Filed under: Social Software, BlackBerry

The BlackBerry application marketplace might not be as easy to navigate at Apple’s App Store and Java might not be as much fun as Cocoa Touch for developers, but there are still some great BlackBerry applications out there.

10 of my favorites:

1. Opera Mini — BlackBerry 4.5 is supposed to have a much-improved built-in browser (my carrier hasn’t officially upgraded yet, so I’m unsure), but Opera Mini is a great substitute. It isn’t as fast as the built-in browser and functionality like copy/paste isn’t as nicely integrated, but you can actually view pages the way they look on a regular personal (more or less) and zoom in on parts of the screen for simple access. If you ever want to post a comment to a blog or fill out another massive text field, Opera Mini is the way to go.

2. Flickr — This official BlackBerry client was released in June and beats the pants off of uploading via e-mail. You can go straight to the camera from the Flick app or choose a photo from your media card or one of your media directories.

3. Facebook — Update your status, read your messages, post messages to your friends walls and send pictures directly to your photo page. It’s pretty slick.

4. NewsGator Go! Some people just love Google Reader. I’m not one of these people. On the desktop, I use NetNewsWire, on my BlackBerry, I use NewsGator Go!. Like all the NewsGator products, its free. Sign up for a free NewsGator Online account or link it with your existing account. What’s so nice about the NewsGator family of products is that they all sync together. So if you use FeedDemon on a Personal computer or NetNewsWire on the Mac, you can access all of your feeds from any other personal just using NewsGator’s web reader (which I think is 100x better than Google Reader). That also means that you can access all your feeds on your BlackBerry. And anything you mark as read on one device, shows up as read on the others.

5. Blackbird – I used to use Twitterberry to update my Twitter status from my phone, but now I’ve switched to Blackbird. The interface is cleaner and it feels faster. I miss the user icon pictures from Twitterberry, this is still my favorite way of using Twitter.

6. BBMetaBlog — iPhone users have access to official WordPress and TypePad blog clients and more than one unofficial Tumblr clients, but BlackBerry users, we’ve been all but forgotten in the world of moblogging software. TypePad users can use TypePad Mobile BlackBerry and Blogger users can use Blogger for BlackBerry, but what about people who use XML-RPC based blogs? BBMetaBlog isn’t perfect — it was designed to interface with a custom blog-engine for Lotus Domino, not for WordPress or Movable Type or any other system that uses the MetaWeblog API implementation of XML-RPC — but it works. Just set your access URL to your XMLRPC URI and you’re set! Categories and tagging doesn’t work, but it’s a superior substitute to e-mail and it can be faster than trying to post with Opera Mini.

7. Google Suite — Google’s Mobile tools for BlackBerry are awesome. The Gmail app is fast, the Google News page is easy to navigate and Google’s mobile mapping tool is the ideal! Even if you don’t have GPS, you can have GPS-like functionality on your phone. Google Sync for BlackBerry keeps your BlackBerry calendar synced up with Google Calendar, and it’s a two way sync — which is always great.

8. Sudoku — The unregistered version won’t let you download daily new puzzles, but still comes with a couple of hundred at three difficulty levels. If you’ve mastered Brick Breaker (or Brick Breaker has mastered you), it’s a great way to kill some time.

9. Mobile Quotes and Analysis for BlackBerry — Even though the quotes are time-delayed (I want a Google Finance BlackBerry app — not just a web page, an app!), this is a fast, free way to keep track of the market.

10. TV Guide Mobile — An oldie, but a goodie! Local TV-listings in your pocket.

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Filed under: World wide web, Social Software, web 2.0

ShoZu is a mobile download which allows you to connect and publish media to most of your favorite social networks in one convenient place. With official support for Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress, Twitter and a ton more, this might be the mobile lifestream manager you’ve been looking for.

After downloading and installing ShoZu on your phone (supported on over 300 handhelds), the easiest way to add applications is via your personal. I added Facebook, Twitter, and TwitPic apps quickly by inputting the required user names and passwords and then checked for updates on my handset. Success!

A nice feature is called one click pic destination. This is the setting you choose for where you will be sending your photos and videos the most. It will appear as a send-to prompt right after you take a photo or video. There’s also the convenience of sending to multiple sites at once via a feature called CC sites.

If you don’t want to be prompted about where to send your pic each time, you can also choose the Zero-click upload setting which will automatically upload every photo and video to your primary destination. You’ve the option of adding tags and descriptions to your uploaded pics and if you have a GPS-enabled phone, when you select GPS settings, ShoZu will geotag your photos for you.

If you’ve a Flickr account you can download your friends’ photostreams and upload to your own, as well as read and reply to comments in your posts. ShoZu also has a convenient feature where you can send multiple pics at once. To do this, press menu and select mark/unmark which will check the pics you wish to send. The bad news is this feature didn’t work for me and I ended up sending all my files on my phone individually.

There’s a RSS feed of all your uploaded media on your My ShoZu page which you can access when you log in to the service.

ShoZu is a free service however carrier charges might apply depending on your service plan.

(Yes, there’s a new iPhone app too).

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