on the BlackBerry browser so the responses are much quicker. The cool part is that you can invite the bot into a group chat in Gmail to translate the conversation for you. Sadly since the BlackBerry client does not support group chat you cannot do this on your device.

To access the Google Talk translation bots you just need to know the correct format for adding them as contacts. The way it is setup is:

[original_language]2[destination_language]@bot.talk.google.com

GOS has done us a service by listing the current available languages. The ones with an arrow back and forth support translation back and forth between the languages.

Below is the current available bots:

ar2en, en2ar (Arabic<->English)
bg2en (Bulgarian->English)
de2en, en2de (German<->English)
de2fr, fr2de (German<->French)
el2en, en2el (Greek<->English)
es2en, en2es (Spanish<->English)
fi2en (Finnish->English)
fr2en, en2fr (French<->English)
hi2en (Hindi->English)
hr2en (Croatian->English)
it2en, en2it (Italian<->English)
ja2en, en2ja (Japanese<->English)
ko2en, en2ko (Korean<->English)
nl2en, en2nl (Dutch<->English)
ru2en, en2ru (Russian<->English)
uk2en (Ukrainian->English)
ur2en (Urdu->English)
zh2en, en2zh (Chinese<->English)

Convenience Software has just made another innovative software release. The new application is called TaskInjector and allows you to add new tasks to your BlackBerry by sending it an email. This would allow your wife secretary to send tasks to your BlackBerry for you to deal with.

To my ongoing dread, my wife already uses Outlook meeting requests to give me the shopping list so I don’t personally have a use for the application. TaskInjector is another example of the approach that Convenience Software has taken to creating new innovative BlackBerry applications. 

The cool part is that if you have previously purchased any Convenience Software the developer has mentioned that you will get a copy of TaskInjector free (link).

The way it works is that they have to send you an email with newtasktodo in the subject, and the body of the task in the body. The email is then picked up by the application and will automatically get added to your BlackBerry to-do list.

The feature set is limited right now to only creating tasks and setting a priority as low, medium or high. (I have not found out how to set the priority but it supposedly works) Currently there is no way to set a due date but hopefully the developer will figure it out.

The software is currently available for $4.99 at this link. This simple feature may not be for everybody you have to respect the innovative approach. There is also a trial available (no OTA) at this link.

One of the new features in the latest iterations of BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) was the ability to request and respond to delivery and read receipts. This feature came along with BIS version 2.3. It is now also nicely integrated into the BlackBerry OS by putting another check next to an email when it is delivered or read by the recipient.

This has frustrated quite a few users who suddenly noticed that all their mail was being sent with delivery and read receipts. It seems that some users had this option automatically added when their carrier BIS was upgraded. Sadly this configuration option is not stored on the BIS and you need to reset it every time you add an email address. The setting is separate for each email address so you could have one address that does request and another that does not.

RIM has kindly provided a simple descriptive procedure on how to enable and disable these read & delivery receipts.

To modify the Confirm Delivery option, complete the following steps:

1. From the Home screen on the BlackBerry smartphone, click Messages.
2. Open the menu and click Options.
3. Select Email Settings.
4. Verify that the correct service book is selected.
5. Select the Confirm Delivery field and open the menu.
6. Click Change Option.
7. Change the setting to Yes.
8. Open the menu and click Save.

To modify the Confirm Read option, complete the following steps:

1. From the Home screen on the BlackBerry smartphone, click Messages.
2. Open the menu and click Options.
3. Select Email Settings.
4. Verify that the correct service book is selected.
5. Select the Confirm Read field and open the menu.
6. Click Change Option.
7. Change the setting to Yes.
8. Open the menu and click Save.

To modify Send Read Receipts, complete the following steps:

1. From the Home screen on the BlackBerry smartphone, click Messages.
2. Open the menu and click Options.
3. Select Email Settings.
4. Verify that the correct service book is selected.
5. Select the Send Read Receipts field and open the menu.
6. Click Change Option.
7. Change the setting to Yes or Prompt.
8. Open the menu and click Save.

Note: If you have Send Read Receipts set to Prompt and you receive an email message that requests a receipt, you will be presented with a prompt screen that allows you to select Yes or No to send the receipt.

Gregg has just released a great Coca-Cola styled theme for the BlackBerry 8800 on Themes4BB.com. The theme has the classic Coca-Cola logo as the background and is accompanied with silver icons. The only fault I saw was that the icons do not look that sharp as you can see in the screenshots. I think this is actually part of the design fitting in with the grainy background. Sadly there is no OTA link yet but a desktop manager link is available. Nice work Gregg!

Link: http://www.themes4bb.com/

Magmic has once again struck a strategic deal to bring more gaming goodness to the BlackBerry platform. This time they have joined with with IG Fun, the publishing arm of Indiagames Ltd, to port their popular games to the BlackBerry.

The first IG Fun titles Magmic intends to publish for BlackBerry are the martial arts fighting game Bruce Lee – Iron Fist and the soon-to-be-released NBC’s The Office Games, based on the popular television sitcom. The screenshots from Bruce Lee - Iron Fist remind me of Mortal Combat. To the best of my knowledge Bruce Lee -Iron Fist will be the first fighting game for BlackBerry. I am curious to know how the controls will work. Magmic has announced that both games are scheduled to be release in the first quarter of 2008.

IG Fun’s game catalog ranges from the movie themed Predator to the racy Playboy Pool. I hope this means we can expect a steady stream of new Hollywood themed games coming to a BlackBerry near you. You can check out the rest of IG Funs game catalog on their website: www.igfun.com

I completely forgot to include this in the last post about Empower HTML Mail Viewer. So far this is the changelog I have gotten from Ani, one of the developers of Empower. I put a smiley face near the ones I think are the most important. Hopefully Empower will released a complete changelog before the software is released on the 20th.

1. Big News: Speed. Zero-lag. Instant.
2. Big News: Supports the latest RIM OS 4.3
3. Big News: PIM Integration! AddToTask, AddAppointment.
4. Big News: All System Fonts are supported!
5. Big News: Image caching is Enabled - less data usage.
6. Support for both: In-memory & Disk-based cache. (Look into Options for more)
7. Big News: Options to pre-fetch images.
8. Big News: Auto-detect Connection settings.
9. Big News: No default Signatures in this version
10. Attachment list redesigned to show up at the top.
11. Headers redesigned to match 4.3 OS, consume less space & display
more info with higher clarity. For ex, a To: 5 Cc:4 to tell you how
many on To & how many on Cc.
12. Different header background for each Account.
13. Big News: Now EMV makes your email Text directly selectable! No need to click Menu & click Select.
14. Header font can be set independently of Body fonts.
15. Big News: Improved and a far better parser, esp with regard to word wrapping, paragraph detection etc.
16. Big News: Inline replies are shown in Color.
17. EMV detects Signature blocks in incoming emails and replies, and shows them in different colors.
18. Big News: AutoUpdate feature to notify you of any new upgrades.You can also do it manually
19. Option to load Images on-Demand on a per email basis.
20. Translation of HTML Special Characters - copyright, registered, trademarked etc special characters.

Empower is just about to win over many BlackBerry users with their new version of Empower HTML Mail Viewer Pro. This is a new Pro version of the Empower HTML Mail Viewer we mentioned in the past. The new version will be released on the 20th of December.

They have been working secretly in their underground lab without food and drink to completely overhaul their Empower Mail Viewer in this new Pro version. The new version opens up HTML email almost instantaneously. No lag, barely any delay, and the added features are just jaw-dropping! They have added the PIM integration that held them back in the past and are promising more 3^rd party integration with the likes of PocketDay. The amazing part is that they added all these features while keeping the application under 160K and with no speed lag.

The developer, Ani, has told me that the cost for the Pro version will be more than the $9.99 standard version and will be released on the 20th of December. That is a shame for people who own the standard version since I am not sure if this will be a free upgrade. We will be doing a preview soon but I just had to share some screenshots with you. Sorry for the brevity!

Sample email

Email menu

More shots after the jump!

Read the rest of this article