Air Canada Releases Application for BlackBerry Smartphones

Air Canada announced the release of their new BlackBerry application today. Customers will be able to access numerous features from within the application, expediting their travel and making for a better overall experience. With the Air Canada application, you can easily check flights, receive notifications, check in, find flights, book flights and more. You can customize for various notifications for flights and other alerts as well. The application is a free download and should be extremely useful to travelers who fly Air Canada. Hopefully more airlines (and other agencies like rental cars and hotels) will put out apps of their own to make traveling that much easier. The Air Canada app is available free in BlackBerry App World, or by visiting mobile.aircanada.com.

• Download the Air Canada app from BlackBerry App World>>

White BlackBerry Bold Arriving On AT&T October 18th

It's been rumored, fondled and confirmed a good many times by now that the white Bold which is set to come to AT&T on October 18th, and later on Rogers, is probably no longer white. If you've got a love for the snow white BlackBerry Bold, it'll set you back $200 provided you're not holding out for the Bold 9700 Series which should be following alongside this release any time now. Rogers customers, we're still waiting to see a release date for "Snow White" (as I like to call it) in Canada but it can't be that far off.

BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 Now Available!

* Update: It seems those of us running leaked versions of OS 5.0 are good to go!!!! *

We knew it was coming as we saw this email drop to some partners earlier in the week, so it was just a waiting game. A lot of you have been playing around with leaked versions of BBM5 and never wanted to see a standard BBM version again - well now you don't have to! BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 is now officially available in BlackBerry App World for devices running OS 4.5 and higher. Check out the link below to download. As for what's new in BlackBerry Messenger 5.0, here's the quick summary:

• Avatars can be easily set up and then populated from BlackBerry Contacts
• Group Functionality - allows groups of friends, family and personal contacts to stay connected & share experiences instantly on their BlackBerry smartphones:
  • ongoing group chat
  • sharing pictures
  • organizing tasks and events with shared lists and calendars
• Bar-code identity - easily add/invite contacts to BlackBerry Messenger by displaying a 2-dimensional bar code that the invitees can capture with their BlackBerry camera
• Large Media File Transfer - up to 6MB

* Note: While BBM 5.0 will definitely work on official releases of OS 5.0, we're not sure yet as I post this if it will work on previously leaked versions of OS 5.0. Be sure to report back in the comments if you're having success or not, and back up your BBM contacts before upgrading. *

• Download BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 From App World >>

OTA Link

A Close Video Look At The BlackBerry Bold 9700

Just in case you have not gotten enough of a look at the 9700 recently, Tinhte.com is now showing off some splendid high res pictures of an AT&T branded 9700 placed up against its siblings. A nice video walkthrough is available after that jump, but be advised it is not in English so unless you speak Vietnamese you may wish to kill the volume. Also, Tinhte.com has a complete tear down of the 9700 for those of you who like to see devices stripped down to their nekkidness. I couldn't bear to go through it all, I was almost brought to tears even though it's an older revision.

LaterFlag - Flag Your Emails For Follow Up

Fabian Heuwieser has been back at work on his awesome and most importantly useful BlackBerry applications. This time around he has created LaterFlag, an application which allows you to flag your emails in two ways (high or low priority) for follow up at a later time. Best of all it's a free application.

Most of you who are running a 5.0 leaked OS will have noticed this type of service is indeed integrated into the OS, but those of you on older devices where 5.0 is not available are going to want to grab this one for sure. Is it just me or does Fabian seem like a porcrastinator to you all? First LaterDude, now LaterFlag - the man likes to put things off, but I'll assume it's just to make us great apps for our devices. Thanks go out to Fabian for bringing us just what our devices need, no more..no less.

• Download LaterFlag For Free For Your Device Today>>

BIS 2.8 Upgrade Coming Sooner Than We Think?

We got a tip this morning that there is a rumoured data outage for October 3rd. During that time, we are told RIM will be kicking it up and upgrading to BIS 2.8 for North American carriers. We originally thought the update would come in September, but in the style of Desktop Manager for Mac, being fashionably late in October may be the way to go.

"There is a RIM infrastructure upgrade scheduled for 10/03/2009 at 2:01:00 AM EST. During the maintenance window RIM will update the BIS Platform to Version 2.8 that supports the Americas; according to RIM all Blackberry Internet Services are expected to be down for 240 minutes. According to RIM this will affect all carriers on the North America Relay."

Updated BeejiveIM Beta 1.9.6 Released for Trackball Devices

I just ran across a thread in the forums and saw that BeejiveIM has tossed out another beta update. The app is currently at version 1.9.6 and includes some cool updates this time around. There are some minor UI changes among other things, but perhaps the coolest feature is the option to have push notifications to and email address when the app is running in the backgound. The new features include:

• file transfers via link, you can now transfer files to buddies on all IM accounts.
• push when app running in background (see preferences in app).
  
• send voice notes
  
• send GPS location (if supported by phone)
  
• new chat styles & background images
  
• new buddy list layouts
  
• improved battery life
  
• overall UI redesign
  
• various other bug fixes & enhancements
  

The beta is available in various versions for all trackball devices (an updated Storm version is on the way) running OS 4.2 or higher.

*Attention*

This is beta software and not a production release. Bugs and defects are to be expected! Please report any defects in this forum.

This beta is NOT for the Storm - a new Storm build is coming soon. This beta is also not supported on devices with OS's below 4.2.1 or the 5.0 beta OS.

Please uninstall your old version, restart the phone, and use the link below to install the latest beta.

Over the air (direct download to BB)
http://www.beejive.com/otabeta4.6_vga (4.6 OS and higher, VGA screen: Bold, Tour, 8900 Curve)
http://www.beejive.com/otabeta4.6 (4.6 OS and higher, NON-VGA screen: 8220 Pearl Flip, 8350 Curve)
http://www.beejive.com/otabeta4.3 (4.3 OS and higher)
http://www.beejive.com/otabeta4.2.1 (4.2.1 OS and higher)

Desktop Install
http://www.beejive.com/beta4.6_vga (4.6 OS and higher, VGA screen: Bold, Tour, 8900 Curve)
http://www.beejive.com/beta4.6 (4.6 OS and higher, NON-VGA screen: 8220 Pearl Flip, 8350 Curve)
http://www.beejive.com/beta4.3 (4.3 OS and higher)
http://www.beejive.com/beta4.2.1 (4.2.1 OS and higher)