Good news, BlackBerry users! Never again will you need to kludge around in your browser just to dig up a number or determine who’s behind the number that just called. Following the success of their iPhone and Android applications, WhitePages will soon be announcing the upcoming availability of a native BlackBerry application.
It’ll still be a few days before the app makes its way to the BlackBerry App World, but we’ve been tinkering with a pre-release copy for a few days now.
The Major Features:
- People Search: Being as this is the first thing anyone thinks of when you mention WhitePages, this one’s pretty much mandatory. Pictured above.
- Business: Search by business name or category. Their business database seems relatively exhaustive and up to date.
- Reverse Search: Know a number, but don’t know who owns it? Punch it into reverse search, and they’ll dig through their database to try and pin it on someone.
- Company: As far as we can tell, this feature is making its mobile debut in their BlackBerry app. By searching through “a number of public and proprietary data sources”, Company search allows you to find the contact information for people who work at a specific company. Company name and last name are required. We tested it with a few major chains (Starbucks, Blockbuster) and it functioned as expected, listing their position within the company (where available) and contact information. A bit creepy, but equally useful.
- Recent Results: Even if you’re outside of signal range, you can look through the details for a number of your most recent searches.
Due to a limitation of the BlackBerry OS, one feature we’ve grown fond of in their Android application won’t be making an appearance: real-time CallerID for incoming calls. They’ve worked around this as best they could, adding a quick link to the reverse search function from within your BlackBerry call log. Highlight the number, hit “Search WhitePages”, and it’ll do the heavy lifting. It’s not nearly as handy, but it’s the best they can do within their boundaries
They’ve integrated the application into the OS in other ways, as well. From within any listing, you can initiate a call, add a contact, send the details via email, or get directions via the built-in BlackBerry Maps application.
The application seems rock solid overall, and does just about everything you might expect – or, at least, it does everything the iPhone port does (plus an extra trick or two). Unlike the iPhone app, however, the BlackBerry version won’t be free. Fortunately, it’s not going to be too hard on the wallet; at $6.99 for 6 months, the per-month cost comes in at under $1.17. This app has just been submitted to the BlackBerry App World, so it should be available within the next few days. Initial availability will be limited to the BlackBerry Bold, though versions for the Storm, Curve, and Pearl will be released shortly thereafter.
Be sure to check out the full image gallery and video demonstration below.
[PSGallery=23xstg2asp]
Are you f-ing kidding me? Yesterday you are killing these guys’ competitors on TechCrunch and today you’re j-ing them off on MobileCrunch? “Only” $6.99 for 6 months? Seriously, Arrington, let everyone know you’re an investor!
Oh, dang. You caught on to our secret conspiracy.
Well, it’s either that, or the TechCrunch network has a plethora of writers, each of whom has opinions which may vary from that of the others within the network.
So, do we have a complex conspiracy involving deeply shrouded conflicts of interest, or is it a simple matter of varying opinions? Occam’s Razor is a good thing to keep in mind when commenting.
It says Greg.
Hey! No curse words…… I’m just f-ing with you man.
Lol… And just cause it says Greg, is it a coincidence that these show up one day apart? Does every crappy mobile app get its own posting on here?
I agree with bigant. What’s your connection to Whitepages.com? You’ve slammed their competition many times. Neither of these companies is doing anything particularly noteworthy. What’s behind your coverage?
Wow this is great news!! http://iamned.com/blog/ people stop complaining about the economy
Oh come on…give me a break. Did you consider that the guy just knows a good app when he sees one? Why does everything have to be a conspiracy?
Greg, methinks thou dost protest too much.
With all the great companies out there and great apps out there, between your two blogs, you waste this much time on a white pages mobile app and their competition, when you can find this from Google?
Just have Arrington tell us outright he has no stake in any way in WhitePages.com. Of he doesn’t have a stake, it shouldn’t be any problem for him to say that. Otherwise, we’ll just have to assume he’s got something going on with them.
Nice, but isnt there an app that was on the blogs a couple of months ago call the fone book. Seems like this is just a knock-off of the work that was done by a company called Blinding Rain. Saw on their site that they are working throuhg some data quality issues and are set to release as well.
Seriously??? I totally agree with Bigiant. What a joke. I don’t think anyone looks to you guys for serious reporting anyway so the bar is not very high but at least make some attempt to fool us!
Techcrunch is basically the National Enquirer now. I have a story idea for you: Three head alien gives birth to cow who can solve the rubik’s cube!
Sounds about as believable and credible as the last few articles you clowns have posted.
This app looks nice. I look forward to downloading it.
Eric, you’re cracking me up…
So Greg, any word from the big man? He ready to make a statement? The longer he waits the fishier it looks…
i guess the statements not coming? so are we to assume he is involved with whitepages.com?
I downloaded the app and tried it for about a week. Finally I had to delete it because of a number of issues that seemed to “pop up” after it was installed.
First were the memory leaks, then my phone would not ring trhough and when using the reverse look-up, it would only find about 30% of the numbers I submitted. Plus it only searches for numbers based upon your location. So if you want to find a 702 area code number and you forgot that your device thinks that you are in a 306 area code, then it goes into a ‘termianl search” and eventually comes back with a “no number found” – In one instance I left it running and came back an hour and a half later. It was still searching.
The business search was an absolute joke. Looking for a resturant locally I discovered that there are only some that are presented. It seems as if it is only showing those businesses who are ad placed rather than directory based. Seems like a waste.
In this instance, I personally know of about 15 resturants within .5 miles of my location. Yet it only showed six and then gave me some conveniently located resturants 21 miles away.
This app has some good ideas to it, but the delivery of those is real poor. Seems almost as if it was not tested properly to me. The giveaway of this is that when it searches for a person it says that it is “Loooking for . . .”. Now that is good for a laugh, but this is supposed to be a professional organization and that screams “amature” to me.
In the final analysis, too much of a memory hog with a huge footprint. Too much even for a smart device. Then the memory leaks and the fact that it degrades the overall phone functions are a real deal breaker for me.
The best you can say is it is a bit overpriced, even at free.
ohh great this will surely help me in improving surfing experience on my blackberry
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Just have Arrington tell us outright he has no stake in any way in WhitePages.com. Of he doesn’t have a stake, it shouldn’t be any problem for him to say that. Otherwise, we’ll just have to assume he’s got something going on with them.
The longer he waits the fishier it looks…