You asked for it, and we’ve delivered! Boingo Mobile, our Wi-Fi service for mobile devices and smartphones, is now available on the Blackberry® Curve 8900, Blackberry Curve 8320 and BlackBerry® Bold.

For just $7.95 per month, Boingo Mobile gives you a high-speed alternative to cellular data so you surf the Internet, download large files, upload pictures, and stream video — all on your Blackberry. Usage is unlimited and you can connect all over the globe. That’s right, surf to your heart’s content while you travel for business or pleasure and save on international roaming costs.

To get Boingo Mobile, first download our free login software directly to your Blackberry. The software tells you when you’re in a Boingo hotspot and automatically connects you. Next, sign up via the software; or alternatively sign up on a PC.

We’re constantly working to expand our portfolio of smartphone support, which now includes the Android™, iPhone®, Symbian™ Series 60, and Windows Mobile™ platforms. We know how much y’all love those mobile devices of yours!

To download the free Boingo software for Blackberry, click here.

To download Boingo software for other mobile devices, click here.

To sign up for Boingo Mobile Wi-Fi for your Blackberry, click here.

Read the press release here.

Never underestimate the power of a laptop and Wi-Fi.

Two years ago, Brianna Karp of California lost her job and then her home. Like most twenty-somethings, she had no savings to fall back on. Brianna didn’t even have parents she could turn to for help.

What Brianna did have was a laptop, which she refused to sell. Instead, she used it in cafes with free Wi-Fi to write a blog called “The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness.” Brianna “didn’t think anyone would actually read it,” but she was wrong. Her readership included a formerly homeless blogger who eventually became her boyfriend, the folks at CNN, and even the editors at Elle magazine. She now writes a fashion blog for the magazine.

The lesson? No matter what happens in this crazy economy, keep your laptop. Of course, we also recommend you keep your Boingo account, because not all Wi-Fi is free, and Boingo gives the best value for unlimited access. Read the entire story here.

Is your smartphone filling up with applications you rarely (never) use? Welcome to the club.

According to various studies, “smartphone users download many more apps than they actually use,” and “consumers stop using the vast majority of iPhone apps almost immediately.”

If you’re looking for applications you will cherish and use daily, check out Fierce Wireless’ list of top ten mobile apps designed to be part of your everyday life:

1. Aha (free): “…connects iPhone users from across major U.S. cities including Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle and Washington, D.C., to share real-time information on traffic conditions.”
2. MotionX GPS ($2.99): “…premium location app optimized for the iPhone 3GS, complete with accelerometric-assisted GPS for improved accuracy…indicates and tracks the user’s position wherever they go–not just on street maps, but also topographic and satellite maps, which explains why the software is so popular with runners, hikers, skiers and boaters.”
3. Put Things Off ($2.99): ” …expressly targets procrastinators… encourages users to focus on what’s important each day and ‘put off stuff that’s not’–its touch-based filing system incorporates a series of virtual trays that separate tasks according to priority level, with completed chores disappearing in a puff of smoke.” Available for iPhone.
4. Sherpa (free): “..local discovery application optimized for Android…promises a customized user experience that improves each time you use it, recommending retailers, restaurants and attractions as it begins to understand your likes, dislikes and behavioral patterns.”
5. Snac (free): makes ” it easier to get at popular applications like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr while also offering up news, weather, email and related tools in a user-friendly, at-a-glance format.” Available for various smartphones.
6. 3deep: (free): “…offer users new insight into their contacts’ presence, location and availability…users share information on their current status, whereabouts and preferred means of contact, and the app’s Tell Me When feature indicates whether communications are best initiated via voice, text, e-mail or IM. Users also determine when and with whom they want to share deep presence information, and can limit how much personal data they wish to divulge on a case-by-case basis.” Available for various smartphones.
7. Vlingo (free): “speech recognition app–available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices–delivers a single voice interface that works with native and third-party applications, offering one-button access to contact lists, search tools, local listings and social networking status updates.
8. WeatherBug Elite ($0.99): “live updates from a vast global network of professional weather stations…bolsters live local weather conditions and forecasts with the addition of full radar animation as well as supplementary map layers spanning infrared satellite, humidity, air pressure, wind speed and next-day high and low temperatures.” Available for iPhone, Android, Nokia, Windows Mobile and Blackberry.
9. Wertago (free): location-sensitive mobile social networking app… grand prize winner in last year’s Android Developer Challenge…pinpoints where the action is, complete with real-time ratings, tags and reviews…also tells you which of your friends are already there and includes tools to message and coordinate plans with them.” Available for various smartphones.
10. Zagat to Go ‘09 ($9.99): “…includes over 40,000 reviews from the venerable ratings guide, as well as suggestions covering nightclubs, hotels and retailers…the iPhone version incorporates GPS features to guarantee you don’t get lost en route to that out-of-the way place. Other components of the application include search, reservations, top-rated lists organized by locale and sorting by food, décor, service scores or estimated meal cost.” Available for various smartphones.

Check out the entire article here.

I just installed the new Facebook app for iPhone 3.0 and am thoroughly impressed by the cleaner, more intuitive user interface. Here is a list of things that are fixed/added in this new version:

• An icon-driven homescreen grid that allows for easier navigation through the various functions within your account
• An adjunct page from the homescreen (just scroll over) that lets you add shortcuts to “favorite friends and pages”
• Landscape mode view
• The ability to upload videos from the iPhone 3GS (best to use this over Wi-Fi, of course)
• The ability to make friend requests and flag that you “like” a post
• Newsfeeds that are truly up to date. One of my pet peeves about the previous app was that the newsfeed didn’t reflect the real-time updates displayed in the PC view. In fact, this is a problem I’ve noticed with Facebook apps across all mobile platforms. But now the iPhone Facebook app has pulled ahead of the pack!

For me, the best thing is the app doesn’t have the look and feel of a re-purposed PC app. As evidenced by the icon-driven homescreen grid, this upgrade was designed for the iPhone.

Have you installed the new Facebook app on your iPhone? If so, what are your thoughts?

A newsfeed that is up to date

Clean, easy-to-navigate homescreen

Accessible by scrolling over from the homescreen

Lynette Luna’s latest article for Fierce Broadband Wireless reviews how mobile operators are finally embracing Wi-Fi. But she wants to know: how far will they go to actually encourage consumers to use Wi-Fi? Boingo’s CEO, Dave Hagan, weighs in.

“Indeed, [Dennis] Whiteside [AT&T assistant vice president for consumer markets] said AT&T benefits from owning hotspots and offering WiFi for free to smartphone users on a number of fronts: network savings, customer retention and value for the hotspot venue owners.

Dave Hagan, CEO with hotspot aggregator Boingo, said the same can be said for operators partnering with aggregators. The company’s usage trends at its airport hotspots revealed earlier this year that about a quarter of all connections from January to May were mobile devices. Eighty-nine percent of those users were iPhone users. Moreover, Boingo mobile users are consuming an average of 114 MB of data over WiFi per month, Hagan said.

“And that’s not data going through the cellular network,” Hagan said. “I bounced that number off several different carriers, and they agree. If you extrapolate that number, subscribers are consuming 400 to 500 MB per month on the cellular network. That is an enormous amount of data. Right now it’s really about iPhone users, but soon Android, Nokia and BlackBerry users are going to consume more. WiFi is a way to offload traffic and create a great user experience .”

You can enjoy the rest of Luna’s article here.