You will probably have heard about the rumored BlackBerry flip phone, or technically, the clamshell phone. Till now, we only knew that the phone has been given the model number 9670, but we had no idea about the name. Now though, there is another rumor going around in the internet about the name of the device, in Style. This is because the new clamshell phone is expected to be named "BlackBerry Style 9670".
This is going to another new from Research in Motion after the very new BlackBerry Torch has been announced. BlackBerry Torch is also a new offering from RIM, with a capacitive touch screen and a slide out QWERTY keyboard. This here, the BlackBerry Style, is also a new offering. BlackBerry is trying hard to give a tough competition to the Android and the iOS. But is it yet to see what will really happy between these big players in an industry that they themselves have created.
A new country is joining the list of countries which had and are still threatening the ban of BlackBerry services. Dubai is that country. And the Police Chief here has stated that the BlackBerry phones may be used as a spy tool in the country to spy on the people there. Like India and Saudi Arabia, Dubai has also given a dead line to RIM, Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry. The country has asked for access grants to encrypted data that is sent through the phone. Dubai is worried that the countries US and Israel may spy on Dubai using the devices made by RIM.
'Dubai's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, said that fears of espionage and information sharing by foe Israel — as well as UAE allies United States and Britain — helped prompt the possible limits on the popular BlackBerry.
Tamim told a conference on information technology that the proposed BlackBerry curbs are also "meant to control false rumors and defamation of public figures due to the absence of surveillance," according to a story posted Friday on the website of the UAE newspaper Al-Khaleej.
It is yet to see what RIM will say as a reply to this and how the country's agencies will take that.
UN technology chief has said that the Canadian company, Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry, should grant access to the government agencies across the world to monitor data sent and received on their BlackBerry devices so that terror threats can be minimized to a great extent.
Hamadoun Toure, the secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Unit (ITU) said that the countries that are facing terror issues have the right to ask the access grant to the encrypted data of the BlackBerry phones, and that the phone manufacturer should do nothing but give full access to the data to make the world a better place to live. "Those are genuine requests," he told the AP news agency. "There is a need for co-operation between governments and the private sector on security issues."
India, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are the countries that have previously threatened to block the services of the BlackBerry phones. Lebanon, Algeria and Indonesia have also raised the same security grounds to ask BlackBerry the access grant.
On the other hand, Civil rights activists have argued that the whole controversy is due to the government's lack of security and frustration over their inability to eavesdrop on BlackBerry using citizens. It is yet to see what BlackBerry will have to face in the future.
BlackBerry Curve 3G is the newest phone of the BlackBerry Curve family now, and this phone has the 3G capability. So you get high data speeds when you are on a 3G network. The phone has been being launched around the world and now, the phone is available for sale on 3 UK.
People who are interested can now finally hope that they are on 3 UK and will get the phone shortly. The phone has a QWERTY keypad and a candy bar form factor. So messaging and email and instant messaging are not a pain anymore. The phone a brilliant wide screen to better viewing of web pages and better navigation to give you a typical BlackBerry experience. The phone has a 2 mega pixel camera, with geo tagging capability. So your photos will now have the location details also. The phone uses the built in GPS also for this purpose.
The BlackBerry Curve 3G has a dedicated music key, which means that the multimedia part of the phone has also been taken care of. The optical trackpad on the phone will let you easily navigate through the menus of the phone with single hand. All in all, a wonderful phone is on your way.
The new BlackBerry Curve 3G will be available in the graphite gray color for £35 a month on The One Plan with 2000 any network minutes, 5000 Three-to-Three minutes, 5000 texts and 1GB data.
The US government is trying hard to make its citizen stop online gambling and betting, but American Wagering and a few other companies in Nevada are all set to open their business to the internet in the form of online gambling. These companies already their apps ready for BlackBerry phones which will help the users gamble and bet online right from their phones.
The Gaming board of Nevada had the app in their lab and tested the app rigorously to find out if the app is breaking any rules. But in vain. So the app by the regulators and gambling and betting enthusiasts will soon get to enjoy this app on their phones. Happy gambling and betting users.
"The Nevada Gaming Control Board scrutinized the project with a very thorough lab investigation, which helped us in setting the bar for our security features," said John English. "We have developed the first mobile phone betting application to be approved in Nevada."
American Wagering has over sixty sports books in Nevada, all of these books are provided in the app. So the users can choose any one of these sixty books to bet and gamble on. But you will have to register first before doing so. The users will have to go to one of these books and have to register their accounts. But care has been taken that nothing illegal will happen. The app will ask for identification details of the user during the time of activation to make sure that the use of the allowed age to gamble and bet.
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.
Pilot My-Cast is an app used by professional pilots to gather a lot of info about the weather and forecasts and the flight conditions as a whole. The app gives just amazing amount of info you would want. Its like sitting with a complete weather forecast, flight adviser, all at the same time.
The app gives details that according to me, none of the other apps provide. The app makes it very easy to page through surface meteorological reports, terminal forecasts and observations and advisories immediately as they surface. The app also gives you an actual radar and satellite imagery from the satellites. So you get a whole better picture and can easily take your decision.
Also, there is an easy flight plan filing via DUATs METARs. This is displayed in both text and graphic formats. So there is no way you can miss on any info. You can even get 24 hours of TAF forecasts. Other details provided by the app include current flight conditions, visibility, altimeter, wind direction, speed, temperature, dew point, time of observation, lightning data and a lot lot more. You think any other app gives you all this info?
Anyway, Handango has the app for sale on its website. The Pilot My-Cast by Garmin app for your BlackBerry$9.95 per month comes to you for . You can get more info about the app and buy it from Handango from here.
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.
