Six Free BlackBerry Downloads You Don't Want to Miss
Get the most out of your RIM BlackBerry smartphone without ever opening your wallet. Check out the following six free downloads.
Google Maps: Mobile Mapping With Satellite Imagery
Google Maps for BlackBerry is a mobile mapping application that provides location-based information and services to mobile handsets with or without the use of GPS. The "My Location" function employs nearby cell towers to determine rough locations of mobile phone users so no information needs to be entered. The application also provides satellite imagery from the Google Earth service and can deliver driving--or step-by-step walking--directions with real-time traffic alerts in some 30 major U.S. cities.
The Google Maps search function also offers integrated search results. That means locations of businesses or organizations, along with contact information and more, appear in one place on a map. And a "Details" tab can be clicked to gather additional information on businesses where available. For instance, the Details tab could display hours of operations for a restaurant or hotel amenities. Users can also easily scroll in or zoom out on the maps by simply clicking the BlackBerry "I" and "O" keys.
Facebook for BlackBerry: Never Miss a Beat
If you are hooked on Facebook, this application is for you. The Facebook social networking tool began as an application used by college students to share photos and other content and to keep in touch with friends, but it has quickly become a valuable tool (some would say addiction) for many business users. The Facebook for BlackBerry applications lets you take your favorite social networking site with you wherever you may roam.
Though not as robust as the real Facebook site--you can't access groups, for example--the mobile application displays your home screen notifications, like status updates, and you can "poke" or message friends and write on their "Walls." Lists of friends and their status updates are also available with a single click from the mobile home screen, and photo uploading and sharing is as simple as snapping an image with your smartphone's camera and uploading it to the site from the application's home screen.
Hitting the BlackBerry menu key on your device brings you from the Facebook home screen to a list of options that include all of the above functionality, as well as the ability to surf to the Facebook Mobile site, which includes much of the functionality available on the full Facebook website.
