A friend of mine recently bought her first Blackberry and not yet knowing her way around the ‘Blackberry World’ (as she calls it) asked me if there were any mobile dating sites. Being married myself, it wasn’t an answer I could instantly give. A few short Google searches away however and I came across Match.com Mobile

Match.com Mobile has been out for a bit but since I don’t believe we have personally posted about it here…and since there may be some readers interested, thought I’d give it a mention.

Currently, Match.com Mobile is only available in the United States to Cingular Wireless, AT&T, Sprint PCS, and Nextel users with Wireless Internet enabled handsets and in Canada to Telus Mobility users with Wireless Internet enabled handsets.

From what I gathered, the mobile site basically allows you access to what their standard online site offers. You do need to sign-up for an account however, and there are probably some fees involved. What are those fees? Since I’m a T-Mobile customer myself I wasn’t able to sign-up so I’m not exactly sure. However, I was able to find their ‘help’ page which does answer some questions on cost, etc.

*Depending on your selected carrier, payment options for the Match.com Mobile service include direct billing to your cellular phone bill or to your credit card. A subscription is required to send personal messages to other users.

That statement isn’t too detailed but a visit to this link should give you some further information: Match.com/Mobile - Help Page

Well BoyGenius was on the money. Its after midnight (12:03pm EST exactly) and the press release just hit my inbox. The BlackBerry Bold is official!!! That is the official RIM picture on the left from the press release.

Check out the official press release here!!!

• 128 MB Flash memory plus 1 GB on-board storage memory, as well as and a microSD/SDHC memory card slot
• Dual Stereo Speakers!!!
• Side loading MicroSD slot
• tri-band HSDPA
• GPS
• Wi-Fi
• 480×320 resolution LCD screen
• Desktop HTML browser
• 2 megapixel camera with video recording capability, built-in flash and 5x digital zoom
• 1500 mAhr battery provides multi-hour usage with a target talk time of approximately 5 hours and 13 days standby time

AVAILABILITY
The BlackBerry Bold smartphone (model number: 9000) is scheduled to be available from wireless carriers around the world beginning this summer.

For more information please visit: www.BlackBerryBold.com.

The full press release after the jump:

Read the rest of this article

With all the other mobile operating systems offering capital for mobile developers it is surprising that it took RIM so long to get with the program. They have just (sort of) announced a fund of $150 million dollars for BlackBerry development. The fund will officially be announced at WES this week. This fund trumps Apple’s $100 million fund and the $10 million Google Android Fund. I guess RIM is really committed to finally listening to their developers and encouraging new interest in the platform. We recently mentioned the fact that RIM should have been doing this years ago.

The funds website is supposed to be at this link www.blackberrypartnersfund.com but does not seem to be live yet. Just wait until after WES.

VentureBeat has the details (This is Google cache because supposedly it has been removed):

The fund will be used to invest in both applications and services for the BlackBerry platform, but it won’t be exclusively to support the Blackberry. Companies that support other mobile platforms in addition to the Blackberry can also apply for monies for the fund. According to our source, the fund isn’t designed to be competitive with the iFund, because it will be free to invest in applications serving that platform too.

Thanks to Richard, David, & Josep for all sending this in over the weekend!

Remzi kindly shared this nice review that he originally posted on Sems.org. Let us know what you think of Remzi’s first article on BerryReview!

One of the this week’s big Blackberry news item was the release of Blackberry Unite!. This interesting piece of software had been announced long time ago and Bell Canada finally released it. The beauty is the fact that you don’t actually need to be a Bell customer. You can download and install it to your computer and it works just fine. It is like a BIS service for your home/small business. It has 5 user limitation and you can only add POP3/IMAP4 accounts to it (BIS on the contrary also supports OWA connections to Exchange servers as well).

The installation is a breeze. The following components are installed with BlackBerry Unite! software:

* Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0
* BlackBerry Device Communication Components
* Microsoft XML Parser 4.0 SP2
* Java® SE 6 Update 2
* MSDE (with Windows® XP installations)
* Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Express (with Windows Vista® installations)

You can see the screenshots at here. You can grab a copy from Bell or if you are outside of Canada try this.

According to the database, the version installed is 4.1.5, same as the latest BES. Makes you wonder if you can enable HTML rendering with this

Once the installation is completed, you can run the web based admin interface. First step is to attach your device, go through a simple registration process (it uses your device PIN I believe, as it requires to be connected). Once that is done, you can add your first user. (limit is 5 users). Keep in mind, since Unite! is also using IT Policy to enforce things, if you are going to use BES as well, you need to activate your device on BES first. Activating a BlackBerry smartphone using BlackBerry Unite! software before activating on a BlackBerry Enterprise Server will result in an IT policy error. (see here)

Read the rest of this article

Kevin at CrackBerry broke the news of the BlackBerry Bold name for the new 9000 series. He now has the cold hard specs for the upcoming Bold-Berry (previously codename Niagara & Javelin)

So let me introduce the Specs & Features for the new BlackBerry Bold! My favorite is the Memory upgrade and the DIVX support.

• Size - Length: 144mm, Width: 66mm, Thickness: 14mm
• Weight (with battery) - 133g (same as the 88xx series. I can attest to it!)
• Memory - 1GB on-board plus 128 MB Flash
• Battery - 1500mAhr lithium cell
• Est. Battery Life - Standby: 13 days, Talk Time: 5 hours
• Network Support - UMTS: 2100 / 1900 / 850MHz, GSM: 1900 / 1800 / 900 / 850 MHz, GPRS, EDGE and HDSPA networks
• Wi-Fi - 803.11a/b/g enabled
• Display - HVGA, 480 x 320 pixels, Transmissive TFT LCD, supports over 65k colors
• Media Player, Video Support - DivX 4, DivX 5 & 6 are partially supported, XviD is partially supported, H.263, H.264 and WMV3
• Media Player, Audio Support - .3gp, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 Pro/WMA 10, MIDI, AMR-NB, Professional AAC/AAC+/eAAC+
• Media Player, Audio - BlackBerry Media Sync allows you to transfer your desktop iTunes music to your BlackBerry!!!
• Camera - 2.0MP, 5 x digital zoom (with flash of course)
• GPS - internal GPS with extended ephemeris, BB Maps is standard
• Bluetooth - Bluetooth v2.0, all the normal stuff and Bluetooth Stereo Audio via A2DP and AVCRP
• USB Port - Enables charging and high-speed data synchronizations via USB “A” to mini-USB “B” cable
• Browser - HTML browsing, View Movies/Clips from websites built for mobile streaming, RSS feed support

Thanks Kevin for gathering this all together. Were drooling already

The BlackBerry weblog sites and forums have been running into overtime today. It looks like someone has let the cat out of the bag with a name to the face of the new BlackBerry  9000. (BGR seemed to be the first off the mark again… well done guys)

It seems the all new BlackBerry 9000 series will be called…’Bold’. It doesn’t really strike a chord with me.(It’s only one letter away from what’s happening on the top of my head )

I ‘Googled’ the name and got 292 000 hits but it could be a trail to throw us all off a really cool name like ‘Avenger’ or ‘Raptor’. 

So I suppose we will all find out at the start of WES or there abouts.

Any other suggestions for names? I think something a little on the rugged side of things. Drop your ideas in the comments section below.

I know many of you have installed BlackBerry unite after we mentioned it yesterday. We also mentioned some of the issues in our last FYI. It turns out that this is more of a full release that really needed some testing. So far people have been liking the functionality but their happiness has been hampered with some serious bugs and unknown consequences.

The list so far – Feel free to add to it with comments:

• Once you install Unite you get an IT policy on your device that you have to wipe your BlackBerry to remove
• You also have to deal with Errors such as the one below where it says “Browser is disabled by IT policy”

• You will also find that it makes your browser bookmarks no longer work unless you delete and re-enable them.
• It can lock up a nice machine on and also gives quite a few of Unite File Sync errors
• The calendar is missing recurring events and the ability to change reminders
• The file upload/download aspect is awesome in theory, but the 1 meg limit renders it useless
• Your device may lock up now every time you hit the CNN.com home screen shortcut or others
• This program may make your browser, Facebook, Viigo, and most other applications unusable due to the IT policy error
• You also cannot sync your desktop outlook calendar to Unite. Nor anything else from your desktop

Thanks to the brave souls who brought this to our attention. Hopefully version 1.1 will be coming out soon. It seems like RIM rushed this out before WES.

Keep those numbers above. May 12th is promised to be the official release date of the new Blackberry 9000. It’s the very first date of WES 2008, in Orlando, FL, where Berry addicts will congregate and get lots of new information first hand, not to mention their own eager hands on lots of brand new lawful Berry drugs. Boy Genius also says that Mike Lazaridis himself will be present at the event to “pull a Jobs” on the crowd. Since RIM has announced two new phones already, I certainly expect him to say “one more thing”. And that one more thing had better be the release of Blackberry OS 4.whatever to all and sundry. What else could be holding it for so long?!!!

I can’t go, it’s a bit too far from where I live. If you can’t go either, well, just stick around and you will be properly informed of all the news. At any rate, the new 9000 model should be available on the 12th, also known in many places worldwide as “Monday”. Piggy banks of the world have a lot to fear.