Top 10 Needed, And Free, Applications

[Ryan]

The Blackberry is a pretty useful device right out of the box, but its even more so with the addition of a few more applications. The good news is that most of these are free and easy to come by:





1) Blackberry Messenger: This is a standard part of the Blackberry OS now, but I don’t think the Blackberry Messenger gets the love it deserves. With it, you can keep your Blackberry enabled friends and associates in context contact without having to pay for text messaging through your cellphone provider. The Blackberry Messenger uses the Blackberry OS PIN to shoot messages back and forth, but what would make it even better if there was some way that I could send messages from a PC to Blackberry users the same way.
2) Google Talk: If you need to send and receive IM’s from a non-Blackberry user the Google Talk Client for the Blackberry OS is your best choice. The interface is similar to the Blackberry messenger, which is a good thing. My only gripe is that I seem to get disconnected from the Google Talk network much more frequently than I should. This might be a problem with my cellphone provider’s network and not Google, but I have to log back in a dozen or more times a day. Still, its the best of breed Blackberry IM option unless you want to pay for more robust applications.
3) Gmail Client: It may sound somewhat redundant to have a dedicated email client on your Blackberry, but the Gmail client gives you much of the functionality of the web based Gmail interfaced from your handheld device. You have access to your full Gmail contact list, access to all of your sent and archived mail and the ability to set up and apply labels. If you’re a Gmail power user its a must have.
4) Yahoo Messenger Client: Yahoo also has a dedicated (and free) Blackberry client. It’s essentially the same as the Google Talk client and enough people use Yahoo messenger to make it worth having.
5) Ramble IM: This is the best AOL Instant Messenger option for most users. A Blackberry native AIM client *does* exist and if you’re a T-Mobile user you may already have it installed. If you’re *not* a T-Mobile user for some reason AOL doesn’t seem to have any interest in you. I tried to snoop around a little bit and track down the Blackberry AIM client but its hilarious the lengths that AOL goes to in order to *prevent* you from using their services. A trip to the Blackberry website yields a message that “USB downloads are not allowed for this software”. Try to use the OTA dowload link and you get a message saying that “your cellphone provider” doesn’t allow use of the AIM service. That’s not exactly true, of course, since what it *really* means is that your cellphone provider hasn’t bought off AOL so that *they’ll* let you use the service. In typical AOL “wisdom” they place the onus for this on the cellphone provider. You can try to understand AOL’s logic in this since by LG 8700 shipped with a dedicated AIM client which I can use on the Alltel network, but I can’t easily access AIM on the *same cellphone network* with my Blackberry.
Unfortunately, a lot of people use the AIM service so its a pretty handy option to have on your telecommunications utility belt. The good news is that where AOL taketh away, the open source community delivers–Ramble IM is a functional AIM client that works like a charm on the Blackberry.

Ramble Instant Messaging (link is also WAP friendly)
There’s also a mobile version of the EBuddy website that allows you to access AIM, MSN and Yahoo from your Blackberry browser. I haven’t tried it yet but I will. Since MSN also doesn’t have a Blackberry native client this probably the best free workaround for that network.
eBuddy Lite Messenger
6) Twitterberry: Twitterberry is a nice little Twitter client for the Blackberry OS. You can easily update your Twitter feed and view your friends/public timeline right from your Blackberry desktop without any text messaging charges. If your cellphone provider is like mine you have unlimited Internet data access but get charged for text messaging, which makes this a handy thing to have. There’s also several java based Twitter clients that will work on your Blackberry including TinyTwitter (which I’ve tried and liked) and a few more that I haven’t tried. Look for a rundown of all of these java based Twitter apps, as well as how they hold up against Twitterberry, in a future post. There’s plenty of action in Twitter app development so there very well may be more Blackberry clients forthcoming.

Twitterberry Blackberry OS client for Twitter (WAP friendly)
7) Jaikuberry: These Blackberry apps have such clever names….as you’ve probably figured out by now Jaikuberry is a Jaiku client for Blackberry. It’s not as far along in the development cycle as the aforementioned Twitterberry but it works well despite its somewhat spartan appearance. You can also post to Jaiku on their mobile web interface at Jaiku | Sign In
Jaikuberry website
Jaikuberry OTA download
8.) Google Maps: It might not be as powerful as the Google Maps web based version, but its still a good thing to have on your device.
Google Maps for Blackberry (WAP)
9) Yahoo Go!: Yahoo Go! only works on newer Blackberry devices, but its a pretty impressive application. If you use Yahoo’s email service you can check your mail with it, but even if you don’t there’s a lot to like about it. It has a slick interface that provides easy access to news, weather, sports, finance and entertainment updates along with driving directions and mapping. The thing that really rocks about Yahoo Go! is the mobile interface it provides to the Flickr photo sharing service. The Flickr widget is downright amazing and it makes mobile use of the service almost as easy and fully featured as the online version. I had an application on my LG 8700 for awhile that I actually paid for that purported to offer the same mobile interface to Flickr, and the free Yahoo version is far superior. My only real complaint with Yahoo Go! is that it takes a bit of time to load, but its by and large worth the wait.

Yahoo Go!
10) Ka-Glom! The Blackberry isn’t really a gaming platform, but it never hurts to have a time killer on board for waiting in line at the airport or DMV. Brickbreaker quickly grows tiresome for me, so I recommend you replace it with the addictive in a Tetris-like way game called “Ka-Glom!”. I found it at the default Blackberry homepage on my device web browser under the link entitled “super games”.