The latest version of BlackBerry App world, 2.0.0.36, has been spotted on some phones. But on others, its still the old version, v1. Why is this? May be for those people who had participated in the BlackBerry Beta Zone program are getting this new version, and those who had not, are still stuck with the old App World v1. We may be able to get the second version for all phones in a few weeks. The new features in the latest version are listed below:
* More Payment Options: More options other than PayPal. You can use major credit cards including Visa and MasterCard. They’re also working on integrated billing with different carriers to allow BlackBerry App World purchases to be applied to your monthly bill of those carriers.
* Easier Application Discovery: new added tabbed sections for various lists of applications. You can swipe or scroll horizontally to view the top 25 Free Apps, Top 25 Paid Apps, and Top 25 Themes, and the lists of Newest Apps and Recently Updated Apps.
* BBID (Universal account)-BlackBerry ID: This provides customers with a device-independent user ID used with BlackBerry App World. It allows new payment option, and allows you to seamlessly transfer your personal library of free and purchased apps when you get a new BlackBerry Smartphone.
* QR Barcodes: QR scanning is supported, allowing you to scan a QR code associated with an application from anywhere- the web, print ads, brochures, any where you can find a QR code. BlackBerry App World will find the related app fast and automatically information and it’s download page.
I also have a few screenshots of the apps. Take a look at the app you will have in the future:
If you are living in the US and you want the entire US maps to be on your phone, but to work out with it in offline mode, what would you do? There are no maps apps which support offline working. But wait, here is TopoSports. This, if I'm not wrong, is the first app to get the entire US map on your phone in the offline mode.
The accuracy of the app is amazing. You can not believe that the app is working in offline mode. You even get accurate GPS stats in the app. You can find out the distance, speed, calories burnt, the pace you maintained and the max speed you ever reached during the current session. All these data are accurate. Now, if your phone has GPS, which is sure, you can locate yourself on the map with the GPS. Now, this is online mode, but its just to locate yourself. The maps work completely offline.
And, if you wanna show your friends and family of the route you took during a particular session and the speed with which you completed that lap, you can record your trail on the map as it is happening. Then you can save this recording and view it at a later time when you want. This is something that most apps of the similar kind dont offer.
With this, you can search locations in the offline mode. You can use the offline geographic search feature or the POI feature of the app and search any location in the concerned map with ease. You can search points on the map, create you own way points and the app offers a great deal of other features as well. The rendering of the maps and the details on the map are impressive.
You can view a demo video of the app on youtube over here. You can buy TopoSports for any of your BlackBerry phones for $14.99 from their official website here. A great app for outdoor sports people.
The press release is as follows:
TopoSports, USA, the only blackberry app to offer offline topo maps, covering entire USA has been launched. Its the first wilderness navigation app for outdoor sports enthusiasts - biking, hiking, jogging, GeoCaching etc.
Thanks to all our early adopters for trying out the early software versions of TopoSports.
Embedded below is a video illustrating TopoSports in action.
The initial version only supports blackberry devices and USA.
We are working on adding support for more platforms and more regions. The current blackberry version supports the following feature set.
* Download topo maps of any quad in US for offline usage.
The app lets you download topo maps of any quad in US.
The maps have been re-projected for WGS84 datum and are GPS accurate for all mobile devices.
There are two ways to download the maps:
1. Search for a quad of your choice by specifying the feature or quad name. It is strongly recommended that you provide the state for which you are trying to download the map.
2. We also have list of popular quads for you to choose from.
* Seamless mosaicing of quads
- If you download adjacent quads, the app automatically switches from one quad to the other when you scroll.
* Distance/Bearing tool
- Measure distance and bearing from the center of the map to any point.
* Create custom way points
- You can create custom way points in two ways:
1. From your current location.
2. Manually selecting a point on the map.
* POI layer for each quad
- All the quads come with a list of POIs for that quad.
- The POI layer can be overlaid on the quad map. The app automatically figur
es out which POI layer to load.
- Clicking on a POI would show its geographic name.
The POI list is the complete list of geographic names published by GNIS.
* Search POIs/Way points
- You can search for created way points/POIs by name.
* Pan/zoom/locate yourself
The software supports standard mapping featurs like pan/zoom to get an overall idea of the region. The maps have been reprojected for WGS84 datum so that they are GPS accurate .If your device has a GPS or you use a bluetooth GPS puck, you can locate yourself at any time.
* Record GPS tracks
If your device has GPS or you use a bluetooth GPS puck paired with your device, you can record your GPS tracks.
* View tracks overlay
If you turn on track recording, at any point you can view the map with your tracks overlaid on the map in dark brown color. This would help you figure out with a glance where you have been and what area you haven't touched at all.
* Live track animation
If you turn on track recording, you can play your track at any time. The track play shows you a red dot traversing the map. The speed of the red dot is proportional to how fast you go. The red dot goes faster at places where you go faster. You can see your speed at the bottom left corner of the phone screen.
* Track analytics/stats
The app shows the following stats for each track:
- Distance covered
- Average speed
- Maximum speed
- Time taken
- Pace (time taken to cover a mile or km)
- Calories burned
- Vertical ascent/descent
* Export tracks in GPX format.
- You can export tracks in GPX format to SDCard/device memory.
- GPX tracks can be shared with others or viewed on Google earth.
Shopping and price lists comparing has now become even more fun for BlackBerry owners. Sccope has released its app for the BlackBerry market as well. So you can do all your price comparing stuffs on your BlackBerry itself. You dont need to go out to the shops and walk from shop to shop looking for the same product and comparing prices. You dont even need to sit in front of your computer and go to different websites and online shops do check the price. You can do it anywhere you are just with the help of your BlackBerry phone. Just download the app and install it once. And that is all you have to do.
Some of the features of the app as listed by the manufacturer are as follows:
Sccope allows you to instantly identify the best possible deal from hundreds of top retailers, with comprehensive product searches and barcode scanning. Simply enter the product name in the search bar, browse through the shopping categories or take a photo of the barcode to compare 10 million different price points.
Purchase the product directly, make a wish list, track prices through alerts, and receive special offers and vouchers, all without leaving the application.
And you can create wish lists, share bargains with friends, see price trending info, and get alerts for out-of-stock items.
Sccope is available on BlackBerry App World for your BlackBerry phone. Go get it now.
With the new BlackBerry OS 6 news making rounds to be seen on the Storm 3, one of the main attractions of the OS would be the browser. So lets take a look at what it is new and what it can do.
To make the online search experience better and to allow the user easily enter URLs on the browser, the new browser has a single text entry field on its homepage. You can do both the tasks with this single text box. Keeping in mind the fact that mobile browser users will have a specific task to do in their mind, the BlackBeery has designed the browser in this way, it seems.
Homepage
To further enhance the experience, you can save your bookmarks directly to the homepage.
Save Bookmarks
One of the other aspects which makes the web experience on a PC good is the tabbed browsing feature on all the browsers. Now, in BlackBerry 6 Browser, you have this feature. You can open up different webpages on different tabs. Along with this, the WebKit renders the pages really well with enhanced graphics, even in the tabbed browsing environment. To switch between the tabs, you just have to tap on the tab in the top right part of the screen.
Tabbed Browsing
If you have a lot of RSS feeds subscribed or you do that a lot, the new browser has simplified this process just for you. The browser has an integration with the Social Feeds app, making it very easy to add RSS feeds subscription. To do this, you just open the website, tap the tab next to the tabbed browsing tab and you get a drop down menu. Amongst other options, you get an option to subscribe to RSS feeds. Its that easy.
RSS Feeds
After Apple introduced the pinch to zoom concept in its iPhone Safari browser, it has become a defacto feature for other browsers that came afterward. BlackBerry 6 Browser being no exception. Yes, the new browser has this feature. You can just pinch to zoom. This being an option only for the touch screen phones. The non-touch screen phones, that which come with a trackpad, can hold down the ALT key and use the trackpad to do the same operation. And also, there is a auto font size adjustment feature which adjusts the font of the text in the webpage you are viewing automatically so that your browsing experience will increase.
Pinch to zoom
There are talks going on in the tech town about Storm 2 getting the BlackBerry 6 OS. This is not yet confirmed. Its still a doubt whether the phone will be fortunate enough. And it can also not be decide whether Storm 2's browser will get a WebKit update or the new browser itself. Its just a wait and watch game.
I have to say that talking about any store of apps, I love the utilities category so I thought I should take a look in the App World for the BlackBerry and I looked for the newest app and I found a really interesting app as you can see. It’s not only interesting, it’s also very useful for those who prefer to put their phone to store important dates and also for those who use a lot the calendar.
