Sports fans want to be in the know -- they want to know as soon as the news happens or their team scores. Thankfully as BlackBerry users we have ScoreMobile to keep us informed on all the latest sports happenings. I've used ScoreMobile for quite some time, but it wasn't until recently that I started using the built-in push alerts for my teams. Enabling these alerts lets you get scores as they happen for any number of teams across the various professional leagues. Keep reading and we'll take a look at just how easy it is to setup alerts in ScoreMobile.

Continue reading article

I am fond of saying there is no perfect Smartphone; there is only the Smartphone that is perfect for you. Whether your beloved device runs Android; BlackBerry; iOS; webOS; or Windows Phone, we're all just part of the larger Mobile Nations family (do you like how I worked that in there?).

Still, when a story like this comes along, I can't help but feel a little sympathy for our iPhone brethren. Last Tuesday, Mahler's Symphony No. 9 came to a halt at the New York Philharmonic after a new iPhone user had trouble silencing his phone's alarm. Sitting in the front row, the patron's iPhone Marimba ring was easily heard by the conductor, Alan Gilbert, who actually stopped the performance until the ring was silenced.

The iPhone's owner, a long-time subscriber to the orchestra, made sure to silence his phone before the concert - as we all should do before movies, concerts, shows, and other such events - but an alarm set on his Smartphone sounded anyway. The day before the concert, the man's company had switched from BlackBerry to iPhone, and the poor gentleman had not yet become familiar with his new device. He didn't know his phone's alarm was set; when it sounded, he had trouble figuring out how to make it stop.

On Thursday, he had a chance to apologize by phone to the conductor who graciously accepted the apology. Like the iPhone, selecting the "All Alerts Off" or "Silent" sound profile on a BlackBerry effectively silences any and all alert sounds on the Smartphone - except for the daily alarm. Silencing that alarm seems to be a bit easier on a BlackBerry than on an iPhone, though, as pressing just about any button on the RIM device will cancel that sound. Methinks the unfortunate iPhone user at the symphony found things a bit more complicated when his iDevice stopped the show.

Source: New York Times via iMore Image: WSJ

Beep beep! Ding dong, ding dong! Bzzzzzz Bzzzzzz! It’s amazing how we respond to these sounds if they came from our BlackBerrys. Not unlike Pavlov’s dogs, we do our own salivating; in this case, it’s not for food, but for messages, calls and such. Our ears are trained to notice the familiar notification tones we have set up. For those who watched House this week- how many of you looked in the direction of your own BlackBerry every time you heard Lisa Cuddy’s Tour go off? I thought so. Instead of breaking free of this conditioning, what do we do? Create more tones; Tones for email, tones for SMS, tones for phone calls. It a vicious cycle with only one other option; take it to the next level. The problem is that, as a standalone solution to this, the BlackBerry doesn’t offer full control. Time for an app!

I thought we would take a look at a couple of options that are out there and see how they compare to each other. We’ll throw Mailtones and BeBuzz (BerryBuzz) into the fray and see how they fair. Who offers more value? Which one will you pick? Will you pick both? Let’s find out.

Continue reading article

When we saw that headline on a press release we feared that maybe this was Wang Chung’s official website. But, thankfully Down2Night is a new web application to help people find out what is happening in various locations each night. Talk about mobile 2.0.

Web-savvy users now have a social meet-up subscription service that gives them up-to-date SMS alert info on parties, drink promotions, live events and nightly happenings at venues they choose. They can also access the application to search for events on their BlackBerry and other mobile devices.
Users can subscribe to their favorite nightlife venues and receive SMS alerts on their mobile phones about events happening on the nights that interest. No more “So what’s going tonight? I dunno” type conversations.

Subscribers can set the venues they would like to know about and receive an alert on the BlackBerry or any mobile device telling them what is going down tonight. You can also pick particular nights you want to hear about. Other features include "What’s Down," a dynamic menu of the event and promotion lists by each venue; "I'm Down," a user powered ranking of events at individual locations. And "Browse," and “search” features that enables users to search by pre-selected criteria such as “My Spots,” “Most Popular” or all the venues in the database.

The service is already up and running in Seattle, San Francisco, and Tri-cities, Washington. Down2night will be launching in New York City, Las Vegas, Boston, Austin, Madison, Miami, Denver, Portland, Vancouver, Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Houston in the very near future.