Filed under: BlackBerry

Dropbox, a file-storage service that's getting a lot of well-deserved hype for its desktop product and its iPhone app, is expanding to at least two new mobile platforms this year. Android and Blackberry users can look forward to syncing files from their phones to their Dropbox accounts in the near future. With 4 million users already onboard, expanding to new mobile devices could position Dropbox as the leader in the growing cloud-storage-and-syncing space.

An email sent to current Dropbox users announced the two new clients, but didn't give a specific release date for the new "mobile magic." We haven't been able to dig up any more specific info about when you might be able to hold Dropbox in your hot little hands, but Kevin C. Tofel at JKonTheRun speculates that an announcement might be forthcoming at the Mobile World Conference later this month. I'm going to guess that's too soon, considering that Dropbox isn't done hiring Android developers yet, but we'll have to wait and see.

Don't want to spend more on shipping your gifts to arrive before Christmas than they're actually worth? Don't worry, there are lots of online sites where you can give some super gifts via download online certificates. Here are 14 places to check out to give some great gifts:

E-Gift Cards:
Amazon.com offers the ability to send gift cards via email in any denomination from $1-5,000. Your gift card can arrive in your friend's inbox as soon as you hit checkout. You can also print your gift card and give them something that is more tangible.

Barnes and Noble is another option if you'd like to send an online gift certificate to someone. B&N provides online access to ebooks which can be read on iPhones and Blackberries, Mac or PCs. All your gift recipient will have to do to get started reading, is select their book at B&N.com and download the free eReader software. Note, gift certificates can only be used at B&N.com, not in stores.

Macys.com offers the ability to send e-gift cards until 1pm on December 24. Your recipient will receive a personalized email within 24 hours, redeemable at Macys.com, macysweddingchannel.com or in stores.

After coming to the iPhone and then to Windows desktops, Amazon's Kindle e-reader app is scheduled to conquer the BlackBerry next. Despite all the hype about the iPhone and new Android devices, BlackBerry is still one of the most popular smartphones out there, so this represents a significant new market for Amazon. There hasn't been a big announcement about the BlackBerry app, but the San Francisco Chronicle broke the story last week.

Kindle for BlackBerry is listed as "coming soon" on Amazon's Kindle product page, but we don't have an exact timeline yet. Will BlackBerry users want to read Kindle books on the small screens of their devices? Maybe not, but Kindle's well-known brand name and large library of books means Amazon probably has a better shot than anyone else at marketing a BlackBerry e-reader.

Kindle for Mac is also listed as coming soon, which isn't a huge surprise after the PC version was released in November. No one seems to have gotten a peek at the Mac app yet, so, like the BlackBerry version, the best we can say about the timeline is "coming soon." Early reviews of the PC version of Kindle praised the seamless WhisperSync download experience, but bemoaned the lack of display settings. Knowing how Mac users love eye candy, Amazon may have to step up its game for a successful OS X release.

[via AppScout]

Although we've seen MapQuest struggling to keep up with Google Maps, the popular map service continues to add features and improve existing ones. MapQuest has been especially active in the mobile arena lately, introducing new versions of Mapquest Mobile 4 for BlackBerry and iPhone, and updating its mobile site for iPhone and Android users.

The most important new feature on MapQuest's mobile site is the ability to let MapQuest use your location on iPhones and Android devices.

Both the new apps and the new mobile site have added walking directions.

Wait, what? MapQuest didn't have these before? Oh right, they're struggling to keep up.

MapQuest.com can also now locate business and provide better search results on iPhone and Android. In addition, the updated iPhone app offers a new, more readable way to view directions, with a larger map and a collapsable directions list.

Foursquare delivers a fun location-based social game to iPhone and Android users, and also has a less-than-stellar mobile website that works on some other platforms. While people with iPhones and Android devices have been talking up FourSquare as the social network of the future, BlackBerry users have been waiting their turn for a FourSquare app of their own. According to GigaOM, that app is coming soon.

Om Malik has been able to test the app, and he says that it delivers a familiar BlackBerry experience. The app is stable, although the beta version could use some work in the navigation department - Om says it's hard to get to the leaderboard, and some functions require loading up the mobile site in your browser. If you're a BlackBerry owner who wants to play FourSquare before everyone else, you can sign up for a beta invite.

[via GigaOm]

There are plenty of competing chat apps for iPhone and Android, but BlackBerry users have, thus far, been left out in the cold in terms of multi-service chat clients. Nimbuzz is stepping in to plug that hole, though, with a BlackBerry-native app that allows you to chat over AIM, Gtalk, MSN, Skype, Facebook and more.

Being a native app means Nimbuzz can run in the background and take advantage of push notifications and alert sounds, which is a must for a decent chat client. Nimbuzz isn't offering Internet calling capabilities yet -- Skype support is limited to text chat -- but that's a possibility for the future. The app is free, and it should run on any BlackBerry with version 4.6 or newer of the OS.

[via TechCrunch]

Travel management site TripIt have launched their mobile companion application for Android, available for download free of charge from the Android Market.

The new application, which is usable with both Standard and Pro TripIt accounts, allows you to access your travel itinerary direct from your Android phone, get maps and directions, make calls to airlines, hotels etc. as well as enabling flight alerts and alternate flight details for Pro users.

As well as launching on Android, TripIt have released an update to their iPhone application, available for download now from the App Store. The iPhone version adds support for Pro account features, as well as a number of useful travel tools including terminal maps, seating advice and live flight status.

If you have a Blackberry and you're feeling left out, fear not! The TripIt Blackberry application is currently in Beta, with release expected before the end of the year. Now how about good old Windows Mobile and that young upstart WebOS...?

Seesmic have released their 'Seesmic Mobile' Twitter client for Android and Blackberry on their respective application stores. Available for download free of charge, the clients are slick, feature packed and refreshingly free of advertisements.

The Android client (pictured above) has a great design that utilises a standard tab-based user interface with a red accent, providing virtually every feature (bar multiple account support) that a Twitterer could desire. Included are the ability to scroll without limits back through your timeline, photo and video upload (either from your device camera or from the gallery) via a variety of online services, the ability to add your location to your tweet, URL shortening, saving tweets-in-progress as drafts, switchable full name / username display and very granular notifications.

The Blackberry application also features a native-feeling UI and adds lists and saved search support, albeit at the expense of video and location features.

If you give Seesmic Mobile a try, let us know how you get on and - of course - don't forget to follow @downloadsquad!

Adobe's Acrobat.com service is getting a big update tonight, followed closely by a new mobile app for iPhone and BlackBerry. The name "Acrobat" goes hand-in-hand with the PDF file format, and Acrobat.com allows you to convert documents to PDF and save, store and view PDF files. It also features some other applications, including the Adobe BuzzWord word processor, a web meeting service called ConnectNow, and storage space for docs, spreadsheets and images.

The new features include searching by filename (I'm still wrapping my head around how they didn't have this before), but not searching within documents. That feature is reportedly coming soon. Your files are also now displayed in a file organizer that lists everything you have stored on Adobe's webspace - I think this includes saved stuff from other web apps, including presentations.

The mobile app is reportedly going to be a pretty basic mobile front-end for Acrobat.com, with the ability to upload documents and send faxes (what's a "fax?") from your phone. It will come in both free and paid flavors, and the free version will allow a limited number of uploads and faxes per month.

[via CNET]

Not being pretty and white, nor slender, shiny and fashionable, the BlackBerry devices don't get as much attention as its SoCal sister the iPhone.

But that doesn't mean the clever folks over at RIM aren't busy developing and releasing exciting new technologies for their latest OS 5.0 devices! You just don't hear about them quite so often, which I hope to rectify with this little bit of news. As covered by our clever cousins over at Engadget, you can expect the following additions and changes to soon become available:

• Open GL ES support -- this is the big one. This is the single change which will see the BlackBerry shift away from the black-straight-edged-suits and more towards the cool-chic-students. The developer kit is already out, so games makers should really get on to that right now...!
• Extensive Adobe technology support -- not only will we be seeing great Flash support (as covered by Engadget Mobile previously), there will also be more integration with rest of the Adobe Creative Suite.
• And much more -- the BlackBerry Payment Service, Theme Studio, and Advertising Service will all make an appearance at the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010.

These changes should cover all Storm and Curve owners, along with anyone that's lucky enough to own a Storm2!

So what does the iPhone do that the BlackBerry devices don't?

Does RIM really have to release a white-plastic-and-aluminum BlackBerry...?

After a long, long wait, RIM have finally released their Blackberry Desktop sync product for Mac OS X.

The application allows you to sync your iTunes playlists, calendars, contacts, notes and tasks with your BlackBerry, manage applications, apply software updates and backup and restore your device (with support for scheduled updates and encryption).

Blackberry Desktop for Mac can manage multiple BlackBerry devices and is a free download.

Twitter's phenomenal growth means that people are posting updates to the service faster than ever. Earlier in the year, the number of tweets posted to the service hit a wall: more specifically the number 2147483647 which was the maximum size of an integer in a fair few programming languages.

Tomorrow morning, however, Twitter will be forcing through Twitpocalypse II where the number of tweets pushes past the unsigned integer limit of 4294967296. And that may cause issues for unprepared Twitter applications.

In a mailing to the Twitter API developers list, the Twitter API team have reminded developers that their applications need to cope with numbers of this size - and if you're wondering why your favourite mashup isn't working after 11:30am Pacific Time tomorrow, this may well be the culprit.

Palringo, the multi platform rich messaging client for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (via WINE), Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry and Java (phew!), that we first covered back in 2007, has just received an update to it's Windows and Windows Mobile iterations.

Palringo is an IM client with a twist - as well as supporting a multitude of instant messaging services (Windows Live, AIM, Yahoo IM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, iChat / MobileMe, QQ, Gadu-Gadu and Facebook chat), Palringo provides some features not seen in competing products such as chat groups, location sharing, picture sharing and push-to-talk speech.

Changes in the new release include support for contact avatars (although these can be disabled if required), flick / kinetic scrolling, the ability to toggle the status bar (useful for devices with small screens!), variable font size, the ability to set online-status for all services at once, an improved installation process and many other improvements and fixes.

The Symbian client was also updated last week, adding a host of new languages, reduced data usage which also results in a speed increase and a number of bug fixes including improved compatibility with the Samsung i8910.

Palringo is free to download (a premium version is available on iPhone) from the Palringo website or from your mobile device's application store.

Many of us change our phones regularly.

The phone world moves on quickly and with carrier subsidies, upgrading to a new device is often cheap or even free, particularly in Europe. While physically transferring your phone number to the new device is usually as simple as swapping in a new SIM card or getting the device activated by the carrier, migrating data can sometimes be a real chore - particularly if you're switching to a different type of phone.

With the arrival of Android in the Smartphone space and it's continuing growth, this is a pain point that is being felt by many users who are switching to Google's new baby from other Operating Systems such as Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Nokia's Symbian OS or RIM's Blackberry OS. Thankfully, there is a solution if you are in one of these camps!

Sprite Software, makers of 'Sprite Backup' have just released a Beta version of their 'Sprite Migrate' tool into the Android Market as a free download. Sprite have a very good reputation in the mobile space, and rightly so. Their products are relied on by millions of users worldwide, shipped by carriers on a number of devices and Sprite certainly have a glowing pedigree!

Sprite Software was founded in 2001 by two former employees of Binary Research, developers of the well known Ghost software that was sold to Symantec in 1998. Any computer technician that has been in the business a few years will tell you how vital Ghost was to their toolkit, and how infallible it was!

How well does it work? For me and my test device, it did exactly what it said it would... everything made it across intact!

While Lee has been lamenting the lack of attention to the latest desktop version of Opera, the browser's mobile version is far from obscure. In fact, Opera Mini is burning up the mobile market: not only is it the most-downloaded mobile browser, it's the most-downloaded mobile application, period. This is according to open apps repository GetJar, which has recorded 25 million downloads of Opera Mini. The number is so high partially because Opera Mini is so versatile, with versions available for Java, Android, BlackBerry and WIndows Mobile.

The 25 million figure might not be quite right, though, as GetJar's download page for Opera Mini only shows a little over 18 million downloads. According to a GetJar press release, Opera was only the 3rd most-downloaded app on the site in July. Perhaps the higher figures are a combination of Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, or there's some other reason why they don't mesh with the number I see on GetJar, so I'll give Opera the benefit of the doubt. Even 3rd place and 18 million downloads is a stronger showing than most people imagine when they hear "Opera."

On the other hand, it's interesting to see Opera claiming Most Popular Mobile Application status when there's still some debate as to whether it has more users than the mobile version of Apple's Safari. Of course, Safari wouldn't be included on GetJar, so this popularity contest is already rigged in Opera's favor. Opera recently retook the #1 spot in the mobile browsing market from the iPhone browser, but that's not including Safari users on Apple's other mobile device, the iPod Touch. All in all, Opera Mini is definitely popular, but to call it the most popular might be misleading.

[via ReadWriteWeb]