Cell phone accessories blog

Good news for BlackBerry business users who are pinching pennies: a free version of the Gwabbit contact manager for BlackBerry is expected to surface in the BlackBerry App World--and only in the App World--on Tuesday, December 8. The current version of Gwabbit for BlackBerry costs $9.99 for a yearlong subscription.

Gwabbit (formerly Technicopia) came out with Gwabbit the BlackBerry app back in May 2009, as the mobile version of its Outlook e-mail add-on. Gwabbit scans incoming e-mail for a signature block. If it finds one, the software compares the contents to your address book contacts. If there's no previous match, or if it looks like there's been a change, Gwabbit will prompt you to add or update the contact.

We were impressed with the convenience Gwabbit gives business users who build up their contact lists from their smartphones. Moreover, we noted how effectively and quickly Gwabbit processed the e-mails, but only so long as the sender's contact details are conveniently organized in the signature block. Gwabbit lacks the sensitivity to pull possibly relevant details from elsewhere in the e-mail.

How could Gwabbit's publisher give away its $10-a-year product for free? ... Read more

RIM's BlackBerry App World is slowly but surely gaining ground as a storefront for distributing BlackBerry applications. eBay is the latest major company to forge a presence in the storefront, in the form of an eBay app for BlackBerry auctioneers in the U.S. and Canada.

The official eBay for BlackBerry application, which was co-developed by eBay and RIM, includes features to search for, track, and buy an item from the smartphone. Unsurprisingly, the eBay app accepts PayPal payments--PayPal has not only been an eBay company since 2002, it is also currently the only payment system for purchasing BlackBerry apps through the App World.

(Credit: RIM/BlackBerry)

In addition to letting users search and buy, the eBay app will notify you of your bidding status, including when you've won or lost a bid. It can also schedule auction-related reminders in the BlackBerry calendar.

eBay's app isn't the first of its kind for the BlackBerry platform. Earlier this year, Bonfire Media released U.S. and international versions of its app, Pocket Auctions for eBay. Since Pocket Auctions doesn't include hooks into the phone's native calendar, and costs $10, we're guessing that most eBay fans will easily pick the free, official app over Bonfire Media's third-party offering.

We got a brief demo of the then-under-wraps eBay app at the BlackBerry Developer Conference earlier this month. We liked the ease of the PayPal integration, but we won't really know how well the app works until we've spent some time with it. Tune back for our first impressions.

(Credit: RIM/BlackBerry)

BlackBerry Media Sync is a straightforward desktop app for Mac and Windows that has historically let you sync music from your BlackBerry smartphone using iTunes and Windows Media Player. On Tuesday, BlackBerry-maker RIM has added new functionality to give the Windows version of the syncing app access to your photo library as well.

RIM leaves the Mac version out of the photo access equation this time around.

Like other media management software, when BlackBerry Media Sync 3.0 detects your smartphone, it will scan for photos, displaying them on a separate tab within the syncing application. You can switch between your desktop and smartphone libraries.

If you're transferring photos from your computer to your smartphone, the sync manager also lets you shrink photos to take up less space on your BlackBerry.

BlackBerry Media Sync 3.0 for Windows works with XP, Vista, and Windows 7. The music sync element is compatible with iTunes 7.7.1 or later and Windows Media Player 10 and up.

The Twitter service with the cutesy raccoon mascot is making a new home on BlackBerry and Google Android phones. The free Seesmic, like its proliferate rivals, lets you read, manage, and compose Twitter messages much more flexibly than you can do from Twitter's Web site. We crash-tested both mobile versions as soon as we heard the news.

Seesmic on Android
Seesmic 1.0 for Android is available from the Android Market app, which is located on the smartphone. It takes up just over 1MB. The interface spreads four tabs along the top in both landscape and portrait mode, one each for the timeline, replies, direct messages, and your profile. There's also a ribbon on the screen that you can tap to refresh the feed. Click to open a tweet and you can save it as a favorite, retweet, or reply as a public "@" message or as a private posting. From the menu button, you can refresh, compose, or tinker with the settings.

Although Seesmic's Android interface is much more stripped down than its desktop AIR app for Windows and Mac, the app manages to remain flexible by giving you a choice over the kinds of notifications you'd like to receive, and over the partner services you'd prefer to use to send a photo, video, or shorten a URL.

Sure, it's blurry (blaming the BlackBerry camera), but squint hard enough and you'll see that Seesmic associated a picture with my account that's not actually my face.

(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

The biggest flaws we've noticed so far? ... Read more

(Credit: Xobni)

A few months ago, e-mail search app Xobni told us they were creating a version for BlackBerry. At the BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco on Monday, we got a look at it.

Xobni on the Windows PC is an Outlook add-on that quickly finds e-mail messages and attachments. On BlackBerry, Xobni will integrate with your e-mail account, where it will extract addresses, phone numbers, and social networking details to automatically create a secondary address book for your phone. You'll be able to use Xobni for BlackBerry to quickly find contacts--including those you have not physically added to the native address book yourself. That expanded address book goes for everyone who has ever sent you an e-mail, been cc'd in an e-mail, or even mentioned in a message.

With the premium Xobni Plus Outlook add-on, you can access this secondary address book by typing into the Compose field. Integration isn't quite so tight in BlackBerry. On the Bold, Tour, and new Curve 8900s, you'll access contacts by flicking up on the track pad to get to to the stylized Xobni address book.

Then search by a contact's name, domain name, or by a keyword to speedily find the person you're looking for. As with Xobni on the desktop, you'll be able to send your calendar availability to a contact, get Facebook to supply contacts' Xobni profile picture, and view Twitter feeds and LinkedIn and Hoovers information from the BlackBerry.

In creating its own address book--instead of adding contacts to the native address book--Xobni makes a statement. Unlike Gwabbit, which adds the information from a signature block into a new record, Xobni finds e-mails and phone numbers anywhere in the message. Besides that, Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte believes that inserting contacts into your native address book means "you've already lost the battle." Instead of adding contacts one-by-one, Xobni builds you a social roster behind-the-scenes, and adds social networking plug-ins in the process.

As far as time lines go, Xobni is looking at a closed alpha release sometime in December. Bonforte expects a beta early next year, and the final release a few months after that. The pricing model is still undecided.

Xobni for BlackBerry will first be available on the Bold, Tour, and Curve 8900. Storm users will have to wait a little longer.

(Credit: DataViz)

Your BlackBerry may already have the free version of the Documents To Go viewer and editor loaded onto it. That's fine for casual users, but professionals who annex their smartphones into their virtual office will want the advanced creating and editing features of the premium version (compare features--PDF).

On BlackBerry phones, Documents To Go Premium Edition 2.0 adds four new features. There's a file browser to delete, rename, and copy and paste all the Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe PDF files across the Documents To Go sub-apps. There's also an enriched PDF To Go app with tools to find and copy text, save as, e-mail a file, and add a bookmark. Tying up a few loose ends, the update now lets you open password-protected Microsoft Word and Excel files that were created in Microsoft Office 2007, and in other Office documents stretching back to Office 97.

The last addition in the new Documents To Go Premium Edition is a desktop app that enables bidirectional USB syncing between your BlackBerry and your home computer. That spells an end to purely manual doc management between the two screens, but we'd love to see over-the-air syncing added next.

Documents To Go Premium Edition cost $69.99 for BlackBerry phones running operating system 4.5 or higher. If you already use Documents To Go Premium Edition on any smartphone, you can upgrade to the 2.0 version for BlackBerry for about $30.

(Credit: Google)

If you haven't recently updated Google Maps for your BlackBerry, do. Earlier this week, Google bumped up its BlackBerry map app to version 3.2. As with Google Maps on Symbian Series 60 and Windows phones, Google's BlackBerry map app now supports layers.

In the layers submenu on the maps app, you'll find a list of layers you can turn on while mapping. These include Wikipedia entries, local transit lines, traffic, your personalized My Maps, and Google Latitude.

When accessing your My Maps listings, Google Maps for BlackBerry 3.2 prompts you to log in to your Google account before letting you load onto the mobile screen the saved routes you previously mapped on a desktop.

You can download Google Maps for BlackBerry 3.2 for free from m.google.com/maps.

(Credit: CrackBerry.com)

As if checking e-mail on your BlackBerry wasn't addicting enough, there may be an accessory in the works that may just fuel your habit. CrackBerry.com has posted images of what it's claiming to be actual renderings of a BlackBerry watch.

The site claims that the Bluetooth accessory is being developed by a new, dedicated BlackBerry accessory company and will be branded as the inPulse Smartwatch. It's not meant to be a replacement for your BlackBerry but rather shows your notifications and previews of incoming messages for those times when you can't pull out your BlackBerry; for example, during meetings, while driving, and so forth.

CrackBerry says the InPulse will have an OLED screen that's optimized for displaying text clearly and will have solid battery life.

"Connected watches" haven't had the most successful run in the past (read: Microsoft Spot watches), though the LG Watch Phone certainly has piqued some people's interest. While the InPulse is just a rumor right now, what do you think? Useful or a waste of time?

Article updated at 5:00 pm to correct mIQ media sharing details.

Best Buy Mobile's mIQ dashboard is easier on the eye.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Microsoft introduced its My Phone service last week, an online dashboard for managing and sharing the contents of your mobile phone. We liked some aspects, and critiqued some others. Ultimately, we wished that Microsoft had teamed up with its Seattle neighbor, connected services startup Dashwire, whose legacy dashboard did much of the same thing as My Phone does now, but did it better. Dashwire has since turned its standalone product into a platform. Best Buy Mobile snapped up a license and is now offering its own sync-and-share service, called mIQ (short for mobile IQ).

I know what you're thinking: The T-Mobile Sidekick backup service just failed, and the blame is Microsoft's. Why trust its My Phone service at all? But backup isn't the point of these services. They're about management. Moreover, comfortably managing the contents of your smartphone from a screen and keypad that's larger than anything you can get on your smartphone. And if you delete a number or photo from the Web or phone, it's gone. Neither of these services intends to save it, but they do intend to make it available online.

So now that that's clear, it's time for a throwdown.

My Phone and mIQ both download small clients to the mobile phone. From there, they bidirectionally sync the phone's contents to an online dashboard. My Phone is limited to Windows phones, but mIQ is free for anyone with a BlackBerry, Symbian, or Windows phone.

Features

We'll say right off the bat that Microsoft's My Phone is richer in feature types overall compared with Best Buy Mobile's mIQ. ... Read more