PRESS RELEASE: BBM 2.0 update

BBM Voice and BBM Channels Now Available for Android and iPhone Customers

New features also include simple file and photo sharing, location sharing, over 100 new emoticons and Dropbox integration for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry Smartphones

WATERLOO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - February 13, 2014) - A new version of BBM™ will be available later today for Android™, iPhone and BlackBerry® (NASDAQ: BBRY)(TSX: BB) customers, giving them lots of exciting new features. Android and iPhone customers will now be able to make free voice calls to BBM contacts over a Wi-Fi® or data connection with BBM Voice(i), as well as access BBM Channels. In addition, BBM customers on Android, iPhone and BlackBerry(ii) smartphones will have more to chat about with fast one-click sharing of photos, documents, voice notes and more. BBM customers will also be able to share their live location for a specified amount of time with other BBM contacts by using location sharing, powered by Glympse, and will have 100 new emoticons available to help them say what's on their mind.

"BBM continues to deliver new functionality as a premier messaging platform that provides a simple and effective way to stay connected. Today's announcement gives Android and iPhone customers the rich experience of BBM Voice and BBM Channels - two great ways to connect with friends, family and colleagues, to build out communities around shared interests, and to follow your favorite people and brands," said John Sims, President, Global Enterprise Solutions at BlackBerry. "BBM continues to quickly evolve as a social mobile platform for consumers as well as for business customers through innovative features that give you great new ways to connect and share with each other."

BBM Channels

BBM Channels lets customers chat with other BBM users about topics that interest them. Customers can join channels about a range of topics from products, hobbies and sports to entertainment, fashion, cars and more. Channels can be created by brands, businesses and BBM customers alike and are a great way to communicate directly and immediately with people who share common interests in the broader BBM community.

By posting to their channel, channel owners immediately reach their subscribers with a message that can spark discussions. "Scheduled chat hours" allow BBM customers to have live chats with the channel owner - a great way to engage directly with their favorite channels one on one.

BBM Channels maintains the BBM core values of immediacy, privacy and control. Because BBM Channels live right inside BBM, BBM customers get notified the moment one of the channels they follow has a new post, or when someone responds to their comments.

With BBM Channels, customers can engage with brands or other customers without having to add them to their contact lists, thereby maintaining a high level of privacy. With BBM Channels, customers have the discretion to opt in only to channel brands that are relevant to them and always have control over the channels they subscribe to, while channel owners have control over how subscribers interact with their channel.

For brands and businesses, BBM Channels provides a new way to interact and connect with a highly engaged and targeted mobile audience. There are thousands of brands already using BBM Channels to engage with their customers. More on BBM Channels:

• Open, yet private. Channel owners control the conversation on their channels. Channel owners can choose to: allow subscribers to comment on posts freely or to approve them first; let subscribers chat with them directly anytime, or set chat hours; they can interact with subscribers without ever giving out personal details, or adding them as a personal BBM Contact. And with private channels, channel owners can keep in touch with closer circles on an invite-only basis.
• Channel reporting. Each channel has its own performance dashboard built right in. Channel owners can see stats on how subscribers are engaging with their channel, how many people have viewed each post and how the subscriber base is growing.
• It's fast and easy. Start a channel right from a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android smartphone. It only takes a few minutes to set up a BBM Channel and once it is set up, posting to it is as simple as choosing a photo and adding a short message

Location Sharing

With location sharing powered by Glympse, customers can now share their real-time location with one or several BBM contacts for a specified amount of time - perfect for when people are running late, out with friends and more. BBM puts control in the customers' hands, allowing them to specify how long they want to share their location for, by setting a timer. When the timer runs out the customers' location becomes private again.

Dropbox Support

Built-in support for Dropbox™ makes it easy to send large files like presentations and videos. With Dropbox built in to BBM, you can send a file from your personal cloud directly to a BBM contact. On the receiving end, you can save the file directly to your smartphone or add it to your Dropbox account.

Emoticons

BBM customers have been asking for more emoticons, and now more than 100 new emoticons have been added to help you express yourself. Many of the new emoticons came from ideas submitted by customers!

BBM continues to connect friends, family and colleagues across a myriad of mobile networks, as the standard for mobile instant messaging with a fast, reliable, and engaging experience that puts control of privacy and personal information back in the customers' hands.

Design that takes a stand – the iF design awards 2014 reward the daring... The Zed10 WINS!!!!!

When the BlackBerry Z10 was first announced there was plenty discussion surrounding the design of the device. In our Z10 review, we got to speak with BlackBerry's Senior Industrial Designer Joseph Hofer about the thinking that went into the BlackBerry Z10's design. At the time, he noted the primary design goal for the BlackBerry Z10 was to achieve a simple, understated, timeless elegance. 

Since then, the device has gone on to win the Red Dot Award for Product Design 2013 and now it has won the right to take home the 2014 iF Product Design Award as well. In January, 49 international design experts assessed 4,615 products, communication designs and packaging entered by participants from 55 countries. 

4.615 entries vied for the coveted iF design awards, which were awarded for the 61st time this year. The successful internationalisation continued to gain ground in 2014: the jury of 49 experts evaluated designs from 55 countries in total, once again a considerable increase over the previous year. The iF design awards 2014 were awarded in the three competitions iF product design award 2014, iF communication design award 2014 and iF packaging design award 2014. 75 entries stood above the strong international competition and received an iF gold award for their extraordinary design achievement. The award ceremony will take place at the BMW Welt in Munich on 28 February 2014.

BlackBerry extra fun codes (for legacy devices)

Here are some key strokes which you can use on your Blackberry device for some cool functionality. Before proceeding with the secret keys disable the Blackberry Keyboard shortcut mode if you have already enabled it.

•Function: Decibel meter.

•Purpose: Displays your signal strength in decibels, instead of bars.

•Process: Hold “Alt” and Press “N”, “M”, “L”, “L” (repeat to reverse the effect).

•Function: Address Book files verification.

•Purpose: Checks the data in your Address Book for inconsistencies.

•Process: In the Address Book, hold “Alt” and Press “V”, “A”, “L”, “D”.

•Function: Address Book data structure rebuilds.

•Purpose: Forces data structures re-build in the Address Book.

•Process: In the Address Book, hold “Alt” and Press “R”, “B”, “L”, “D”.

•Function: View source code.

•Purpose: Displays the source code of a Webpage.

•Process: In the Browser, hold “Alt” and Press “R”, “B”, “V”, “S”.

•Function: Help Me! Menu.

•Purpose: Provides crucial technical information about your device, for when seeking technical support or help in forums.

•Process: Hold “Alt” and (left) “shift”, then Press “H”.

•Function: IMEI display.

•Purpose: Displays your device’s international mobile equipment identity (IMEI–your serial number) on-screen…Also works from all other

GSM handsets.

•Process: Type “*”, “#”, “0″, “6″, “#”on the Home screen.

•Function: “Soft” reset.

•Purpose: Performs a “soft” reset of your device; the equivalent of doing a “battery Pull” (i.e.

Removing the battery for a few seconds).

•Process: Press-and-hold “Alt”, then Press-and- hold (left) “shift”, then Press-and-hold “Del”.

•Function: Event Log.

•Purpose: Displays event logs of all the system- level events that occur on your device.

•Process: Hold “Alt” and Press “L”, “G”, “L”, “G”.

Note: Please note that these secret keys may not work in Blackberry Pearl. It is good to be on the home screen while you executing most of these secret keys.

Here’re the steps to disable the Keyboard shortcut mode:

1. Press the Call button and click on Options

2. Now you are in “Phone Options” menu. There click on “General Options”

3. On the General Options menu select “Dial from Home Screen” and change the option to “Yes”. You set this option back to “No” to re-enable the Keyboard shortcut mode once you’re done playing around with the secret codes.

This post was originally published @

www.hackstacks.com

Your WhatsApp conversations may not be as safe as you think! O_o

A post popped up from Thijs Alkemade, a computer science and mathematics student at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. The post outlines a bit of the core encryption methods of WhatsApp, highlighting a few of the technical aspects of the service and also noting some big vulnerabilities. 

If you can follow along with the original post, you can see that Thijs runs through two "mistakes" that WhatsApp uses in its methods, both of which are able to be exploited if someone has the know-how. Ultimately he determines that your WhatsApp messages can be decrypted given enough effort by a would-be snoop. 

You should assume that anyone who is able to eavesdrop on your WhatsApp connection is capable of decrypting your messages, given enough effort. You should consider all your previous WhatsApp conversations compromised. There is nothing a WhatsApp user can do about this but except to stop using it until the developers can update it.

Of course this is something that could be (and will need to be) fixed by WhatsApp to patch things up, so they could very well be corrected soon. He also notes that the problems could be avoided if WhatsApp were to use something like TLS (Transport Layer Security), which is exactly what BBM uses for their services.

From Andrew Bocking, Head of BBM for BlackBerry:

I can’t really speak to all of the technical aspects of the WhatsApp system. However people can rest assured that BBM remains a trusted private social network. Where other services may be vulnerable to unwanted snooping or eavesdropping, BBM increasingly uses standard TLS deployment to remove that vulnerability from our service. TLS is a well-known, well-studied protocol. To put it in every day context, this is the same technology used for internet banking.

Hearing things like this can't make cross-platform BBM get here soon enough. We know the demand is crazy high but we just need it to be released. Sadly we're over three weeks in since it was supposed to launch originally, and while it's still on the way, we have no idea when we'll actually see it. Thankfully when it does show up you can rest assured it will be a solid, private messaging service that won't have such issues or vulnerabilities. Something to keep in mind, in light of recent attacks on WhatsApp.