Garmin is trying to trump TeleNav by offering a $99.99 GPS navigation plan for the life of your BlackBerry. This plan is not transferable to another BlackBerry device but is good for the life of your BlackBerry. It might just be better than paying a $10 a month subscription plan.

If you don’t have GPS on your phone they offer a GPS puck with the plan for $149.99. I am not sure about the quality of the Garmin GPS offering but it looks good. I might just have to try it. I just cant seem to locate a link for a free trial…

You can find out more about the plan at this link:
http://www8.garmin.com/mobile/blackberry/.

Or you can read the press release at this link.

Kevin @ CrackBerry got the scoop on the upcoming release of a new Aliph Jawbone. I personally use one of the current Aliph Jawbones so this is good news to me. It is not the ultimate headset but they have the least amount of problems and great features.

They did hopefully fix my two complaints with the original Jawbone. First the fact that they use a proprietary charger connection that sucks. They changed this to a magnetic charger but it still is proprietary. Second the fact that there is only 1 button and is hard to press. They fix the button issue by adding two touch buttons. Otherwise the audio quality is awesome and worth every penny.

You can catch a demo of the upcoming Jawbone at this link www.jawbone.com. Hopefully stores will have them in stock shortly. The price will be $129.99 and will come in Black, Silver, & Rose Gold. It is also 50% smaller than the original.

Full press release after the jump:

Read the rest of this article

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