JAMM Store Blackberry Theme Throwdown

Mobihand, the sponsors of our JAMM Store, has put together an interesting little contest for all of you Blackberry lovers out there.  You can check out the details below:

We challenged four of our top selling theme designers to our first-ever Theme Throwdown.  Each theme designer gets to choose five of their top-selling themes, one for each day (Mon-Fri), for a week of Deal of the Day promotions.  Whoever sells the most  themes in their week wins the “Theme Throwdown Champion 2010.”

We’ve also created a contest just for you.  Every user that RTs the following tweet will be entered for a chance to win 10 free themes from their favorite theme designer (we’ll change the tweet each week so the hashtag is the current weeks theme designer):

RT and enter to win 10 free #JCDesigns BlackBerry themes. 50% off a top theme from 6/7-6/11. See todays deal http://bit.ly/9JZ8SK

For each theme maker, we’ll pick one lucky user who “tweeted” to win 10 free themes from their favorite theme company.    Here’s the list and order of the Theme Throwdown contestants:

• Week 1 (Mar 31-Jun 4) – Lunars Edge
• Week 2 (Jun 7 – Jun 11) – JC Designs / Gadgetbean
• Week 3  (Jun 14 – Jun 18) – BT Design
• Week 4 (Jun 21 – Jun 25) – Hedone Design

For week two, JC Designs / Gadgetbean has submitted the following great themes:

• Monday: Real iBerry Blocks
• Tuesday:  Storm Today Plus  / Dual Sliding Dock
• Wednesday:  Speed –  JC Designs – Gadgetbean
• Thursday:  Bold Today Plus
• Friday:  Real iBerry Blocks Custom L 2.0

Question of the Day:  What is your preferred means of communication?

Used to be, if someone wanted to get in touch with you they had to meet with you face to face.  Then came the writing of a letter, from horseback to postal carrier and next in the line, the telephone.  We had landlines and party lines.  Then there were cordless phones, gigantic (at least by today’s standards) cell phones and car phones.  We were blessed with email and instant messaging.  Now we have texting, Facebook, Twitter and so on.  It seems that there are countless ways that you can get in touch with someone, rather be it for a quick “hello” or a full blown conversation.  Ushering in with each new wave of technology, we are saddled with one or seven more ways to contact someone, and for them to contact us.

Of these methods, what are your preferred means of communication?  If you can find me in person, I’ll talk to you… especially over a glass of iced tea.  You can call my cell phone and I’ll (likely) answer.  I send text messages to my wife, and occasionally a family member, but not everyone that texts me gets a response.  You can email me.  It’s my preferred method.  You won’t find me, however, on Facebook at all, as I just don’t understand it.  I’ve posted about two things to Twitter since getting my account, both stating something along the lines of “Hello World”.  Am I able to be contacted for communications?  Sure.  By every means available.  No.

What are your thoughts on this?  How accessible are you, and via what means?

I confess. No doubt about it. I am an application junkie. I love finding useful programs that make my PC more powerful and my phone more functional. I always seem to max out my phone’s memory because of my habit. That began to turn around the day I discovered a free application called Kinoma. I tried it, was so impressed by it’s graphics, intuitive ease of use, and its inclusion under-one-roof of some functions I already had individual apps for, I immediately bought the pay-version, called KINOMA PLAY, and haven’t looked back. I was also able to un-install a bunch of those now unnecessary space/memory wasters.

I’m surprised I don’t here more yelling about it, so I’m here to do just that. Take a look.

They call it a social media browser, but don’t get confused. It’s not another Opera or Skyfire or that kind of browser. It’s a powerful media connector. It will display your pictures, play your movies or music, it will stream broadcasts and podcasts, it will even connect you to your home computer if you use Orb. The list is too long to list. You need to try the free version and you’ll know immediately what it does and if it would be useful to you. I’m betting it would.

I tried it on my original AT&T Tilt and was even more impressed when I loaded it on my Tilt2, with wm6.5 and VGA screen. But they have versions for Nokia, Palm, as well as Wm smartphones without touch. They even have a version that will convert movies for your iPod or Playstation.

It’s a media integrator. From one place, you can reach your on-board media or you can reach out to your external media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flicker, Picasa, Box.net, Flight Tracker……shall I go on? I just like the look and feel of it and I think you will, too.

Kinoma Play Features:

• Available for Windows Mobile & Symbian/S60
• Custom Creatable Home Screen
• Skinning available
• Free and Paid App Store
• Video, Audio, Picture browsing
• Connect to home PC via Orb
• Streaming on-demand access to thousands of podcasts, music, audio books & radio stations
• Free version available
• Price for Full Version: $29.99

Download from HERE

Resco has just introduced version 7 of their image viewing program for Windows Mobile, Resco Photo Viewer.  The updated program provides enhanced support for the ever more finger friendly user interface, as can be seen in the screenshot above.  The buttons are larger and spaced to allow for large fingers!  The finger friendly UI has also been enhanced with gestures.

Additionally, Resco Photo Viewer 7 adds support for using GPS to tag images, a redesigned image browser that focuses on sorting images into albums and the ability to upload images to popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

A 7 day trial can be downloaded here, while the full version is available for $24.95.

Please watch for the upcoming full review of Resco Photo Viewer 7 as I try it out on my HTC Touch Pro, while in the meantime you can see the full press release below:

Resco Photo Manager 7.00 Released — Far Beyond Standards

Bratislava, Slovakia (December 2, 2009), Resco, a supplier of Windows Phone applications and one of the a leading mobile software developers officially announced the release of Resco Photo Manager 7.00, follower of a popular image viewing application with brand new graphic solutions, overall concept and handling options.

Resco Photo Manager is a favorite photo viewing program with features far beyond standards of the classic built-in viewer. Users gain functions of complete image management in a modern looking and easy to handle application. Intuitive way of work, outrageous effects and many slideshow and edit features move other image viewing programs to the second line.

“With Photo Manager 7, Resco made a fantastic and completely new user experience for showing and managing photos on a Windows Phone. The developers focus on easy finger-friendly controls and iPhone-like interface will fit all needs on the go to provide best user experience.” said David Kaiser from Pocketland.de. “If you want to have photos on the Windows Phone you will need to install Resco Photo viewer.”

Since the last version, the application has undergone lots of graphical and functional changes. The old fashioned appearance has been replaced by modern looking graphics and the overall concept has been modified to make work with the program even more intuitive and effective. Support for the most popular social networks was added.

Some of new features in version 7.00

• Touch optimized user interfaces with handy gestures
  Users operate in 3 main interfaces; Browser, Viewer and Slideshow. Zoom, rotation and move gestures make image handling very comfortable.

• Quick image access
  Browser’s home screen offers 4 main image databases; My Documents, Camera Roll, Favorites and My Albums.

• Footprint support for devices with GPS Module
  Enables adding GPS position to any of the images and make diary of a trip. Such geo-tagged image can be, afterwards, located on a map (using Google Maps).

• Upload to the social networks: Flickr, Facebook, Picassa and Twitter
  Along with Flickr, the biggest internet image database, users can choose among other three popular social networks (Facebook, Picassa or Twitter) to upload their photos to.

Screenshots

A while back, I had the chance to take a look at the Peek email device.  This is a standalone mobile device, about the size of a Blackberry, which does nothing except check email (text messaging was added later).  While this felt a bit limiting to me, I thought it seemed like a very nice solution for someone like my Mom, who might want to check email but does not have any interest in a full scale smartphone.  Let’s be honest, everyone uses email almost every day, whether they are technologically inclined or not.  So, the ability for non-techies to check email on the go made sense.

Today, I got an email from Amol Sarva, the creator of the Peek, with a sneak peek (sorry about that) at his latest creation, TwitterPeek.  Like the original Peek, this is a sole purposed mobile device.  Instead of email, however, the TwitterPeek will log into your Twitter account, allowing you to read and send tweets from anywhere.

While I could really see the attraction of the original Peek, I simply cannot say I see the same niche for the TwitterPeek.  Twitter has simply not worked its way into every day life the way email has.  Most of the non-technical people I know use email, but do not necessarily see the same need for Twitter.  Furthermore, unlike email, most of the people I know on Twitter are at least savvy enough to access it from their iPhone or other smart device.  Add to that, the price of the Twitter Peek, which will run you a whopping $99 with 6 months of service or $199 with unlimited service; and I am having a hard time coming up with a good reason to opt for this one instead of a feature phone like the Sprint Instinct or other smart phone.  Nonetheless, you can find out more at www.twitterpeek.com.

What do you think?  Would you purchase a single purpose mobile device like the Peek or TwitterPeek?