While watching Til Death last night I saw a great ad on TV for the BlackBerry curve from AT&T. Very well done. Afterwards when I was checking my Gmail I noticed this advertisement on the top of the page:

I then did a search for BlackBerry in Google and look what I found in the adsense area:

I guess RIM has decided to advertise the Bold early. Does that mean that the device is coming sooner than expected? I would not put it past RIM but it usually takes a few months for AT&T to release a device…

PS: While out in Los Angeles last month I actually watched the filming of this weeks Til’ Death episode live from their studio. Pretty cool stuff. If you happen to be in Los Angeles you really should check out this website www.tvtickets.com to get some free tickets to awesome hit shows.

I just visited mobile.blackberry.com from my Berry and found a new application called the BlackBerry wallet. It lets you store your owner information, credit cards, gift cards, login credentials, loyalty cards, and shipping addresses for easy access. Its much better than the password manager.

Info:
BlackBerry® Wallet has been designed to make shopping on your BlackBerry® smartphone faster and easier. It lets you use information securely stored on your BlackBerry smartphone to help fill in forms with credit card, reward program and shipping information.

How Does it Work?
Simply switch to the BlackBerry Wallet when you’re ready to make a purchase. Enter your password, and populate your credit card information, delivery details and more.

Security
Your credit card and shipping information are your business. For your protection, not even you can use your BlackBerry Wallet without entering a password. It’s also AES encrypted, so you can be sure your data is secure.

You can pick it up for free on your Berry from this link: www.blackberry.com/devicesoftware/entry.do?code=wallet

I just found a classic Nintendo game & a ton of others on Handmarks website. I don’t know how many of you remember Contra but I used to live on this game. I have not had a chance to download it myself and sadly there is no trial. You can check out the Contra game at this link. I just wish they would come out with Mario Bros.

Also of interest were:

• The Weakest Link 2008
• Galaga By Namco (Remember this classic?)
• Castlevania: Order of the Shadows
• The Fast and the Furious: Fugitive

Every ounce of irony is intended on this one. Seriously I thought removable faceplates and such were not important to smartphone users. The last faceplate I had was on my Nokia 3650  and I don’t miss the flimsy feel. (or the flashing see through keypad I shamelessly sported)

I guess RIM thinks I am wrong. Kevin from CrackBerry snapped some shots of the upcoming line of battery covers for the BlackBerry Bold. I am finding it really hard to get excited about this one even though I am trying…

They seem to be popping up everywhere these days… And they seem to be improving. The latest iteration of Bold Clones comes to us from eVeek, a pay/free site devoted to BlackBerry software. In order to mark their one year anniversary, they have released (free, for a limited time) Precision, OSX and iBerry.

The OSX/iBerry clones are certainly worth grabbing, but it’s the Precision theme that really caught my eye. I’ve tried a few 9000 themes, to me they didn’t quite sit right… This is where precision seems to shine: it really suits the 83xx, complimenting what is already a very stylish phone.

The thing that sold me on this theme was the menu layout. It’s very similar (despite the lower resolution) to that found natively on the 9000.

The only thing missing from this theme is a custom TX/RX signal; you know, those little arrows indicating data is being sent or received. It comes with the stock blue arrows that seem somewhat out of place. Unsure if this was just an oversight or by design, however, is only a minor distraction to what is overall a very sharp theme. Head on over to this eVeek page to pick this and the other two up. Be quick, from what I understand, they may not be free for long! You can pick up the themes OTA from elecite.eveek.com/wap

Bplay just released four slick Star Wars themes that I thought looked really well done. I know I grew up on this stuff so I am a bit biased but see for yourself.

The themes are all in Zen format and feature one for Hans Solo, Anakin Skywalker, Boba Fett, & Darth Vader so far. The icons are custom and look awesome but they are the same in all 4 themes.

You can pick them up now for $5.99 each from Bplay

ANAKIN SKYWALKER THEME
BOBA FETT THEME
DARTH VADER THEME
HAN SOLO THEME

Since I am not a Lotus guru I can only read this and do my best to explain it to you. RIM and IBM have hooked up to create the ultimate collaboration tool for BlackBerry. It integrates a ton of things that I just had to copy and paste from the press release to get right. It looks like the Lotus version of BES is not only live and kicking but rather threatening to overtake the Exchange version with regard to features.

• Portals & Dashboards: IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM dashboard software lets businesses build Web sites and single screen dashboard views that deliver information, applications and processes personalized to the individual BlackBerry smartphone user.
• Social Networking: The BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Connections helps people tap into the collective knowledge of others and find the people and information they need for the task at hand while on the go.
• Messaging and Calendaring: BlackBerry(R) Enterprise Server for IBM Lotus Notes and Domino enables access to key email and calendaring functions as well as custom applications built with Lotus Domino.
• Unified Communications: The BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Sametime lets people access their full buddy list, send and receive instant messages, view presence information and convert an IM session to a phone call with a simple click.
• Business Intelligence: IBM Cognos 8 Go! Mobile business intelligence software is the industry’s first business intelligence solution designed specifically for the BlackBerry platform. It provides personalized secure business information in the right context to allow people to view and interact with dashboard-style reports to make informed decisions while they are on the move.

If you are interested in Lotus I recommend reading the full press release

Josep just sent me a link to a random blog in Spanish that announces the release of a BlackBerry blogging application / client for Typepad. The application installs on your Berry and lets you:

• Create content and post to your blog from your BlackBerry
• Save draft posts for editing or publishing later
• Take photos and upload them to your blog

You can find more info about it at this link

If you use TypePad you can download the client free OTA at the link below:
http://get.typepad.com/typepad.jad
Or you can install it using desktop manager with this link:
TypePad Mobile BlackBerry (zip)

I just wish somebody would develop a client for Wordpress. The developer would make quite a few people happy! (HINT!)