This year of 2010 is definitely not a good year for the Research in Motion (RIM) team. The BlackBerry phones has been exposed to a lot of threats of bans around the world for security reasons. Countries like Saudi Arabia, India, Lebanon, and a couple of other countries have been warning Research in Motion on security grounds. Now, Indonesia is joining the list of countries who are willing to ban BlackBerry services in their countries. But Indonesia has no security issues, its pornography.
Indonesia has an anti-pornographic law since 2008 and according to that, obviously, there should no pornography in the country legally. Indonesia has requested the Canadian company RIM before to ban the pornographic content in the country. But RIM has not yet acknowledged this for Indonesia. Now, the government is keen about taking the porn out of the country and has threatened to ban the services of BlackBerry completely in the country if RIM does not take the pron out of the services.
"If they are still not responding to our request, we have to close it down," said Indonesian Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring. "RIM may violate our law if it remains providing porn content in its service (in Indonesia)," Tifatul said.
Monday was the day when RIM and the Indian government met in a meeting to decide whether its services should be continued in the country or not. It was decided that the Canadian company should set up a local server in India so that the Indian security agencies can monitor the services easily. Now, though, there is a new notion for the reason of the decision taken by India.
India is hosting the Common Wealth Game in a few months, in November. And a lot of people are expected to fly into the country during this time and a lot of US delegation is expected too. This includes the US President Obama. It is a well known fact that Obama uses a BlackBerry and all the people escorting the President are also using the same phone. The BlackBerry service these people use the most on their phones are the BlackBerry Enterprise and BlackBerry Messenger. These are two services that were to be banned from today in the country if proper solutions were not provided by the country.
It is also said that the Canadian government might have given a political pressure on this issue to get the work done for Research in Motion. This is still being an issue and a rumor. But the ban has already been taken off on the company's services and India has given the company another 2 months time to monitor whether the solution provided now are enough.
Skype for BlackBerry Verizon was launched a few months ago and had never seen an update since then. But now, here is a leaked version of the Skype, dubbed the Skype (BETA) Version 1.0.5.0. A pic of the app in working has also been seen now and I guess this is still with the beta testers making its way out to the general public in the near future.
The update is said to address some of the issues that the users who are on the current version, are facing. Dropped calls is one of the major issues that is present in the current version. The update is going to only for the Verizon BlackBerry users. It is not going to work on other networks. So dont even worry about giving it a try.
The update is not going to be an over the air (OTA) download. So you will have to have the BlackBerry Desktop Manager installed on your PC to install the update on your phone. If you dont have the BlackBerry Desktop Manager, you can download it from here. You can also download the leaked version of the Skype for BlackBerry from here.
Yesterday was the day a meet was organized in India for the security and telecom agencies of the country and the Research in Motion (RIM) officials to talk about the solutions for the security risks that the encrypted data transaction that BlackBerry phones use. The meeting was to decide whether BlackBerry can give a solution to monitor the encrypted data that was going out of the country from the BlackBerry phones used in the country, to a server that the Canadian company maintains in Canada.
Its been two months since the country's officials first asked Research in Motion for the access to these encrypted data. RIM had stated that the matter is out of its hand and it can not help in anyway. As a result of this, the Indian government gave it time till today to finalize its decision and if RIM gave a NO again, all its services would be banned from tomorrow.
As a result of this, RIM has to obviously find a way to avoid the ban. Now, the company has agreed to give the access to encrypted data and this is to maintained in a local server inside India. So RIM is to now set up a server at India so that the security agencies could easily monitor the traffic.
Nearly 1.1 million people in the country can be relaxed and dont have to change their phones now. This monitoring will be done for two months and will be examined later to see if the monitoring is proper and enough. If not, future steps will be taken accordinly.
Tomorrow, the 31st of August, is the last day that the Indian government has given for Research in Motion to come up with a solution to allow the security and telecom agencies in the country to monitor the data transactions happening in the country via the BlackBerry phones. BlackBerry is asked to attend a meeting today in the country with the country's security officials.
RIM has suffered a major dip in its share value last week in New York. If the company does not do anything about this, it will have to shut down its services in the fastest growing cellular market of the world. This could be a very bad situation for the Canadian Research in Motion.
If it fails to provide a satisfying answer to the big heads of the country today, its internet and mail services will be blocked in the country starting tomorrow.
"Everything is possible. If they say we have a solution and ask for time, then we will see," one unnamed official told reporters late last week.
With about 1.1 million BlackBerry users in the country, the company may not want to lose the market share here. So we can surely expect something positive from the meet today. By evening today, the fate of one of the world's largest phone manufacturers will be known in the world's fastest growing market.
A bug fixing upgrade to the existing version of WordPress for BlackBerry is now available. This is the version WordPress V1.4.1. The update also features some new inclusions. The list of fixes or features, as said by the company is as given below:
- Fixed empty title issue for those blogs with “Site Title” field set to empty value.
- Fixed an issue on the comments screen that doesn’t permit editing of comments with weird characters within URL or e-mail field.
- Introduced a better integration with the VideoPress service and the WordPress.com Space-Upgrade option.
- Added support for blog shortcut icon.
- Minor bug fixing.
The app is available in the App World or you can also download it directly from the servers on to your phone over the air (OTA). But this is just a fix to the bugs that were lurking in the previous version. Unless you want to be perfect in your work or are a professional blogger, dont worry about downloading this update. You can download the WordPress for BlackBerry update from the App World from here. You can also get WordPress for BlackBerry update directly over the air from here.
BlackBerry OS 6 is the latest OS from RIM for its BlackBerry phones. Now here is the first screenshot of the next BlackBerry Theme Studio. We dont yet know what this will be called, but right now, we call it BlackBerry 6 Theme Studio. We dont even know when this will be out. Probably a week or a fortnight after the release of the BlackBerry 6 OS.
For all the developers out there, wait for the app to be released to develop themes for the latest BlackBerry OS 6. Till then, feel happy seeing this screenshot.
If you are concerned about your BlackBerry getting scratches on the display or the panel at the back, here is a chance to get a very good protection accessory for low price. Zagg is offering its award winning protection accessories for your BlackBerry phones at very low price. You can get as much as 75% off on its products. Just follow the link given below in this post and avail discounts on all the products listed on the page.
Currently for BlackBerry, Zagg is offering full body protection for the BlackBerry Tour, BlackBerry Pearl 8220 and the BlackBerry Storm 2 with 75% discount. The invisible protection shield lets your phone be safe and also does not make your phone look ugly, because, I said its invisible, rather transparent. 
Get a better idea of the product on the official website. You can read user testimonials and product features before you make a purchase. So head over to the website with the link provided and take a look at the products yourself.
For the first time ever, here is an app which will let you make VoIP calls from your BlackBerry phone over WiFi. This app will not use your voice minutes. Tring Me is an Indian based communications company and has come up with the Tring Me app for BlackBerry phones.
Apps such as this were already present for the Symbian, iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile. But BlackBerry users never had such a chance. A lot of the existing VoIP apps make use of your voice minutes. But Tring Me needs only WiFi, and you get WiFi at almost all public places these days. So no matter if you are at an airport, restaurant, coffee shop or anywhere else, you can connect to the local WiFi and start making calls. Easy!!
So if you think you want such an app for your BlackBerry, head over to the official website here and sign up. Singing up is easy, you just need to provide your name and email to them. As usual, you will get an email with no delay with the sign up link. Once you are done, you have to authorize your phone. Provide your phone number on the website and they will call you with instructions and a security code. Enter that code and you are good to go. You can choose to be reached on your phone or GTalk or be offline or a few more options. You even get your own phone number, so that people can reach you with that.
Good features. Try it out today. Get Tring Me on your BlackBerry now. The official website is here.
Research in Motion's latest offering to the world of smartphones is the BlackBerry Torch. Its the first BlackBerry phone to have a capacitive touch screen and a full QWERTY keyboard in a clamshell slider form factor. With a lot of hopes, BlackBerry is launching the device all over the world. Now, the company is getting geared up to launch the BlackBerry Torch in the Canadian part of the world.
The new is that the company will have launch parties on the company's home turf. Sources say that the BlackBerry Torch launch party in Canada has been scheduled on 21st of Sep. On 21st, the launch party will be in Toronto. This will be followed by another launch party for the device in Vancouver the next day, and then the next day yet another launch party in Montreal. So its a three day launch party, from 21st of Sep to 23rd of Sep.
But there is no info about the fact that these dates will also be the official release dates for the device also. This is yet to be known. It is also said that BlackBerry will be giving away 25 units of the BlackBerry Torch free at each launch party. So there you go, another attraction. RIM is spending a lot of money and time on this device. Dont know if the device will live up to all the hype.
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