Research in Motion has launched a new subscription-based music service called BBM Music. The good news is that at $5 per month it’s one of the cheapest music subscription services available for any mobile device, and there’s a strong social element that allows you to hear the songs your friends are listening to. The bad news is that if you don’t have many friends you can’t listen to much music.

Here’s how it works: You pay up your money and BBM Music gives you access to 50 songs that you can stream over the internet or cache on your device for offline playback. If you want to change songs, you can only change 25 per month. When you compare this to services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG, or Rdio, which offer unlimited access to music it sounds like a ripoff.

But here’s the innovative feature: BBM Music is a social app. If your other BlackBerry Messenger contacts are using BBM Music you can access any of the 50 songs on their devices. This way you can discover new music and expand your library… by convincing your friends to pony up $5 per month too.

From RIM’s standpoint, BBM Music could be an excellent way to lock users into the BBM service. After all, if you have a few hundred friends and a few thousand songs, you may be a little less likely to replace your BlackBerry phone with an iPhone. From a user standpoint… yeah, I’d probably rather just use a non-social music app. But maybe that’s just me.

HTC uses a new lock screen on the HTC Flyer Tablet and HTC Sensation 4G smartphone. There’s a ring at the bottom for the screen that you can pull to unlock your device — but there are also four icons for apps that you can launch by dragging them into that same ring. This lets you launch some apps without first unlocking your device and then finding them on your home screen or app drawer.

Now an independent developer has cloned the new HTC lock screen and brought it to the Android Market as a free app called Agile lock. If you don’t like the ads in the settings menu you can also purchase a paid version for about a buck and a half.

The full version also lets you adjust the font size, style and color and other settings and add widgets to the home screen. But you can use the free or paid versions of Agile lock to choose which icons display on your home screen, set your default music player, or adjust some other settings.

I get the feeling that Agile lock may not be available in the Android Market forever — at least not in its current form. Last year a developer released an app called Fancy Widget that copied the HTC Sense weather and time widget, and he was asked by HTC to remove the app and make some rather dramatic changes to the graphics.

via Android Community

Verizon has released a major update to its multimedia service, V Cast Video, and announced that it will now be rebranded under the title Verizon Video.

The new version offers higher-quality video content, although how much higher-quality isn’t specified. You’ll have unlimited access to more than 250 full-episodes of TV shows from most major networks. This includes the latest local and national news, as well as weather and a list of live sporting events each month.

Verizon Video costs $10/month or $3/day, while requiring that you have an adequate monthly data plan to cover the service’s streaming data.

That’s more expensive than monthly subscription packages from Hulu or Netflix, but neither of those services offers day rates or live sports. Verizon Video offers a selection of live sporting events including Sunday Night Football.

If you’re already a subscriber to V Cast, you’ll get a notification from Verizon detailing the update and its availability on your handset. Android users can also install the app from the Android Market.

via Phone Scoop, Verizon Wireless

Google released a Google Docs app for Android a few months ago letting you view, create, and edit documents in your Docs account from an Android phone or tablet. But it only works when you have an internet connection, since the mobile app is pretty much just the mobile Google Docs website in app form.

But if you’re looking for a mobile app that lets you create notes while you’re offline and then synchronize them with your Google Docs account when you’re back online, NoteSync might fit the bill.

This 99 cent app lets you jot notes on your phone and sync them with Google Docs — or view your Google Docs files on your phone. All you have to do is add the NoteSync label to any documents you want to view on your phone or tablet.

Unfortunately NoteSync is really meant for quick notes only. It doesn’t support spreadsheets or presentations, and won’t preserve rich text formatting in documents imported from your Google account. There’s also no way to italicize, bold, or underline text, use bullet points, or compose notes with any other rich text formatting tools.

via reddit

There are some pretty awesome games available for Google Android phones and tablets. Unfortunately while some are optimized for touch controls, others make you mash your fingers all over the screen which obstructs your view. This is especially a problem when you’re using an emulator to play Nintendo, GameBoy, or even Playstation games.

Enter Sixaxis Controller. It’s an app that lets you pair a Playsation 3 DualShock controller with your Android phone or tablet over Bluetooth and use it to play games on your mobile device — although you’ll need to use a mini-USB cable the first time you want to pair your controller.

The app only works on phones or tablets with root access, and not all Android devices are supported. In fact, most HTC devices and some Samsung devices are known not to work with Sixaxis Controller.

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A new photography app for iOS called Photo Stats brings statistics to your photo collection by creating detailed infographics on your device.

Photo Stats designs infographics that visualize your photography habits. For example, infographics can be generated based on the specific time of day that photos were taken, your most productive photo-taking days and months, and location-based information on where you took your pictures. The app is quite innovative in that it has a knack for detecting photo properties such as photo sizes, exposition, ISO (light sensitivity), and the photo application used on your photos, and Photo Stats uses that information to create the colorful charts.

The app includes social networking support, meaning you can share your infographics via Facebook, Twitter and email. Of course, you can save them to the device itself. You can also combine all of the resulting information to piece together a full-size infographic that are typically found on websites.

Photo Stats is available from the App Store for $0.99, and the developer has noted that the app currently works best with the iPhone 3GS+ and the 4th gen iPod Touch, although it can be purchased for the iPad 2.

via IntoMobile

Sure, the weather looks great this weekend and it would be nice to spend some time outside. But some mobile game developers have other plans. There are some great deals on iPhone and iPad games in the App Store this weekend.

Epic Games is selling the popular (and graphically impressive) Infinity Blade role-playing title for $2.99, which is about half price. And EA Mobile is offering discounts of up to 80 percent off a number of popular iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad titles.

You can pick up Scrabble for iPhone for 99 cents this weekend, for instance, while the iPad version is just $3.99. The latest Transformers game is just 99 cents, and so is FIFA 11.

I also spotted some great deals on games from Gameloft including Eternal Legacy and Assassin’s Creed for iOS. Both games are going for 99 cents at the moment.

Chaos Rings Ω from Square Enix is also on sale at the moment, although at $8.99 it’s still pretty expensive for an iPhone app. It’s still cheaper than the normal $11.99 price. The iPad version is going for $10.99 instead of the normal price of $14.99.

Update: Final Fantasy Tactics is now available for iOS in New Zealand, and will arrive in the US at 11pm EST.

It appears as though the wait for Final Fantasy Tactics on iOS is coming to an end. In a post on Square Enix’s Europe Blog, the company announced that Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions will be available in the App Store on Thursday for £10.99. In the US, the price should look more like $15.99.

The game is a remake of the classic Final Fantasy Tactics. It was released for the Sony PlayStation in the 90s. The new edition for iOS features some significant upgrades, including better graphics, an improved script translation, and impressive cutscenes. It’s also optimized for the iPhone’s touch-based UI, so the controls shouldn’t be too challenging.

The ‘Tactics’ alternative to the usual Final Fantasy RPG’s implies a more strategic approach to fighting other characters. Rather than having battles spontaneously, they are fought on grid-like maps and require some knowledge of your team of character’s special capabilities.

Square Enix also commented that an iPad version of the game is in the works, and for those familiar with the incredible graphics of Final Fantasy games, the bigger screen might be worth the wait.