Crackberrys Kill

Soooo, things have gone well with my new Blackberry (BB) Curve 8330. Gone well if you are asking me. Turned into a borderline addiction, should you ask my wife. She often wants to go "intervention style" on me when I am thumbing away on Sunday at her parents house.

So yeah. Things have been going so well, in fact, that I even had a dream about it! But I don't have a problem. Yeah, so what?! Hell, I can quit whenever I want!

For everyone who's "into" their berries, you understand it's potential. You empathize with those who share your passion. You know what it's like to walk out of the house only to realize you left your BB unattended in the house...all alone, unused. It's an empty, helpless feeling.

What I love about the BB is the ability to add 3rd party software. It was the biggest reason I was drawn away from the iPhone. Well, that and switching service subscribers. Now I'm glad I went with the BB. Here's a list of all the software I have downloaded thus far:

• Opera Mini (browser)
• Empower Email (must have for email, full images, active links)
  
• Fusion Voicemail Plus (visual voicemail)
  
• iBerry phone theme (awesome...looks just like the iPhone interface)
• BlackBerry Messenger (great IM service BB-to-BB)
• Viigo beta (RSS reader, news, weather, sports, etc)
• Tellme (voice activated web search)
• Vlingo (voice activated web search...I'm testing both)
• Facebook app
• ESPN news feeder
• JabpLite (mobile checkbook app)
• Google Maps
• BlackBerry Wallet (stores passwords, credit card info, etc)

These applications are just some of the many, many that exist out there for BB owners. Most (all but iBerry & Empower) are completely free! Talk about f'n sweet!

Never again will I get stuck somewhere with nothing to do. I just pull out the BB and look @ Google Maps to see my location in satellite view. Or maybe check the scores quickly (before the wife sees) using the ESPN gadget. Most likely, I'm reading email & checking my Viigo RSS feeds (that's right, RSS feeds directly to your phone!) to check the blogs of my friends on Troopspace, Blogger, etc.

And if you haven't checked out Opera Mini yet, you're missing out. It's so much "more gooder" than the BB default browser. It's a FULL web browser experience. Meaning? You get headers, banners, images...all like you would if you were on your desktop PC viewing the sites. There is no scaled down mobile feel using Opera Mini.

At the Start Page, you can enter 10 sites and quickly jump to any of them. When you launch to a webpage, the browser scales down the screen size so that you see the whole page. Then by clicking on an area (highlighted within a framed section), you can zoom in. Now you see the section and scroll up/down, left/right in order to view the page. Or, you can scale it to "Column View" so you eliminate the left/right scrolling.

Well there you have it. Ever since I've laid my hands on this one, I can't get enough. Check out some of the software I mentioned. I'm sure you'll like it. The Empower email even offers a 30-day free trial. Nothing to lose there. Take care, I gotta run. Think my BB is calling for me.