I just purchased the LG Ally  and the Droid 2 and from AmazonWireless and was so impressed and excited about my experience, I just had to write review! There has always been the option to buy the phones and plans online from individual carriers, but AmazonWireless brings it all together in one website and eliminates your interaction with telcos, and prevents you from having to spend hours in a Verizon Wireless (VZW), AT&T, or a T-Mobile store and dealing with their sales reps . Instead you deal with Amazon, which is the single best online shopping experience in the world.

This was my first time purchasing a Smartphone with the data plan online! With AmazonWireless I was able to learn everything I needed to know about my new smart phone, purchase it (sight unseen) along with a voice & data plan all while switching carriers and porting my number over to my new carrier. This was a much better experience the purchasing in a store, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for new smartphone. The AmazonWireless website is still in beta but it works perfectly, and is well done.  It is integrated with your Amazon account credentials.  However, it’s  not integrated with Amazon payments (1-click payments, or Amazon pay phrases) or Amazon Prime.

Proceed to the full review - Using AmazonWireless to purchase a new smartphone + data plan

I see little green men everywhere!

ScreamingToaster has been developing mobile experiences for the Android platform before version 1.0 and we are so happy to see the huge success of Android smartphone sales this year! . As you probably know, Android has been the fastest growing smartphone platform for quite some time now, however it has has finally overtaken Apple in marketshare! This goes to show that most people have real requirements for their smartphone, such as: handset diversity, carrier choice, multitasking (switching between applications), real customization, and an open marketplace .

Here are a few quick stats:

• Globally, Android has 10M+ handsets in circulation, compared to 8.7M iPhone handsets.
• Android phone sales in the US have gown by 851% in Q2 of 2010! Amazing!
• Android now has 34% of the US market and has surpassed Apple in mobile marketshare!
• Android’s growth has outpaced iPhone growth, but iPhone is still growing. In contrast, BlackBerry marketshare in on the decline globally.

Here’s a graph showing the mobile marketshare in the US for Q2 2010.

There are now many Android phones available by many manufacturers on all the major telcos in the world. The Android OS is free and open, and it is the clear choice for handset manufacturers, which promotes handset diversity. All of this equals tons of choice for the consumer! The Android SDK is open source, well documented and Google supports its developer community. The Android Marketplace is completely open for developers to submit apps (for better or worse), so this means Android developers are excited and energized to make apps.

A smartphone is much more than just the hardware, or just the software that comes with it out of the box. I literally talk to dozens of young people everyday who think nothing could be cooler than being an Android developer and want to learn to make apps. A vibrant developer community keeps a platform’s ecosystem relevant and strong.

ScreamingToaster can build your next Android experience – if you are interested in assistance with the design, implementation, and marketing of an Android experience, please contact us.

Hold the fruit!

What is most interesting for me is where all these new Android customers are coming from… they are coming from the former customer base of BlackBerry and Windows Mobile! In a recent Nielsen survey, 57% of US BlackBerry customers have said they are switching away from BlackBerry to another type of smartphone. Over half of their US customer base wants to leave them.  This is not good news for RIM. In contrast, Android customers are very loyal, as 71% of them say they will stay with Android when purchasing their next smartphone.

Here are a few quick stats:

• 29% of BlackBerry customers say that they will be switching to iPhone next.
• 21% of BlackBerry customers they will be switching to Android next.

Too little, too late

BlackBerry has just come out with the 9800 running OS 6.0. It has a large touch screen and a pull out keyboard, which is nice but the new OS 6.0 is basically a BlackBerry/Android hybrid OS. Almost all of the “new features” in OS 6.0 are from the Android OS. The biggest addition to the new OS is an ACTUAL web browser that supports tabbed browsing. If you are a long time BlackBerry customer, the web browser will seem like the greatest part of 6.0. However, if you are an iPhone or Android customer, you will probably laugh at this “new” OS and device. The 9800 with OS 6.0 is too little, too late. 

The 9800 and all BlackBerry devices are way overpriced for what they deliver. BlackBerry data plans are also way overpriced. The iPhone has a functional web browser, amazing screen, has a huge App Store, costs less to purchase and has a cheaper data plan per month. It also has full ActiveSync Exchange support out of the box! BlackBerry requires you to pay an extra $30 per month for BES in order to get Exchange!

It is no surprise that many Fortune 100 companies are currently in the process of certifying iPhone 4 as their corporate mobile device, soon eliminating BlackBerry from the enterprise. The 9800 with OS 6.0 may be the first modern smartphone by RIM, but it is still not worth paying $30 more per month for BES. There are just too many other better choices. Why would I pay for a BlackBerry when I can get more for less in an iPhone or Android? I just don’t see the numbers adding up.

Maybe there is just too much “bad blood” between me and BlackBerry:

1. BlackBerry devices are just a really fancy PDA and pager, circa the early 2000’s. They have just now, in 2010, come out with a phone with a real web browser (I just can’t get over this!)
2. BlackBerry devices cost too much for what they do.
3. The BlackBerry data plan + BES costs too much. It costs $30 more per month than an iPhone or Android data plan!
4. All BlackBerry devices are slow! Especially compared to other smartphones in their price range.
5. BlackBerry devices are no more durable than any other device.
6. They are not the only device with a keyboard – many Android devices have nice keyboards, and the iPhone 4 soft keyboard is amazing and works like magic.
7. There is no real support for media playback or recording, like on Android and iPhone. They have a laughable amount of onboard storage for media.
8. The screens are small and unusable, especially the 9800 screen!
9. Location based services are not really available on pre 5.0 devices, which is the majority of the market. LBS is not available at all on Verizon for BlackBerry.
10. OS and hardware is fragmented, making it really difficult to develop one application that works on all devices.
11. There is no BlackBerry ecosystem – they have successfully killed their ecosystem. Consumers hate them. Developers hate them. BES customers hate them.

BlackBerry treats ISVs that make BlackBerry software as competitors because RIM authors all of the major name brand apps on the App World such as the: Twitter app, Facebook app, Windows Messenger, AOL Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ app, Google search app, as well as dozens of others that they do not officially put their name on. They do not foster a developer community and developers are not excited or motivated to make BlackBerry apps. There is an overall lack of buzz and excitement around BlackBerry.

We can build your next mobile application. We can help you choose the right platform for your app, design your app, build it, and help you market and sell your app. Please contact us if would like us build your next mobile application for an Android, BlackBerry, or iPhone. We can empower your business by bringing your ideas to life.

How do you know if a platform is right for you?

As the CTO of ScreamingToaster, I work a lot with of organizations that need help rolling out mobile projects. We provide them with guidance, architecture recommendations, training, and implementation services. They tell me how mobile apps are crucial for their business to remain competitive, and we advise them on how mobile can empower their business. We also advise them on how to avoid the common pitfalls around mobile development in order to save them time, money, and political capital.

The first step is for you to select the right mobile platform for your mobile initiatives. The following table outlines the major differences between the major platforms and can act as rough guidelines to help you match your requirements to the right platform for you.

BlackBerry	Android	Apple
It has the largest market share in US and worldwide. It is the best choice for building commercial and enterprise apps, because 50% of users commercial and 50% are enterprise. There are virtually no developer resources for BlackBerry. Development is much more difficult than iPhone development and the cost is higher because of this. Also, graphics capabilities are severely limited. BlackBerry’s strength is in multitasking, encryption, security, & manageability, which is a weakness for iPhone & Android. Lots of handset diversity (small to large screens, keyboard to touch screen). Devices have excellent battery life. Apps are easy & inexpensive to deploy via OTA. BES and BlackBerry App World are also available, making this the most prolific and mature app distribution platform on the market today. If you are considering building your app on multiple mobile platforms (iPhone, Android,etc) BlackBerry is the best platform to start with. ScreamingToaster provides implementation and training services and has a 100% success rate in app development.	It is the fastest growing mobile platform in the US. It is the best choice for building commercial and enterprise apps due to its vast adoption by developers, which is a result of it being completely open source. It is completely open, there are no restrictions by carrier or handset manufacturer. You can build apps on Android that are simply impossible on BlackBerry and iPhone. Apps are easy & inexpensive to deploy via OTA. Android Marketplace is a prolific and mature app distribution platform. Android’s strengths include great multitasking, excellent graphics capabilities, lots of handset diversity (small to large screens, keyboard to touch screen). Android’s weaknesses include lack of encryption, security, & manageability, and very bad battery life in general. If you are considering building your app on multiple mobile platforms (iPhone, BlackBerry,etc) Android is the 2nd best platform to start with. ScreamingToaster provides implementation and training services and has a 100% success rate in app development.	It has the 2nd largest market share in the US. Graphics capabilities are excellent and there is a lot of support for development. There is no handset diversity, simplifying development and reducing cost. It is a bad choice for building commercial apps due to the restrictions on app deployment by Apple. Apps can only be distributed thru the App Store, and are subject to Apple’s tyrannical approval policy, and can be denied at anytime. It is the anti-freedom and anti-open source platform. It is not an option for building enterprise apps due to its restrictive deployment model (only thru App Store and no OTA). iPhone weaknesses include poor battery life, lack of multitasking (which is a non-starter for any compelling service-enabled application).

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Introduction

May 31, 2010 – ScreamingToaster is proud to announce that RainOrShine for BlackBerry is now available in the BlackBerry App World – click here to go to the app.

It can also be downloaded straight from our website via OTA – click here to get the app via OTA download link.

What is Zen?

Zen is a powerful application framework for building service-enabled mobile applications, and is made up of the following pieces:

RPC server – this acts as glue to bring together disparate data sources + services into a singular canonical data format (CDF).

1. The CDF can easily be represented on BlackBerry and Android. The CDF has an easy to use Java API, making life easy for developers.
2. The CDF can efficiently/compactly be transmitted over cellular networks. This improves battery life, reduces network usage and we can get compression ratios of over 80%.
3. The CDF can efficiently be processed on smartphones. This reduces battery life and CPU usage on smartphones.
4. The glue performs service orchestration, which bridges the gap between disparate services. This allows really compelling and useful user experiences to be delivered through mobile applications.

UI Toolkit – this enables mobile apps work perfectly on a wide variety of BlackBerry devices. With the Zen Application Framework’s advanced DPI scaling technology you can build apps from a single code base for OS 4.6 and higher. You do not have to build separate applications (separate code bases) for each type of BlackBerry device and each OS. It does magic by overcoming the differences and incompatibles introduced by vastly disparate:

1. BlackBerry operating systems (4.6.x, 4.7.x, 5.0.x)
2. BlackBerry screen sizes and resolutions
3. BlackBerry input methods (keyboard, touch screen, touchpad, track wheel)
4. We leverage the magic of our DPI scaling technology to save you lots of time, effort, and money with BlackBerry development if you choose us to build your next BlackBerry application.

Zen works to mitigate all of the limitations for all mobile platforms/device – there are many limitations of mobile & wireless of technology that make mobile development completely different from server, web, and desktop development. Zen overcomes these limitations:

1. Battery life is low/limited on mobile devices
2. CPU power is low/limited on mobile devices
3. Memory is low/limited on mobile devices
4. Storage is low/limited on mobile devices
5. Mobile networks are slow, laggy and unreliable

Read the rest of this entry »

Location, location, location

As the CTO of ScreamingToaster, I work a lot with of organizations that need help rolling out BlackBerry projects, both B2B/B2E and B2C. We provide them with guidance, architecture recommendations, training, and implementation services. They tell me how mobile apps are crucial for their business to remain competitive, and we advise them on how mobile can empower their business. We show them our technology in action with applications like RainOrShine.

RainOrShine is a free location-based weather application for BlackBerry that provides real-time, current weather conditions for your current location. Most weather applications can only provide hourly/daily weather overviews for your town or city as a whole, and can’t provide weather information in real-time for your current location. Using ScreamingToaster technology, RainOrShine also delivers location-based real-time updates for any Wikipedia information available for your current location, and movie show times for theaters near your current location. It is location-aware (it knows its current latitude/longitude). It uses a host of technologies to find its location initially, and track location changes as it moves around.

The user’s physical location is the starting point for all the information delivered by RainOrShine. It is the only application that provides real-time, location-based information that is accurate up to the minute and down to the street address. As you go about your day, whether you move around a few miles, or a few thousand miles, RainOrShine will keep you up to date with the most current weather, Wikipedia, and movie show time information that is possible. RainOrShine is a showcase of location-based services (LBS) possible on the BlackBerry platform, brought to you by ScreamingToaster.

ScreamingToaster’s Zen Application Framework was used exclusively to build RainOrShine. It’s comprised of client side, and server side technology, and can be used to build not only mobile applications (for BlackBerry and Android), but also Web and Desktop applications. Zen is free for all ScreamingToaster Consulting clients, please contact us to learn more about Zen. ScreamingToaster has a commitment to open source software (OSS) and democratizing knowledge for the good of the developer community, and humanity as a whole.

This white paper outlines the ScreamingToaster technologies and expertise utilized to create RainOrShine. ScreamingToaster is the leader in location-based applications and services for the BlackBerry platform.

Download Now

To get RainOrShine for BlackBerry via over the air (OTA) download link, click here.

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Success right from the start

As the CTO of ScreamingToaster, I work a lot with of organizations that need help rolling out BlackBerry projects, both B2B and B2C. We provide them with guidance, architecture recommendations, training, and implementation services. They tell me how mobile apps are crucial for their business to remain competitive, and we advise them on how mobile can empower their business. Based on a rough idea of what our clients are looking to get out of mobile, we create a mobile roadmap comprised of small, bite-sized steps that can be implemented incrementally and clients can pay as they go. We take a bite-sized approach not only with planning and implementation, but also with payment because we understand budgets are tight.

We advise & guide our clients on things such as: the advantages & limitations of each mobile platform (BlackBerry, Android, iPhone), architecture, user interfaces & user experience design, and enterprise information integration (EII) and services orchestration for both B2B/B2E and B2C mobile apps. We also advise them on how to avoid the common pitfalls around BlackBerry (such as the total lack of support from RIM, OS proliferation & incompatibility) in order to save them time, money, and political capital.

All of this advice ensures their critical first mobile app is successful, which will give them the political capital to push the mobile agenda. We support and empower our clients every step of the way – from implementing their first application, to administering BlackBerry development training courses & post-training “mentor consulting”, to deploying their apps in the field. We are a solid partner our clients can bank on.

We provide a wide variety of mobile application development services:

• Comprehensive open-source mobile development tutorials
• Consulting implementation services
• BlackBerry development training services
• Post- training “accelerator” programs and mentoring services

We have done and seen it all. We set the trends for mobile, because we are mobile up visionaries. We are the leaders in mobile technology development. We don’t follow the trends and fads set by others, and we don’t make the mistakes made by others.

Avoiding common pitfalls that ensure failure

Many of our customers have tried and failed with mobile initiatives for various reasons, but are still committed to rolling out mobile initiatives because they believe mobile is critical for businesses to stay competitive. We save our customers lots of time and money by planning their mobile roadmap, and providing mentoring to prevent them from falling into the common pitfalls that cause their mobile initiatives to fail before they even begin.

Despite having invested a lot of money in BlackBerry devices and BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), companies feel a real lack of support, straightforwardness, and resources from RIM. Many of our customers feel that RIM has “left them out in the cold” and was nowhere to be found once the implementation of their projects began. This is why companies look to ScreamingToaster for guidance, recommendations, and a roadmap to help bring their ideas and initiatives to life. We have a 100% success rate for consulting projects, and we always deliver on-time and on-budget. Read the rest of this entry »

Bertrand Piccard circumnavigated the Earth in a hot-air balloon, and he gives a great talk about metaphors for how to live life well, and how to face challenges with hope, creativity, and will -

Janine Benyus gives a fantastic talk about the concept of biomimicry, which has galvanized scientists, architects, designers and engineers into exploring new ways to seek solutions that come from solutions created, tested, and implemented by nature -

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As CTO of ScreamingToaster, I am dedicated to finding better, smarter, healthier ways of living, and working. I work at lot, and the number one thing that keeps me from being as productive as I want is being in pain. So finding solutions and products to live more ergonomically and pain-free are very important to me. This ergonomic review is just one of the many developerlife.com reviews on ergonomic products for work and home.

I believe that ergonomic, human-friendly products are important to use all the time, not just in the office, in order to have a healthy balanced body, and to be happy and pain-free. This will eliminate the root problems of pain and not just mask it. I decided to write a review about these amazing, ergonomic, life-changing little shoes called Vibram FiveFingers, and I hope they will help you out as much as they have helped me.

Proceed to the full review – Vibram FiveFinger “shoes”