Flashlight 2.1 Free

This app provides a bright flashlight that uses the camera as an LED flashlight. This helps the LCD display which is great because it conserves battery power and memory usage. Most importantly, this app is 100% free and it will not cost you a single penny to use! You definitely cannot beat a free app that can be useful to you.

Facebook 2.0

Since Facebook is the number one social networking website, this app is an important feature for a lot of people. Most people love being able to log onto their Facebook page and chat with other people as well as update statuses and upload pictures. With this app, you can stay in touch from your phone on Facebook. The chat on Facebook, although not as smooth, is still an improvement, especially for Blackberry users who are using this app.

Google Maps 4.5.3 0

This upgraded version has better results than the past versions. You can filter your searches by using star ratings or distance. You can turn on live traffic and have the GPS lock in quickly. The GPS can get you where you need to go instead of you having to worry about getting lost along the way.

Amazon Kindle

You can even read books on your phone thanks to this awesome app. The only downside to this app is that you cannot read newspapers or magazines with it. However, anyone who enjoys reading a good book and is a fan of their Blackberry and/or Kindle, will thoroughly enjoy the convenience of such an app.

Shazam 2.8.0

This app allows you to use your Blackberry as a recorder. If you hold your Blackberry around a song that is playing on the radio, this app will recognize who is singing the song and what the song is called. After recognizing the song and the singer, it will allow you to buy the track as an mp3 and will even look up the music album that it’s on. It will also post YouTube videos of the song that you like as well.

Slacker Radio

This app allows you to listen to music offline and saves the battery life  on your phone as well. You can get very well-programmed and customized stations which is definitely a convenient function for all Blackberry users. You can create your own customized stations that are ideal for your listening tastes.

Twitter 2.0.0.16

Most people own a Twitter account as a means of networking with other people. This updated version shows off a lighter color scheme. It also supports some of the most common growing trends along with support for 0S 6 and a profile icon which features a lighter color scheme too. This version of Twitter also performs much faster than the previous versions that came before it.

Weatherbug 2.0.0.64

This app is a necessity. It not only lets you see what the weather is, you will also be able to see the live updates for the weather and view touch maps so that you can easily see what the weather is like in other areas aside from the area in which you are in. This app will allow you to keep a heads up on the weather and know what to expect in terms of temperature.

Conclusion

Blackberry did not always have easy and convenient apps at your disposal. However, many improvements are being made to the phone as well as the apps so that Blackberry users can enjoy a lot of entertaining and informative apps.

These apps are just some of the many apps that Blackberry users have to choose from. These apps will allow you to keep in touch with friends, update statuses, find directions, know what the weather is, and read articles about what is going on in the world. All of these apps enhance the functionality and pleasure of using your smart phone.

Related posts:

• November 28, 2011 – Top 10 Android Apps for College Students
• October 29, 2011 – Popular Music Streaming Websites
• October 15, 2011 – The BlackBerry outage – How Critical Was the Failure?
• September 20, 2011 – Apple iPhone 4S vs. Blackberry 9900
• August 6, 2011 – SENDtoREADER – deliver web content to Kindle instantly
• November 11, 2008 – Ensim Showcases New Unify Enterprise

Since then the BlackBerry’s fortunes haven’t been much better than Obama’s.  It was already struggling to maintain relevance before this week.  Then the Great BlackBerry Outage hit.  Word started coming in from Europe, the Middle East and Africa that users’ messages and emails weren’t going out.   Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry OS, acknowledged the problem and pinpointed its source, but were not able to stop users in Canada and US from getting hit next as well.

What got hit hardest, though, was the reputation of the BlackBerry itself.  Now with a tablet and smart phone world that is bursting with alternatives, the question comes: is it time to move on from the BlackBerry, or is this just a series of nasty bumps that loyal users will be rewarded for seeing them through?

Putting the outage into context

This wasn’t the greatest year for BlackBerry to start out.  What was once their market to lose is now the market they’re starting to lose.  While 2010 sales were strong, the iPad series alone seized a sizable chunk of the BlackBerry’s user share.  These devices brought with them a parade of competitors that further squeezed the former king of portable devices into a defensive corner.

To try to keep up with the iJones’s, BlackBerry is attempting to reposition itself with its own Playbook tablet.  Supplanting the BlackBerry OS in the new device will be QNX, a Unix-based operating system that BlackBerry says will take over its handheld market as well as of the BlackBerry 8.  RIM is supporting all of these changes with a developer conference next week.  A feeling of “betting the farm” is setting in with all of this, and with some of the accompanying headlines, there is a growing concern that this may not be a winning bet.

The technical side

Let’s get away from economic commentary and examine the actual problem.  Not much information has been released just yet.  What we do know is that within RIM’s infrastructure a core switch failed.  This happens all the time: what usually doesn’t happen is redundant backup systems not kicking in like expected.  RIM routes all of its customer traffic through BlackBerry servers.  This centralization provides a high level of security, one of the BlackBerry line’s main selling points.  You don’t exactly want the president’s emails peeked at.   It also creates a single point of failure.  Even with this single point having its own backups within it, it proved to be too much of a technical bottleneck.

Once the breakdown occurred, a spectacular backlog of data started to pile up.  It’s believed that this is why the problem eventually spread to the Americas, though no solid information has confirmed this.  As of this writing the problem appears to be subsiding, but this is also not confirmed.  Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis posted a 2-minute video apologizing for the outage.  He explained in it that he wished he had more information, but that he would continue to communicate as the problem got resolved.  It was a honest, honorable response to the situation that offered no excuses, but that simultaneously confirmed that the problem was serious.

A reminder about vulnerability

There is one quick lesson we can get from this incident.  Without making any judgments on how understandable an error this was, we can perhaps take this as a reminder that even today, with every attempt in the world to provide security and redundancy, outages can and will still happen.

Companies today like to present an air of invulnerability.   We’ve warned you in these columns, though, that nature remains more powerful than us.  Every system has its weaknesses.  This isn’t to completely exonerate RIM.  It may well be when the dust settles that some truly boneheaded errors will be revealed.  Clearly there were some mistakes, somewhere.  Regardless of this, the greater truth is that some errors will always occur.  Take this lesson from the outage: it is a fantasy to think that any company can ever engineer its way past all of life’s chaos.

Once you’ve accepted that, we can then approach the question of what to do about it in this case.  That is not as easy a question to answer.

Wait for the dice to settle?

In the world of fantasy games there is a notion called the “critical failure”.  It occurs when, during a battle, a combatant has a total defensive breakdown, and suffers a blow that is so damaging that it alone could wipe them out.

Has the BlackBerry suffered that through this outage?  It could hardly have come at a worse time for them.  Right now more than ever they are attempting to prove that they still have a place in the mobile world.  Little worse evidence to the contrary could have been offered.  All that said, we cannot say for certain, looking at the efforts RIM is putting in to continuing to maintain their product line that they are necessarily down for the count.  It’s too soon to say what the overall effect of this incident will be.

What we can say, though, is that if you are not already a BlackBerry customer, it’s wise to exercise a bit of caution before necessarily jumping in.  The entire BlackBerry line is in a significant state of flux right now.  There is talk about management changes, technical changes, and market changes.  It is impossible right now to make any long-term predictions about anything related to the entire BlackBerry line with any real clarity.

If you still love them enough to stay with them or are willing to take chances with a product line that could go either way no one would blame you.  It is still a quality set of hardware.  No would blame you either, though, for stepping back, and looking before leaping.  The BlackBerry line right now could go either way.

This outage was a clear failure.  We’ll probably need to watch throughout the rest of 2011 to know for certain whether or not this was a critical failure.

Related posts:

• December 29, 2011 – Top Smartphone Picks in the Coming Year
• November 22, 2011 – Top Blackberry Apps
• September 20, 2011 – Apple iPhone 4S vs. Blackberry 9900
• November 11, 2008 – Ensim Showcases New Unify Enterprise

The 8 megapixel resolution camera is perfect for people who want to take high resolution pictures with their phone. You will never have to worry about whipping out your camera, turning it on, and then taking a picture. As long as you have your Apple iPhone 4S at your fingertips, you can easily take pictures in a matter of moments and the pictures will look as if they were taken with a high quality camera. The camera on this phone also comes equipped with flash and face detection to ensure the pictures come out perfectly.

Advanced voice commands, better known as Siri, will allow you to work your phone with your voice instead of your hands. This is especially convenient for people who prefer to use their voice instead of having to use their hands to find numbers, apps, and certain information in their iPhone. Not only can you make phone calls with your voice, you can even send text messages and create meetings and special events on your calendar. This is definitely a great feature to have, especially for someone who is particularly busy.

Video chat will enable you to keep in touch with friends on your phone while still being able to see them! Even if the person on the other end of the phone is a million miles away, with the Apple iPhone 4S phone, you will be able to video chat with that person. This allows you to have personal conversations with people who you love and care about. It is quite an amazing feature that most people seem to love being able to use.

The abundance of apps that are provided on the iPhone is amazing. You can shop for tons of apps that will allow you to play games, listen to music, find out important information, and basically stay in touch and up to date on everything you care about. Having access to thousands of apps is something that iPhone users absolutely love and rave about.

Last but certainly not least, the Apple iPhone 4S offers longer battery life which is definitely a great feature to have especially for people who constantly use their phone for just about everything. Using your iPhone for e-mail, texting, talking, and apps can waste battery quickly but with this extended battery life, you will have several more hours of chatting, texting, listening to music, and Internet browsing than you would have with the traditional Apple iPhone.

Blackberry Bold 9900 Features

The Blackberry Bold 9900 allows its users to choose from the touch screen or QWERTY. This is perfect for people who may not enjoy touch screens or would prefer to go back and forth with using the touch screen and the QWERTY. This phone gives you the opportunity to choose what you would rather choose and what is easiest for you to use at the moment.

Fast performance and fast Internet browsing is essential for people who enjoy using their phone for browsing the web. No one wants to browse an Internet if their phone runs slow and takes forever to load web pages. With fast Internet browsing, you will never have to wait for long loading times or anything else that would waste your time.

The Blackberry Bold 9900 comes equipped with 8GB memory. Of course, if you need more memory, you can buy a memory card. However, this is a lot of memory to start off with which is perfect for people who take lots of pictures with their phone along with adding music and videos that will take up memory on the phone.

This Blackberry is thinner than any other Blackberry that has ever been made. It is thin and compact which is perfect for people who do not like carrying around a large phone. There are also tons of apps that you will be able to choose from with this phone which includes social networking apps and games as well.

Conclusion

Choosing just one of these two phones can be a difficult decision. Both of these phones have a lot to offer the average user and are in constant competition with one another to be the best and provide the best for its users. Both phones offer easy Internet browsing, tons of apps, and lots of other neat features that consumers seem to love. Overall, it will depend on your personal preference as to which phone will suit you better. Some people are, in general, fans of Apple products and may choose to stick with the Apple iPhone 4S. In the same sense, there are some people who are fans of Blackberry products and will stick with the Blackberry Bold 9900. Whichever choice you make, both of these phones have a lot to offer and you will surely be happy with the decision you choose to make.

Related posts:

• December 29, 2011 – Top Smartphone Picks in the Coming Year
• December 20, 2011 – Top 5 Smartphones 2011 in the United States
• November 22, 2011 – Top Blackberry Apps
• October 15, 2011 – The BlackBerry outage – How Critical Was the Failure?
• October 12, 2011 – iPhone 4S – Playing to a Tough Crowd
• October 3, 2011 – Tips for Designing a Web Site for the iPad
• August 31, 2011 – Top 5 Cloud Storage Service Providers
• November 11, 2008 – Ensim Showcases New Unify Enterprise

Ensim’s latest enterprise product is designed to standardize various procedures using IT policies to provision and provide access control for Active Directory, Exchange and mobile device infrastructure such as Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.  The components of Unify Enterprise can be installed as individual tools or as an entire suite, providing a turnkey environment where IT policies can be enforced and administered from a centralized interface, significantly reducing the downtime associated with configuration issues.

Ensim unveiled the power of its complete Unify Enterprise suite at the Centre Conventions International in Barcelona Spain, reportedly at Booth B8.  Some of the features of the new release include the following:

Fine Grain Role Delegation: Allows the role of system administrator to be restricted by organizational unit policies.

Simplified Provisioning: Automatically configures various integrated componets including logon scripts, end user home folders and the home drive.

Customizable Provision Policies: Allows system administrators to customize the creation of user accounts and provision processes.  This is done by making automatic configurations to specified Active Directory attributes as well as validated username patterns.

Ability to Modify and Audit Logs: Lets administrators keep track of changes made to individual objects.

Enhanced Alert Notification: Enables the customization of action reports such as end-user license notifications and usage statistics.

Multiple Domain Controller Support: Allows system administrators to leverage the software’s preferences to access a number of domain controllers.

Unify Enterprise Edition 2.5 is currently available on the Ensim website.  The company is currently offering an upgrade promotion of the standard Ensim Unify Enterprise Edition for NetPro, NetIQ and Quest users on the site as well.  http://www.get.ensom.com)Additionally, any enterprise currently using a competitor’s solution will qualify for a discount when switching to Ensim Unify product.  This promotion will be active up until December 31, 2008.

Microsoft Tech Ed EMEA IT Professionals is Microsoft’s premiere educational conference strictly made for IT professionals.  The 2008 conference runs five days, teaching administrators how to structure, deploy, administer and secure a networked enterprise with tips from Microsoft experts and other industry leaders.

The Ensim Corporation was founded in 1998, delivering products to enterprises and service providers throughout the world.  This company is leading provider of user provision and access control products, well known for its Ensim control panel software.  As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, it has strategic partnerships with several industry leading companies including Accenture, BroadSoft, Hewlett-Packard, Research in Motion and Siemens.

Related posts:

• November 22, 2011 – Top Blackberry Apps
• October 15, 2011 – The BlackBerry outage – How Critical Was the Failure?
• September 20, 2011 – Apple iPhone 4S vs. Blackberry 9900
• September 29, 2009 – Ensim Aids in North America’s Largest Single OCS Deployment
• July 13, 2009 – Options for Your Reseller Software
• June 4, 2009 – Mezeo Takes Part in Cloud Storage Gathering
• April 21, 2009 – The Crave Behind Cloud Hosting
• April 16, 2009 – Novella Reveals Plans for New IT Solutions
• December 17, 2008 – The Advantages and Disadvantages of Ensim
• December 12, 2008 – Do You Need Dedicated Hosting?