...But does anyone have a copy of BBSpell 1.0 that they can post. I love BBSpell, but find it objectionable to pay $35/yr for it. I don't mind the ads (in fact I bought one of the pieces of software that was advertised).

Now that they are at v2.0, there is some obtrusive limit to the number of emails that you can spell-check a day. (I think the limit is 3-4), and that is a problem.

(If the guys from SomeDevelopers are reading, sorry about this shameless begging. Your app is great, but the subscription model sucks)

Any and all help is appreaciated.

Peace.

I agree make it adds or three emails a day not both.

I would just try BBCorrector. It works great for me, and its free, no adds, no limits. Its very easy to setup also.

Does it not require a connection to a spelling server? What spell server are you connecting to?

I just set up my own server. Really simple. I searched for a public server, didn't find one, so just set up my own.

If you wouldn't mind posting the step you went about to do so? Would you be interested in others using your spell server?

I hear you guys, but we have thousands invested in the business, and like any business, need to be paid to survive. We'd like to continue to deliver high quality applications for the BB, and can't do it for free. Unfortunately, the advertising model doesn't make money, and doesn't support the free version.

In 1.0, the main problem we felt existed was that too many business users who could care less about the $35 tolerated the ads because it was easier than going to the site, buying the software doing an expense report, etc. Our conversion rate is way higher with 2.0 and I dont think that it is because of the new features.

If there were a way we could make the app free/cheaper for individual non-business users we would, but frankly feel $35 is a fair price for any business use of the application. The coupon posted on this site is an attempt to help.

You can use 1.0 for a little while, but we will stop supporting it on the server within a month.

bbCorrector might be a good option for you. It requires that you setup, secure, and maintain your own spelling server. While server installation is not too difficult, maintaining a secure server environment requires ongoing attention to service packs and other security issues. Even if you open your firewall up on just port 80, you should know what you are doing or risk having your computer/network hacked.

jeff

I will just not use a spell checker. 35 dollars here 35 dollars there starts to add up after a while so if yours was the only program that I had to buy NO problem. But thats not the case. I have to buy Im programs I have to buy spell checker I have to buy every little program for it and after a while you just have to say no. So thanks for the 3 or 4 emails a day that I was checking for errors. I didnt mind the adds heck I bought several things from advertisers. Will be deleteing the program promptly.

I'll second that. All of the fees add up after a while. I would love to have the spell checker but I also feel $35 is a bit steep. As you mentioned, just about everything has a cost. I have seen some of the programs as much as $125. No way will I pay for anything with a price tag like that for my BB.

I guess we are really doing something wrong if both Dawg and Amfetamyne have bought things from our advertisers, but choose not to buy bbSpell

jeff

I love sarcasm.
The reason I choose not to buy a spell checker is because I only use it on very lengthy emails. The other reason is if I am going to send important emails I send from my pc since it includes a free spell checker. The other reason is I usually proof read my stuff. However I didnt buy software from your ads. I bought cases and other accessories.

I hear you Dawg. Bottom line is that this is our job. We've done the best we know how in order to make some functionality available free while still encouraging business users to pay. If anyone has any suggestions as how to better meet both objectives, we're all ears. BTW, we've investigated BES vs non-BES licensing, but there is not a way for us to know reliably.

Greenhut:

I bought your speell (oops) checker and I love it. It is one of the programs I use the most on my Berry. I do lots of emails on the road for my firm, and I love the ability to look intelligent. I'm one of those guys who writes emails the way we used to write letters -- it has to be perfect. bbSpell makes it easy for me. Thanks also for the dictionary and thesarus, it saves me a lot of time and effort. Your product is gold for me. As much money as I make off my Berry and my time, 35 bucks is not a big deal -- at least for me.

You've got a great product. Keep up the good work,

Yeah it sucks. If you don't want to pay that price: no problem.

Simply install a competitor's product or an open source project.

But please respect the author's work. Nobody is forcing you to use it.

I'm a developer myself. I know how much time it takes you to get something working, to carefully answer each users email. To settle beta test, to fix bugs, etc.

They use client/server architecture heavily. They need to host their server into a serious hosting company. Certainly not like the one at US$ 45 per month. They need to have a stable bandwith to guarantee a smooth dialogue between the client and the server. They also need mirror servers to guarantee the service. i guess US$ 300-400 per month is the minimum for a serious service like this one. If too many "free" applications are connected to the server, then there will be a bottleneck and paid users (i would say legitimate users) will suffer from it.

And after that you have to pay advertisements to reach the audience. Do you how much it costs to be advertised on a distributor web site? around 150 US$ for a week for the smallest place available and for a single device (BB 7100T, 7520, etc.). To get your banner published on a BB dedicated web site? Nothing less than $US 100 for few weeks.

Would you have heard about BBSpell without their marketing campaigns? I guess you wouldn't at least most won't. They put a lot of money on the table to reach you.

And don't forget distributors takes between 25-30% of the retail price.

I don't know if it's the correct price or not. But I'm sure they have carefully chosen their price based on various variables that only them could know.

You don't agree with the retail price? Tell the developer that is too expensive for you but you like his/her product. if this isn't the correct price he will see it : sells will fall. he/she will rethink its strategy accordingly.


Piracy is lame even more when you have the choice.

Olivier

I agree with them selling the product if thats what they choose to do, no issue its a great product. My only issue was the free version was ad based again no problem. I didnt mind the ads at all I surfed them regularly. My issue was limiting it to only 4 emails a day, I am not saying making it unlimited thats not a fair deal either. On a device I get 50 to 60 emails a day on I say maybe 10 to 12 would be more feasable.

Again I loved the product and enjoyed it even with the ads. But like software for the pc user you can get an ad based product with limited features not use, or you can purchase the full product and do away with the ads and limited feature use.

Dawg:

"I say maybe 10 to 12 would be more feasable."

Except that allowing you and the other freebies 12 email uses a day at no cost would jam up the server for those of us who pay for the product. It's not fair. I say if you agree the product is good, that you actually love it, and that you would use it as much as 12 times a day, pay for it -- like I do.

But are you getting the ads NO! I was so someone was paying for me to use the program the people advertising there products. If you would have read what I posted before I didn't use it that much. As I am sure most dont use it that many times. Or offer a limited time frame for the free like webmessenger and other products. Look I guinda I am not saying they give there product away so don't make me the enemy here. I am all about free enterprise if they want to charge 10,000 dollars for the license so be it. Limit it to 3 or 4 emails a day hell limit it to none if you dont buy it.

I was trying to help with suggestions I wont say any more. Sorry for bothering

Dawg,

Maybe you are right but maybe not for this kind of products.

Your goal is to send an information quickly. I guess you don't care having an ads at the footer. The most important thing is to have the information delivered. Just like yahoo and hotmail users don't care about the ads.

His problem was that there are too many people like you using BBspell .

So the business model was broken in some ways. The server was mainly used by free applications.

The goal isn't to have a lots of ads. The goal is to sell enough products to get a break even and later profits. Profits and ads aren't always "synchronized".

he told us it has a higher conversion rate with his new stategy. I guess he is right otherwise he wouldn't do it.

Olivier

A couple of observations:

With the coupon code posted on this site, the annual cost of bbSpell is really $25.

If my Cingular offered a spell-check service and wanted to bill me an extra $2 per month to use it -- in addition to all I'm already paying -- I would certainly complain about being nickel-and-dimed. But that's not the case. I paid for bbSpell and I'm convinced I'm getting my money's worth, but that's entirely a personal issue.

I do wish there were an option to run a spell-check automatically on every message I send. That's an option in the version of Lotus Notes I now use and in Outlook. Any possibility?

We've spent days trying to implement that feature. RIM specifically prevents third parties from gaining access to outbound messages before they are sent. We tried every trick we could think of - as have other BB developers for similar reasons. Sorry - we want it too!

jeff

Thanks very much for the quick response. Even without this feature, it's an excellent application.

Well, I must agree that developers should be compensated for their work. For years, I have written Windows and PalmOS applications. A few I have charged for but for the most part I havent. I concentrate most of my programming for private individuals and commercial clients, so I am well compensated up front before I ever start.
As far as the BBSpell, yeah, if you would like to charge for it, then that is your right. And if you dont wish to pay for it, then dont use it. I prefer BBCorrector because it is free. I have setup our server for our 350 employees and the cost is very minimal. Our users are using it on a daily/continuous basis and the bandwidth issue is very minimal. I have logged our usage since we implemented it and we will not have to absorb any additional cost due to bandwidth usage at our current rate. We have a host with a dedicated domain for our server. Yes, maybe we will have security issues, maybe we will have down time due to these security issues, but its not a critical part of anyone's life. Its only a spell checker, a luxuary, a quicker way to proof your emails and its very economical.
I can't see us as a company, or any company for that matter, investing such monies into a server application when system Admins and programmers like myself should already have the ability to implement their own server to handle such a task. With our in-house abilities, we save lots instead of having to outsource such tasks. This is why I chose BBCorrector....... To each his own.

And to finch and Dawg, if you send me your IP and a preference for Login/Pass..........I'll hook you up.

The question is still, how can I, an average joe user with a super powerful 4 processor Xenon webserver, connected to a super fast pipe, with unlimited bandwidth, set up our own spell checker server?
Ed
web/gadget guru

mistrfree thanks for the set up but cant get it to work yet I can see the server through the browser but not when spell checking

That's the most ridiculous thing that I have heard all day, and I work with some pretty ridiculous people. Better yet, it's just plain stupid

How did you setup your own server for BBCorrector?

Jarret, why do you call Greenhut's statements stupid. I'd like to know, instead of you asking us to accept such a fourth-grader slap at face value.

Think about this for a moment. One spends a great deal of time creating an application for the RIM OS. He does this to make money, correct? OK then, who would think that creating a limit on the number of e-mails that can be scanned would make more money? It's a stupid business plan, he would make more sales if he didn't make that restriction. It's like buying a car but only being able to drive it twice a day.

Would you buy that car?

Thanks for your explanation. But I think you misunderstand. I've paid $25 for the software. I can use it all I want. I happen to have heavy use of the email features of my Berry. I have unlimited use of bbSpell for my 25 bucks. Just like I do for my car. The limited feature you're talking about is for trying out the system. Sort of like test-driving a car. You wouldn't expect to be able to test drive a car by driving it from LA to NYC and back, right. And if you were given this privilege, I wouldn't want to buy it as if it were new.

That's the problem with guys that are complaining over having such limited use of the software with the ad feature, without having to pay for the service. Giving them use of bbSpell for more than a few emails a day jams up the server, and makes my paid-for use less valuable, because I have to wait longer to have my emails checked, or to use the dictionary and thesarus (which I use a lot and find very helpful).

Pay for it guys, if you want to use it. Or at least quit bi**ing.

BBcorrector is the way to go just set up your own server and its free.

If your time to setup and maintain a bbCorrector server is worth less than $25 in a year (or you just enjoy tinkering), and you have the skills to properly secure and maintain such a server, and the other bbSpell features are not important to you, then bbCorrector would be a good choice.

There are significant differences between bbSpell and bbCorrector:

1. bbCorrector requires proper installation and configuration of a web application server, exposing it in a secure way through your firewall, and maintaining the server from a security and availability perspective. When using the bbSpell service, this is entirely unnecessary - somedevelopers hosts the bbSpell server in a highly available and secure datacenter.

2. bbSpell has Thesaurus and full Dictionary lookups.

3. bbSpell has a much more efficient UI for correcting messages.

4. bbSpell has custom user dictionaries.

5. bbSpell supports spell checking in English (US, UK, CAN), Spanish, German, and French plus Legal and Medical dictionaries.

6. bbSpell supports SSL for enhanced security.

7. bbSpell support BB OS 3.6 through 4.0. bbCorrector requires version 4.0 (not an issue for most here, but you would be surprised how many users are not on 4.0!)

8. bbSpell service includes free support.

Wasnt any trouble at all to set BB corrector up. I sent to my buddy who runs a gaming server house here in atlanta in about 30 minutes I was up and running. He liked it so much he put it on all the units he runs in his company. He installed it on a brand new server he set up just for his buddies to play on. Cost me a case of beer so well under 25 bucks.

Should have bought him some better beer

I've done a bit of reading on bbspell and think it would be a good add-on for my BB so I installed it and the demo sucks with the limits and ads. If you do not make any money off of the ads then eliminate them. Why not go with a timed demo. Give the user 15 days to use it unrestricted and have it stop working after that? This will allow the user to properly evaluate the product. Also I noticed in the browser menu I get the bbspell menu selections listed twice. Other menu's appear to be ok. I am running a BB7290.

Mike.

Got the man what he asked for.

Dawg:
Sorry you were having probs with mine, everyone else seems to be fine with it. I wouuld have replied sooner, just got back from vacation. Sorry again for the trouble, but glad you got into your friends.

Mike - that's a great suggestion and we are planning something along those lines for the next release. The goal is not to make long term free usage easier, but to make early evaluation use less obtrusive.

We are aware of the double menu issue in the browser. This appears to be a bug in the BB API.

Regards,
jeff

Its interesting to see the viewpoints on both sides... Personally, I don't use a spell checker on my BB as most of my emails are done through the desktop and the BB is used for quick responses and reading. This is not to say I don't think developers are not doing a good or bad job... they see a need and fill it while making a bit of money.

However, considering how long BB units have been around, I'm surprised that RIM hasn't decided to add a bit more memory (or use a bit more) and put in a standard spellcheck application on their OS. Its certainly one of the additions I think would be more than useful to all consumers.

I think BB are great, and have been using them since the 950 series days for business. However, I do think the limitation on software and the need to pay for (almost) everything aside from the base applications compared to Palm and PPC is a bit over the top. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind paying for PocketDay due to its support, excellent updates, and fast help from its developer. Magmic and a few others have given out free games/apps, so thats greatly appreciated but everything else is pretty much subscription based.

I don't know... email is the killer app but the extras are going to kill us. Microsoft will eventually get their act together and then the game will be over.

Sorry for going off topic a bit, but I thought I'd add my 0.02 cents. Feel free to discuss, but I'll ignore any flames.

Attention Nextel users free spell checker from nextel and dynoplex

http://blackberryforums.com/showthre...3629#post73629

Don't feel bad about trying to make money. I think you have a great product and it is very much worth the annual fee. Especially for people who run a business with their BlackBerry.

One quick note...Please see the post in this forum regarding BBSpell and OS 4.0.2. It describes a really weird problem. The post is
http://www.blackberryforums.com/aftermarket-software/11354-bbspell-os-4-0-2-a.html.

Congrats on a great product...