Entry #36 - Chairman Plow's I LOVE MY CRACKBERRY

With the Grand Prize Winner announced in the I Love My BlackBerry video contest, it's time to follow-up with some honorable mentions. In this shout outs post, we've got three stellar music-focused videos that were submitted. Above you can hear Chairman Plow's awesome I Love My CrackBerry track (this was one of my personal favorites - just needs a couple more verses and this baby would be platinum!). Below we've got two more vids. First, Crystal Hunter's I Love My CrackBerry parody of Miley Cyrus' Party in the USA (which today landed top spot on America's Top 40). Gotta give Crystal HUGE props for working "Force Radio On" into a chorus. LOL. Now THAT's Hardcore (download Force Radio On). And lastly, David Demaria's I Love My BlackBerry Remix that's full of CrackBerry.com love. Awesome stuff. Enjoy the vids!

It's Saturday morning as I type this and I'm about to head to the gym so it's a fitting time to blog this up...

Long-time readers of CrackBery.com are familiar with Gym Technik's fitness tracking service - we've written about them plenty of times before and have been longing for them to take their web app offering to the next level with an actual BlackBerry app. Great News! Gym Technik has just announced the preview release of their much anticipated, downloadable app: Gym Technik NextGen for the BlackBerry.

Thousands of users worldwide have been using Gym Technik's mobile and web application for tracking their workouts. After much feedback and interest from users surrounding this app, Gym Technik's developers are excited to present a preview release of the NextGen app. It comes bundled with a 30 day free premium trial. So you can test-drive both Gym Technik's Premium Service and NextGen app without commitment or hassle. All current Gym Technik members can link to the app, and new members can create an account right from their BlackBerry.

We'll be following up with a review on the app shortly. Next in line, GymTechnik has already promised upgrades for OS5 support and a Storm version of the app, stay tuned.

Learn More & Download: You can visit get.gymtechnik.com from your BlackBerry's web browser to download and learn more about the app and how to use your BlackBerry as a fitness tracking and workout management tool @ www.gymtechnik.com/blackberry.

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Since getting my new BlackBerry Bold 9700 earlier this week I have been living on cloud nine. It's uber fast. The optical trackpad is silky smooth. The 3.2 megapixel camera is noticeably better than the original Bold's and the additional flash memory boosts operating performance considerably. And I've been blown away by the battery life so far -- over 48 hours before needing to charge!!!

With positives oozing out of the device, the only thing that I have had to really come to terms with is how much smaller the new Bold 9700 actually is compared to its big older brother the 9000 (I tried to get the images above close to actual size and scale). And reading through the Bold 9700 forums and talking to other original Bold owners making or looking to make the upgrade to the 9700, it appears I'm not the only one.

When the Bold 9000 came out, I was a Curve user. At the time, I actually griped over the Bold's big size and deemed the size a negative. But over the year and a half following its introduction, I have really grown to LOVE the big-boned Bold. They keyboard is heaven to type on, and that extra 1/4" of width in the screen makes a difference. Plus, the device just looks impressive - the full leather back, the chrome band, the shiny black area above the display.... the Bold 9000 is the luxury SUV of the BlackBerry Smartphone line and when you see it in public it stands out in the crowd. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is stellar, but it's more of one of these new, smaller, cross-over SUVs. The 9000 was my daily driver for the past few months, and making the switch to the Bold 9700 it now feels like I've gone away from using a Bold to using a Curve again.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the Bold 9700. I just hope / wish RIM would also release a same-sized upgrade in the Bold 9000 form factor for all the people out there who appreciate a bigger device with a little extra bling (the 9700 has a more conservative look). Honestly, when I went to the Rogers store Wednesday to buy a 9700 they also had the new Bold 9000 in white on display. If only that white Bold 9000 had 256MB of flash memory, trackpad and a 3.2 megapixel camera, I would have purchased it over the smaller Bold 9700. The Bold 9700 needs to exist as device (it's awesome!), but it's almost like RIM should have branded it the Curve 3G or something (maybe slapped on a Curve-esque keyboard), then released a bigger device as an update to the Bold more true to the original Bold's heritage. On the other hand, to each his/her own. My girlfriend traded in her Curve 8320 for the Bold 9700 and is head over heels for it. I love the Bold 9700 too... I just can't help but miss the 9000's big keyboard everytime I pick it up.

CrackBerry Poll: Whaddya think? Like your Bold big or small? Cast your vote above! 

SAN FRANCISCO HERE WE COME!!! Monday kicks off the 2nd Annual BlackBerry Developer Conference and CrackBerry.com will be there in full force. Adam, Bla1ze and myself will be blogging the news, live-blogging the general session, recording podcasts, conducting interviews and doing up some videos if and when applicable. Keep it locked to CrackBerry.com for all sorts of DevCon goodness. This event is about the BlackBerry platform and is for the developers in attendance - don't expect any device announcements  during the week (plus the Storm2, Bold 9700 and Curve 8530 have just all been announced in rapid succession), but we're bound to see some cool things get displayed that you won't want to miss.

If you're a developer attending DevCon, reach out to us! We want to meet you over the course of the week and get to know you. Want to say hi to CrackBerry Nation? We'll interview you and feature your app on the blogs! Want to get some tips on how to engage the CrackBerry community to build better apps and promote them? We'll share our experience and give you the do's and don'ts. Definitely do not be shy. If you see us walking, stop us and talk to us. And if you somehow miss us during the day, the odds are good you'll find us at the hotel bar late at night. See you @ DevCon!!

• Learn More & Attend the BlackBerry Developer Conference >>

Entry #17: The Scent of a BlackBerry!

Yup, that's right... the Grand Prize Winner in our I Love My BlackBerry Video Contest is Matt Galo's amazing video production, The Scent of a BlackBerry. If you haven't seen it yet, watch it above and be blown away! For his creativity, efforts, and wicked video, Matt will be taking home a new Macbook (in honor of the launch of BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac), his choice of BlackBerry Storm2 or BlackBerry Bold 9700, and the Schlage LiNK home system!!

Our 1st runner up was our wild card pick, APPLECALYPSE, which drew in a lot voter support, capturing 24% of the vote compared to 26% of the vote for The Scent of a BlackBerry. 2nd place will get Kevin Leung his choice of BlackBerry Bold 9700 or Storm2. From there it was CrackBerry Therapy followed very closely by BlackBerry... A Love Story for third and fourth place respectively, each getting 11% of the votes. You can view the finalist voting breakdown below.

ALL OF OUR FINALISTS Will be receiving some great prizes, including a $50 coupon code for accessories from ShopCrackBerry.com, a free custom battery door cover from Coveroo.com, and a 1-year subscription to both SmrtGuard and Slacker Radio Plus. With the finalists and grand prize winners taken care of, we still have some shout out awards that'll be hitting the blogs over the next few days. To all our participants -- we'll be following up with all of you soon as everybody will be getting prizes (stay tuned for a big thank you to our sponsors post too).  BIG CONGRATS go to all our our finalists! 

Drum roll please...... and the winning bumper sticker slogan in the Where and Traffic.com Bumper to Bumper Contest is....

I would honk, but I'm on my BlackBerry!

Nice. I guess it's fitting that CrackBerry.com readers would vote the slogan with a BlackBerry theme the highest. You can see the finalist voting results below. This bumper sticker was submitted by chadmd23, who has won himself a new Garmin Nuvi 1390 T. Congrats! Big thanks to Where.com for setting up this contest, and if you haven't already, be sure to check out the Traffic.com Application for your BlackBerry today.

Just bought a new BlackBerry Bold 9700 running the latest and greatest firmware? Well... it is a pretty dang wicked device, but depending what carrier you're picking it up from when it goes on sale, you may not have the latest firmware. Example: Rogers launched the 9700 with 5.0.0.321 while T-Mobile released it with 5.0.0.330. As we head into the weekend, we have OS 5.0.0.344 up for grabs. While this is an evil leaked OS, word is it is the gold candidate build for a couple of the European carriers out there that will soon be releasing the Bold 9700, so it should become "official" soon enough.

*OS Disclaimer - Please Read: Keep in mind this is NOT an official release and as such is not supported by RIM or your Carrier. If you choose to install, do so at your own risk and only if you're comfortable in the process of upgrading and downgrading your device software. It is quite normal during operating system development for certain features to be crippled or disabled while others are tested, and these beta builds often reflect that. They are not always better. Depending on your BlackBerry comfort level, it may be best for you to wait for community feedback on a build before deciding to download and install for yourself or simply wait for the next official release. If you require support, you will find it in our CrackBerry forums via our extremely knowledgeable community base - do not contact your carrier or RIM for Beta OS technical support (their first course of action will be to advise you to downgrade to a supported OS). Follow the links below for more information and instructions. *

• Download OS 5.0.0.344 for Bold 9700 (rapidshare) >>
  
• Download OS 5.0.0.344 For The Bold 9700 (Mirror)>>
• Instructions: How to Upgrade your BlackBerry's Operating System >>
• Instructions: How to Downgrade your BlackBerry's Operating System >>
• Instructions: Mess things up? Fix a Bricked BlackBerry Here >>

Hmm... this is interesting. Just yesterday we told you about DreamTheme's new offering of PrimeThemes, DreamTones and StillScreens. I was just clicking through App World catalogue this morning to see if there was any new apps on the BlackBerry scene and lo and behold, I stumbled onto a few of DreamTheme's new PrimeThemes! These are standard themes, built with the Plazmic CDK.

We've been hearing that RIM will soon announce support for themes in App World (at least to RIM ISV partners who pay the annual fee and assure RIM they are only using content they own the rights to in their themes). This is either a little slip up -- maybe naming it PrimeTheme and throwing in a few extra wallpapers was all it took to get past QA and into App World -- or maybe this is just the first of themes to show up. I guess time will reveal all.

In the meantime, if you haven't loaded it up on your device yet, be sure to grab the new CrackBerry Theme Store. It's full of free and paid themes from all developers who choose to include their collections there (no fees to developers).

• Check out DreamTheme's Themes in App World >>

DreamTheme entered the BlackBerry personalization scene at the end of last year with their truly unique LiveScreen offerings. They have now extended their offerings further into the personalization space with what they are calling "PrimeThemes", built using the Plazmic Toolkit so you get the interface and navigation you expect, along with the customized icons and high caliber aesthetic DreamTheme is known for. With their new "DreamTones" apps they have also entered the ringtone pack space with some cool sounds. The DreamTones app is a small app you install that gives you access to over 20 professionally recorded track segments you can then save as a ringtone. The 6 DreamTone products they have started off with cover a broad range of genres to span most tastes and they claim that more will be coming regularly. To complete their full Personalization offering they have also launched "StillScreens" -- an offering of themed wallpapers of outstanding quality.

DreamTheme seems to be committed to a full service personalization model and have bundled all of these products, from all 4 of their product lines, into a personalization package called "Ultimate Dreaming" that will be available at a deep discount for a limited time at www.dreamtheme.com. We will be reviewing some of the individual products and collections in more detail in the next few weeks, but wanted to let everyone know that these guys are serious about being category captains in the personalization space.

DreamTheme Contest: The folks at DreamTheme love their BlackBerrys too, so they're going to be giving all of our finalists and "shout out" winners in the I Love My BlackBerry contest a free Ultimate Dreaming package. As for everybody else reading this -- check out the site and leave a comment to this post letting us know exactly which PrimeTheme or DreamTones or StillScreens you'd like to have on your BlackBerry. 5 lucky winners will get their pick!

• Visit DreamTheme.com for more information and to purchase >>

You didn't think it was only Verizon that would be getting the BlackBerry Curve 8530, did you? Sprint users looking to get there hands on the new Curve can sign up now to be notified of its release, which we'd imagine is coming soon... no pricing and release date have been announced just yet. Oh, and in case you don't like the Royal Purple color pictured above, it also comes in black.

The interwebs have been filling up with review coverage of the BlackBerry Bold 9700, which is now beginning to roll out to carriers around the globe (you'll need to check to see if your carrier has it yet). With so much content out there, and even CrackBerry.com doing up multiple reviews, I figured a little roundup of some links would be useful. And for those who have bought one already, how do you do like it? Sound off in the comments!

• CrackBerry Reviews: Kevin | Adam | Craig | Bla1ze | Member Reactions >>
• Blog / Tech Pub Reviews: Engadget | Gizmodo | BGR | PhoneScoop | Pocket Berry | Laptop Mag | infoSync | Washington Post | PC Mag | cnet | G-Style | more reviews? post the url in the comments!

So it turns out there are no dumb BlackBerrys, just occassionally dumb BlackBerry users which apparently I am one of! If you saw my BlackBerry Bold 9700 unboxing video yesterday or the follow-up tip, you may have noticed I ran into some issues with getting the battery door cover off the thing. It wasn't the device... just me.

Watch the video above. It's actually DEAD EASY and requires very little effort to remove the battery door. You just need to use the right technique and apply a little pressure in the right place. This is obviously the way it was designed to be done...I just somehow missed that message. Maybe it's common sense to other people, but yeah.. errr.. my bad.  Lesson learned. Enjoy the video. And if by chance you run into any new BlackBerry Bold 9700 owners struggling with their battery (it'll make me feel better about myself if I'm not the only one out there who had a mental lapse) then show them the proper technique and tell them you saw it on CrackBerry.com. Not mentioning this topic again! LOL :)

The title says it all. Today is the final day to vote in the I Love My BlackBerry video contest. From 80 awesome entries, the judges picked out nine finalists, the community picked out one, adding up to 10 wicked videos for you to watch and pick your favorite from. 

There are awesome prizes for the grand prize winner and runner-up (and good prizes for everybody else still), but if you want your voice heard you need to vote, Vote VOTE!!!! If you haven't seen all the finalist vids yet, you can click the image above to watch them all. And you can cast your vote there or below. Good luck to everyone!!

Ha! So it's not the Curve2. Looks like all that crazy Curve2 talk and Curve2 promotional material was just VZW being a little overzealous in branding the Curve themselves (in reality you'd think it should be the Curve 8550 now that it has WiFi). Whatever the case, Verizon has gone ahead and announced the BlackBerry Curve 8530 Smartphone. It goes on sale November 20th and will be $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate. GPS, Trackpad, WiFi... it's a nice little device. If you haven't yet, be sure to read our BlackBerry Curve 8530 Review.

If you've been wanting to see how the BlackBerry Bold 9700 stacks up against its BlackBerry brothers and sisters (you can fight in the comments to which is which! lol) then you'll want to check out this one-take, no excuses video. I size up the BlackBerry Bold 9700 and from there we compare it to the BlackBerry Bold 9000, Curve 8900, Tour, Curve 8520, Pearl Flip, Storm2 and more...

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 really is an amazing little device. Components-wise, it represents the best of everything Research in Motion currently offers in a smartphone, and it packs it all into an extremly tight and lightweight package. The ultimate communication tool!