Your BlackBerry might be plenty powerful out of the box, but there are hundreds of third-party applications out there that can make the device even more useful.
Adding the apps to your BlackBerry is a breeze, because they can all be installed "over the air," either by visiting the app's site with your BlackBerry's built-in browser and downloading the file directly, or by having an e-mail sent to your BlackBerry with a direct download link.
[ Read the InfoWorld Test Center's review of the BlackBerry Storm. Or to learn more about which software programs now run on Apple's mobile device, see "iPhone apps get down to business." ]
Even better, some of the best of these apps are totally free. Here are 10 of the best free apps available for your BlackBerry.
Viigo
Viigo is a full-featured RSS feed reader that lets you read your favorite feeds and keep up with important news wherever your day takes you.
You can add your own feeds (Viigo's auto-detect function can discover the feed address for most Web sites), but Viigo also comes well equipped with a variety of tech, politics, sports, weather, and other feeds.
Preconfigured feeds also allow you to easily set up traffic alerts; stay up to date with flight information; and track packages from UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, and DHL. The new version, now in beta testing, adds support for custom search alerts and even podcasts.
Vlingo
Although recent BlackBerrys support voice dialing, the speech-recognition app Vlingo goes far beyond dialing numbers from your address book.
Using only your voice, you can run Web searches ("Find post offices in Punxsutawney"), launch built-in BlackBerry applications ("Open Calendar"), compose e-mails, and send text messages.
The transcriptions tend to be very good, so you don't have to worry about double-checking before sending. Vlingo takes over the application key on the side of your BlackBerry, making it easy to access even while driving.
Google Mobile
Access the entire suite of Google's mobile-friendly services in one place with Google Mobile. A single interface gives you one-stop access to Google's Gmail and Maps applications (the latter of which can integrate with your built-in GPS tool, if your BlackBerry has one).
It also includes links to Web services including search, Google News, Google Reader, Google Docs (which is read-only on mobile devices), Picasa photos, and your Google Notebook, all of which open in your BlackBerry's built-in Web browser. Google Mobile also includes the Google Sync service, which allows two-way synchronization between your BlackBerry's built-in calendar and the Web-based Google Calendar.
BBNotePad
Packing a little more oomph than your BlackBerry's built-in MemoPad, BBNotePad is a plain text editor that allows you to write full-length documents or even code wherever you might be.
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