Posts tagged: blackberry

Announced today:

Effective on the dates listed below, IBM will withdraw from marketing, part numbers from the following product release(s) licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:

Program   marketing
number    date       Program release name
 
5724-Y93  07/13/11   Blackberry Client for IBM Lotus Software

On or after that date, you can no longer obtain the withdrawn product(s) directly from IBM.

Replacement products
There are no replacements available.

Given these clients have not been updated by RIM since long before Connections 3.0.x and Quickr 8.5 were released, this isn’t altogether a surprise, particularly as the infrastructure needed to run the clients (a separate Windows-only BES-style server called the SNAP) was pretty onerous to configure.

Not sure if RIM themselves will continue to sell the clients, or if this is the end of the line.  IBM seem much more willing to develop native clients themselves these days, particularly for iOS and Android so perhaps this will be the future for Blackberry too?

When Research In Motion shipped the PlayBook without native email support, it was surprising.

After all, RIM’s greatest strength is a killer email-application for BlackBerrys. Why didn’t it have email baked into the PlayBook?

Turns out it had to skip native email support on the PlayBook because its architecture can’t support two devices with one person’s account, according to a source.

Here’s how our source explains it: “The Blackberry email system is the BES — which is the source/focus of all the famous BB security. The BES email server has the concept of one user = one device (or they call it PIN).”

More >

Two desirable items that hit my feed reader today, that I just want need so much 😉

1. The new Blackberry “Thunder”

That’s right folks an anonymous tipster has sent us shots of the highly anticipated BlackBerry Thunder. The Thunder also known as BlackBerry 9500 will feature a huge 360×480 touch display and will apparently run on OS 4.7. This device will be a great multimedia player and could bring CDMA carriers true iPhone competition. The Thunder will run a carrier music store which similar to the iPhone’s iTunes store and will allow users to purchase songs from their device. The display on the Thunder most likely will be a glass surface similar to the iPhone.

I so want an iPhone 3G, but can’t have one for a couple of reasons – first, cos’ I really couldn’t give up my Blackberry for email purposes, and secondly, I wouldn’t touch O2 (the chosen iPhone carrier here in the UK) with a very long barge pole. This might just provide a very nice alternative – at least if Blackberry sort out their Mac syncing issues.

2. The “YellowCube“

Decided to test the waters with our new product. As we found the Lotus Foundation Micro2 server not really practical for my clients, we decided to up the ante.

What if that micro2 was a little bigger, and had 2 drives, 4gb of RAM or more and a really fast processor?
You could load Lotus Foundations, Linux, Windows or whatever else you want on it too!
And it was preloaded with Domino with Sametime or Quickr or …
What if you could pick it up and take it ANYWHERE, ANYTIME?
And what if it came in Yellow?

Now, this is a great idea, Keith, and one that I can see being very very popular.  Nice one!

From Volker:

Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM) today launched Facebook(R) for BlackBerry(R) Smartphones, an exciting new BlackBerry software application that enables fast, streamlined and optimized mobile access to the popular Facebook social utility using a BlackBerry smartphone. The application leverages the push-based BlackBerry system architecture and Facebook Platform to create an unparalleled mobile experience for Facebook users.

Download here >

Shame that the download page only supports IE, and the Active X control checks for the Blackberry Desktop software before downloading the file – so it must be done on the Windows box that you use to sync your Blackberry.

User-friendly this is not!

Update1: So, I still hate the download process, particularly that it requires IE and a USB connection to your Blackberry.  BUT… oh what a sweet application.  Looks great, works well, is very quick.  I like it!

Update2: Paul says that you can download direct from the Blackberry itself from here