BlackBerry: Top 10 must-have apps for the Cellphones

நன்றி: By Liane Cassavoy, PC World | InfoWorld | News | 2009-02-18 | By Liane Cassavoy, PC World: “Out of the thousands available, here are the apps to download right now for your smartphone”

1. Documents to Go, Premium Edition
DataViz
$70; BlackBerry OS 4.5 or higher
I know, I just said that most new BlackBerry phones come with a version of Documents to Go already installed. And they do — but it’s the Standard Edition. That app will let you view and edit existing Microsoft Office files, but it won’t let you create new ones; for those capabilities, you need the Premium Edition. Both versions let you open existing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and Adobe PDF files natively, so you don’t need to convert them to view them properly.

2. PeeKaWho
SmrtGuard
$10; BlackBerry OS 4.1.0 or higher
It may not sound like a terrible hassle to open your BlackBerry’s e-mail client every time you get a message. But why not make things easy on yourself? PeeKaWho pops up an alert when you have an incoming e-mail message, showing you who sent it, the subject, and a snippet of the text. That way you’ll know whether the message is important enough to read right away, or whether it can wait until you’ve finished your current task. The alerts are especially handy if you’re composing another e-mail — they allow you to see new messages without losing the one you’re working on. You can also create blacklists or whitelists to control how many pop-ups you get.

3.  Maximizer CRM 10.5 Freedom for BlackBerry
Maximizer Software
$229 (single user); BlackBerry OS 4.6 or higher

4. PocketMac for BlackBerry
PocketMac
Free; Mac OS 10.4/10.5 and any BlackBerry phone

5. TwitterBerry
Orangatame Software
Free; BlackBerry OS 4.1.0 or higher

6. Opera Mini
Opera Software
Free; BlackBerry OS 4.0.0 or higher

7. YouMail
YouMail
Free; dependent on carrier, works with most AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless phones
Anyone who has used an iPhone knows that its visual voicemail is one of its best — if often overlooked — features. But other companies, like YouMail, are taking note, launching similar services for other smartphones. YouMail visual voicemail displays a list of your incoming messages, so you can see who they’re from and when they arrived before listening to them. It also can transcribe the voice messages into text so that you can read them in places where you can’t make calls, and it lets you create various outgoing messages for different callers.

8. Viigo
Viigo
Free; BlackBerry OS 4.1 or higher, BlackBerry hardware series 7100 or higher
Viigo started out as an RSS reader — and it was an excellent one, allowing you to add newsfeeds easily and browse the results. Nowadays this free application remains an outstanding RSS reader, but it also does much more, tracking weather, flight status, sports scores, stock quotes, and even restaurant reviews.

9. iSkoot for Skype
iSkoot
Free; BlackBerry hardware series 7100 or higher
You don’t have to leave your Skype account behind when you’re away from your PC. iSkoot lets you access many of Skype’s features right from your smart phone. You can chat with other Skype users, and you can save your monthly allotment of voice minutes by using Skype for voice calls. Make and receive calls to and from other Skype users, or use SkypeOut to call regular phone numbers.

10. Google Mobile Updater for BlackBerry
Google
Free; works with all BlackBerry phones
Google offers a great collection of mobile applications, including Google Maps, Gmail, Docs, and Sync. Deciding which one to include here was a tough call — until I realized just how useful Google Mobile Updater can be. This tool allows you to install a variety of Google apps — including all the ones I just mentioned — to your phone, and notifies you when new products or updates to your existing apps are available.