Have a BlackBerry? Snazz it up with these useful driving-centric applications!
Ever since the BlackBerry App World first opened its doors almost two years ago, plenty of BlackBerry users have reasons to celebrate! Here are some useful BlackBerry to make driving safer and more economical, as well as helping you remember where you parked your car!
Drive Safely - DriveSafely reads text and email messages aloud so you can keep your eyes on the road. The paid pro version lets you chat by sending text responses by voice and use voice commands such as “repeat message”, or “call back sender”.
Text’nDrive - This reads email and SMS messages as they are received. Compatible with all mobile carriers, TextnDrive also works with any hands-free devices such as speakerphones, Bluetooth headsets or built-in car systems.
Vlingo - A more advanced variant of the text-to-speech apps, Vlingo is more like a personal Virtual Assistant. Vlingo adds a more complete voice control set to your BlackBerry, understanding commands such as "Text John; What's up?" or "find Italian restaurants" or even "update Facebook; I'm on a boat!"
Honda Safety Driving — A simple app that can be set to automatically can reject incoming calls and send auto reply SMS to the caller, or direct the caller to the voice mail while one is driving.
Not While Driving - As soon as it detects that the car is in motion, this activates itself automatically, putting the phone into sleep mode. It will put the phone back into its normal state when the vehicle comes to a standstill. Should this be overridden, it will send an automated email to a parent or employer.
Speaker On Car Kit - No more fumbling for the speaker-phone button, this activates the loudspeaker automatically on incoming calls. There is also auto answering and auto redial on user busy or network errors. Speaker On mode will be enabled on predefined speed reading from the phone's built-in GPS.
CRASH - Anyone can have their own Insurance information at their fingertips, and will be able to quickly and easily gather other information. One can also record information about accidents for reviewing while dealing with insurance, body shops and work shops.
Where is my car? - If you're constantly forgetting where you parked your car, here is an app that helps you to remember where you parked your car. It stores the current position, and it will track the orientation and distance to the car. One can view the exact location of the car in the MAPS application and trace a route from the current position back to the car.
VQ Car Finder - An automatic car locating application, it remembers where you parked automatically. One does not have to do anything until the need to find the vehicle. At the press of a button, this app will use BlackBerry maps to route the way back to the vehicle using GPS.
Parking Tracker - Parking coupons may be a thing of the past with ERP-based carparks but there are still a number of parking spots that use them. With this app, you can also enter notes, the number of the parking lot and an alarm for the expiration of your parking tickets.
Fuel Dashboard - This provides a way to record gas fill-ups, show history and statistics about your car mileage. The dashboard serves as the unique information centre with most important statistics at a glance.
