Review Time - ShortcutMe (AKA ShortCut Berry)

For the last couple of days I have had the pleasure of reviewing Fonwares, ShortCut Me. I have been trialing the new version for the BlackBerry Storm and have been pleasently suprised by the nifty little program.

You can see ShortCut Me in action in the Video below:

Basically it does exactly what it says on the tin. Its an application that can be assigned to convenience keys and when pressed brings up a menu of all the tasks you use on your phone like launching an application, turning the flashlight on, calling/emailing/SMS a friend and many many more. Not only can you have access to all of these out of the box functions but you can fully customize it to suit your needs.

I tested the product on the BlackBerry Storm, but it is available on all OS’s including the latest 4.7.0.141 Storm OS. One of the things I look for in an application is the speed and functionality of the program. First up the speed! It is lightning fast, considering the amount of programs I have running on my phone ShortCut Me runs without any hitches and extremely quick! My memory was down at 4mb yesterday and I was still getting tremendous responsiveness with the application. One comment I liked from a member of the BlackBerry Community who uses this was:

“The speed of this application is impressive. Even me trying to crash it on
purpose, it takes it like a champ. Multi-tasking is actually pretty easy
with this. Once you learn all of your shortcuts, you will be zipping through
them like a hot knife through butter”

When I first read that statement I thought maybe it had come from someone who developed the application but to be fair its a true statement.

As regards the functionality of the application, what more could you ask for? Press one button and bring up your top 70 tasks (or less if you choose) and fire away with what you want to do. Now setting it up was a little time consuming but believe me once you have it set up you will wonder how you lived without it. What impressed me most about the application was the ability to set the convenience (side) keys to perform multiple tasks. You can set different applications to load up on one click, two clicks, 3 clicks etc. For example I have mine set up like this:

Right Hand Convenience Key:

• 1 Click - Open Short Cut Me
• Double Click - Run BB Messenger
• Triple Click - Make A Call
• Quadruple Click - Send A Text Message

You can also set double triple, and quadruple on the opposite side that you have ShortCut Me set to.

There is also a handy little pdf guides available for both Storm Devices and TrackBall Devices located here:

Storm PDF User Guide For ShortCut Me

BlackBerry TrackBall User Guide For ShortCut Me

Instead of me waffling on about how many things this app can do here is a list of the main features as found on the official ShortCut Me website:

• 70 out of the box, yet customizable shortcuts for major BlackBerry applications.
• Remove the unwanted shortcuts to shorten the ShortcutMe list as you wish.
• Assign single-letter shortcuts to your favorite tasks/applications.
• Set shortcuts for launching any of your application that is not listed in the 52 pre-defined ones.
• Shortcuts are active from anywhere, so press the shortcuts and fire an application without closing the current app.
• Create shortcuts for opening your favorite web pages.
• Create shortcuts for directly call/email/PIN/SMS a friend.
• Create shortcuts for opening a new Task or Memo.
• Create shortcuts for turning Radio and Wifi off/on.
• Assign 3 applications to each convenience key (double/triple/quadruple clicks).
• Assign 3 applications to ENTER-key (double/triple/quadruple clicks).
• Double click the convenience key (from anywhere) to lock your Blackberry.
• Access to any application while internet browsing without exiting the browser.
• Turn your Blackberry quickly to a Flash Light from any application.
• Avoid the annoying “Say a Command” voice because of the accidental convenience key clicks.
• No more worries about loosing your shortcuts when upgrading/changing BlackBerry or its software.
• User-friendly configuration process provided by Copy, Paste, Select, and Multitap in menus. (e.g. Copy a phone number from your Address Book and paste it in SB to create a Call shortcut).
• Modify most of the configuration settings on PC then load it into ShortcutMe.
• QWERTY, QWERTZ, and AZERTY keypad support.
• Shortcuts provided for the following major applications: Address Book, Alarm, BlackBerry Messenger, Brick Breaker, Browser, Calculator,Calendar, Camera, Clock, Face book, Flash Light, Garmin Mobile, Global Search, Google Mobile App, Help, Home Screen, LBS, Lock, Manage Connections, Memo Pad, Memory Cleaner, Messages, My Space, Options, Phone, Profiles, Tasks, TeleNav, Twitter Berry, Video Recorder, Voice Dialing, Voice Notes Recorder, and many other popular 3rd party applications.

In conclusion we have decided to give this product a 10/10 score and personally this is one of my top 5 premium applications.

We ran a competition in the forums for this application and the 20 lucky winners will be recieving a PM shortly regarding this.

For those of you unlucky enough not to have won a copy you can buy your copy of ShortCut Me for the extremely reasonable price of $4.99 click Buy Now below or navigate to the application in BlackBerry Application World

Screen Shots:

Minimum Requirements:

• For for Blackberry series: 81xx, 82xx, 83xx, 88xx, 89xx, 90xx
  • Blackberry handheld series:
  • 90xx series (Bold),
  • 89xx series (Javelin),
  • 88xx series,
  • 83xx series (Curve),
  • 82xx series (Pearl Flip),
  • 81xx series (Pearl)
  • Blackberry Software 4.3+ (4.3, 4.5, 4.6, and 4.7)
  • English Language
• For for BlackBerry series: 95xx (Storm)
  • Blackberry handheld series:
  • 95xx series (Storm),
  • Blackberry Software 4.6+ (4.6, and 4.7)
  • English Language

For for Blackberry series: 81xx, 82xx, 83xx, 88xx, 89xx, 90xx
Display Dimensions
240 x 160, 240 x 240, 240 x 260, 240 x 320, 320 x 240, 480 x 320, 480 x 360
Operating System
4.3, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7

For for BlackBerry series: 95xx (Storm)
Display Dimensions
480 x 320, 480 x 360
Operating System
4.6, 4.7

IM+ All-in-One Messenger Now With FaceBook Chat - Reviewed

To Buy IM+ All-in-One Messenger Click Here>>

Being a user of a couple IM clients and a confessed Facebook addict.  I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this little gem.

This new IM client from shape services allows you to chat within AIM iChat, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber Google Talk, MySpace and Facebook chat in one handy little application.

There are some nice features available, Including an IM Push mode that enables you to send and receive IMs as emails and save precious battery life!   There is no cost per message and it fits in nicely with your data plan. You can “Stay on-line”, even if your connection is lost and you’ll still receive your messages.  It also includes cheap SMS worldwide from IM+, just 5 cents to US, Canada, UK and most other countries.

This app incorporates an online translating tool, so you’re able to translate messages into 9 supported languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, if your that lucky to have friends in other countries.

There is another perk with this app for BlackBerrys with 4.6 and higher OS.  You receive incoming messages to your message inbox just as you would with an email or a text.

The software is simple and easy to use and is almost fully customisable and an excellent way to keep in contact with buddies on the move.

Now I’ve been having fun with this app for the past few days and it almost does exactly what it says on the tin.  On initially receiving this product, the Facebook chat was not a function that worked.  And after a few emails back and forth to shape customer services, I was able to find out there was a problem with the gate servers, It has now been fixed in an update available from the Shape Services website.   Unfortunately the avatar support they claim to have is another function that is not currently working on my device, but I am confident they will fix that very soon with a future update.   All in all, it’s a minor hiccup, which can be overlooked due to the apps functionality.

Some people may have mixed views on the price of applications, but seeing as this has been reduced to $19.99 from $49.95 until may 1st, it is worth every penny and is a nice compliment to the new Facebook 1.5 application.  I’m sure you will enjoy it as much as I have.

To Buy IM+ All-in-One Messenger Click Here>>

To View More BlackBerry Products From Shape Services Click Here>>

Slacker Radio Plus, 2500 free 1 month subscriptions

Yet more giveaways from Slacker.  RIM and Slacker are giving away 2,500 free 1 month subscriptions to Slacker Radio Plus!  It is limited to the first 2,500 people that sign up so get over there and sign up fast

( use the link below to sign up).

Slacker Radio

via  Berry Review

QuickLaunch for BlackBerry Bold and Curve Released this saturday

Erik over at www.Nikkisoft.com got in touch with Berry 365 to tell us he was releasing the awesome QuickLauch for the Blackberry Bold and Curve this saturday, the 27th. He asked us to road test an early release and one of our team members Mandizzle was only too happy to oblige:

I’d like to start off by saying WOW!

That’s truely how I feel about this nifty little app.  QL has a customizable dock to which you can add shortcuts to just about any application, as well as shortcuts to SMS/EMAIL/CALL specific contacts.  It’s a super small program and barely uses any system resources.  The best part is QL only runs on demand and you don’t have to worry about another app running in the background.

I was initially just going to write up a quick review and post a screenshot or two but after playing with QL for only a few minutes I was so impressed that I decided to be a bit more thorough so that you could see every facet of this well made application.

Installing QL was as simple as pointing my BB browser to the OTA (Over The Air) link and hitting the Download button.  Once installed, the first thing I did was change my Left Convenience Key to QuickLaunch.

I then loaded up QuickLaunch and played around a bit with the Options. I was able to configure if I wanted the Launcher to appear on the left/right side of the screen as well as the size of the font. One of the cool things QL offers is a Device Information screen which gives you all the info that you could see by pressing ALT+RIGHT SHIFT+H.  But the nice thing about checking Device Info from QL is that it’s a lot more aesthetically pleasing and also the information is presented neatly all on one screen.

I was then able to hit the menu button in QL and a menu popped up allowing me to add/edit/delete/move shortcuts.

I also decided to add a shortcut to Berry365 (surprise, surprise!) just so I could access it easily without having to go to browser > favorites.

This is the final result of what my QL looks like as I type this. I just have a few shortcuts on there that I can’t access from my homescreen. I have Dial from Homescreen set to OFF so that I can use certain keys from the keypad as shortcut keys.

All in all I give QuickLaunch 2 thumbs WAY up!  It is incredibly easy to get set up and going.  QL integrates flawlessly with the BB O/S and looks like an app that came with the O/S.  Actually, if I were RIM this is something I would integrate into future O/S builds.

If you’re like me and you like to hit as few keys as possible then I suggest you rush over to Mobihand and grab your copy of QuickLaunch , it’s well worth the $4.99.  TRUST ME!!!!

Great job on developing QuickLaunch, Erik!

Thanks and good night!

Mandizzle

QuickLaunch for Blackberry Storm Review

This is our first review on the newly launched Berry 365. We were asked by Erik, from www.Nikkisoft.com, to write up our thoughts on his new product QuickLaunch.

So here goes:

For the past 24 hours i have been road testing the updated version of QuickLaunch. Lets get straight down to it. Is this product worth $4.99? (about 3 quid in good old English Pounds) The answer is a resounding YES, more on that later.

Ill give you a brief summary of what the application provides. It has been specifically designed for the Storm and allows you to set shortcuts for some of your features you use more aggressively on the phone. A typical example of this is being able to set one of the functions to text a specific person at the click of a screen. This is extremely handy if like me you text the other half quite a lot throughout the day.

When i first read about QuickLaunch i didn’t really understand what it was going to do for ME! Its not until you get it set perfectly to your needs that you realize how much time it actually saves you. It takes away the awkwardness of navigating to certain features on your phone. If like me you like a clean screen, i have 1 row of icons, then you will understand how much of a pain it is getting to a specific feature like the memory cleaner or even bringing up the phone book.

It runs perfectly with the operating system and just looks like it should have been there from the start. It does make me wonder how all the brains at the BlackBerry headquarters couldn’t think of this when designing the phone, but hats off to Erik he really has out smarted the folks at RIM.

The best thing about QuickLaunch, for me, is being able to program a web adress into it…. I spend a lot of time on the phones browser and most of that time is spent on 3 different sites. Now i have access to them at the click of a screen.

I would score this product as 10 out of 10 but i couldn’t find an option for it to get me a coffee…

On a serious note it is a quality built product and one we here at berry365.com recommend highly!!! GO GET IT!!!

Buy QuickLaunch

Peace Out
Danny