Web Worker Daily

A few days ago, Aliza provided some excellent planning advice on how to pick a company phone system. I’ve written in the past about three options for incoming service: Google Voice (which now lets you use some of its features with your existing number), 3jam, and Grasshopper (which is now reportedly profitable.)

This time, let’s look at a business phone system that provides both incoming and outgoing service, plus actual phones. The folks at RingCentral have kindly set me up with one of their packages, the RingCentral Office. They also offer RingCentral Online, an inbound service similar to those listed above, but we’ll focus on the Office package for simplicity. Read the rest of this entry »

Socialtext, an innovative enterprise social network/collaboration app that we’ve covered previously, has just launched Socialtext Mobile, which provides smartphone compatibility and lets you stay connected to your team even when you’re on the go.

The beta version of Socialtext Mobile supports iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices. The site detects if you’re logging in with a mobile browser, and automatically directs you to Socialltext Mobile, which has a mobile-optimized interface but still lets you access all of Socialtext’s key functionality, including giving you full access to Socialtext Signals (Socialtext’s private microblogging tool), Activity Streams (keeping you up-to-date with what everyone’s doing), collaboration via Workspace pages, and — perhaps most importantly — access to your colleagues via People (which lets you look up colleagues’ contact details and connect with them while you’re on the go).

Socialtext Mobile comes free with Socialtext, the cost of which varies depending on your needs (a 30-day free trial is available). If you’d like to see a demo of Socialtext Mobile, check out the video.

Let us know what you think of Socialtext Mobile in the comments.

If you own a BlackBerry and use Twitter as much as I do, you’re more than likely frustrated with the experience of using the Twitter web site via your phone’s browser. With more Twitter applications available for the device, do any succeed in turning the BlackBerry into a great Twittering tool?

I compiled a list of the current free BlackBerry Twitter apps and tested them out to find the strengths and weaknesses of each. All of the apps have the basic features (timelines, replies and direct messages), with some standing out more than others due to speed, ease of use, or additional functionality.

All of these apps underwent an obstacle course on my BlackBerry Curve 8310 to test their strength, agility and durability in order to find the better-performing apps. Read the rest of this entry »

Blackberry Pearl Flip

Editor’s note: With this post we welcome Rachel Murray to the WebWorkerDaily team. Rachel has been building web sites for more than 10 years, and currently manages the online presence of a nonprofit in the Boston area.

I’ve only made the transition from a “regular” mobile phone to a smartphone recently. I had been able to hold off up until now, but then the trusty Razr that I had for three glorious years just gave up on me. After a heart-to-heart with the sales rep at T-Mobile, “we” agreed that perhaps I should try the BlackBerry Pearl Flip for the new contract price of $50 (as opposed to the Razr for $20). I didn’t want to be a slave to yet another device, but he showed it to me, and it actually looked like a regular phone. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written in the past about both gwabbit and gwabbit for BlackBerry, nifty tools designed to help you capture and create contacts from within Outlook or on your BlackBerry device.

It turns out the folks at gwabbit are having a contest. I know I am always interested in the chance to win free stuff, particularly when the prize is a Flip MinoHD video camera, an oft-mentioned device here on WebWorkerDaily.

The contest is simple — the five folks who get the most friends to try gwabbit win the big prize. I don’t recommend spamming your friends and social-networking sites just for the sake of winning, but if you have some friends who might benefit from gwabbit, or are willing to help you out, this custom Flip cam is a nice prize.

Get full contest details to learn how to enter and win.

Does gwabbit help you with your contacts? What would you do with a Flip MinoHD?

Evernote, the multi-platform note-taking app that we’ve covered many times previously, today announced the release of a free BlackBerry app, Evernote for BlackBerry, now available from BlackBerry App World.

The new app is available to all Evernote users and is compatible with recent BlackBerry models running  OS 4.6 and later (including Bold, Storm and Curve). It has camera support and audio recording for note-taking on the go.

Of course, previously you could always use the web browser on your BlackBerry to access the Evernote web site, but a dedicated client adds more functionality and should please the many users who have been asking for a dedicated app.

Have you tried Evernote for BlackBerry? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Like many of us, I spend a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Need to get your music fix? Try Pandora for BlackBerry or Slacker for BlackBerry; both offer outstanding radio services.

Last week I wrote a brief snippet about gwabbit for BlackBerry as a means to easily capture contact info from your emails, but you may want to also take a look at Anagram’s BlackBerry offering as well.

Spend a lot of time on your BlackBerry? Our friends atjkOnTheRun can help you find out if you affinity has reached the level of addiction.

SimpleHelp offers up a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up Google Sync for Blackberry.

Finally, I just love Nicholas Bate and his hilarious ongoing series of posts documenting the species known as Homo Berriens:

“Accentuated fingers enable small keyboards to be adroitly managed at speed while simultaneously executing other activities such as eating cereal, walking the dog or sky-diving.”

Good news! SugarSync, a file synchronization and backup service for PC and Mac (reviewed positively here on WWD), today started offering free accounts (previously the cheapest option was $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year.)

The catch is that free accounts are limited to 2GB of storage, which will be inadequate for backing up large collections of files or music, but for syncing a few big files between machines — accessing project files on the road, for example — it could be very useful.

SugarSync differentiates itself from its competitors (like Dropbox) by offering comprehensive mobile support, with clients for iPhone/iPod Touch, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices. The free accounts announced today include access to the mobile clients.

Let us know what you think of SugarSync in the comments.