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...?

Orbit is a mobile app that brings together your Facebook and your phone book. It's a phone book at heart, but it shows your friends' recent Twitter and Facebook status updates, and allows you to create groups called "orbits." You can turn the level of social noise from each orbit or individual up or down according to your needs. Of course, you can also initiate a call, text or email from within the app.

As long as Facebook won't allow phone numbers to be exported into your contact app of choice, something like Orbit seems to be the best solution for a light Facebook/phonebook combo. Being able to take a quick glace at a friend's latest Facebook or Twitter status before you call is a cool feature, but it's the customizable groups that really make Orbit appealing. Orbit's favorites list also changes dynamically, updating your favorite contacts depending on who you communicate with most often.

The only problem with Orbit is that it isn't out yet. It's coming to the iPhone and the BlackBerry before the end of the year, and if it turns out to be as useful as it looks on paper, it's going to have a permanent place on my iPhone's home screen.

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.

As a user of the location-based social game Foursquare, I'm not sure how I missed this one: thanks to a new round of funding, Foursquare is expanding to new cities and making some dramatic improvements to its website. One of the more obvious changes is the new domain name: foursquare.com. Previously, the service was running on playfoursquare.com. The site is now easier to navigate and much more stable.

Meanwhile, Foursquare is planning to add new cities using crowdsourced location info, rather than seeding the game with locations from a third-party database. A BlackBerry app is in the works, too, following the success of Foursquare's very slick Android app. Some common gripes about the game are also being resolved, so expect fewer crashes, fewer duplicate locations, and less gaming of the leaderboard.

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!

Yesterday, RIM acquired Torch Media in a further step to turn the Blackberry into an iPod. Ok, so maybe that's not their goal -- but they have an app store, they did steal U2, and now they're bringing a Webkit-based browser front and center.

Now, Torch doesn't currently have a version of Iris for the Blackberry platform which means they'll have to get to work. How do you quickly clear your schedule so you can start developing for a new platform? Why not kill off work for the version that runs on your competitor's OS?

WM Experts have received word from Torch Mobile's spokesman that development on the Windows Mobile/CE version is coming to an end. That should give the crew at Torch plenty of time to crank out their BB port.

In all fairness, the Blackberry is in much more dire need of a better browser than WinMo.

Blackberry has acquired Torch Mobile, developers of the Iris web browser. The webkit-based browser is currently not available for RIM's smartphones though that's about to change in the wake of the acquisition.

As reported on the Torch Mobile website, "Our team of developers will join RIM's global organization and will now be focused on utilizing our WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to contribute to the ongoing enhancement of the BlackBerry® platform."

Iris is a pretty slick mobile browser, supporting CSS 2 and 3, HTML 4 and some HTML 5, Javascript, the Netscape plugin API, touch controls, phishing/spoofing protection, and much more.

Haven't seen Iris in person yet? Check the YouTube clip from Torch Mobile after the break.

Update: It looks like the browser isn't just coming to the BlackBerry, it's also leaving Windows Mobile. Development on that platform will be ceased.

[via Boy Genius Report]

Palm has begun accepting applications for third party applications for WebOS that could eventually end up in the Palm App Catalog. The program is still in the early stages, but here are the details for the beta program:

• Developers can submit free or paid apps
• Developers will get 70% of any revenue from sales
• The program is only open to the US for now

Palm reserves the right to reject applications for pretty much any reason. Officially, apps need to have "acceptable performance and response time" and be written for WwebOS, and the web browser. But what exactly is "acceptable?" And Palm also says applications should be "useful and engaging to users," which seems pretty subjective. My favorite requirement? Applications need to have an "appealing design."

Still, it seems likely that the Palm App Catalog will start looking a bit more substantial soon.

In other news, RIM is making it easier for BlackBerry users to find an download programs from the Blackberry App World store. In addition to using the application on supported BlackBerry devices to find and download applications, you can now visit a web-based version from any browser.

In order to actually download applications, you'll need to enter your email address and the store will send a download link to your mobile device.

[via Gizmodo]

Need to sync files across machines? Need to access those files on your mobile devices? SugarSync to the rescue. There are currently SugarSync clients for WinMo, BlackBerry, iPhone, Mac and Windows, and starting today, Android phones (Android netbooks too, if they ever appear).

The apps are free, but you pay for storage, starting at $4.99 a month. You can try it free for 30 days, or keep it free with a mere 2GB of storage. You get 30GB for the $4.99 price. SugarSync hasn't yet replaced my current favorite, DropBox, but in light of Apple's iDisk app release, it seems there are more options for syncing files than ever. Here's to choice!

Gmail on the BlackBerry has come a long way in a short while. When I first starting using the Java app (as opposed to the site in BB's rather crummy browser on my 8800) it was pretty limited. Only one draft email at a time, limited support for some of Gmail's best features, etc. Now, however, it works... better. You can star items, check archives, move things around a bit, work in offline mode and create multiple drafts. I'm not saying it is perfect, but mobile users are conditioned to being second-class netizens when it comes to application features. But this may change.

Google is experimenting with an enhanced Gmail plug-in that will supposedly bring conversations, labels, stars and so forth available on lesser beasts than the iPhone. Speaking of iPhone, I'm still amazed there's no native Gmail app seeing as how Apple's Mail tool doesn't "do" much with Gmail's features (stars, labels, etc.) and the mobile Safari version is superior in almost every way to Apple's Mail. Perhaps Google will release a proper iPhone app around the time they release this now-beta plug-in. We'll keep you posted on both fronts.

In the meanwhile, if you're a power user who likes to try new things, you can sign up for the RIM Beta program and see if they let you play with new stuff.

[via Engadget and BerryReview]

There's been an absolute deluge of different Twitter apps over the past year or so, and the number is only getting bigger as Twitter's popularity grows. The iPhone might be the leader in mobile Twitter clients, boasting Twitterrific and Tweetie, but the poor, maligned BlackBerry has been lagging behind. The team at Boy Genius Report decided to do something about that, though, and now BlackBerry users can turn to TweetGenius.

TweetGenius is the first client for the BlackBerry to include advanced features like search and TwitPic integration. While it might not measure up to its iPhone cousins in terms of UI, it's leaps and bounds ahead of competitors like Twitterberry in terms of looks and ease of use. The pop-up bubble for entering a tweet is a nice touch. If you're a BlackBerry user who's been reluctant to use Twitter because the right client came along, give TweetGenius a spin. You might like it.

While I'm not as big of an Evernote devotee as some other Download Squad bloggers, I do love the idea. For the uninitiated, Evernote is a service/app combo that is designed to let you capture all the bits of information that you want to save for future access -- business cards, to-do lists, audio messages, photos, screenshots, web links -- and organize those bits so that they are searchable and accessible from multiple computers and mobile devices. It's a great idea, and a great service -- but it's really only valuable if you either use more than one computer frequently (so your work machine is separate from your home machine), or if your mobile device is compatible with t he service.

Although Evernote has a GREAT iPhone app, as a hybrid BlackBerry/iPod touch 2G user, it really isn't the best solution for me. Chances are, if I'm away from my primary computer, my BlackBerry is what I'll end up using, unless there happens to be WiFi around for my iPod touch. If I had a Windows Mobile phone or an iPhone, that would be one thing, but I'm a BlackBerry user, and I'm used to getting short-changed on the mobile app front.

Fast-forward to this morning, where I see a post on the Evernote blog, announcing Evernote for BlackBerry. Unfortunately, before I could get too excited about the possibilities of keeping my handbag clean and consolidating my various notes in one digital space, I saw the system requirements.

Evernote for the BlackBerry requires OS 4.6 or higher. That means, you must have a BlackBerry Bold, a BlackBerry Storm (ick) or the new Blackberry Curve 8900. If you're one of the millions of users, who has the BlackBerry Curve 83xx (like me), well, you're still Evernote-less. On the mobile front anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I don't blame the Evernote developers for wanting to make the app as robust as possible, thus, they want to use the best OS framework available. I'm just a little peeved at RIM, who is continuing to sell BlackBerry 83XX series Curves by the truckload seems pretty content to let Curve owners languish with OS 4.5 (an OS that has made me hate my BlackBerry, yet I need 4.5 if I want to actually use the device for more than phone calls and e-mail), and thus, miss out on cool apps like this.

If you do have a BlackBerry that works with OS 4.6, you can download Evernote for the BlackBerry from the BlackBerry App World. Since I can't test, it, tell me what you think in the comments.

Research In Motion has launched BlackBerry App World, also known as RIM's version of the iPhone App Store. BlackBerry owners can purchase programs priced between $2.99 and $999.99 directly on their mobile phones, with some free apps available as well. Checkout is powered by PayPal.

You'll need a device running BlackBerry software version 4.2 or higher and the service is only available to customers in the US, Canada, and the UK.

Microsoft is expected to launch its own app store, called Windows Marketplace, for Windows Mobile devices soon.

Research in Motion is in the process of launching an app store that will let users purchase and download software directly from their Blackberry mobile devices. You know, kind of like the iPhone App Store. But for BlackBerry.

But there's at least one thing setting the BlackBerry App World store apart from the competition: prices will start at $2.99. The companies has released a FAQ for developers explaining the pricing tiers. And it looks like you'll be able to find free apps in the store. But the suggested pricing for paid apps starts at $2.99 and goes up to $999.99.

Now, it's possible that these prices aren't written in stone. RIM does refer to them as "suggested retail prices." But it's also possible that this is RIM's way of ensuring that the company's app store isn't filled with frivolous apps like the fart app craze that has recently overtaken Apple's app store.

[via CrackBerry]

Want to run BlackBerry applications without buying, you know, a BlackBerry? Soon your dream may come true. BerryReview has a first look at the BlackBerry Application Suite for Windows Mobile. The software is basically a virtual version of the BlackBerry OS that you can run as a Windows Mobile application on supported phones.

The application weighs in at about 32MB which is pretty large for a Windows Mobile application. But it will allow employees at companies that are currently tied to BlackBerry software the option of picking up Windows Mobile phones that can support BlackBerry's push email and other services.

The first release is still pretty limited. GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, and video playback don't work. Neither does the ability to make phone calls. So the software clearly isn't ready for prime time yet.

[via MobileTopSoft]