Empowered Interactive - Empower your BlackBerry

A New Paradigm.

A new paradigm for BlackBerry application development.

Pluggable architecture has long been existing in PC world, widely used, loved by users and developers alike. We are trying to do the same in BlackBerry. Empower is built as a set of components that plug into a common codebase.

Why components?

For Freedom.

For Choice.

Our aim is to provide Empower in a way that celebrates freedom for users - I can choose exactly what features I want to install. For ex, if I am on 8300 and want Folders and HTML but no SpellCheck (as its already there on 8300) then Empower allows me to do so.

But if I am on 7290 or older devices, and want Spellcheck & HTML, but not Folders then Empower allows that as well. And if I want neither Folders nor SpellCheck, but only HTML - well, Empower supports that also - just take the HTML

The idea is that your device does not gets unnecessarily cluttered with features that you DON’T want. No bloated software, no strain on the limited resources of a mobile device.

As long as the minimum base is there, separate components will plug-in and work seamlessly - That’s our vision.

Over the past few days, all of Communicator components have entered Alpha. While work continues on SpellCheck & Folders, the first component - HTML Mail Viewer enters public beta today. And everything from RIM OS 4.0.2 onwards is supported!

Also in line are two new features that will be included soon. Just to ensure that you are not left behind with an older version, when everyone else moves to a newer version, I request you to provide us an email id, I will drop you a line when we release a new update, or a new component.

To install OTA, point your BlackBerry browser to www.getempower.com/emv.php - If its fast, you will notice its just 26 Kb!

Also please note, its a work in progress. We are happy to hear your comments, feedback and suggestions, just shoot us a line at support@getEmpower.com

So, All the best and Welcome to Empower ! Many thanks to the very first users of EMV - Stacey, Paul, Christian, Nathan, Bob, Low, thank you all for your feedback and for trying it out. Special thanks to Stacey Tenen for suggesting us on Modularization, you’ve been really insightful.

Add comment June 17th, 2007

Alpha-1 is here.

What makes a great product? Teamwork, dedication and a passion to create the ultimate!

Alpha 1 was released to testers today. It is surely going to change the way we think about BlackBerry messages! For those not in there yet, here are a few screenshots of the Communicator in action -

Folders, Rule-based Filters, Auto-spell check and HTML View - Yo Man! You’ve it all

But hey, that’s not all.. the revolution has just started.. there is more to come. Stay tuned.

Add comment June 14th, 2007

A new look for mails

Empower will change the way emails look on your blackberry.

Seeing is believing.

Add comment June 12th, 2007

A spell check that works while you type…

BlackBerry lacks spell checking functionality. And whatever spell checkers are available, they do the spell checking at the end. They often send the contents to the web server to do this checking.

Here we present a device based spell checker, that checks the spellings as you type, and offers suggestions as soon as you request.

Add comment June 12th, 2007

Folders strike back…

For long, blackberry users have been forced to use a single mailbox for all their mails.

We believe this should change. Outlook has folders, so should blackberry.

And mail should automatically move itself to different folders based on rules.

If you delete a mail, it should move to a Trash folder and not get permanently deleted.

Add comment June 11th, 2007

Assembling Code

For the last few months we have been working with BlackBerry API’s and now is the time to create something that rocks.

At present, we are trying to assemble the various parts that we have written over time into a single entity.

The alpha test will commence shortly.

Add comment June 9th, 2007