Users can access BlackBerry App World over traditional cellular networks as well as Wi-Fi, and can be used with various BlackBerry models. As well, users will be presented with a catalog of relevant apps for their specific mobile phone model automatically. The front page features a carousel showcasing several applications that will vary from week to week allowing users to discover new applications across all categories.

The types and number of application should continually increase with time, and the current list of application categories include:

- Entertainment
- Games
- Maps and Navigation
- Music and Video
- News and Weather
- Personal Finance and Banking
- Personal Health and Wellness
- Productivity and Utilities
- Professional and Business
- Reference and eBooks
- Social Networking and Sharing
- Sports and Recreation
- Travel

If you’re more comfortable finding applications on your own, then you can make use of the search feature to track down the apps that you want. If you really like an app then you can review it and star rate it for the benefit of others as well see reviews, descriptions and screenshots of apps before downloading them. Find an app that you really want to recommend? You can recommend applications to others through email, PIN, SMS message or BlackBerry Messenger. As you may very well end up with dozens of apps; you can keep track of your applications with the My World folder that lets you store, uninstall reinstall and transfer applications to a new BlackBerry smartphone.

BlackBerry App World supports both free and for-purchase applications. It’s expected that nearly 1,000 applications would be posted by partners on BlackBerry App World in the first week, including applications from popular brands such as:

- Bloomberg
- ClearChannel (iheartradio)
- Gameloft
- Hotel Reservation Service
- LIVESTRONG.COM
- Lonely Planet
- MTV Networks
- New York Times
- Pandora
- salesforce.com
- Shazam
- Slacker
- Viigo
- WorldMate

Currently, BlackBerry App World is only available to users in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, but service in more countries will be sure to follow. Don’t let iPhone owners have all the fun! Find and download the apps you want for your BlackBerry by visiting BlackBerry App World.

The benefits for creating a charger standard are probably greater than they seem at the outset. Firstly, with the new standard you would theoretically be able to buy new phones without ever having to buy a new charger for any phone, no matter what brand of phone you purchase. Second, this new universal charger format is meant to be more energy efficient in reducing standby energy consumption by 50%. There is also the potential reduction of 51,000 tons of duplicate chargers, which benefits both the companies as well as the consumer.

This charger interface development would truly make the mobile phone industry much more environmentally friendly as well as consumer friendly. Needless to say, this is a very big deal. Some of the companies that have already agreed to support the Micro-USB charger standard are 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Companies that have yet to support the new charger standard are Apple, Palm and RIM. We can look forward to this Universal Charger Standard (UCS) to be available worldwide by 2012.

See the official press release at the GSM World website.

It’s no mystery that Palm hasn’t been on the top of most mobile phone shoppers even though they have consistently produced some decent handsets in recent years. The fact that their phones were a bit boring in appearance was reason enough that there was never much buzz about their newest phones, until now. At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, Palm introduced their entry into the touchscreen handset market with quite some fanfare. But will it be enough to change this company’s future as a player in mobile phones?

To look at the Pre’s specs you’ll see that it comes with some pretty impressive features. It doesn’t have the largest screen when it comes to mobile phones, but at 3.1 inches it’s adequately large as well as bright and clear. For those that are heavily into texting, you’ll like the fact that it does have a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, so you can be all thumbs without being ‘all-thumbs’. Yes, this is a 3G phone that also has Wi-Fi capabilities as well as TeleNav GPS, and to make this phone a contender in this ever-expanding phone category, it was needed.

Currently the Pre is reported to only come in a one size model, 8GB which is not bad, but other phones on the market already offer more storage. As well, it can not accommodate expandable memory either, which seems to be a bit of a non-starter for some people. On the upside the Pre does have a 3MP camera as well as stereo Bluetooth connectivity. We can pretty much expect that it does have a music player, but there’s no word on an FM tuner or satellite radio support. If it’s entertainment features are as good as we hope, then this will be a popular phone to have.

Overall the Palm Pre is a really sleek-looking phone with plenty of features to like, but we’ll have to see what the customers will have to say about when it comes to market sometime in the first half of this year. The Palm Pre will be available through Sprint with a contract of course, but with Sprint’s flat-rate monthly fee you won’t get any unsuspectingly large bills. So, for now Palm is grooving on the buzz that this phone is producing, and we hope that this is just the beginning.