The wait for Blackberry users is finally over….Amazon has recently announced a beta version of its Kindle application specifically for Blackberry users.

With this latest application, BlackBerry users can now not only read Kindle ebooks, they can also sync their bookmarks with Kindle readers or the Kindle application for PCs as well, while at the same time search online for new ebooks from the Amazon Kindle Store. Amazon already has Kindle applications for both PCs & the Apple iPhone, so its latest expansion to include the Blackberry family will definitely be a welcome addition for Blackberry users out there.

Although the application is currently in beta, it comes as a free download for all Blackberry users. Users can control the text size of book on their screen, create bookmarks, display books in full colour & also search over 400,000 books from Amazon’s Kindle store directly from their BlackBerry. Unfortunately however, the app is currently available only for US Blackberry customers. 

This latest Kindle for BlackBerry app currently supports the following 7 BlackBerry models - Bold 9000, Bold 9700, Curve 8520, Curve 8900, Storm 9530, Storm 9550 & Tour 9630. You can get a free download of it at Amazon’s link below :

Kindle for Blackberry

At a recent press conference held on Monday at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, Microsoft officially announced its much anticipated Windows Phone 7 series of smartphones. This series refers to a set of new smartphones that will run on Microsoft’s latest mobile operating system, which is a complete revamp of its existing Windows Mobile platform. These new smartphones will not only have enterprise-friendly features beneficial for corporations, but will also have extensive social networking capabilities & be able to be integrated with Microsoft’s Zune and Xbox Live online services.

Some of the new & impressive features of this latest series of smartphones from Microsoft include :

(1) New Hub-based Interface
Microsoft has come out with a unique design interface that allows users to create their own “hubs” that pull together information from the Internet, applications & other services into one single integrated view. It also comes with six pre-built “hubs” as well – People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office.

(2) Zune Player
The Music + Video “hub” within the Windows Phone 7 acts as a Zune HD within a phone, basically mimicking everything about the original Zune HD player. This means you’ll be able to get quicker access to music, video, podcasts, radio and the Zune marketplace itself. There’s also a home page that records a history of your most-played content & other new stuff you’ve added.

(3) Xbox Live
Windows Phone 7 also has an Xbox Live Integration feature that allows you to integrate it very closely to your Xbox Live account, allowing you to retain your Xbox Live avatar, earn achievements, link up with friends, and play multiplayer-based games.

(4) Multi-touch browsing
Microsoft has also joined the ranks of Apple, Palm and Google to incorporate full multi-touch support for the Windows Phone 7, enabling users to browse & navigate easily between screens & even full HTML pages

(5) Customizable Start screen
It also comes with a customizable Start screen that can be easily rearranged to your liking & which enables you to access your most frequently used applications via shortcuts.

However, it was announced that the first units of the Windows Phone 7 smartphones will only arrive during the 2010 shopping season later this year, which could mean any time from October to mid-December. So it looks like consumers & eager Microsoft fans will have to wait a very long, long while before they can even get their hands on one.

(1) Check out this latest cool video about the features of the Windows Phone 7 series :

(2) You can also watch Steve Balmer’s press conference about Windows Phone 7 at the link below :

Windows Phone 7 Press Conference

Valentine’s Day is this Sunday, so if you’re an iPhone user & want to use it to impress or share your feelings with that special someone in your life, then check out these 8 cool iPhone Apps that were specially created for that special day :

iWrite : Love Poems

Valentine ~ Postage

Creative Romantic Ideas

Be Mine Hearts

Send eFlowers

iLuvMe

Sweethearts

How Am I Feeling

Do share this post with others as well….

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone !

Recently Skype released an official statement on its blog saying that an upcoming version of Skype for the iPhone that supports 3G calls will be coming out real soon.

Currently Skype for iPhone only supports Wi-Fi calls, which severely limits its use for people on the go. But in a recent blog post, Skype’s Peter Parkes confirmed that a 3G-capable version is on its way.

You can read the full Skype update right here :
Skype calling over 3G on iPhone

You can also watch their video below for more info :

Mozilla’s long-awaited Firefox 3.6 is nearing its official release and an RC1 version of the web browser has been made available today for testing.

New features and big changes abound in this latest effort, including a host of performance enhancements thanks to the Gecko 1.9.2 web-rendering platform including extended support for new web technologies, improved Javascript performance and general improvement in speed and stability. The much-hyped Personas feature allows for complete customization of the browser with a single click while Firefox will now keep an eye on your plugins for updates so that your browser is also running as well as possible.

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 RC1 is available for free download here with the official release notes here.

Mac users looking to test and build extensions in Google Chrome now have the option with Chromium, the developer version of Google’s popular web browser.

Extensions, also known as add-ons, have been a contentious point among Chrome users; their near-complete integration in the Firefox experience seems to have spoiled surfers with the ability customize and extend their browser at all. While an official version of Chrome supporting extensions is still a way off, this latest developer release ensures that both PC and Mac users have the ability to catch a glimpse of Chrome extended.

Check out Google’s early access release page to grab the developer version of Google Chrome and play around with the few extensions that are currently available; as Chrome’s popularity soars, so does the potential for very cool add-ons to come!

Two of the coolest new pieces of technology come together in the video below as Google’s experimental Goggles features is tested on the yet unleased Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, one of the most anticipated smartphones coming in 2010.

The future is now: check out the Xperia’s big screen as it works with a Toblerone chocolate bar (mmm, Toblerone) through Google Goggles, performing searches both via bar code reading and image recognition.

Anyone else excited for the technological advancements coming in 2010? I thought so.

It’s been mentioned many times in recent months and Google has finally come through with what should prove to be an excellent innovation for the web in general: real-time search results.

As of yesterday you’re able to find real-time results when you perform a Google search, including tweets, Facebook posts, blog articles and news reports, all happening in the moment. This ability makes the already near-instant web even more useful for those on the hunt for the absolute latest online content. The feature is also available on Google’s mobile site.

This move also puts a heavy burden on competitors like Microsoft’s Bing, depending on the early demand for real-time results and how much thought other search services have given the importance of instant results.

Google’s demo video of real-time search results:

Panasonic has announced that the technology they’ve been working for to display three-dimensional pictures on plasma televisions is nearly ready for market, indicating that end-users could easily have the technology in their home by this time next year.

3D technology is not new, having been utilized in a sparing manner by television and film studios in the past few years with television shows like Third Rock From the Sun and films like The Polar Express using early adaptations of the necessary hardware and content to portray 3D-like images. The industry has been waiting on standardization of interface connections and portable media for the technology to really take hold in the mass market and the burgeoning HDMI and Blu-ray formats are well on their way.

Panasonic will aim to release 3D-enabled televisions and the special glasses necessary to utilize them in the next year while other manufacturers, including Playstation 3-maker Sony, will continue to work towards bringing other entertainment sources to us with an added dimension through 3D gaming and movies, with industry analysts expecting more than $11 billion dollars in sales of home 3D equipment by 2013.

It’s going to feature in every aspect of home entertainment. That’s how strongly we feel about it – this time it’s for real. We see 3D as a pillar of our strategy, we are all getting geared up on this theme.

Panasonic press release

Speakers at the Microsoft Professional Developer’s Conference in Los Angeles have offered up some details on Microsoft’s next big release in Internet Explorer 9, revealing improved performance and better use (and apparent improvement on) web standards.

With the launch of Windows 7 out of the way, Microsoft has had time and energy to spend on the next incarnation of my (and many others) least favorite web browser, reporting that they are about three weeks into the development process. With stiff competition from the open source and free Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome along with Apple’s popular Safari browser, Microsoft has their work cut out for them.

Some of the details offered include:

• Microsoft admitted that IE’s JavaScript handling abilities were less than stellar, promising improvements and offering data that shows current test almost at the speed seen in Chrome and Firefox. Next!
• Questions concerning whether HTML 5 would be fully supported by the coming IE 9 were danced around, indicating that the answer will eventually be a resounding negative. Next!
• CSS support will be improved, leaving web designers who favor rounded corners cheering gustily. Welcome to 2007, IE. Next!

My advice is to forget you read this article and forget any promises Microsoft makes. They appear destined to play catch-up to the better browsers out there so why waste your time? If you’ve yet to try a browser that didn’t come pre-installed on your PC, please do visit the official Firefox site and the official Google Chrome site – both free and both fantastic!