A job posting for a position within Lab126, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon that focuses on the Kindle, suggests that Amazon may be developing a new web browser for its popular e-reader. In an “it’s about time” maneuver, the job is seeking a Software Development Engineer to work with the web browser team on a project whose goal is to provide an innovative Embedded Web Browser. The current Kindle browser is severely lacking and needs an overhaul if the Kindle is going to compete with the iPad and other tablets slated to hit the market in 2010.
A recent report form ChangeWave Research is foreboding when it suggests that current e-reader owners would have bought an iPad if the iPad was on the market when they made their purchasing decision. Considering the market forces at play, the last line in the job description requiring “someone to deliver high quality work on tight schedules” is quite telling. Despite its calm and cool appearance, Amazon may be feeling a bit under the gun. What do you think?

Read

Remember the days when Handago was the place to go if you wanted to find an application for your smartphone and PocketGear was the place you went if you could not find it on Handango? Those days are long gone and today heralds a new beginning for both companies as PocketGear has announced that it is acquiring Handango. The two application distribution platforms will merge to form the world’s largest cross platform application store and the ensuing stats on this newly merged behemoth are impressive:

• over $400 million in mobile application revenues to date
• over 140,000 paid and free titles
• support for Android, Symbian OS, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, Linux, and Java powered mobile devices
• 4 billion consumers in 175 countries worldwide and using over 2,000 unique mobile devices
• 32,000 strong developer network
• distribution deals with 4 of the world’s top 5 handset manufacturers, 4 of the top 5 mobile operators in the US, and 3 of the top 10 mobile operators globally

Competition will be intense as this new application store will be competing directly with the Android Market, Windows Marketplace for Mobile and other smaller manufacturer and carrier-created application stores that will come pre-installed on the customer’s smartphone. Given a choice would you prefer to buy from the potentially smaller platform-specific application store or the larger, cross platform conglomerate?

Read

Looks like AT&T is adding a few new handsets to its lineup for the holiday buying season as today, Ma’ Bell announced it will be carrying the BlackBerry 8520 and the new LG Shine II, all now added to its “best in the world smartphone lineup.” The Shine II is a 3G slider phone with a 2.2″ screen, stereo Bluetooth, Java 2.0, and a November 22nd release date. The Shine Part Deux will also set you back $119 with a 2-year commitment. Switching gears, the more familiar BlackBerry 8520 will boast the now-standard specs of: WiFi, a 320×240 display, 512 MHz processor, 256 MB of memory, and a 2 megapixel camera capable of video recording. The exact release date of the updated Curve was not specified but rather listed as within “the next few weeks.” Any takers?

Read 8520

Read Shine II

We’ve already talked about some of the news from the first day of the 2009 BlackBerry Developers Conference, but another blast of PR from RIM has hit out inboxes, and wow, are we ever excited. The biggest news of the day is that developers will finally be able to unlock the full potential of the latest generation of BlackBerry smartphones — OS 5.0 and hardware permitting, of course — with the latest beta of the Java SDK 5.0 thanks in part to its OpenGL ES support. Still, there’s a lot of things to cover and we don’t want to clutter up our newly redesigned site with a bunch of text, so join us after the jump.

Previewed today but not expected to be available until the middle of 2010, the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse will be updated with a new drag and drop WYSIWYG interface which will greatly reduce the amount of time it takes for a developer to put together all of the graphical elements in an app. More importantly, as BG is screaming up and down with excitement, this should allow BlackBerry applications to utilize a more streamlined and consistent user interface instead of, well, utter crap. More information about the new BlackBerry Theme Studio which replaces the Plazmic Content Developer’s Kit has also come out. Comprised of the Theme Builder and Composer, Theme Studio works for all devices running OS 4.2.2 and up and can not only directly import images from Adobe Photoshop but create a new generation of themes that are capable of zooming, sliding, wiping and fading while devices with OS 5.0 and up will have support for ringtones and screen transitions (oooooh, aaaaah). And now on to some slightly drier content (as far as consumers interests go.)

One of the things RIM has focused very hard on since the launch of App World has been helping to create an environment in which developers can generate more revenue and heighten the app-friendliness of the OS. With this in mind, RIM has announced its very own advertising service, BlackBerry Advertising Service, which amongst other things will “include the ability to easily initiate a call from an ad, add a calendar entry or contact entry from an ad, and directly link to an application in BlackBerry App World from an ad” while providing deep analytics. Speaking of monetization, BlackBerry Payment, available in mid-2010, will open the flood gates to activities such as premium content, subscriptions and in-app purchases. GPS has been a strong point of any BlackBerry, but now developers will have the means to do crazy new-fangled things like use cell site geolocation, reverse geocode and figure out how many minutes it will take to arrive at ones destination. Mindblowing? Definitely not. Abso-positively-necessary for RIM to do? Yes.

Read