Today, RIM announced the beta availability of BBM Music service in BlackBerry Beta Zone. BBM Music lets you share, discover, play, and grow your music collections with your BBM friends.

With BBM Music, you can discover and share music with your friends through an evolving community-based music library. The size of your library continues to grow as you add new friends, and you can select music from a catalog with millions of songs.

Key features include:

·         Ability to build a music profile (up to 50 songs) from a catalogue of millions of tracks

·         Invite friends to BBM Music from your BBM contacts

·       Share playlists or single songs with BBM Music friends

·       Create multiple playlists by combining your profile songs plus your BBM Music friends’ profile songs

·        See what new songs your BBM friends have added, view comments, or start up a BBM chat about favorite bands

·       Cache music for easy offline listening

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Quick Links:

• RIM Press Release
• Inside BlackBerry Blog
• BlackBerry Messenger
• BlackBerry Beta Zone

Gist essential meaning is to keep your contacts organized. It combines all your contacts and the details, the news via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in one place. Thus, it helps you create an improved and organized view of your contacts profile. You can even sort them by its ‘importance’ feature. It can also give you detail like the amount and frequency of communication you have with every person in your network.  There is also an additional ‘get the gist’ menu for the BlackBerry’s Messages, Calendar, and Contacts applications.

The latest version 1.5.41 requires device software 6.0 or higher and supports not only the United States but also Australia, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom. It has been updated also to support more BlackBerry devices, previously it was only Torch, but it is now available also for models Bold 9700/ 9780, Bold 9900/ 9930, Style 9760 and Tour 9630 as well.  Moreover, Gist promises your full privacy and security regarding your contacts information. The data is totally controlled and owned by no one but you, and anytime, you can request from the Gist management to wipe the data from their system.

Visit their official website, gist.com or BlackBerry App world for the free download of this application.

LogicNEXT Software gives you Smart Shopping List app for your PlayBook where you can manage your shopping lists by editing and importing list or just simply creating them in preset template. Shopping List also gives you sharing features over sms and email, with ask your family and friends feature too if ever you forget something. Moreover, with its advance and innovative feature, you can also manage your expenses; take a track photo for your receipts to keep it on track with billing snapshot, view your expenses report in monthly or yearly way with themes and sounds for you to enjoy.

For BlackBerry PlayBook, there is a list of applications you can shop from. The choices include, Smart Smart Shopping List, Shopping List Lite, and Smart Shopping List Pro. The shopping list Lite app comes for free with the mentioned features above, while the basic smart shopping list costs $2.99. Their only difference is that you can create and save a list with different items aside from all the options from the free version (Lite).The third option is the Smart Shopping List Pro that can be purchased at $3.99. The pro with this version is that you can share the lists across different platforms with other Smart Shopping List users, backup and restore feature is included, access to cloud portal with options to generate reports on it, seven additional preset templates. These applications are available in BlackBerry App World.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), the first bank in Canada introduced to us a new application designed for those who are in the investment world last July 25^th through its mobile brokerage app. The CIBC Mobile Brokerage App lets you get connected to your investments wherever you are in the world, anytime of the day, just using your cool device like your BlackBerry® smart phones.

You can do the following with your CIBC Mobile Brokerage:

·         View your CIBC brokerage accounts: Check your account balances and holdings details so you are updated how your investments are doing.

·         Trade your Stocks: Maximize the use your smartphone in knowing the market opportunities, whatever you are doing and wherever you are.

·         Get real time quotes: Monitor the price of an individual stock and make trade. You can set up a customized watch list for the latest stock price.

·         Transfer Money: Easy and secured way of money transfer between your CIBC bank and brokerage accounts.

·         Review Transactions: Check the status of your past and current transactions like trades and cash transfers and review their details.

It is a free application and comes in 2 major languages only: English and French. You can download it from CIBC official website http://www.cibc.com/mobilebrokerage or from BlackBerry App World. To use this application, you must first be registered for CIBC Online Brokerage.

Evernote is a suite of software and services designed for taking notes and archiving. These notes can be in a form of text, or web excerpt, photos or a voice memo and then these notes can be sorted and tagged, annotated, edited, given comments and searched. Evernote, developed by Evernote Corporation supports a number of operating system platforms and offers synchronization services.

While Xobni (the backward spelling of Inbox and pronounced as zob-nee), is designed to help you find all the people you have communicated with from all the emails, text messages and phone calls you have exchanged from your Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook accounts. Then Xobni makes a complete and social profile for each of your contacts for you and make it available to you on any device.

Combining Evernote and Xobni, this will surely be our ultimate favorite contact management solution we can find on our mobile gadgets. This powerful combination will just give you two combined features. You can search for a contact in Xobni to see any notes that you have taken including email addresses and phone numbers. The other one is to edit or create a new note for a contact or company that is automatically associated with the contact information, and then search your Evernote right from your inbox to find and associate or link any note to that contact.

Accessing Evernote needs a free (ad supported) or premium account and Xobni for outlook 2 is free to download.

Instant messaging clients have been updated by Research In Motion for BlackBerry®  smartphones. These applications are Google Talk™, Windows Live Messenger™ (formerly MSN Messenger by Microsoft), Yahoo! ® Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger™ (AIM).

With these IMs, you can keep talking and chatting while on the go with their common features of virtual real time chat from almost anywhere using your BlackBerry smartphone. Take pictures by means of built in camera so you can share them to your IM contacts. Keep your friends, loved ones, and workmates be updated of your status, and then spice it up and express your feelings through emoticons. Chat with multiple contacts at the same time, and personalize your profile pic with an icon or avatar. 

All of these IM applications can be downloaded for free from the App World and their latest official update is the v. 2.5.84, containing no major changes on the features and perhaps its update is all about bug fixes only.  But, watch out, there has been news leaking out that that there is (unofficial) v.2.5.88 for all the mentioned BlackBerry IM clients. And that is news we are looking forward to. What changes could have been made next time?

BlackBerry Instant Messenger Download

                       Entertainment® Book Companion (of Entertainment Publications of Australia Pty. Ltd.) is free application to download. But, it requires an entertainment membership for you to view and use the offers. To become a member, buy its membership at Entertainment.com, and then you can save more and do more with this companion in finding discounts for up to 50% off and 2-for-1 near you in your favorite local restaurant, shops, hotels, golf courses and travel spots, events and much more. It is indeed a real deal lover’s dream. This entertainment membership only cost around $35-$48/, a very low one time pay for 12 months and some programs are actually provided by institutions, schools or organizations and fundraisers. Its 2 kinds of memberships are branded as Saversguide® or Frequent Values®.

Plus, browsing it from your BlackBerry (w. device software 5.0 or higher), you can quickly search and review and even organize the discounts in your membership. Search by location, category and name; see merchants on the map and get driving instructions going to it; get essential information regarding the offers available, contact numbers, and find out where the coupon is within your entertainment book; and you can create an easy reference list.

Entertainment Book Companion for BlackBerry

Integration with BBM, is the new feature for the FileScout Version 2.7.0.8

FileScout, formerly known as BBFileScout, is complete file manager software for BlackBerry devices with OS 4.3 or higher. It is a very popular and very useful application with zip, text and image manager for your smartphones.

The core features of FileScout includes creating, copying, moving, renaming, deleting directory files; zip and unzip files; opening all media files and register additional file types; and the list of directories can be define as shortcuts with shown details. Moreover, this application lets you open files in plain text (this usually happens when you receive email that is not supported in your BlackBerry) for you to edit, mark, copy, and paste. You can also display thumbnails for supported image files; delete pre-installed wallpapers to save more memory; create audio playlist; e-mail and SMS archive function; QuickFilter the current directory; send and receive any files through bluetooth;  send any attachment in your email; and access your Dropbox (in a separate plugin). Note that some of these features are supported depending on different models.

The most recent update came out last July 13^th with the version 2.7.0.8 that is now integrated with BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). So, from just navigating through all kind of files stored in your BlackBerry, the integration makes it a complete process by allowing you to send those files to your contacts from your BBM. This newer version of software the File Scout supports BBM 6.0.0.111 and higher OS. You can download enjoy its 14 day trial version or just get it straight from the BlackBerry App World for only US$4.99 USD.

There are several RSS clients that you can choose from but GeeReader comes for free to your BlackBerry®PlayBook™.

Released around May from EPI-USE Africa Pty LTD, this application was useful already in importing/ downloading your feeds and synchronizing it with GoogleReader, very important if you are the type of person who get and read RSS feeds regularly. With the update to 1.0.7, of course, this touch-optimized GoogleReader free application gave us fixes on “keep unread” function and the inability to add new feed and share them on your Facebook or Twitter Accounts.

 Now, on its latest version 1.0.8, you can still use your Google account to login; “star, like and share” feed items and sort them from newest to oldest articles; and you can further click and view the article detail in a maximized window and some fixes on the compatibility issue with blogger feed subscriptions (before, it was preventing the application from loading).Already available in BlackBerry App World and get it for free.

Get FileScout – BlackBerryApp World

GTD on your BlackBerry, now more empowered by Viira Outlook Suite v1.2

What is a handy way to an organized lifestyle and staying ON your schedule? Imagine the power of the Viira Outlook plugin implementing the concept of GTD on your BB device!  Viira (a trademark of Karta Mobile) is simply a software application, and is a solution, that is inspired based on David Allen’s famous principles of “Getting Things Done” or (GTD) which is adopted by professionals, entrepreneurs, executives all over the world. It is integrated to BlackBerry smartphones apps and it is the first to synchronize with the Microsoft® Outlook® (email management &calendar software). Hence, the combination is a powerful and effective Viira Outlook Suite.

With the impressive productivity enhancement on Viira v3.0’s release, users love it. Quick New Project, Search, Reminders, BlackBerry Task Integration and In-Basket (email, SMS, daily tasks, reminders, ideas, that are un-assigned with will appear here, collection phase of GTD system) are just the new add-ons. Meanwhile the Viira Outlook Suite version 1.1 is also updated to v1.2 with the same additions of email organization (task can be created and or emails can be viewed either in BlackBerry client or Outlook plugin or vice versa), quick search and quick launch, quick add, fast start up, enhanced IU and touch screen support (BlackBerry Torch and Storm models). The version 1.2 comes in free upgrade to all buyers.

Viira Outlook Suite is purchased at Karta Mobile for  price of $69.99 and there’s also a free trial available, 14 days period, and is supported on all modern BlackBerry devices as well as on Microsoft Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010.

Vira for BlackBerry

Blaq for BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet is on further enhancements.

Blaq (from Kisai Labs and Baselime Ltd., )for BlackBerry® first launch back in May this year was not so totally complete with its several planned features not yet in place. Features such as the list support not present, more testing on multi-account support, limitations on advanced notifications and the need of extensive menu customization, the team behind the creation of Blaq is really working hard for these improvements to take place as quickly as they can.

However, this launch of Blaq for PlayBook™ on BlackBerry® App World™ just last May, it did not stop the fanatics from purchasing it at $1.99 to experience a fuller featured Twitter apps. Even with the non-extensive coverage regarding this application, after few hours of its initial release, it tops the list of paid tablet in the AppWorld, especially over the  other paid apps in all BlackBerry® App World™, PlayBook™ including BlackBerry® smartphone apps in just a day!

A newer version, of Blaq for PlayBook v1.1 was submitted on July 8^th, with additional features such as the multi-account support, search, trending topics and lists, enhanced support for non-English users, and maximized web view, show lock for protected accounts. Also, they put in scroll to top by double tapping respective icon, new search icon to toolbar (and removed compose icon from it), new reply icon, progress bar (uploading image), delete tweet, links @ mentions to profilecard and minor cosmetics changes. While some are not yet changing like “remove photo” stays after tweeting a picture, mention shows as new even on refresh, cannot send tweet with special characters, and composition runs behind avatar, real –time streaming fails after upgrading to OS 1.0.6, keyboard doesn’t show up on reply/compose, and user can only retweet once then only old-style afterwards.

Blaq for BlackBerry PlayBook