Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Open Source BlackBerry
Now, I have been caught on tape beating a BlackBerry once, but we left in good terms. So much that today we have announced we actually love the BlackBerry...Funambol has released two clients for BlackBerry today:
- A push-email client, with integrated address book. Why would you need it?? Well, if you are like most, together with your work like, you also have a personal life. If you don't, then forget it, we do not like you anyway ;-) If you do, you might want to keep your BlackBerry email client for your enterprise life (with its own address book), but now you can get a separate client to check your personal email (e.g. AOL, Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, any POP/IMAP, and so on). The address book is separated, but it is synced on the device. So it is fast
- A PIM-sync client, a tool to synchronize on your BlackBerry contacts, calendar, task and notes (also known as PIM), coming from the Funambol server. This is for those who do not like BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) that much, because it does not sync your PIM stuff on the device. It is a full BlackBerry experience, with a consumer angle. And it is open source, extensible, it supports a lot of backends and more.
How do you get them? The push-email client signing up on myFUNAMBOL. It is delivered to your phone, no sweat. The PIM-sync connecting your BlackBerry browser to http://my.funambol.com/bb/plugin.jad.
Here you have a brief video of me using the Funambol BlackBerry client. It is just the first release, but it is quite good, in my opinion. And it is obviously all open source (actually, the PIM sync has been built pretty much by the community, with zero or so help by Funambol employees... I love open source ;-) More to come, stay tuned.
Posted by Fabrizio at 15:13
8 Comments:
Gil said...
Hi Fabrizio,
How are you?
Gil from fring here (gilr@fring.com).
I'd like to keep you updated on fring news as the come.
Could you send me an e-mail address where I could do that?
Best Regards,
Gil R.
Comment Posted at 04:06
alberto dottavi - infoservi.it said...
Fabrizio, this sound great. I'm with you, thinking that BB should have a more consumer soul. They seem to think sooo similar to the old Palm's guys...
I'll give it a try asap. And I'll also have a look for a similar solution on Symbian - any one?
Thnks
Comment Posted at 13:22
Fabrizio said...
Ciao Alberto,
our JavaME client works for Symbian as well. That gives you email and address book sync inside the app. For PIM, we use the pre-installed SyncML client on the device, which works great.
On top of it, we are coming out with a PIM sync native Symbian client as well in a few weeks. Stay tuned, we are working for you ;-)
fabrizio
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 16:01
I have tried it but cano not synchronize from my BB, after some time I get timeout.
Comment Posted at 05:10
Hi! Do you have plans to support BIS-B instead of the TCP gateways of the wireless providers? (and with this avoid having to use an additional data plan)
I have researched down to the code of the PIM sync, and besides a TRUE that needs to be FALSE, you must work out an agreement with RIM to do this...
Comment Posted at 00:12
Fabrizio said...
Yes, we are working on it. Becoming part of the Alliance Partners list seems to be the requirement. We'll keep you posted.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 09:09
Well, you would finally bring a solution to everyone who wants to have a fully open source stack.
BES forces you to use a Windows Server, and if you don't have Zimbra as an Exchange replacement, you would need Lotus Notes, Exchange or Novell too.
But with Funambol and Zimbra, you could get rid of those unwanted licenses.
And RIM doesn't seem to be planning to release a BES for Linux any soon, so you are not competing with them on that ground (I don't think anyone will change its open mail stack just to support BES).
What do you think?
Comment Posted at 22:59
Fabrizio said...
Hi Alfredo,
I agree! We are the only play on Linux, plus we support way more than just BlackBerries ;-)
fabrizio
