Common Paradox Tech Blog

Sprint users, say goodbye to the NFL app: Sprint has lost their contract with the National Football League. The Wall Street Journal notes that Verizon users have reason to celebrate (if you are into such things), as Big Red has signed a new four-year contract with the NFL to bring all the coverage and the popular RedZone Channel to Verizon phones. The new deal is valued at $720 million, a 50% premium over what Sprint was paying the NFL. And that’s not all: Verizon users are getting more from the NFL than Sprint did: they’ll have access to live footage of every NFL game and plenty of additional content.

Football fans on Sprint need not fret, though you may find yourself disappointed. With the NFL contract gone, Sprint’s football app will cease functioning at the end of March, as was posted on SprintUsers.com. A new Sprint Football Live app will replace the NFL app, but all that exclusive video won’t be coming along with it. Apparently Sprint Football Live will provide all sorts of live coverage of the NFL draft, games, and more, but in the form of raw data, news, and commentary – not the official stuff with live audio and video that Sprint users have gotten used to.

Sprint Football Live is expected to be available before the end of the month, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see it mixed in with the next webOS update for Sprint devices. Verizon webOS users may be disappointed for a while, though, as Verizon marketing chief John Stratton noted to the Wall Street Journal that their new NFL service will be available for Android and BlackBerry devices. The equally capable webOS devices like the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus? Not mentioned.

Thanks to mu7efcer for the tip!

Packed into the deceptively small package of the BlackBerry VM-605 Bluetooth Car Kit you’ll find a host of quality audio equipment and technology that puts this car kit a step ahead of the pack. Now I know you’re asking yourself, “I thought this was a Palm site, not CrackBerry.com.” You’re right, but seeing as the VM-605 is a bluetooth car kit, it should be more or less universal and work with just about any bluetooth-equipped phone. The Pre would be one such phone, and the VM-605 performed admirably when paired.

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In January Twitter application maker Seesmic acquired Ping.fm. Today the updated Seesmic for BlackBerry application is the first to integrate the Ping.fm service into the fold, which means Twitter users can now use the BlackBerry app to simultaneously update 50 different social sites.

The fresh-faced BlackBerry app also includes multi-account support for Twitter, integration with Twitter photo-sharing service TweetPhoto, and three different size options for photo uploads.

Twitter users with multiple accounts will no doubt appreciate that they can now configure the application to tweet from all of their accounts individually or simultaneously on a tweet-by-tweet basis. The feature addition makes the mobile app more than capable for those — especially business users — with a penchant to maintain all of their accounts regardless of their location.

On the photo side of things, Seesmic for BlackBerry users can share photos via TweetPhoto thanks to a new partnership between the two companies. The integration includes a progress bar so users can track the status of their photo upload, and the ability to choose to post a small, medium or large photo depending on user preferences. The idea behind the later feature is that choosing a smaller photo size should dramatically decrease the time it takes to upload your Twitter photos.

On the whole, the new application offers a feature-rich Twitter experience for the über-connected type.

Now that both the BlackBerry and web app have been drastically enhanced, we can only hope that Seesmic has plans to release its long-awaited iPhone app in the near future.

We’ve included a few photos of the new applicationm and you can also watch Loic Le Meur demo and discuss the application’s new features in the video below.

Reviews: Seesmic, TweetPhoto, Twitter, iPhone

Tags: blackberry, blackberry application, Mobile 2.0, seesmic

Sprint has updated its buyback program to accept upwards of 900 different wireless devices, regardless of the carrier or manufacturer those devices may have originated from, offering between $5 and $300 in instant account credit for eligible handsets in a bid to drive recovery of handsets sold to 90 percent by 2017. 

The Sprint buyback website now has a substantial amount of new additions including the iPhone 3G S 16GB ($213.90 in account credit), the BlackBerry Storm 2 ($131.10 in account credit), and the Motorola Droid ($147.20 in account credit). To sweeten the deal, up to three eligible devices can be cashed in per device purchased. 

This isn’t confirmed, but with RIM rumored to be exploring sliding-QWERTY devices for a pretty long time, one of our BlackBerry connects dropped some info on us and we wanted it to share it. Here’s what we know:

• It’s a portrait-oriented slider. While most people assume a device with slideout keyboard would end up being something like HTC’s devices, we’ve been told this particular handset is more like the Palm Pre in terms of layout.
• The phone will run BlackBerry OS 6.0
• The rumored device will 100% support Wi-Fi 802.11n
• The resolution unfortunately has not improved, it is still 360×480.
• No word on if this will have a touch screen, but we’d assume so, and our source alluded to this possibly being what the rumored BlackBerry Magnum/Dakota evolved into. Not saying there won’t be a Bold-like device with touchscreen, optical trackpad, and physical keyboard, but this might be released first.
• If it does have a touch screen, this could in fact be the mythical BlackBerry Storm slider – picture a Storm 9520 with a slide up Bold-esque keyboard.
• The phone will not be a Verizon exclusive – it’s supposed to be a GSM/HSPA device.

That’s all we’ve got for now, folks. What are you thinking? Does this remotely interest you, or could you care less about the hardware at this point and just hope that RIM can make some pretty big strides as far as their OS is concerned?

The Palm Pre unveiling stands in my memory as one of the most refreshing moments in modern history. Palm had done it—they had created a great phone Nokia would kill for. But today, that’s just not enough.

As Palm teeters on the brink of either ruin or acquisition, let’s count all the things they did right:

• They abandoned an entrenched but aging platform for something new an innovative, and they didn’t half-ass it: Palm OS was dead, WebOS was here.

• WebOS was actually good. If you discounted the lack of apps at launch, it was arguably more capable than anything else on the market.

• The Pre was totally buyable. It’s one of the few smartphone’s I’d consider buying, and would also recommend to the rest of my family. Good hardware, too.

• They got huge buzz, and they earned it.

Sure, their app ecosystem was slow to develop, and their TV ads were underwhelming at their best, and creepy at their worst. But that’s not what really matters, right? Palm accomplished something with the Pre, and we could all see that.

This was the line from Jason’s Pre review that he caught the most flak for, but seriously, fuck that, it was completely right:

I’m bored of the iPhone. The core functionality and design have remained the same for the last two years, and since 3.0 is just more of the same, and-barring some kind of June surprise-that’s another year of the same old icons and swiping and pinching. It’s time for something different.

The Pre’s spell was such that it made everything else feel old. Palm made something different—and it was something we would have paid obscene amounts of money for just a year prior. More than anything, Palm succeeded wildly at reinventing its products, its company and its image, by its own standards and by ours.

The problem is, it’s not 2006 anymore. Those standards don’t apply.

There was a time when it was enough for a company like Palm to release a fantastic phone, and for years, that’s exactly what they focused on. But today, to fight in the smartphone wars is to fight against multi-platform giants. And the rules of engagement have changed: It’s not longer phone vs. phone, or mobile OS vs mobile OS. Today there are apps, and even if a phone maker nails that ecosystem, they have to integrate it into the company’s other stuff: desktops, tablets, the livingroom, the workplace, and soon the car, bathroom and all the music, movies, tv and reading any given human wants to do on all their stuff.

The era of the standalone smartphone company is over. To say it plainly: To make the best phone, it’s not enough to simply make the best phone.

And that is a sad thing.

That’s not to say that the Android Market isn’t growing quickly. It is. As our friends at Android Central pointed out (noting an insightful application store study done by Distimo), the Android Market is growing by more than 3000 apps a month, which equates to 15% of the total available apps. That’s cool, but we feel the need to clear our throats and say “Wait a minute…”

Here’s the deal: Palm’s webOS App Catalog hit 1000 apps on January 1, 2010. Since then 561 new apps have joined the catalog, a pace of 10.2 new apps per day. Or 310 new apps a month. Or 20% growth per month. Or more than 15%. If you’ll pardon the indulgence, “Ha ha.”

More analysis after the break!

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