If you’re a BlackBerry owner who’s looking for something small to get themselves this holiday season, this might help. Earlier this morning, Beejive released version 2.0 of their BlackBerry IM application – and just in time for the season of The new features: * Facebook chat: Chat with your Facebook friends while on the go, and see a record of your chats on facebook.com. From today until January 1st, a one-device license will set you back $9.95 (usually $19.95), while a swappable license will come in at $14.95 (usually $30). If you’re not ready to jump in just yet, there’s always the 30-day trial. i found this on: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/16/beejive-for-blackberry-2-0/#more-24096 cacth more about mobile on this page... mean wile keep smiling & surfing 
getting.. awkward family dinners.. giving, they’ve lopped 50% off the price tag.
* Clickable Twitter usernames: Click on a Twitter username in a chat to launch Twitter.
* Refined and responsive UI: Take advantage of BeejiveIM’s custom-written user interface, offering speedy and responsive controls and a modern look-and-feel.
* Voice notes: Instantly record and send voice messages to your IM contacts. Voice notes are perfect for on-the-go chatting, such as when you are walking down the street or need to get information to someone quickly and don’t have time to type.
* GPS location: Send your current GPS location with a link to Google Maps, taking advantage of your BlackBerry’s location features and adding a new location-aware element to your chats.
* More chat styles: Customize your chat styles and colors and set different backgrounds and wallpapers.
* File transfers with all IM services: Easily send, receive, and review file attachments, and see previews of images right inside your chat.
* Push notifications: Whether running in the foreground or the background, BeejiveIM will always notify you of new instant messages.
* Improved Battery Life: Staying in touch with all your friends is now far gentler on your battery.
* Support for the 5.0 OS and Storm: BeejiveIM supports all BlackBerrys running 4.2.1+ and 5.X operating systems, including the Storm and Storm 2.
Yep, it’s still happening. You can still become a millionaire on the iPhone without a marketing budget and a brand name.Occipital, the company behind RedLaser [iTunes Link], has struck gold with its barcode-scanning iPhone app. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s much harder to be an indie developer on the iPhone these days. The App Store is riddled with brands and much of the Top 50 selling apps are backed by marketing/PR budgets or legacy users (meaning they’ve been on the store since the beginning, and have an install base that can boost future app sales via cross-promotion). In fact, almost every developer I talk to nowadays says the App Store has become increasingly difficult, and that it would be “impossible to get noticed” if you just stuck your app in the store. Well, if you create a good enough product on the App Store, people will come, and they came to buy RedLaser – in droves. RedLaser has been in the top 5 of the App Store paid apps for 3 months now, and got there without any advertising or marketing whatsoever. Co-Founder Jeff Powers says that though the app hit the market in May, it wasn’t getting any traction. After releasing an update to the app which made it “actually work”, according to Jeff, they saw a dramatic increase in sales. This was despite the fact that they did nothing different upon the re-launch and got almost zero press pickup when they updated the app. The hypothesis is that this came entirely from word-of-mouth sales, which is probably a good bet. Who wouldn’t want to show off to their friends the cool new barcode-scanning price-checking app on their phone? The chart below shows exactly how sales ramped up upon release of the update. The staggering sales RedLaser was getting didn’t stop anytime soon – they rolled through October, November and now half of December without ever leaving the top 5 apps on the store. It’s common for apps to hit the top 10 and stay there for a bit, but 3 months is an extremely long run. We’ll see if they can keep it up through the post-Holiday app frenzy. Regardless, TechStars startup and indie developer Occipital has shown that if you make a great product, users will still buy it. With just two employees, Occipital has managed to rake in well over $1M for their $2 app, and are selling roughly 6,000 units a day. They are also getting strong press pickup due to the holiday buying season, with a feature on Martha Stewart Living earlier this week and as part of a front-page article on WSJ.com. They’ve seen more than a 1,000 sale bump recently, which they attribute to the Martha Stewart TV show. RedLaser does a fantastic job of scanning barcodes on curved surfaces and in poorly-lit areas. I had a bit of trouble taking a picture of some barcodes because I have an awfully unsteady hand, but that was fixed by putting my elbow against my chest. RedLaser provides product search data from a products database called TheFind and nutritional facts from DailyBurn. The product database scans the stores near you (along with any online stores) to help you compare prices between what you’re buying online and what is available locally. It works well, though it sucks that the database has no mom and pop stores because they often don’t link to the product search companies’ databases. On top of RedLaser, there are 12 apps on the store that are powered by the barcode scanning technologies, including Good Guide, GroceryIQ, Corks and others. They get around $0.10 per download of those apps as well, which is a nice recurring revenue stream as more apps integrate their barcode scanning technology. Jeff stressed that Occipital is a mobile computer vision company and that we would see even cooler things from them in the future. In the meantime, take a look at RedLaser on the App Store and make sure you’re getting the best price on your holiday purchases. I found This on: catch this page for more detsils on this ...... mean wile happy surfing
If you live in the United States it can be difficult to understand the role mobile phone technology plays across the globe. Here, you may use your phone for calls and messaging, perhaps for some computing lite, but likely little more. In Senegal, however, farmers are using phones to track crop prices, in Japan, writers are SMSing whole novels, and in Sweden, they're texting to apply for instant loans. An app that lets you kill time on the subway, this is not.
Within a year and a half, half the world will use cellphones, predict analysts, and with the bulk of new users emerging from developing nations, the question of what phones can do for their owners has never before had such potentially world-changing answers.
Enter Nokia and Dean Kamen.
Yesterday, a new partnership formed by the company (of largest cellphone maker fame) and the man (yep, the guy who invented the Segway) announced "Calling All Innovators." For the next three months developers can enter mobile apps with real-world value for a chance at a $25,000 purse (also, you know, the glory of helping to save the world). There are three categories the apps can fall into: ECO-Challenge calls for programs that help users make "sustainable choices," Emerging Markets is a catchall to encompass anything from microfinance to health care, and Technology Showcase lets developers strut their stuff. The apps will run on Nokia phones with the S60 platform.
Kamen has recently completed a field test of two inventions that he hopes will change the world. Both are based on Stirling engine technology: one is a water purifier, the other an electrical generator. "Cancer, diabetes, all those diseases, that's 50 percent," says Kamen. "The other 50 percent of all disease is caused by bad water. Getting clean water to people would knock out 50 percent of all disease."
Each purifier and generator provides enough power and water for a village; but, with one million villages in India alone, deployment is a challenge. In the past, Kamen has worked with multinational companies to launch his inventions, but the top-down approach of a big company doesn't mesh well with the million-village scale of this project.
The developing world has a high number of cell phones per capita -- the counterpoint to having very little in the way of landlines -- and the idea is that software running on Nokia's platform could be used to network and control a village's small-scale power and water supply.
Hence the contest. Kamen is hoping to tap the expertise of mobile software developers -- for instance, the three million of them enrolled in Nokia's "Forum Nokia" community -- to provide the infrastructural glue that will help get his inventions to the people who need them. Like Tim O'Reilly, Kamen hopes that developers, properly motivated, will pour some of their efforts into projects that help the world instead of endless widget toys and games.
It's an inspiring idea
i found this on:
http://www.popsci.com/gear-%2526-gadgets/article/2008-09/will-cellphones-save-world
