Core Facts

• A new gold edition of Palringo for Blackberry® was launched today adding location functionality and support for Facebook™, iChat® and QQ. 

• Palringo for BlackBerry now includes the option to share your location with other Palringo users.  Location and proximity [distance] of contacts are shown, both on the buddy list screen and on map displays for even greater precision. 

• User feedback on the initial beta version of Palringo for BlackBerry has been instrumental in refining the gold version.  In particular, the connection issues identified in the beta version have been resolved.  

Palringo is available now for the BlackBerry Pearl™, BlackBerry Curve™ and BlackBerry 8800 series. The application is free and downloadable from

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• Palringo users can exchange voice, picture and text-based messages with contacts on many popular messaging services including Microsoft’s Windows Live/MSN Messenger, Facebook™, AOL® Instant Messenger®, Google Talk™, Yahoo!® Messenger®, Apple’s iChat®, Gadu-Gadu, ICQ®, Jabber® and QQ. This means that Blackberry users can chat, and share photo and voice messages, with all of their friends on many different IM and social networking services using just one application. 

• Palringo enables users to form and administer groups.  Many businesses use Palringo Groups as an additional tool to enable communication with staff, whether they’re out in the field or in the office. 

• There are presently thousands of active groups, ranging from entire businesses to special interest groups to sports clubs.  There is no need to be online to receive messages; the conversation history can be read whenever a user logs in.  

• Palringo is designed for use on mobile phones, but versions are also available for Windows-based PCs and for Mac OS. 

• At the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona [February 2009], Palringo was shortlisted for a 2009 GSMA Global Mobile Award  – the most prestigious annual awards in the world of mobile.  The shortlist of five, in the Best Mobile Internet Service category, also featured Nokia and Bharti Airtel.

Quotes

Martin Rosinski, CTO of Palringo, said: 

“We know of businesses using Palringo to gain a business edge over their competition, simply because it enables them to react more quickly to a situation: they either get to the customer first, or they keep the customer happier.  Palringo shows [via status] which staff members are available and their location indicates whether they’re near or far away – so colleagues can send the right person the right message at the right time.”  

“Getting Palringo right on BlackBerry is obviously an important step because so many business users have a BlackBerry and the device itself is the ‘permanent fixture’.” 

“The new version of Palringo is a huge improvement on the previous beta version.  Some elements of the application have been completely rewritten, particularly where we were unhappy with the quality of the original user experience.  We’re confident that BlackBerry users will find it a valuable, useful, and fun addition to their device.”

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