Who knew? There are some good apps for my Blackberry Pearl Flip phone
Blackberry Pearl Flip phone
Most of my Tuesday column, Get App-y, deals with apps that I can find on my iPod Touch. Although I talk and text on my Blackberry Pearl Flip phone that I get through U.S. Cellular, I have found that Blackberry’s App World is slow and confusing, and apps run slow on the phone once I get them.
Today, thanks to a roundup in PC Magazine of its 100 top free apps for various devices, I found a list of handy Blackberry apps here – http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366227,00.asp.
One of them, a browser called Bolt 2.1 looks particularly promising. And fast. And more like a real Web page than what I’ve been seeing previously. Bolt the Browser (and not the horse in the movie by that name) even loaded the graphic- and photo-heavy website operated by Ree Drummond — thepioneerwoman.com — quickly onto my phone. To see the huge photos, I had to scroll around on the tiny screen, so they’re not as beautiful as they are on her site, nor is her site set up to view on a mobile device, but loading thepioneerwoman.com worked faster and better than the regular Blackberry browser.
I’ll eventually take a look at several of the others recommended by PC Magazine for the Blackberry but if you want to see the list of its pick of the top 100 free apps 2010, no matter what your mobile device you’re using — iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc., here’s the link: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366292,00.asp.
Get App-y!
~ Lillie-Beth (lbrinkman@opubco.com)
Getting your mobile app idea to the iTunes store is all in your "App-titude" and finding people who can help
Heath Clinton with Phase 2 Interactive, Holly and Clay Healey of AIC Title Co., and web developer Josh Wright hold images of the apps they helped bring to Apple's iTunes store.
So, you and your friends have this great idea for an application for the iPhone that you think will change the world and make you a millionaire because so many people would want to download it.
Now what do you do? How do you develop it?
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about three Oklahomans who have taken apps from concept to the iTunes store in different ways. Read the article at http://bit.ly/cNEFdl, or read below for information on how to contact them for your own app idea.
One of the Oklahomans, Heath Clinton, leads an Oklahoma City company, Phase 2 Interactive, that develops both mobile and web apps for individuals and businesses. In addition to developing websites, such as for the Oklahoma Heritage Association and SandRidge Energy, Phase 2 received attention this spring for its OKC Memorial Marathon mobile app. The company has others in the works, so stay tuned. Its developers’ first effort was a game called “Quadrangle”; a more recent one was for technology trends speaker Scott Klososky.
Another Oklahoman, Holly Healey, had an idea for an app and wanted to learn what it meant to outsource something to India, a trend that she had read about. She turned to Brickwork India first and was connected to Rajan Barma, who has since formed his own company, Diya IT Solutions, based in Fremont, Calif. The app, “Who Owns That Plane?”, developed for AIC Title Co. of Oklahoma City, owned by Healey’s husband, is now on the app store. She has stayed in touch with “Raj” for other app ideas.
The third Oklahoman, Josh Wright of Norman, is a Web developer from Norman who decided to play around with his ideas for the iTunes store on his own. He has several, including “Pocket Tap,” grouped under the name “Bendy Tree.”
Three Oklahomans found slightly different ways to take their ideas from concept to an actual app.
If you’re interested in getting in touch with the two who do this for a living, here’s how to reach them:
Phase 2 Interactive, which has been in business in Oklahoma City for more than a decade, developing custom websites and software for businesses and institutions and has now branched into the mobile app area.
http://www.phase2online.com
4100 Perimeter Center, Suite 310 Oklahoma City, OK 73112
Phone: (405) 917-3777
Fax: (405) 917-3799
Email: info@phase2online.com.
Rajan Barma with Diya IT Solutions, Fremont, Calif., which develops web and mobile applications on any platform, providing project management and working with local resources if required.
www.DiyaIT.com
E-mail: info@diyait.com or raj@diyait.com
Phone: (510) 857-6880
~ Lillie-Beth Brinkman (lbrinkman@opubco.com)
Wishlist Wednesday: All the new technology, or at least to understand it
Choices, choices, mind-boggling technology choices:
An iPhone 4, an Android or an HTC EVO 4G, which, apparently, is sold out almost everywhere? (I don’t know anything about the Evo. Please enlighten me.)
An iPad, with the 3G network or just wifi?
A mobile phone that tethers to a wireless network so I can have wifi with me all the time? (Or, does the wifi tether to the mobile phone?)
Switch to AT&T or stick with U.S. Cellular? Do I really need an iPhone or can I live happily ever after with my iPod Touch?
A CDMA network or a GS one? What the heck does that mean anyway?
A Wii trade-in at Game Stop so I can get a new one with an enhanced motion-sensor remote for $50 and download Netflix movies onto it?
How do I pay for it all? How are other people paying for all this stuff? Do I NEED it or just WANT it, concepts I’m always stressing to my kids in trying to teach them how to spend money?
With all these new devices, there’s too much technology coming at me all at once these days. I’m trying to sort through it all, and I appreciate the sales clerk at Best Buy who explained some information about mobile phones to me yesterday: The business people still like the Blackberry; younger people like some other phone; developers like the Droid, which is more open and easier to program; different types of users like the iPhone for its ease of use, and so on. At least that’s what I think he said.
My mobile phone contract isn’t up for another year, and my garage sale profits from last Saturday won’t get me anywhere close to an iPad, so luckily I don’t have to make decisions about what I might use as extensively as my iPod Touch anytime soon.
It’s good to be ready, isn’t it? Whew. My brain is tired. Is yours?
I’d love an iPad, but the iPhone 4 is awfully appealling. I could use it to explore all the photo apps, for one. But I will also need a phone that’s I’ll use for real conversations and texting; is the iPhone good for that? I like U.S. Cellular’s network because I can always get through on it at a crowded OU football game while many of my AT&T friends can’t. I’m mostly content with my Blackberry Pearl Flip, although a year from now … ?
The “wow” factor continues for me as I watch all these new products roll out. I want them all, but I don’t know where to start to narrow it down. Also, for which ones do I wait for the second generation? Any ideas?
~ Lillie-Beth Brinkman (lbrinkman@opubco.com)
Steve Jobs and the Apple iPhone 4
Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed the new iPhone 4 Monday.
In case you’ve missed it, Apple CEO Steve Jobs officially announced what Apple considers its latest and greatest iPhone, out June 24.
Calling the iPhone 4 the “biggest leap we’ve taken since the original iPhone,” an enthusiastic and smooth Jobs introduced the new design and new features including:
A new operating system, dubbed the iOs4; new high-resolution display, new folder system for apps and ability to multitask between them, and others. It will also be the first phone that offers video chatting, where both parties who have an iPhone can see each other while talking. Jobs called it “Face Time video calling.”
“I grew up in the U.S. with the ‘Jetsons’ and ‘Star Trek’ and ‘The Communicators’ just dreaming about this, just dreaming about video calling and it’s real now,” Jobs said.
You can read the details at websites like TechCrunch’s blog (www.http://techcrunch.com) or see the speech at places like cnn.com ( http://bit.ly/aHCLJI).
But here are some figures that I found interesting in watching the video:
- 15,000 apps are submitted to Apple weekly
- 5 billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s app stores
- 100 million of Apple’s devices (iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads) are in circulation right now, using those apps
- The app store has 150 million accounts signed up to download apps
What do you think? Are you going to get one? Are you as impressed as the enthusiastic audience was? In using up 570 wifi connections in the auditorium to get the word out live today, audience members excited to tell the world about the product bogged down Jobs’ demonstration when the iPhone 4′s wifi didn’t work.
E-mail me your thoughts at lbrinkman@opubco.com.
~ Lillie-Beth
Get App-y! NewsOK's "Of Interest" blog now has app, tech focus
There are more browsers for your iPhone than Safari's. Search for them in Apple's app store.
Greetings. We are switching the focus of this blog to one that covers the app world and the tech one beyond it. So, if you have a favorite application, you’d like to share or one that you wish did a particular task, e-mail me at lbrinkman@opubco.com. Follow me on twitter.com/lillie_beth. If you’re looking for Heather Warlick-Moore, find her at NewsOK’s gossip blog: http://blog.newsok.com/gossip.
There. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk applications, mostly for your mobile devices.
Right now, I’m still looking for ways to repair an iPod Touch that I spilled wine into and haven’t had much luck. But I have one I can use instead, as well as a Blackberry Flip, which is pretty good but doesn’t run all the apps that a higher-end Blackberry would.
I have a column that runs on Tuesdays at http://newsok.com/life. Yesterday, I talked about alternative browsers for Safari that Apple installs on every iPod Touch and iPhone. Did you know there were a lot of them?
Here are three I tried, and they are all faster and have more features than Safari. Have you had luck with any more of them? Leave your comments below.
• Opera Mini Web Browser (free, Opera Software ASA). This application is fast, and you can’t beat the price. When you first open it, you see all your open pages in squares on the main page, which developers call “speed dial” because it looks like a phone’s keypad, so it’s easy to navigate.
• Mercury Browser (free or 99 cents, iLegend Soft). I tried the free version. It allows you to have tabbed browsing, and like Opera, the pages load quickly. There’s also a “private browsing” option.
• Perfect Browser 4 (99 cents, Ingenious Creations). This one has the potential to become my favorite. You can lock the browser in landscape or vertical mode, and you can hide the settings and the website menu, so you get a full-screen view. An option lets you scroll up and down pages quickly without having to swipe a little at a time.
Read more “Get App-y” at: http://newsok.com/get-app-y-more-than-1-browser-available-for-mobile-devices/article/3460301#ixzz0nkWyCYih
And let me know what apps you enjoy, too.
~ Lillie-Beth (lbrinkman@opubco.com)
