Check out the latest and greatest in apps for your BlackBerry with our monthly app roundup.
LAN File Explorer for PlayBook
Stream your PC or Mac’s music, videos and files to your PlayBook.
Having to transfer your movies to your PlayBook before being able to watch them is a bit of a pain, especially when you can’t possibly store your entire movie (or music) library on your device. If I think of a movie that I want to watch, I want it to watch it now, dammit!
So, the ability to have movies stream from my PC to my PlayBook is a blessing for my tendency toward immediate gratification.
Better yet, LAN File Explorer lets you stream any file type from your PC or Mac, meaning you can shoot over music, photos or documents, making it an all-in-one LAN browser.
The inbuilt media player makes it a snap to watch movies, listen to music or view photos too. All you need to do is download and install (on your host PC) the free
FileHub media server. After installing it, simply choose a password and specify which folders you wish to share. Then it’s just a matter of firing up LAN File Explorer on your PlayBook and entering your PC’s IP address, port and password.
Note that the media server won’t actually transcode videos so you can only stream files that are natively compatible with the PlayBook (which is the same as for iOS: H.264 MP4 with AAC audio).
US$1.99 > Liang Gao > Online Picinote for PlayBook
The size of the PlayBook makes it a great laptop alternative for conferences, lectures and the like, so it really benefits from having a good note-taking app.
Picinote allows you to take a photo and quickly annotate it, either with supplementary information or by scribbling over the top of it. Once annotated, you can either store the image in a notebook specific to that particular talk or send out a PDF via email or Facebook.
US$2.99 > Siamese Systems Inc. > Online Vibrate on Call Connect
A no-muss, no-fuss, title-says-it-all app that solves a problem you didn’t even know you had. All the app does is cause your handset to vibrate when a call successfully connects.
If you’re asking why you want this, think of me the next time you're left holding a phone to your ear waiting for a dropped call to connect. Now you can leave your phone in your hand until your mate answers.
US$0.99 > AFBB > Online Fightin' Words
Uh-oh! It’s double clone time! Fightin’ Words is a clone of the immensely popular Words with Friends, which is – of course – a clone of the historically popular Scrabble. The best part about Words with Friends is, perhaps unsurprisingly, playing it with your friends. This can lead to problems when your friends no longer have BlackBerries.
So, thankfully, this game also has an Android version, and supports cross-platform matches. Oh, and in case Hasbro calls: Fightin’ Words is different because it has a 'POW' tile, not a blank one.
Free > Interworks Inc. > Online