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BlackBerry Torch 9800 Super App Compo: the winners

Applause for app ideas

Last month, we asked you to imagine your ideal BlackBerry Super App to run on the sizzling new BlackBerry Torch - and to tell us all about it.

Hundreds of you, from all around the world, submitted your ideas, leaving the judges - Reg Hardware Editor Tony Smith, Research in Motion UK marketing director Richard Pilkington and our independent judge Ed Moore, who is involved in several mobile data companies - with a tough job selecting just five winners.

Some entries simply put a new gloss on one of the Torch's many existing features - or replicated functionality already offered by third-party apps.

The judges were looking for ideas that got right to the notion of the Super App - an application capable of pulling together multiple data strands to make the phone more useful to the user.

Gavin Coates suggested a Super App called Work/Play Switcher that is capable of automatically flipping the Torch between 'work' and 'play' modes according to location.

"By integrating with the GPS, the phone detects I am at work and switches the profile to prioritise access to work contacts, email accounts and calendars," says Gavin. "Once it detects I am home, it closes off the work email, and instead replaces the home screen icons with my personal email accounts, friends contacts etc."

Jodi Knight proposed a wireless to phone-to-phone touch app that exchanges business information when two or more BlackBerry owners meet up. Data on the virtual business card would reach all appropriate apps:

"Where business cards have an address, this can be utilised by the POYNT application or MAP application on how to get there," Jodi says. "Integration with selected messages to your LinkedIn profile, and other social networking service for quick easy adds when you are meeting in business or socially.

"With NFC coming online soon this could be a winner."

We think so too.

Sion Phillips wants a Super App capable of scanning the music you listen to on your Torch - whether stored locally or a played stream - and using it to generate a taste profile. That information, he says, could be them used to automatically "query various databases and websites to let me know when bands I like are on tour and appearing locally, releasing new material, appearing on radio or TV, and link to the official sites/tweets/blogs for the acts".

Charles Ralli's Super App suggestion would help you get to the gig.

"I'd like an application that could take information from the appointments in my calendar, based on the address information for that contact and using that location, my current location and information from one of the live traffic services, advise me if I need to bring forward my departure time."

"If my contact is on something like Google Latitude, then I could also be advised if they are running late or early using the same data - and to tell them if I'm not on schedule too. Future appointments are checked to make sure I've left enough time between one finishing and the next starting to travel between them."

Matthew Shields' suggestion would make sure you weren't disturbed when you had arrived. "My Super App is time-, context- and location-sensitive silent mode," he says. "It will allow your Blackberry to automatically switch into silent mode when specified conditions exist: during scheduled meetings, at night, at the cinema. These could either be user defined times or GPS locations, or based on downloadable Places of Interest collections."

Congratulations to the five winners - their BlackBerry Torch smartphones are already en route to them. And well done everyone else - there were so many good ideas to choose from. ®

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