Who doesn't love to be rewarded for the doing the simplest things? Whether you've won an eating contest or a drinking game, earning some kind of recognition, badge or t-shirt always feels good. Foursquare does just that, for those of you familiar with the social networking service. All you have to do is be at some place, check in and let your friends know where you are and you earn points and badges. While Foursquare has had an application available for iPhone and Android for some time, it has recently become officially available for BlackBerry 8000 and 9000 series devices and I'm here to take an in-depth look at what it has to offer.

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Since the introduction of Wi-Fi on the BlackBerry, and the Bold 9000, RIM's first 3G BlackBerry, surfing the web on our handsets has been faster than ever. Still, BlackBerry users will be getting an extra kick in speed according to a recent patent application by RIM entitled, "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ENHANCING NETWORK BROWSING SPEED BY SETTING A PROXY SERVER ON A HANDHELD DEVICE." Who doesn't want faster browsing speeds?

The patent sheds a little light on how data is transferred now, and the solution RIM plans to offer to make that process more efficient. RIM states, "One reason is that the data is sent across the air uncompressed. This increases traffic and lowers browsing speed." Ever the innovative engineers, the folks at RIM have come up with a clever way of enhancing current technologies by creating a proxy server on the handset in order to compress and transcode HTTP requests before it hits the air. A quick glance at the patent summary reveals:

"A system for enhancing network-browsing speed by setting a proxy server on a handheld device comprises a browser for sending a request for requesting a message from a website and receiving a response in response to the request, a proxy server for transcoding and compressing the request, and transcoding and decompressing the response including the requested message in response to the request, a wireless network communicably linked to the proxy server, Mobile Data Service (MDS) gateway for transcoding and decompressing the request, and transcoding and compressing the response including the requested message from the website."

So, instead of having to send data back and forth several times just to get information to load on your browser, a proxy server should be able to handle compressing, transcoding and decompressing much faster. Now we just need to couple this technology with a brand new WebKit-based browser and then maybe we'll finally have that kick-butt web surfing experience all of us BlackBerry users have been waiting for.

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First loves. No one ever forgets them. Whether it's your first girlfriend or boyfriend, first car or first pet, you rarely ever forget that experience and what it taught you along the way. But I'm not here to reminisce about old flames and puppies; this is a BlackBerry site after all. When Kevin gave me the opportunity to contribute to the blogs here, I thought the most appropriate thing to do was to introduce myself by gushing about my first BlackBerry and how I got addicted. So, I'm here to talk about my first BlackBerry love (which you'll find wasn't technically my very first device), what I went through along the way, and how I came to love our favorite brand of smartphone.

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