Jenn Writes

Writing my way through life, one word at a time.

Blaq for BlackBerry 10

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When I said that I would blog about Blaq later, I didn’t think it would be later today.  I am at BlackBerry Live in Orlando next week and I’m not bringing my laptop so I figured I should probably write the review sooner rather than later.

From day 1 with my Z10, I was frustrated by the native Twitter client (Twitter for BlackBerry).  I realize that it is as functional as Twitter for Android and Twitter for iOS, but I’ve been spoiled with Twitter for BlackBerry 7.  I expected the Twitter client on the BlackBerry 10 devices to be just as functional, and when it wasn’t I was disappointed. I tried a number of other Twitter clients in the first two months I had my Z10: Tweetings, Neatly, RewitQ, and Twitter for BlackBerry 10.  Each of them had some advantages but they were either too slow, too frustrating to use, or missing key features (like lists).

As many of you know, I’m a Twitter junkie.  I need a fairly robust application to use on a daily basis.  One of my favourite features on Twitter is the ability to sort your followers into lists and follow those lists.  I follow over 1600 people on twitter, and, though I do Twitter purges on a regular basis where I unfollow accounts that are no longer relevant to me, it can still be a lot to handle.  Lists allow me sort the people I follow into groups such as “Formula 1 fans”, “CFL” , and “Journalists” and only follow those streams when I’m feeling overwhelmed.  For example, Monday May 6th was the CFL draft and though I love all my tweeps, I was trying to keep up with the draft picks as they happened.  I opened Twitter on my laptop, went to lists, and selected my football list.  Everything else in my stream disappeared and I could pretend that the world outside of football had melted away for awhile. None of the apps I had on my Z10 before Blaq allowed me to follow lists easily.

Aside from Lists, the other features that I want in a Twitter application are, in order of importance to me:

  • Multiple Account Support (preferably 3)
  • The ability to quote Tweets when retweeting
  • The ability to Mute hashtags (Sometimes, I just don’t want to hear about #PeopleIWantToPunch)
  • Real time refresh rate.

It’s not a huge or particularly demanding list, yet until Blaq was released no single Twitter application for BlackBerry 10 had all the features I wanted.  Right now Blaq only allows you to have 2 accounts but I’ve heard that support for 3 is coming and I still have the other applications so the accounts I use less frequently are set up on those.

Blaq is relatively easy to use.  When you first download it, you need to authorize it to access your twitter account, this is pretty standard. Once you’ve done this the screen will pull in your account and change to the main screen.  The main screen looks like this:

BlackBerry 10, Blaq, Twitter, AppThe green bar at the top is called the timeline progress bar and fills up as you get closer to the newest tweets in your stream.  The clock on the green bar shows the time of the tweet you’re on while the clock in the top right shows the current time.

From the main screen, it takes a quick swipe to navigate within the app.  Swiping right gets you the most options:

BlackBerry 10, Twitter, Blaq

To make it easier to understand what each of these options are, I’ve numbered them.

  1. Mute:  Allows you to mute a person or a hashtag.  This can be helpful if there is a twitter party going on and you’re not participating. Selecting this option and then “add mute” on the next screen brings up a page where you can enter your criteria for what you want muted. You can also un-mute from this screen.
  2. Search: Lets you search Twitter for a username or hashtag. Blaq imports saved searches but you can delete them at any time.
  3. Me: takes you to your profile page.  You can see your followers, who is following you, how many tweets you’ve tweeted, and lots of other fun stuff.
  4. Favourites: When you favourite a tweet, they are marked  with a star.  You can find them again later by selecting this option.
  5. Lists – All of your twitter lists are here.  Currently, you can’t edit lists from Blaq but if that changes, I will let you know!
  6. Retweets – These are tweets of yours that have been retweeted.
  7. Direct Messages – you can read and compose direct messages from here.
  8. Mentions – these are all of your @ replies.
  9. Home – this takes you back to your whole twitter feed.
  10. Compose – Tap this to compose a new tweet.

When you swipe down from the top of the screen, you get a much smaller menu: Accounts lets you add another account or switch between accounts, while Settings allows you to change the font size, set the refresh rate while the app is inactive, and access the tutorial again by selecting Help.

Blaq, BlackBerry 10, Twitter

Finally, swiping left allows you to access options directly related to the tweet you are viewing.  This is the action that is the least intuitive in Blaq.  To access this menu, touch a tweet and then pull left.  While holding the menu open, pull the list up or down to access the different options.

  1. Blaq, Twitter, BlackBerry 10 Allows you to reply to the tweet.
  2. Allows you to retweet the tweet to your followers.  (By default the app will confirm that this is an action you want to do)
  3. Marks the tweet as a favourite (again, the default is set to confirm that you want to favourite the tweet)
  4. Options.  If the tweet is one that you sent, you can delete it from here.

Earlier, I mentioned that one of my “must have” features in a twitter app is the ability to quote tweets.  You need to select the tweet by tapping it so that it opens up in its own screen.  When the tweet is isolated, touch and hold the retweet button (Circled in red below), and select the Middle option “Quote Retweet”.

Blaq BlackBerry 10 Touching and holding the retweet button brings up 3 menus on the right:

  1. Classic retweet – a nice and simple way to retweet
  2. Quote – puts the item you are retweeting in quotes – useful if you’re going to modify the tweet in any way.
  3. Retweet via – a type of retweet I’m beginning to use a lot more often – great for websites – takes the text of the tweet and then at the end puts (via @username).  It’s a stylistic choice but one that I quite enjoy.

One last thing about Blaq.  By default, Blaq connects itself to BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). You get an option on every tweet and retweet to send the message as your BBM status or share it with BBM contacts.  I don’t like that option, and so I turned it off.  To do this is a little tricky though.  You need to go to the Settings menu on your BlackBerry (it looks like a cog) –> Security and Privacy –>Application Permissions –>Blaq and switch “Connect to BBM” to off.

In a nutshell, that’s Blaq for BlackBerry 10.  Have you tried Blaq for BlackBerry 10 yet?  What do you think of it?

BBM

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One of my favourite applications on my Bold 9900 is BlackBerry Messenger or BBM. BBM is more than simply a messaging system – it’s an easy way to keep in touch and coordinate events with my friends and family.  BBM allows me to share my calendar appointments with the people I need to – I can invite a friend to a concert or my parents to a family dinner.  It also allows me to easily send pictures in a compressed format.  I use this feature while shopping if i need a quick opinion from a friend on a shirt or a pair of shoes.  With BBM connected apps I can chat with my BBM contacts within certain apps such as foursquare or twitter.  The biggest advantage BBM has over text messaging is that messages in BBM can be up to 2000 characters long.  This means that I can send 1 longer message and get the whole story across. My favourite feature of BBM (apart from it not using any of my data because of the plan I’m on) is that I can see when my messages are delivered and read.  I can invite multiple people to join a conversation – which comes in very handy when I’ve been at a large event and want to meet up with people. Adding people to BBM is really easy too – from the “invite to BBM” screen, you can enter the person’s name, email, phone number, or PIN.  If you’re in the same room as the person you want to add you can scan their BBM bar code – it’s really neat and easy to do.

Displaying your bar code for others to scan was a bit tricky at first but then I learned that all I had to do was hit the BlackBerry button  while in BBM, select “view my profile”, and then scroll down to “personal bar code” and select “show”.  Quick and efficient.

A feature that I’ve started using recently is BBM Groups.  BBM groups are different from simply having a chat with multiple people in it.  For starters you can have people in your BBM group who aren’t on your BBM contact list.  You can have up to 30 people in a BBM group.  I have one for my football contacts and love being able to make and share appointments and pictures quickly within the group.  Joining a group is as easy as scanning the group bar code.  You can invite other people to join a group you’ve made by getting them to scan the group bar code as you display it on your phone.   I was a guest of BlackBerry at the Manulife Financial LPGA tournament in Waterloo last week, I couldn’t attend the final day (Sunday) due to other commitments, but because I had scanned a BBM bar code from BlackBerry@LPGA I was kept up to date with tournament and scoring information.  Several other organizations have similar promotions – you can become a BlackBerry Blue Jays Insider by entering the PIN or scanning the bar code found at Bluejays.com.  This gives you access to contests, video content on your device, score updates and more.

To be honest, I never thought I’d use BBM as much as I do.  It has become something I just can’t live without.

The Camera Question

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By far the most frequent question I get asked about my Bold 9900 is about the camera.  People ask why I would want a smart phone with a crappy camera.  My answer is simply, I don’t.  Here are the specs on the camera on the Bold 9900:

  • 5 megapixel camera
  • 720p HD video recording capability
  • 4 x digital zoom
  • Flash
  • Geo-tagging (So helpful when sorting through the pictures!)
  • Zero shutter lag.  ZERO.  You can capture a memory the instant it occurs.
  • Multiple scene modes.  I actually find this very useful – I have tried out all of the modes, and while Auto is great, the Party and Landscape modes are quickly becoming favourites.

All of this wouldn’t be worth anything without the amazing resolution on the screen – VGA 640×480 high resolution with 287 pixels per square inch.  In short – pictures I take on my Bold 9900 look fantastic on my handheld and on the computer.

The touch screen on the Bold 9900 is also very useful for taking pictures.  You can zoom in or out swiping the right side of the screen, you can either use a key or touch the camera icon in the middle to take a picture.  When you are looking through your photos, the touch screen enables you to easily move between pictures.

I have a 32gb MicroSD card in my Bold so that I can keep photos on the phone, but also transfer them easily with the help of an adapter to any compatible device.  I would highly recommend getting a card if you’re going to be storing music or photos on your Blackberry.

A picture really is worth 1000 words, so here is one I took with my Bold 9900 at a friend’s party.

A Blackberry Bold image

Oh and the header on the blog?  Yeah, I took that with my Bold too.

A word of Introduction

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My Beloved Bold 9900 – as a TARDIS !

Welcome to my new blog.  People keep asking me why I’m so devoted to my BlackBerry (both the Bold 9900 and my 64gb Playbook) so I’m starting this blog to try and explain.  It’s not just that I live in the Kitchener-Waterloo area and have had more exposure to the BlackBerry brand.  My dad has had a succession of BlackBerries, starting with the “Brick berry” going through the pearl (he was not a fan, nor was I) and after seeing my Bold 9900, he decided he needed the latest and greatest BlackBerry too.  I didn’t make my choice of phone lightly.  In the spirit of full disclosure I will say that I got my BlackBerry Bold 9900 free after winning a BlackBerry sponsored contest on Twitter.  Even so, if it wasn’t the right phone for me, I would have sold it and found something else.  I want a smart phone that is actually smart.  I don’t play many games (except cribbage and word mole – they’re surprisingly addictive) on my phone.  I use my phone to talk to people.  Whether it’s by BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), Text messages, Twitter, Facebook, or e-mail, my BlackBerry never lets me down.  I love the fact that it has a keyboard and a touchscreen – I can type much faster on the keyboard than I ever could on my IPhone, and I still get the fun of a touchscreen to flip between pictures quickly.  It’s the best of both worlds.  Oh, and the camera rocks.  I also found a skin on Etsy that made my BlackBerrry into a TARDIS from Doctor Who.  Yes, I geeked out my BlackBerry Bold.   I’m a real person and I need a smartphone that allows me to communicate effectively.  For me, that’s my Bold 9900.