Review: Bose Triport IE Headphones
Rating: 8/10
Link: www.bose.com
Cost: ranges around $99

Now, I might be a bit biased towards this review as just about every bit of sound hardware I have has the Bose logo printed on it somewhere. Home entertainment, outdoor sound system, iPod docking station and even my clock radio is all in this category. But I will try my best to stick to the facts and save my opinion to the end…

The Bose In Ear Headphones work well with a variety of portable sound devices including the BlackBerry. Keep in mind that there are two different versions of Bose Triport Earphones floating around. The new 2007 version comes with Black and White cabling and the older versions cables are only black. I can’t 100% confirm that but that is what I have heard and read on multiple places including Amazon. The newer version supposedly fixes the “falling out of ear” issue with updated gels.

For more information skip to the full review after the JUMP…

Read the rest of this article

A bit back we mentioned DoneIn2Minutes from S4BB. DoneIn2Minutes is a glorified 2 minute timer for BlackBerry that lets you implement the 2 minute countdown on immediate tasks required by GTD.

For a limited time S4BB is giving away a free copy of DoneIn2Minutes (Usually $9.95) when you purchase one of their productivity applications.

These applications are:

NextAction! ($39.95), TaskMaster ($19.99), and HabitMaster ($24.95)

Personally I think DoneIn2Minutes should come standard with these applications but I guess S4BB has decided that a promotion is the better way to combine them.

You can read about the offer here on the S4BB website. Sadly the offer is not available in the BerryReview Store so no luck with the 20% off discount going on now. Personally I would just pick up a copy with the 20% discount and forget about the timer.  Different strokes you know?

Simon at BBCool just found that Bplay, the BlackBerry portal for Magmic games, is now offering users the option to take a 40 question survey and get a 50% off coupon at Bplay.com for your time. I think that is a pretty sweet deal but the survey does take awhile to fill out. It took me around 10–15 minutes to fill it out myself. It seems like Magmic is trying to do what RIM should by finding out what really makes their consumers tick. Expect questions about your gaming addiction and why you love your BlackBerry.

Head on over to the link below to fill in the survey and get a coupon emailed to you:

http://www.infosolutionsgroup.com/Surveys/Magmic

Rove Mobile, AKA Idokorro, has released a user friendly remote desktop solution for BlackBerry at the DEMO Conference in California today. It is actually surprising that it has taken Rove so long to enter the consumer market. They have had their Mobile Desktop software around for quite awhile but it required VNC and some technical knowledge to get working.

PCMobilizr is Rove’s first consumer product allowing users instant, complete access to their computer and all of its content, including applications, files, programs and network resources from their BlackBerry. PCMobilizr is supposed to be simple to use compared to setting up a VNC server and dynamic DNS and all the other requirements for previous solutions.

You cant quote me on that but that is what Rove is selling. The product is not on their website and instead has its own home at www.pcmobilizr.com. It has a 30 day free trial until PCMobilizr and afterwards has a monthly subscription rate of $9.50. Personally I am not a fan of monthly subscriptions for software but for some this may be good solution. Once we give it a whirl we will let you know. Right now the “Buy Now” link on www.pcmobilizr.com does not work but the demo download works just fine.

PS: Rove was actually smart to also purchase www.pcmobilizer.com since I misspelled www.pcmobilizr.com a few times before I published this post.

I just got an email from Ani, the developer of Empower, that the WiFi capabilities we mentioned before and a couple other features have been added in the new version. I heard quite a few Canadian users were asking for this. The release is currently available for OS 4.2.1 and 4.2 but the OS 4.1 release will be available shortly. Just check out the download site at www.getempower.com/ota or just wait for the autoupdate in Empower Pro to kick in.

If you don’t own Empower you can pick up a copy from the BerryReview store for $29.99. Keep in mind that you can get 20% off using the coupon info at this link. A review of the pro version will be coming out soon.

The detailed list of new features follows below -

1. WiFi Connections: The most significant feature enhancement in this version is WiFi ! WiFi enabled devices can now download images over Wifi! Web registration and auto-update also will work over Wifi. Also added an option to download images using WiFi only and not use any other connection.
2. Toggle Name/Email Address: A new menu item to toggle between name and addresses of all the sender/recipients. You can also just press the shortcut key ‘A’ for Qwerty devices.
3. Auto-expand Attachments under header
4. Added font smoothing to header fonts as well.
5. Single Click launch for URLs - For trackball based devices.
6. New Option: In the original EMV Std, there used to be an Option for link shortening - Full Link Address. This was with-held in the Pro with the assumption that almost everyone preferred the shortened links. However, we are re-introducing this feature as some users asked for it.
7. New Option: Added an option under Advanced options to set Strict/Lenient URL Parsing. Lenient parsing of urls allows { } etc in the urls which are “technically” disallowed.
8. In Appointments the default reminder is now set (to 15 minutes). Earlier you had to set the reminder everytime.
9. Hide the Registration screen if registered.
10. Images bigger than screen will occupy full width of the screen, and not lesser.
11. False positives for Smileys removed. Eg email:Dan@gmail.com will not show a smiley.
12. Declares itself as Pro in Empower Options > About :-) 

The information about update has been published and EMV AutoUpdate should tell you about the available update within next 24 hours. However, if you don’t want to wait those 24 hours here is how to upgrade.

How to Upgrade Manually

This version is labeled 3.0.66.7 for OS 4.2.1 and higher. And labeled 3.0.6642.7 for OS 4.2. A release for 4.1 is will soon be made available.

To upgrade just point your BlackBerry browser to getempower.com/ota

Google has just released a new mobile JAVA application for YouTube that sadly does not support BlackBerry devices. This is a step forward since most previous devices needed a native YouTube application. So this may be a sign that one for BlackBerry will be coming soon. I guess the underlying issue is that the mobile YouTube mobile website requires a phone that is able to stream 3GP files over RTSP. Which the BlackBerry cannot.

According to GoogleSystem the application currently is only available for the Sony Ericsson K800 & W880 and Nokia S60 3rd Edition phones including the N73, N95, E65, 6110, 6120. They also mention that some people have tried just downloading the JAR file directly from this link but it did not work on my BlackBerry 8310. Maybe somebody with an 8130 can to try it out?

Check out more info on the YouTube Blog. Hopefully this is a sign that a BlackBerry YouTube application is not that far off…

I am proposing a response to RIM’s “Ask Somebody Why They Love Their BlackBerry” marketing campaign we told you about earlier. Our campaign will rightfully be titled “Ask Somebody Why They Hate Their BlackBerry.” RIM has never made an open push to ask users what they feel could be improved in their BlackBerry devices. This will actually be #1 on the list. RIM should listen to their consumer customers and not just their large corporate customers.

Below you will see the list I have been compiling with Josep of MiBlackBerry.com. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

I HATE…

1. That RIM does not listen to their customers. They have no line of communication open to gauge what a customer cares about.
2. That RIM announces OS upgrades and delays them for months if not years. Do you remember how long it took to get the 4.2 OS upgrade?
3. That RIM does not tell consumers about planned or current outages. It takes days after the fact for us to even hear a peep from them.
4. That RIM did not add the H.264 Codec to the BlackBerry video player. They could have easily capitalized on the H.264 Codec that the iPod uses.
5. That we still have no useful voice recorder. We can’t record phone calls. Something I could do with Symbian phones ages ago.
6. No flash support. Enough said.
7. That RIM makes promises but takes months if not years to deliver.
8. That the RIM API makes it 10 times harder to get good applications for BlackBerry devices.
9. That most of RIM’s Instant Messenger clients are not available from all carriers
10. That RIM’s MP3 player is equivalent to a 5 year old MP3 player. For example there is still no equalizer!

Okay so there are 10 on my list. What is on your list?

S4BB has really been on a roll when it comes to releasing BlackBerry task software. My only issue is that their software descriptions leave alot to be desired. From what I understand the most recent application called DoneIn2Minutes lets you track how long a task took you to complete.

DoneIn2Minutes capitalizes on the GTD (Getting Things Done) framework. Since I am not an expert with GTD so I cant comment to much on that. From what I do know GTD guidelines tell you to give a task a 2 minute immediate time frame before pushing it off until later. DoneIn2Minutes lets you do that with a timer. The software is compatible with their new TaskMaster application and their more expensive NextAction application. Personally the $14.95 dollar price tag seems a bit high for a glorified 2 minute timer. I guess the 20% BerryReview Store discount may help but still…

From the Product description:

DoneIn2Minutes is supposed to work with S4BB Limited’s productivity applications like TaskMaster and NextAction!. However, it will work with any other task application as well. As the name already tells us: DoneIn2Minutes will help you to track your task processing so you can find out how long you need for actually processing a task. The usual task processing workflow is: Checking the task list, start processing a task and marking the task as done after it has been processed completely. So now the productivity interested user can start DoneIn2Minutes before start processing a task to figure out how long it takes to process this specific task.

The two minute time frame is a specific GTD related duration for processing a task immediately before deferring it. So all tasks that take up to 2 minutes to process should be processed directly at the moment they come up. This decreases bureaucracy in adding a task to your task processing system. With the experience a user can gather from using DoneIn2Minutes this bureaucracy can be reduced to a minimun and increase productivity!

As every task that takes longer than 2 minutes should be deferred, every task that takes less or about 2 minutes should be done right at the moment. You can now use your BlackBerry Wireless Handheld to figure out which kind of task takes less than 2 minutes and can be done right now.
This will help you to implement GTD (getting things done) with your blackberry wireless handheld.

Features

• Check your Processing
• Helps you implement GTD on your BlackBerry
• Fast Processing
• Easy to use:
  1. Start: Automatically at program startup
  2. Restart: Hit the space bar, enter or press the restart button
  3. Stop: Exit the program with the escape key