The Month in BlackBerry Apps: Slacker Stitchers Make Robot Schedules [Blackberry Apps]

Hey look, it’s our first BlackBerry app roundup. We’ve got free podcasts, free music and free hacks to make your BlackBerry more usable—or let you grind its battery into the ground.

Stitcher: Formerly an iPhone/iPod touch app, Stitcher lets you cut together podcasts to stream them to your phone as virtual radio stations. Mostly news(ish) content, but it spans from the Wall Street Journal to Slate and we’ll take free streaming audio wherever we can get it. Free at App World or OTA for Curve, Bold and Storm. (Image via Crackberry)

LEDReset: Simple, but great: Turns off your BlackBerry’s LED light until the next alert. Grab it here OTA. Free.

ScoreMobile BlackBerry: Real-time sports scores for MLB, NHL, NBA, and PGA from Canadia’s theScore—so perhaps their Canadian numbers aren’t to be trusted. Supposedly, more sports are coming this summer. I’m hoping for PBA scores, personally, since it’s been way too long since I’ve bowled. Free at App World or OTA.

Slacker 2.0: With the latest version of Slacker Radio, song transitions and skip times are supposed to be damn near instant. All of the regular features are still there, obviously, with full stereo over any connection and offline caching being two of its biggest perks. Free in App World.

SmrtGuard for BlackBerry: What makes SmrtGuard worth a look is that it rolls up a bunch of security features for the always-losing-their-damn-phone crowd into one tasty combo: Location tracking, remote data wipe and remote backup and restore. Oh, and stealth listening, so you can hear whoever picked up your phone gloating. I’m sorta surprised RIM doesn’t actually bake all of this into the OS, but SmrtGuard delivers it for $4 a month or $45 for the year.

ForceRadioOn: Do you hate it when your BlackBerry kills the phone because the battery is moments away from death? ForceRadioOn speeds your phone to its doom by turning the cellular radio on against its will, so you can gab for a few fleeting seconds. Free here and other app stores.

BB: Robot Scheduler: The range of this robot schedule slave is pretty impressive. You can schedule emails, texts, audio recordings, GPS location sharing, or pretty much anything else you can do on BlackBerry, in simple or more complex arrangements. It’s only available for the Bold and Storm at the moment. $6 OTA here.

BlackBerry App Coverage:

• BlackBerry Facebook 1.6 Is More Like Real Facebook
• New BlackBerry Messenger Is Much Better [BGR]
• RIM Acquires Dash Navigation (no app from this yet, but there totally will be!)
• Every Mobile Browser Should Just Give and Go WebKit

This list is in no way definitive (especially cause it’s our first!). If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this month, give us a heads up or let us know in the comments. Have a good rest of your weekend everybody!

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In the Universal Century, we suppose this sort of thing will be rather blasé. But until then, there’s really no better way to get our geek hearts a-flutter than some up close and personal pics of this 1:1 scale model of the classic RX-78-2 Gundam mecha, built to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the franchise. We’ve been watching the construction of this thing rather closely and we’re proud to announce that the finished product is every bit as badass as we’d hoped. If you’re not planning on making the trip to Tokyo any time soon, feel free to take a gander at the thing in the gallery below. And our thanks to blogger Punynari for the awesome pics!

Gallery: Life-sized Gundam

[Via Examiner]

Filed under: Robots

Life-sized Gundam complete and no, you can’t borrow it originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Via [Engadget]

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Behind You! [Image Cache]

“Bob, I wish the damn elephants were closer. This new telephoto lens is amazing, but the extra weight is killing me!”

And yes, the photographer and videographer apparently had no idea. [National Geographic via Neatorama]

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Behind You! [Image Cache]

“Bob, I wish the damn elephants were closer. This new telephoto lens is amazing, but the extra weight is killing me!”

And yes, the photographer and videographer apparently had no idea. [National Geographic via Neatorama]

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In the Universal Century, we suppose this sort of thing will be rather blasé. But until then, there’s really no better way to get our geek hearts a-flutter than some up close and personal pics of this 1:1 scale model of the classic RX-78-2 Gundam mecha, built to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the franchise. We’ve been watching the construction of this thing rather closely and we’re proud to announce that the finished product is every bit as badass as we’d hoped. If you’re not planning on making the trip to Tokyo any time soon, feel free to take a gander at the thing in the gallery below. And our thanks to blogger Punynari for the awesome pics!

Gallery: Life-sized Gundam

[Via Examiner]

Filed under: Robots

Life-sized Gundam complete and no, you can’t borrow it originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Via [Engadget]

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Microsoft Cuts iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm Pre Employee Reimbursement Program [Microsoft]

Microsoft, on the heels of its big layoffs and other cost-cutting measures enacted earlier this year, has reportedly stopped reimbursing its employees for iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre data plans even if they’re being used significantly for work-related purposes.

Only—you guesed it—Windows Mobile device users will have their data plans reimbursed. It may sound fishy at first (Bill Gates banning iPods in his house, anyone?), but you have to remember that many companies offer no such perk for their employees to begin with. The economy being what it is, such a cut in employee benefits wouldn’t be out of line for any tech company. [Business Insider]

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Blue Angels Cockpit Cam Viewing Experience Should Include Barf Bag [Blue Angels]

I knew the Navy’s Blue Angels were good, but seeing their stuff from inside the cockpit actually got a few butterflies stirring in my gullet. [Danger Room]

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Separated at Birth? [Thinking Out Loud]

I’m sorry, but I just gotta know—are Dell Dude #1 Michael Dell and Iron Man director Jon Favreau secretly related? Does their freakish resemblance not trouble anyone else?

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VAIO P gets whole new lease on life with Atom Z550 processor, SSD and WiMAX

A whole new day is dawning for the never-ever-a-netbook Sony VAIO P — those new processor and drive upgrades apparently have the little PC churning through benchmarks at twice the pace of the original. Most of the benchmark help comes from the SSD drive, but the Atom Z550 doesn’t hurt. Meanwhile, Japan is getting a WiMAX version to churn through stereotypically Japanese websites in record time. We’d be jealous if only we lived under 1,000 miles from the nearest WiMAX signal.

Read - VAIO P gets WiMAX
Read - VAIO P benchmarks

Filed under: Laptops

VAIO P gets whole new lease on life with Atom Z550 processor, SSD and WiMAX originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI X-Slim X600 specs get detailed in full

We’ve already gotten word of some of the specs for MSI’s new X-Slim X600 ultraportable, and gotten up close with the laptop itself, but those few remaining details has now finally been revealed in full, along with some fresh new pics of a hereto unseen black model. According to Notebook Italia, there will be two variations of the laptop available: one packing a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Solo processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive, and the other sporting a slower 1.2GHz Intel Celeron processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive — the latter also ditches the built-in Bluetooth. Otherwise, you’ll get ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics on each, along with HDMI out, three USB ports, a six-cell battery and, of course, that 15.6-inch 1,366 x 768 screen. Still no official word on a US release, unfortunately, but it looks like these will sell for €799 and €949 (or roughly $1,120 and $1,320) when they hit Europe at the end of June.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Laptops

MSI X-Slim X600 specs get detailed in full originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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