Playbook

Blaq for BlackBerry 10

May 10, 2013 by koalateagirl

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:

The 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:

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

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.
Search: Lets you search Twitter for a username or hashtag. Blaq imports saved searches but you can delete them at any time.
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.
Favourites: When you favourite a tweet, they are marked with a star. You can find them again later by selecting this option.
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!
Retweets – These are tweets of yours that have been retweeted.
Direct Messages – you can read and compose direct messages from here.
Mentions – these are all of your @ replies.
Home – this takes you back to your whole twitter feed.
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.

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.

Allows you to reply to the tweet.
Allows you to retweet the tweet to your followers. (By default the app will confirm that this is an action you want to do)
Marks the tweet as a favourite (again, the default is set to confirm that you want to favourite the tweet)
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”.

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

Classic retweet – a nice and simple way to retweet
Quote – puts the item you are retweeting in quotes – useful if you’re going to modify the tweet in any way.
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?

Apps I can’t live without.

May 9, 2013 by koalateagirl

Hi everyone,
It’s been awhile – I’ve been busy with life and spending far too much time with my BlackBerry Z10. The advantage of spending so much time with my Z10 is that I have a shortlist of the “Can’t miss Apps” for BlackBerry 10. These are my favourite apps, the ones I use on a daily basis.

1) Password Keeper – This app was standard on earlier BlackBerry devices, and is a free download for the Z10. It has all the functionality that I wrote about here but is on your BlackBerry 10 Device.

2) BlackBerry Messenger – Another old standard but one that I use daily to keep in touch with friends and family. It’s just so convenient. The Video chat feature on BlackBerry 10 devices allows you to do more than simply type to your contacts, you can actually see them and have a face to face conversation.

3) BlackBerry Remember – I had my doubts on how useful Remember would be. I was so wrong. I use it every single day. It’s better than any other notepad app I’ve used. It allows you to flag emails and put them into a file folder within the Remember App, but more than that, it allows you to add photos, videos, voice notes, and documents to the folder.

I have a BlackBerry Live folder and my airline tickets, hotel confirmation, event schedule, and hotel shuttle emails are all inside that folder so that I can easily find them as I need them.You can assign due dates to items within a folder and never forget a deadline again. You can also pull in contacts so if you are working on a project with a co-worker, you will have their contact info alongside all the information for the project. The BlackBerry video about Remember gives a pretty awesome overview of this amazing app.

4) CrackBerry 10 – I admit it, I’m a CrackBerry addict. I was going to the website a couple of times a day to keep up with the latest BlackBerry news. The CrackBerry 10 app for BlackBerry 10 allows me to catch up on the latest news and reviews in a really nicely designed and user friendly manner. To access the category feature simply tap the CB home button at the bottom of the screen in the app:

Once you do that, you will be greeted with a list of categories – I tend to read everything but if you only want to read reviews, it can be really helpful to go straight to the reviews category. My favourite thing about the CrackBerry 10 app is that it’s built for BlackBerry. I have nothing against Android ports but they don’t always work in quite the same way that apps built specifically for the BlackBerry 10 platform.

5) Blaq – The native Twitter app on the BlackBerry 10 operating system is not as good as the version I had on my Bold 9900. I use Twitter a lot and needed something better. I have used Blaq on my PlayBook, so when it was released for the BlackBerry 10 in late April, I eagerly downloaded it. It took a little getting used to and I’m still discovering little gems like the ability to quote tweets. (You can only do it from inside the tweet itself, not from the main screen) I will do a full post on Blaq soon for all my Twitter addicted friends who need a solid app that works well and is stable

6) Podcasts – I’m late to the podcast party, but I love listening to them as I walk around town. I had a few different Podcast apps on my Bold 9900 but my favourite wasn’t available for the BlackBerry Z10. After consulting some of my fellow BlackBerry Elite members, I downloaded Podcasts for BlackBerry 10. I love how easy and intuitive the app is to use. It also doesn’t drain my battery the way other podcast apps have. The selection of podcasts in the app is pretty good but you can search and manually add your favourite podcasts within the menu if they aren’t on the list. The only complaint I’ve heard is from my friend Nick who listens to a lot of podcasts while riding his bike to and from work – he would like a feature that skips back 5 or 10 seconds in the podcast when you restart after a pause, so that you don’t miss anything. I agree it would enhance the app but even without that feature, the app is head and shoulders above any other podcast app for BlackBerry 10.

These are my favourite (non game) apps so far. I’m going to be testing BlackBerry Travel next week as I journey to BlackBerry Live, and I will let you know how it works on BlackBerry 10 afterwards.

What are your favourite BlackBerry 10 apps? What app do you really want to see on the platform?

To whet your ‘app’etite

January 21, 2013 by koalateagirl

A number of people have been asking me to review apps for the BlackBerry 10. Gven that I am not currently in possession of a BlackBerry 10 device, I thought I’d write about what I know – some great free apps for the PlayBook.

The first app I want to discuss is the one I’m writing this review on – WordPress for PlayBook and BlackBerry10. I have posted a few blog posts from my Bold 9900 but until recently found the free WordPress clients for the PlayBook unappealing. Then, as I was searching for another app, I saw this one and thought ‘why not’. The app is just as functional as the website.

You can manage multiple blogs, approve comments, track your statistics (which is scarily addictive!), edit old / saved posts, read blogs you subscribe to, add quick photos and videos, and, of course, write a new post. You. can write half a post, save it and come back later to finish it up. I love that it’s so easy to add pictures and screenshots right from my PlayBook. I write about my BlackBerry and PlayBook a lot so it makes sense to write on my BlackBerry and PlayBook.

The only feature that is missing when typing using the WordPress app is the awesome autocomplete feature of the PlayBook’s keyboard. I’m so used to the PlayBook finishing my words that I get annoyed when the feature doesn’t work in an app. I do like that I can manage multiple WordPress blogs from the app and that switching between them is one-touch easy.

What’s your favourite app for the PlayBook?

The Grey Cup with BlackBerry

January 11, 2013 by koalateagirl

It’s no secret that I love my BlackBerry devices. I also love the Canadian Football League. With the 100th Grey Cup practically in my backyard, I decided that once again this year, I was going to go and report from the big game without taking my old and heavy laptop. This year, however, I did add the BlackBerry Bluetooth keyboard for my PlayBook. This gave me more functionality with very little additional weight.

I also added a second battery and charging case (which is basically a small case for the extra battery that you plug the regular micro usb adapter into) for my trusty Bold 9900. I knew I would be putting in some very long days and didn’t want to need to find somewhere to plug in my BlackBerry. Between the 2 batteries, I got somewhere in the range of 12-13 hours of heavy use out of my Bold each day. My BlackBerry was in hand from the time I got up (around 6am each day) until I finally got back to my hotel room somewhere between midnight and 1 am.

I was pulling double duty at the Grey Cup this year – as a member of Argonotes (the official pep band of the Toronto Argonauts) and as a member of the media for Rouge Radio.com. I could not have successfully done both things without my BlackBerry calendar to help me keep track of where I needed to be and when. It was indispensable for getting press releases, schedule updates, and interview requests into my hands immediately so that I could add or adjust my schedule accordingly. Between my Bold and my PlayBook, I had everything I needed: email, calendar, documents to go, a voice recorder, cameras, a phone, access to text messages, Twitter, Facebook, and, of course, BlackBerry Messenger.

I recorded interviews on my PlayBook while tweeting and taking pictures on my Bold or vice versa. I typed game notes on my PlayBook with the keyboard while watching the game. I freaked out another reporter by using the remote control feature to type on my PlayBook from 2 rows back in the press box. Having words appear on the tablet next to you that you were asked to watch for a couple of minutes can be a freaky experience, especially when the words are addressed specifically to you. (Yes I know, it was wrong to use my PlayBook to freak out other people but it was a prank I’d been planning for awhile and the opportunity presented itself at the Vanier Cup on Friday night.)

The combination of my Bold 9900 and my PlayBook were all I needed to make the most of my Grey Cup experience – no need to lug around a heavy, awkward laptop, a voice recorder, or a camera – just my trusty BlackBerry Bold 9900 and my PlayBook.

I will note that being able to update my Facebook, Twitter, and BBM statuses with things like “I just drank out of the Grey Cup” was awesome. I uploaded a ton of Photos, directly from my devices, often while walking between events.

Have you ever used a tablet instead of a Laptop? Would you consider leaving the laptop at home for a major conference or event?

Banners outside the Rogers Centre

She’s Connected and my BlackBerry

October 24, 2012 by koalateagirl

You know what I absolutely love hearing when showing off my Bold 9900? “Wow, I didn’t know a BlackBerry could do THAT“. I heard that a lot this weekend at the She’s Connected Conference in Toronto. Mostly it was the simple things like the fact that managing multiple accounts in the Native Twitter Application is so easy. Or that I could remote control my PlayBook from my Bold 9900 (to be honest, that was me showing off because I had the bluetooth keyboard for the PlayBook and was perfectly capable of typing on that but I like the wow factor of the remote control). I loved meeting so many fellow BlackBerry devotees and being able to help them use their devices more easily. It’s not rocket science but there are tips and tricks that will enhance your experience as a member of Team BlackBerry.

Bold 9900 - BlackBerry Bold - TARDIS berry — My BlackBerry Bold 9900

The one question everyone seemed to ask me was if I was excited about the upcoming release of the BlackBerry 10 devices and operating system. The answer to that was an unequivocal YES! I am very excited about BlackBerry 10 and can’t wait until it is released! I still don’t know how I’m going to get a BlackBerry 10 device into my hot little hands but rest assured, it will be done. I have friends who are developers for BlackBerry and their excitement at what the BB10 OS can do has rubbed off on me. I truly believe that there is a core market of BlackBerry users who may have switched to another platform who are waiting for an excuse to come back to the BlackBerry fold. I believe that the BlackBerry 10 Operating System will be the thing to bring them back. I spoke to quite a few people who either had been BlackBerry users in the past or who were simply curious about the new product launch. A number of them were at the end of their cell phone contracts and were eligible for a new device, either now or at the beginning of the year. After chatting with me, many of them are waiting to see what BlackBerry 10 has to offer before deciding what phone to get. I wasn’t out to strong arm people into becoming members of Team BlackBerry but I wanted people to give it a chance.

BlackBerry isn’t for everyone. If you want a smartphone to game on, then this isn’t the right solution for you. However, if you want your phone to work FOR you, and WITH you then you need to consider BlackBerry. I primarily use my BlackBerry for social media, emails, as a gps, as a camera, and *gasp* to make and receive phone calls Yes I have a number of very entertaining apps and games, but they’re not the reason I chose my BlackBerry. I have far more games on my 64 gb PlayBook.

BlackBerry PlayBook - Bluetooth Keyboard - PlayBook - BlackBerry — My PlayBook

Not once all conference did i wish I had a different phone. My Bold 9900 had no issues connecting to the wifi, releasing the cached wifi info page so I could log in again on the second day, or with maintaining a battery charge throughout the conference. I don’t want to have to carry around a charger for my phone because it won’t last 10 hours. I was having too much fun trying to meet up with twitter friends to be hunting for somewhere to plug in my phone.