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Home»BlackBerry Software»News & Rumors, BlackBerry Apps

BlackBerry Podcasts App Now in Beta Zone

by Adam Zeis on 29 Apr 2010 10:25 AM
41
 

BlackBerry Podcasts BlackBerry Podcasts

Yesterday some BlackBerry Beta Zone members received and email about the new BlackBerry Podcasts app that is now available for download. This one really flew in out of nowhere, but its great to see RIM dropping some apps that we haven't heard about into the Beta Zone. Reports are mixed so far, but it does look like the app has some potential down the road. There are a variety of options and settings, but for now not such a huge catalog of podcasts to download. The app is only available to Beta Zone members at the moment, and no word of when it will be publicly available. We have no idea what to takes to get included in the available downloads, so for now maybe its best to stick with the CB Podcasts app :-)

Filed Under: News & Rumors, BlackBerry Apps; Tags: BlackBerry Beta Zone, BlackBerry Podcasts
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41 Comments

Posted by Burzlurker Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I went racing to the beta zone to d/l this when i realized that they didnt email me and so it probably wouldnt be in my list, and i was right. who knows how they pick people.

 
 
Posted by Desconocido Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I know this leaked out to BB leaks first, but it is really disappointing to see this info leak after less than a day in the Beta Zone. This is supposed to be an opportunity for RIM to test its apps and get feedback. It's not supposed to be a way for the competition to know what they are up to. I imagine the Beta Zone wont continue if this keeps happening.

 
 
Posted by Dave79 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Come on now you really think that RIM doesnt know that everything they put in the Beta Zone isnt going to be a public domain news? You think they expect confidentiality from end users?
You're so naive dude!

 
 
Posted by BerryGuy25 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

"It's not supposed to be a way for the competition to know what they are up to."

LOL, I assure you that getting access to podcasts on a smartphone is by no means new, RIM is late once again.

I do agree with your final statement though but what choice does RIM have? It seems like they have no internal testing if they are doing beta programs with the public. They should know the risks with public betas, something will ALWAYS leak. They could be playing smart though, like I said, podcasts is nothing new so if it leaked, who cares? I would hope though that their "good stuff" that no one knows about will stay internal.

 
 
Posted by Bla1ze Friday, Apr 30, 2010 754 days ago

this before and in that time nothing has changed. RIM knows the information will get out there at some point. "leaking" (if you can even call it that) doesn't mean that RIM will shut anything down. They pretty much assume the information will get out there.

That is why alternative measures have been put in place. With stuff like this, you can't even call it a "leak"...a leak would be a working copy of it avilable to all. Go ahead, ask someone to send you the files for it..it sure as heck won't work.

So, again...the "leaks" aka pics, lol. Are expected to get out at some point, Unless someone finds a way to get past the alternative measures in place (not suggesting, just the facts) the beta program is in no way going to be closed down. It's rather naive to even think that they weren't expecting it. Also, it's rather naive to believe that there only option to stop it..is too shut it all down, they have plenty of other ways to enforce these things of they really want to.

 
 
Posted by miloszz Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Hmm, interesting. Does it allow to download podcasts using BIS-B connection? Or TCP?

 
 
Posted by StormJH1 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Okay, this is fine, I guess, but I already have PodTrapper and it does pretty much everything it's supposed to with little trouble, so...

I think RIM has shown that they're capable of making decent first-party apps, so rather than offering their version of stuff that's already done well by 3rd parties, I would rather see them:

(A) Fix the stuff they already have, like the horrible FB app;

(B) Come up with something that isn't done well by 3rd party apps, such as a YouTube app (which appears like it might be a part of OS 6.0).

 
 
Posted by SD.87 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Some of us would prefer not having to pay $10 for a decent podcast app though

 
 
Posted by jlb21 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Oh I know. But for me, the $10 I spent on PodTrapper is some of the best money I have spent in a long while. At this moment in time, it is still the cadillac podcast app for BB as far as I am concerned.

 
 
Posted by StormJH1 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I guess I missed the part of the article where it said it was free. Yes, it would be nice if it worked well AND was free. If that's the case, it will be a benefit to new BB adopters.

And 90% of the time, I would agree with you, even on some of the apps that are $4.99 or even $1.99. Except that PodTrapper is worth every penny of $10, and probably twice that.

My concern is that BB only has X amount of resources to put into developing 3rd party apps, and rather than do something new (or better), they keep putting going out and vulturing 3rd party efforts so they can say they have their own. Marcus put a lot of work into creating a great app that people wanted to pay for. It even came with a 30-day trial to show you what it could do. If you didn't appreciate that app enough to spend $10 after trying it out, then I doubt you're really that interested in a BlackBerry podcast app. As for those of us who did, it's kind of a kick in the groin (though I may still prefer PodTrapper anyway, just like some people still use UberTwitter).

 
 
Posted by SD.87 Friday, Apr 30, 2010 754 days ago

Or perhaps coming from Symbian I find it hard to pay $10 for something that I got used to having out of the box.

I'm sure he did put in a lot of work, and I have no problem with that. For you it's clearly worth the $10, and for others it isn't.

 
 
Posted by phabriss Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I think they should fix apps that don't work well, but i prefer first party apps because they work great with the BlackBerry.
I think it's great to have Podcasts app from RIM, and it would be even better to have a YouTube app from RIM also.

 
 
Posted by bia9977 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

No BIS-B I'm afraid :(

 
 
Posted by chewbocka Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

well that pretty much kills it for me then

 
 
Posted by chevrolet.racing252 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I would have loved to be involved I this beta, but I will just wait and see what happens in the near future and go from there.

 
 
Posted by Balay Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Lol those are the pictures I sent in to them

 
 
Posted by interfasys Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

They should just buy Podtrapper. It will take RIM a long time to make a product as good...

 
 
Posted by kmartdanickel Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

This app really didnt come out of nowhere if you go back and watch the 6.0 os preview video and look the first girl opens up the media folder and, it shows the podcast app, so it is a standard in 6.0....further confirmation that the new os is coming very soon

 
 
Posted by r0cketman22 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Love the app so far. Just waiting on more content providers. (Such as CB). Other than that; it works great. Video podcasts are also available.

The keycode to activate the app was sent directly from BlackBerry based on my PIN.

 
 
Posted by bulls2213 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

good thing i'm part of the Beta zone and was not included in this! grrrr.

 
 
Posted by 3Dee Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I'm a beta member too with no invite. My guesses as to why: a) they picked people who weren't included in the BBM beta (my honest guess), b) can RIM tell what apps we have on our BBs? Has anyone been invited to download the beta who already has Podtrapper? (my cynical/paranoid guess!)

 
 
Posted by fraja1983 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I got an invite for the beta and I have Podtrapper on my BB.
The app looks really nice, but still got miles to go to even begin comparing it to Podtrapper.
Maybe they wanted some users with experience on 3rd party podcast apps so they can have feedback related to those and make theirs better with more features.
Who knows?

 
 
Posted by AgentScribe Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

But, I like it so much it caused me to buy the full version and start following some long-lost podcasts again.

 
 
Posted by katatonic Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Was just checking it out a minute ago. Looks cool so far, haven't downloaded anything yet.

 
 
Posted by coffee-turtle Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

"CB Podcasts will ONLY play the CrackBerry.com Podcast, and you will not be able to search for or download any other media."

I know it's free, but there's a whole world of media content out there. Will CB expand beyond this limitation?

 
 
Posted by chrisesau Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I am not too sure how they pick but i got picked. Just trying to figure out my key code to activate it.

 
 
Posted by JoeDirt2217 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Anxiously waiting/hoping to get picked to test this.

 
 
Posted by PJW Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I got an invite, but it seems most of us who have got the invite still haven't received the install code. There's some sort of issue going on

 
 
Posted by Seven.07 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

That's a bummer. I didn't receive an email either. I guess we will have to wait. ;)

 
 
Posted by Esteve1 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Got the email yesterday downloaded it it took about 12 hours to get the key code jusy copy and paste it works great from then on.

 
 
Posted by MattD Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

At first i thought it was a URL.. that thing was rediculously long... good thing the emails go to my phone so i just copied and pasted it from there, but still. It was stupid long.

 
 
Posted by urbanjas Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I'd like to have the ability to add my preferred content but all in all it integrates well with the 9550. As far as keycode probs just send them a note and they will reply promptly with guidance. Its a snap to get running. Thanks RIM. Gotta love the. Haters!

 
 
Posted by StormJH1 Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

What does that mean? Why isn't it just a search engine like PodTrapper where you go find the URL and it just works? I found basically every podcast I previously DL'ed from iTunes on PodTrapper within 15 minutes.

 
 
Posted by smnc Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

This app doesn't work like PodTrapper.
It's similar to AppWorld with a screen of featured "Channels" and a library categorized podcasts to choose from. There's maybe 200 "channels" so far.
Not bad, but not huge.

 
 
Posted by sarah_ariel Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I got the email and downloaded it, it is pretty cool but if you don't have unlimited data it takes up allot. I haven't really played around with it yet but they need to add allot more to it as there is not much to choose from!

 
 
Posted by lotsopets Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I am a download freak so I would love to try this.

 
 
Posted by rlhammon Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Not sure the point of having signed up... every time I get an e-mail about something it's not really available to me in the Beta Zone to download.

 
 
Posted by tedesco Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

Not sure how I was chosesn, but so far so good.

 
 
Posted by smnc Thursday, Apr 29, 2010 754 days ago

I got my invite and downloaded right away.
No idea how I qualified, but I'm liking the app so far.
There is a limited selection of Podcasts so far (about 200 "channels" to choose from), as the article mentions, but for a beta it's not bad.
It looks very much like the OS6 media player in the video that was released.
So far, so good!
Yes, RIM has fallen behind, but with the new hardware, new OS and new apps on the way, it looks like they're getting back on track!

 
 
Posted by katatonic Friday, Apr 30, 2010 754 days ago

To anyone waiting for the email, they make your code according to your bbm pin. It takes a little while. I submitted my acceptance for it last night and had the email by the morning.

 
 
Posted by azucanegra Friday, Apr 30, 2010 753 days ago

Got my invite /code and downloaded app immediately.
Not sure how I qualified either as I rarely used my 9700 for media. I like the variety of channels a lot. If this works out I'll lose not my 'other' device for podcast.