Top Blackberry NewsKeeping you up to date with all the latest Blackberry News!

Tashanna let me know that Slacker has been quietly updated to v1.1.23 today. It now is sitting at a whopping 1.4mb download! This is an update from the last 1.1.11 version. Sadly there is no change log so I cannot say if it is worth upgrading but if you are having issues it cannot hurt.

You can pick up the latest version at www.slacker.com.

via BlackBerry Forums

We mentioned the new NHL mobile website last week as a pretty cool resource for hockey info. Hockeybuddha let me know that The Hockey News has a free mobile application for BlackBerry powered by Polar Mobile that looks pretty slick. It gives you access to:

• Full coverage by The Hockey News (articles are cached locally so you can even read them on the plane)
• Live game scores updated automatically every few minutes when updates are available
• Full schedule
• & Stats

You can pick it up free by heading to www.thn.mobi from your BlackBerry browser. Let me know what you guys think!

Devices officially supported are: BlackBerry 8700 Series, 8800 Series, 8300 Series (Curve), 8100 Series (Pearl), 9000 Series (Bold), 8200/9100 Series (Pearl Flip), 8900 Series (Curve), 9500 Series (Storm) which pretty much covers all recent devices.

Theme designer Seville is showing us ladies some love with his latest theme design, Pink.

Pink is for all the ladies out there who have been missing ‘girly’ theme designs for your BlackBerry. It comes in Bottom Zen and Today styles. I was able to play with this theme on my Bold and it runs very smoothly. The fonts in the ‘messages’ application for example are very ‘bubbly’ in style which, maybe be little hard to read for some, but go very nicely with the overall concept. The icons are basic ‘Bold like’ icons but highlight to cute pink flowers when you select them. A clean, yet pretty theme that’s available for 8100, 8300, 8800 (4.5) and 9000 devices and costs only $3.00 over at Sm0g.com.

Iambic Health & Diet Manager is a hefty application at 1.5mb but it does have some interesting features I have not seen in similar applications. Its kind of like having a electronic nutritionist in your pocket. It gives you health information about the food you eat along with giving you a way to track and monitor your caloric intake. Its a bit pricey at $19.95 (with a free trial from what I can tell) but still if you use it the app is well worth it just as a way to log your calories instead of using the memo application.

From the description:

When you’re constantly on the go and dealing with the demands of your hectic life, usually it’s nutrition that gets put on the back burner. Quick and convenient can often end up replacing smart and healthy. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, you can actually take control of your health and nutrition using an approach that is quick, convenient and smart – with Health & Diet Manager for BlackBerry.
This handy app keeps you “in the know” on all kinds of things, like how many calories you need to consume on a daily basis to lose (or maintain) weight. Or how many calories and grams of fat are in that egg muffin sandwich with cheese and sausage (486 calories/31g fat) you grabbed for breakfast. Or that walking for 45 minutes during lunch burns about the same number of calories as a small Veggie Delite sandwich from Subway. Or that the protein count in that particular sandwich, 9g, will surely having you running for the snack machine by mid-afternoon.
Armed with Health & Diet Manager, you’ll be able to make smarter meal and exercise choices today and everyday.

Tracking the Essentials…

• Recent studies have shown the benefits of logging calories consumed. “It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories,” said Jack Hollis, Ph.D., the lead author/researcher of a study for Kaiser Permanente.
• With Health & Diet Manager, you can keep track of what you ate and how many calories you expended while working out. It also helps you keep track of other health-related vitals, such as resting pulse, blood pressure, and hours slept.

Leveraging Your BlackBerry – Quick, Convenient & Smart

• This version of Health & Diet Manager has been specially designed for use with BlackBerry devices such as the Bold, Curve, Pearl, and Storm. Users will enjoy the convenience of one-handed navigation, which allows quick movement through the various screens and menus.
• See for yourself how Health & Diet Manager provides the essentials you need to proactively pursue a healthier lifestyle, gain more energy and accomplish more than you ever imagined.
• With Health & Diet Manager, you’ll be able to:
• Tap into robust food item and menu databases that can be easily customized to speed the meal logging process.
• See how many calories are expended for a variety of exercise activities and get a better appreciation of how much time you should ideally spend exercising to achieve optimal results.
• Easily track health-related data in addition to logging meal and exercise activities.
• Give yourself regular checkups and see at a glance the progress you’ve made towards achieving the health and nutritional goals you’ve established.

Mayhem let me know that Yatca has released version 1.3.2 of their app. We mentioned Yatca before as a free OS 4.6+ compatible Twitter client that integrates nicely with your messages list. They have added some new features like support for other micro blogging services built on Laconica like identi.ca and TWiT.tv along with some corporate/internal systems. They have also added some filtering updates and other feature upgrades. They still have an issue with pictures taken with a 8900 or Storm but they are working on it. As of the next version they will be removing direct support for the camera and will just let you browse for images. This is because RIM does not give them any controls over the camera that users want like zoom and such.

NOTE: Yatca mentions that they had to change the ’shape’ of some of the objects that we store in the device memory. This means that when you install the new version it will blow away all Yatca updates, replies and settings already stored on your device.

You can pick up the latest version OTA at bit.ly/yatca or read more on the product page

New features:

• In addition to good old Twitter, you can now use Yatca with any microblogging service built around a Laconica server. This includes identi.ca, TWiT.tv and many others – including private corporate servers. Simply choose the service you want at the top of the Yatca Options screen. The only issue with non-Twitter services is that TwitPic’s dependence on Twitter for authentication means that you can’t upload photos. But we are working on a solution.
• The filtering introduced in the last version has been reworked. Previously, for a given category of update or reply (e.g. ‘Updates sent by me’) you could only choose between having it merged into your main message list or keeping it in a separate non-merged folder. You can now choose between ‘Merged’, ’Non-merged’ and ‘Discarded’.
• A further improvement in the area of filtering is that instead of a folder for each filter category there are now just two folders. Anything that gets filtered into the ‘Merged Items’ folder will appear in your main message list and anything filtered into the ‘Non-merged Items’ will not. It is easy to associate a shortcut key with a search that will quickly open the ‘Non-merged Items’ folder from within the main message list.
• Paging is now used when downloading updates and replies from the server. This fixes the “request entity too large” problem that occasionally affected users with lots of friends who did not regularly refresh their friends timeline.
• Yatca now has a homescreen icon which gives you something more obvious to look out for when switching applications. It also means that you can open Yatca from the icon to quickly update your status. Lastly, it means that you can uninstall Yatca by just deleting the icon.
• When replying to somebody, the recipient’s @username is now shown before the text. Previously, this was just silently prepended to the text before uploading to Twitter. But it freaked some people out that they couldn’t actually see it so now they can.
• The retweeting function has been improved and it is now possible to review and edit the text of the retweet before sending. Also, if the length exceeds 140 characters, the last three characters are replaced with the ellipsis instead of just truncating.
• A new setting way down at the bottom of the Yatca Options allows you to choose wether you want to see screen names (droozr) or full names (John Smith). We prefer full names so that remains the default
• There are times when you get so far behind that all you want to do is mark all unread tweets as read and get rid of that useful (but occasionally annoying) notification icon at the top of the screen. Well now you can, thanks to the ‘Mark All Items Read’ command.

It looks like VeriSign is testing out a new RSA SecurID like 2 factor authentication application for BlackBerry. In case you don’t know this would secure your eBay, PayPal, or AOL account by requiring you to enter in your username, password, and a randomly generated 6 digit code from this application to login. This really secures your accounts and is a form of what is called 2 factor authentication.

Many people already have such a system to connect to their work VPN systems and such so it is nothing crazy new. Some websites have already been trialing just giving out the small key fobs that generate these numbers so a BlackBerry app just combines the two.

It does not look like they are accepting any more users into the beta program but hopefully the app will be out soon.

via NY Times via BlackBerry Cool

Just as a heads up in case you did not know. CTIA begins tomorrow and there will probably be a slew of news and announcements along with the event. CTIA is a large wireless trade show where companies come to show off their new wireless products and services.

RIM recently started a big push to get people registered for their app store. I received over 3 emails from them so far asking me to register to “be the first to know.” It looks like things are ramping up to a release especially since we are getting to the end of Spring 2009… Maybe RIM will even drop the bomb on the 9630 we have been hearing so much about and an official announcement for BES 5.0.

The BoyGenius also seems to have some rumors about WES 2009 which is coming in early May. Looks like an AT&T 8900 Curve is due along with maybe an announcement of the 9630. BES 5.0 will definitely be announced by then since they have sessions dedicated to it already. There are also rumblings of LTE BlackBerrys being shown…

Michael Small over at BlackberryThemes UK hooked me up with an amazing Iphoneish theme for the Storm! Personally, I like the look of the iPhone but definately prefer my Storm! This allows you to have the best of both worlds! This themes has a sleek & modern feel to it. The shelving layout is really unique, something I rarely see. Overall, it is a very crisp & clean theme for sure!

You can download this theme for free by visiting BlackberryThemes UK

BBFileScout has shown quite a few changes since we mentioned version 0.5.6. My favorites are the new progress bars when you are copying multiple files and the simplification of the playlist creation features. I won’t go too far into the details but I do recommend upgrading to the latest version. You can find the change log below:

What’s new?

• Copy, move, delete and zipping of directories (or collections containing one ore more directories) will now show a percentage progress bar
• Create Playlists from current directory content [optional: including all subdirectories (recursive)]
  (this menu item is only available, if you have specified a ‘Playlist Directory’ in the options)
• Multiselect now support the selection of directories
• File details [added properties]:
  • Is Hidden [YES|NO]
• Directory details:
  • Filename (complete)
  • Total file size (incl. sub-directories)
  • free space
  • number of files
  • number of directories
  • Last modification date
  • Is Hidden [YES|NO]
• New Key Shortcuts and other fixes

As a reminder BBFileScout is a Donation-ware/free application where the developer asks that you donate as much as you feel the application is worth at this link. You can read more about BBFileScout at this link or you can download it OTA at this link.

Our friends over at Elecite have just introduced a hot new premium theme for the BlackBerry Bold, Curve 8900 and Storm. This new theme called PSB 3.0 is based off of Sony’s PlayStation console. It features 20 icons sorted by five drop down columns. It’s probably one of the coolest themes I’ve put on my [...]

This post originated at BlackBerry Sync. To see the full post visit please visit BlackBerrySync.com