Editors Note: Thanks to Brett for sending in this review! BeeJive is quite popular and is just starting to support the Storm with their latest betas. Brett gives us some insight into what’s new and if it is worth keeping.
Beejive has done it again. They have released an upgrade to their IM app for the Storm, which is still in beta. You can read the old review I did last time by clicking here.
The newest upgrade came out yesterday and shows the version sitting at a 1.9.5 from the previous version of 1.9.2
It actually seems like the developers at Beejive read my review and took note and changed one of the major ‘thing’ I did not like about the application. Pretty sure everyone agreed with me on it as well. The problem was when you were typing a message, you were typing inside a bubble which made viewing/reading the IM very difficult when they were being sent to you.
As you can see, it was pretty much impossible to view a new IM while typing. It was annoying and aggravated, which kept me from using Beejive a lot. Well, they heard my cry and they came up with a solution.
They added a new option in the preferences. Use Floating Text Input. JACKPOT! Simply uncheck that box and you get a great surprise.
The bubble is gone and typing and reading at the same time is 100x better. I am really glad Beejive spent some time on this and inserted an option for us to remove it or not. This was really the only downfall I think Beejive had in their previous version. They are def. now heading in the right direction!
Now that you can type and read at the same time I started to look for some other things and came across this new addition. Most of you, even though most of you won’t admit it. Most of you are color blind and some colors blend in and look the same. When viewing the budding list you can see how the circular status icons can look the same to a color blind user.
(screen names were removed)
As you can see, the colors can easily look a like to a user who is color blind. So, Beejive came up with a simple solution.
In the preferences they added this option. Simply check the box and presto!!
Can’t mix those colors or shapes up. If you do then, well. That’s a whole other issue. With this upgrade they enabled the use of file sending. You have two options, it can either directly send to the user or it can post a link in the IM box as seen below.
This def makes sharing files on your Blackberry much easier to do then having to send via e-mail. The last feature, I don’t think I saw in their previous release but they have added this cool feature.
You can now create a chat room. You simply click the new chat room button, invite which ever friends you want and then it will send them an invitation and you can all chat together.
The chat room feature is the winning touch. Now you can chat with all your friends together. No separate IM windows for each person. I know I will def be using the chat room feature a lot.
Overall, Beejive did a major upgrade. They removed the one big issue I had and have added a few new touches to give Beejive the upper hand on IM applications. This is the GOT TO HAVE IM app. It is perfect and now can only get even better!! Great job Beejive!!
You can download Bee Jive by going to www.beejive.com/stormbeta on your Storm
Originally posted on the BlackBerryOS forums
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