Here's the BlackBerryTools binaries again!

For others interested:
- the story of what happened
- source code information
- substitutes and alternatives to BBTools

Enjoy!

Edit: bbCorrector has now been added. I hereby uphold GNU General Public License, by doing a favour to the public, by legally re-releasing BlackBerryTools.

Enter this web address into your BlackBerry for wireless over-the-air downloads:
BlackBerryTools OTA
Or if you prefer to install via BlackBerry Desktop, download any one of the below:

BBLight: Allows you to set the screen backlight to stay on under certain conditions, i.e. charging, time of day, etc.
BBReply: Allows you to show a different reply to address on your emails.
BBToday: A Today screen with customizable fields for weather, stocks, email info, etc.
BBWeather: Allows you to quickly check current weather and forecasts for locations you specify.
BBCorrector: A spell checking application.

Edit 5/9/08: BBWeather had to be rewritten for new weather data. You can download the new 0.77 version Here. No Desktop Manager version is available yet. When it is, we will post it here. Also, The weather portion of BBToday no longer works. When that app is rewritten, we will post an update, as well.

We have no issue with the re-release of the spelling checker providing it does not conflict with our bbSpell trademark.

Thanks Mark for getting these back in the communities hands.

I have the BlackBerryTools source code ready now in a zip file, including renamed spell checker (bbCorrector).

If you are somebody who wants to reinstall BlackBerryTools onto SourceForge, please contact me by PM.

According to the GNU General Public License, the BlackBerryTools source code belongs to the public.

Mark thanks a lot for getting this going!

this is great news!! Thanks for the getting the code back up there Mark!!

Here's the source code:
BlackBerryTools SourceForge CVS
(If you're a developer, please feel free to participate.)

Alternate location if you prefer a zip file (Old Source Code - May 1st, 2005 edition):
www.marky.com/files/bb/BBTools-Source.zip
I hereby uphold GNU General Public License by releasing the source code.

I did a lot of correspondence with the parties involved. The new name for bbSpellCheck is now already "bbCorrector" - I have already changed the source code for everybody. The trademark issue has been resolved. Both wonderful products continue to exist. The only exception is that Chris Miles never got back to me.

This is under GNU General Public License, an open source license, and belongs to the public. I have worked with GNU open source projects since 1994 under Linux, so I am familiar with the legal implications of GPL. The GPL guarantees my protection even if Chris Miles does not want me to re-release the source code. This source code legally belongs to the public!

Thank you to Chris Miles for releasing BlackBerryTools, the BEST open source BlackBerry software.
Thank you to SomeDevelopers.com for being very reasonable with me, and for releasing an excellent spellchecker!
(I should note I got the SomeDevelopers.com 'bbSpell' spellchecker beta before the Chris Miles 'bbCorrector' spellchecker was ever released)

Can you add the bbCorrector to the attachments above?

Thanks!

I can't, as I don't have the correct environment to recompile. If you have Eclipse and the $100 RIM signing key to recompile, please do so. Even if I installed Eclipse, I don't want to use my employer's RIM signing key as that would be unethical. One of us developers could probably pony up $100, but I'd like it to be someone who can take over the BlackBerryTools project and put it back into SourceForge. Someone else with the appropriate environment will have to recompile bbCorrector from the source code.

In the meantime, for a hassle-free solution, please try the free bbSpell spell checker from http://www.SomeDevelopers.com

Ohhhhh I see... Thanks for explaining that...

I would post the old binary, but it is not legal to do so because of the naming conflict. That's the only sticking point right now.

To the best of my knowledge and others' knowledge, of all parties I have contacted, I have posted everything that is legally allowed to post. I did my best to uphold the GPL requirements while satisfying the naming issue.

Well I DID try out bbspell and it works great and is very fast. Now if it was a little less expensive I'd actually pay for a license. But $35 is a bit steep for a utilty app, in my opinion, when you can get fairly robust apps like Pocketday for around $20.

Guess I'll just stick with the free version for now.

I also downloaded and am using the free advertiser supported version of BBSpell, which like you, I found easy to install and to use. I did this even before the issue with the trade mark in connection with the former bbspellchecker, as I wasn't prepared to take the time and effort to set it up. For now the advertising is not an issue as I find the ads, for the most part, informative of BlackBerry useful products.
As a former (a while ago) user of palm products I am amazed and pleased at all the third party products that have come out for BlackBerry during the last six months.

Me too. In fact, I have used Palm products for years; I owned one of the original Palmpilots and most recently I used a Palm T3. However, since I acquired the 7100T about a month ago I have practically forgotten about my T3. It IS a nice gaming device when travelling, but for my business needs, the 7100T rules.

I think that comparing BBSpell pricing to Pocketday pricing actually helps justify the $35 charge. I agree that Pocketday's pricing is fair. The price of BBSpell really isn't that much more when you consider what you are getting. BBSpell uses the developer's server to do the spell checking. So they are maintaining a production environment for you, which includes power, bandwidth, etc. Even so they are willing to provide a free version so you don't have to directly pay out of pocket. Also, they have an active presence here on the forums. If you add it all up, they are still costing you less than many of the commercial IM clients. Now if I want to make the comparison to them, BBSpell can help me not look like an idiot when I compose mail, and costs less than an IM client that can potentially get me glared at in a meeting.

That's certainly one way to look at it. But the certainly don't have to maintain a programming staff to update and maintain the code like a company would for a more robust piece of software with a lot more functionality. (Oh, and with Pocketday I don't have to pay again for the software every year).

I appreciate your perspective, but I wouldn't pay $35/year for bbSpell.

Very understandable.

Let's put things into another perspective. One year ago, long before I was employed by them, I was willing to pay for Idokorro MobileSSH, even though it cost vastly more than most telnet/ssh clients. (Except for the very best desktop telnet/SSH clients, such as the Vandyke SecureCRT, which costs the same as Idokorro MobileSSH).

There are people who do not have the time and money to worry about not-officially-supported software and the intricacies of setting up a spellcheck server.

I do understand many people go to midpssh (A free telnet/SSH competitor to MobileSSH) and to bbCorrector (A free spellchecker competitor to SomeDevelopers.com bbSpell) for very same reasons. However, the commercial projects are pretty sustainable, they are simply marketed to different segments of the BlackBerry-using population than for the free products.

Thanks for an donor (who will remain anonymous) who has used his signing key, bbCorrector has now been recompiled. The zip file has now been attached above!

bbCorrector REQUIRES you to have a CGI-capable web hosting account, because you must install a server component for bbCorrector. To get help installing bbCorrector, please post a separate thread asking for instructions. (No, I don't have instructions, but I think there's some old instructions on RIMROAD, I could probably dig up). The GNU 'aspell' binary must be preinstalled on the web server. It is preinstalled on most Linux web servers. If it is not, you can google 'aspell' if you need to recompile it on the web server, for the use by the bbCorrector server component.

For a more user friendly spellchecker, try bbSpell at www.SomeDevelopers.com.

It would be great if someone could recompile BBSpellCheck, uh, I mean BBCorrector and bold the words instead of just underlining them. <hint><hint>

Congratulations,

great easy small tool. Really helpfull....
Some enhancment whishes I would have:
- proxy authentication support (either by saving the credentials or passing the prompt to the user)
- Possibility for lookup of Location ID, either via internal function or external small tool
-to keep data traffic low I would like to be able to increase the refresh interval higher than possible now.
- additional different look (with less details) for the forecast...similar to bbtodaz
- different languagesupport (I could help you with some languages if needed)

Again thanks for the work

Sure would be nice if the developers of bbSpell would offer a discount for Blackberry Forum members. Pocket Express has been offering a 20% discount for forum members and I'm giving some serious consideration to purchasing it with the discount.