Category: Featured News

The Canadian tech company announced that its BBM has been beefed up as a focus is placed on software.

The tech company from Windsor, Canada may be struggling when it comes to hardware, but it is using its popular BlackBerry Messenger program and other software to help to bring itself back into relevance and profitability.

The company has announced that it has beefed up its free BBM application for all smartphone operating systems.

There are several new features that have been added to the BlackBerry Messenger app, many of which will be quite appealing to the current and future users of the mobile application. Among the most appealing could be one that allows a user to “retract” a message that was sent to a recipient in error. This option also allows a user to set a time limit on the existence of a message that has been sent.

The BlackBerry Messenger update also provides new location reporting tools that gives users a greater options range.

For instance, the new BBM features make it possible for users to be able to decide whether or not they would like to publicly reveal their physical location. They can decide that they do or do not want to share this data and, if they do, they can state exactly how long they wish to continue to do so.

Until very recently, most of those features did actually exist in the BBM mobile app, but they were available only when using the premium version of the application, for which people paid an annual $12 subscription fee. That said, now that social messaging competition is headed skyward, BlackBerry has opened up these features to users of the free mobile app.

According to the BlackBerry senior vice president of BBM, Matthew Talbot, “Building on the renowned immediacy, reliability and security inherent to BBM, the new release provides unmatched level of privacy and control to BBM users without any subscription fees.”

Talbot also went on to say that providing control over the BlackBerry Messenger content and messages shared by users can ensure that those individuals can be confident in the control they have over that information.

The designs in this new line use wearable technology to bring style and function into the same place.

Engineers and designers have gathered around the world for the MakeFashion event that uses wearables in a way that is meant to be “augmenting the human experience” through a combination of form and function, according to the event’s co-founder.

The event took place in Calgary, Canada and brought runway fashions together with wearable technology.

This isn’t the first time MakeFashion has hit the runway. In fact, it was first launched in June 2012 by a team of three people from the Canadian city. For the fourth year, the gala has now been held at Telus Spark. Among the features that hit the runway were a range of different scientific wearables as well as stunning responsive runway clothing. Each was required to incorporate style and some form of practical application.

The wearables could cause the clothing to do everything to alter their colors to even changing shape.

The various options from the wearable technology allowed wearers to change the appearance of their clothing based on what they wanted or could even allow the clothing to respond to their mood by reading their brainwaves and offering a reflection of that mood through fashion expression.

Co-founder of the event, Shannon Hoover, explained that “You end up with a piece that looks amazing, looks beautiful, but has the technology that you would expect to see in wearable technology.” He also pointed out that the designs featured in this event had a focus on enhancing the “human experience” while making it possible for people to interact with their fashions and with each other with greater meaning.

Hoover pointed out that “Your FitBit, it tracks your motion and your activity, but it doesn’t do a lot about telling human stories.” The hope is that the pieces that were displayed on the runway would offer a greater ability for expression by the individual wearing the various pieces. The goal is to have the clothes tell the story of the person wearing them through wearables that are able to detect it.