We are proud to announce news about gwabbit, and introduce you to it if you haven’t heard of it before. It’s one of the most useful apps I have ever used, and has been a great asset to my BlackBerry. I have some news regarding gwabbit, and was granted an exclusive interview with Todd Miller, President of gwabbit, and I’m going to share both.

I want to start off by apologizing, the announcement of the offer was supposed to accompany this article. First, let me give you a bit of information about gwabbit. Founded in 2008 gwabbit LLC (formerly Technicopia, LLC) is the only provider of applications designed to automatically feed the contact cloud.  The product gwabbit grabs contact information embedded in emails and automatically updates or creates new contact files.  It comes in two versions: gwabbit for Outlook and gwabbit for BlackBerry. They are the fastest ways to capture and manage contacts on a mobile device or desktop.

The company has achieved profitability only six months after its product launch at DEMO ’09, and won a coveted DEMOgod award (the highest honor bestowed by the nation’s premier technology conference for launching startup companies).

This is the Press Release as it was announced:

San Francisco, CA – August 31, 2009 – gwabbit, LLC, the only provider of automatic email contact management (ECM) solutions for the contact cloud today announced that the company has achieved profitability only six months after its product launch at DEMO ’09.

“By achieving profitability in such a brief time, without the benefit of venture capital, gwabbit is demonstrating a new paradigm for technology start-ups for the new economy, with a focus on efficiency and productivity,” said Todd Miller, president and founder of gwabbit.  “Companies can be successfully launched and grown without millions in venture investments and years of losses.”

gwabbit launched its flagship product, gwabbit for Outlook, at DEMO ’09 in March, winning a DEMOgod award, the highest honor bestowed by the nation’s premier technology conference for launching startup companies. gwabbit followed up in May with the launch of its first mobile product, gwabbit for BlackBerry. The gwabbit products use semantic technology to automatically scan incoming emails, identify and grab embedded contact information, and import it into the user’s address book with one click.  gwabbit has garnered both industry and user acclaim.

“In these challenging economic times, it is an impressive achievement to bring a technology start-up to profitability in such a short period,” said Chris Shipley, chairman and CEO, Guidewire Group.  “To do it without the benefit of outside venture capital is remarkable.  gwabbit is a strong proof point that priced software remains a viable – and  perhaps most viable — business model.”

Miller attributes gwabbit’s rapid ascent to profitability to a combination of solid user-intuitive product offerings, a back-to-basics revenue model, and  “lean and mean” business practices, such as virtual officing. Miller is pioneer in virtual officing, launching one of the world’s first successful 100% virtual companies, WebFeat, in 1998.’s rapid climb to profitability to a combination of solid user-intuitive product offerings, a back-to-basics revenue model, and  “lean and mean” business practices, such as virtual officing. Miller is pioneer in virtual officing, launching one of the world’s first successful 100% virtual companies, WebFeat, in 1998.

After reading the press release, I was very interested to ask Todd Miller more questions, both app and business related, and for some tips for application developers as well. This is the interview, cutting to the questions and answers. And I’d like to thank Todd for taking the time to answer my questions and share his insights with me.

I congratulated Todd on the success of gwabbit, and asked what he would attribute gwabbit’s success to. He stated it was two fold. One, it simply hits a sweet spot, there’s a product need and gwabbit fulfills that need.  And two, it’s the way they do what they do such as the virtual office which is non-tradional but allows them to be twice as productive.

I wanted to know how the idea of gwabbit came about. Todd explained the true story. In 2001 during his last start up, WebFeed, he found himself cutting and pasting in Outlook. He knew there had to be a better way. He was too busy and didn’t have time or money to fix Microsoft Outlook”s tasks. So in 2008 he sold WebFeed, he had time and money and decided he would fix what Microsoft hadn’t.

I asked him if he ever expected gwabbit to achieve the success it has. He answered yes. He shared a funny story that several months ago, a friend of his, Scott Jarris who was a 2006 entrepeneur from efax. He had mentioned to Scott that three months after launching gwabbit that there was no profit. He said Scott laughed and asked him if he had watched tv lately, that there was an economic downturn but Scott assured him to be positive. It took a little longer than Todd had anticipated, but it happened.

I asked Todd how he would compare Gwabbit to other free apps that are similar. Todd said that there are a handful of older generation apps out there, but they aren’t the same. Gwabbit uses an automatic recognition engine which is similar to speech recognition. It automatically grabs essentially missing pieces of information which is what the market needs.

I asked Todd why or what makes gwabbit so unique. He stated that it is automatic. They strive for 100% recognition. Right now the app is above 80%, and with Outlook, improved results to 90%. Using semantic technology, it’s not limited to English, and can also do Chinese, Korean, and Japanese as well.

I asked Todd for advice or suggestions he could share with app developers and hopeful entrepeneurs wanting to find their way in the app business. He stated he thought from a development perspective to try and keep it very simple. Keep the problem simple, keep the solution simple.  He said on the business side he said don’t give away your product. Charge money for it, pricing it with what service it provides, the needs of the market, and what appropriate.

The one thing I had to commend Todd for, besides the fantastic gwabbit app, is that the customer service is outstanding. I always rate a product on how it works, looks, and the customer service. And with gwabbit, they are fast to answer, and make sure they are on top of issues, checking back with you and making sure everything is top notch. He thanked me and said they believe in old-fashioned values, having someone to talk to the customer on the phone is very important.

I also asked Todd what areas will gwabbit grow in, and what new features or areas does he see gwabbit growing and venturing into. He gave me this answer:

“1. gwabbits for more devices and platforms: Android, Windows Mobile, iPhone, etc. We’re also developing enterprise versions of gwabbit for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and MS Exchange. With respect to gwabbit for BES, this will enable IT managers to push out gwabbit to any/all BlackBerry smartphones across the enterprise, as well as to enable managers to configure any/all gwabbits centrally. 2. gwabbit Cloud. We want to solve a problem that we see with previous attempts at building contact clouds, namely keeping contact information fresh. Current models rely on users to manually refresh content, which I think is unrealistic. We envision a cloud that does what current clouds do (or try to do), which is to sync up contact information in various repostories (CRM’s, SalesForce, etc), while keeping contact information fresh by feeding the cloud automatically from our base of gwabbit devices.”

So now I’m going to give you a brief explanation of gwabbit. gwabbit automatically scans incoming BlackBerry emails, finds contacts, and instantly transforms them into contact records within your address book with a mouse click! gwabbit puts your contact fields away in their proper place in the address book and even checks your address book to see if you’ve already saved a contact previously before re-prompting you to “gwab” it again. You can read our review of gwabbit here.

gwabbit employs a remarkable patent-pending semantic technology to identify contact blocks within email text and accurately parse and import them into your address book. No more cutting and pasting contacts one field at a time from your emails into your address book.

Features are:

gwabbit for Outlook also available

gwabbit automatically scans emails for signature contacts and alerts user when it finds a contact

No tedious manual contact “painting” required

The gwabbit alert prompts the user to import the contact with one click, or click “No Thanks” to ignore the contact

gwabbit compares contacts with address book entries — only displays contact alert when a new contact is found or if contact information has changed

Option to turn off automatic email scan/alert and instead capture contacts with the “gwabbit” menu option gwabbit for BlackBerry Enterprise Server coming soon.

We are also fortunate in that gwabbit is offering a great deal for our readers. In light of the announcement and the interview, gwabbit is going to grant 20% off the first annual subscription for two weeks. The coupon code designated for our readers is gwabsync. If you don’t have gwabbit, now’s a great time to gwab it.

You can gwab your copy of gwabbit from the BlackBerry Sync Store for 20%  off the first yearly subscription here >

And please drop a thank you to Todd and gwabbit if you grab a copy.

We’ve got an exclusive offer for our BBSync readers! We’re offering 20% off your yearly subscription of Gwabbit for BlackBerry. Gwabbit is an amazing application that automatically scans incoming emails, finds the contact information and saves it right into your address book. Usually Gwabbit would cost you $9.99 for a full year subscription, but only in the BlackBerry Sync Store are we offering it at 20% off (bringing it down to just under $8). You can pick up your copy of Gwabbit at the link below (be sure to use the coupon code to get the discount).

Purchase or Get Details about Gwabbit for BlackBerry in the BBSync Store >>

Use coupon code “gwabsync” when checking out.

We’ve just received a great tip! Apparently the BlackBerry Tour has cleared the FCC. Unfortunately it seems that internal and external photos of the Tour has not been posted yet. We did managed to grab a sketch of the back of the device, and it sure looks like the Tour to me. The FCC describes this device as a CDMA/GSM/WCDMA device with Bluetooth and GPS. I’m sure the confediantly agreement will be lifted soon and the external pictures will be shown. This means that the Tour should go on sale, on time next month! If you want to check out the FCC’s documents you can here.

Looks like the anticipated launch of Facebook v. 1.6 might be a little delayed. We just received a tip that RIM has delayed the launch to fix up some issues. Hopefully this time RIM won’t launch a broken version like they did with 1.5. We aren’t too sure on a release date for the new version just yet, but its expected sometime next month. Stay tuned for more details.

I was browsing the site today when I noticed one of the Google ads on this site was showing the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8210. Correct me if I’m wrong but has the 8210 officially been released yet? When clicking the link it took me to BlackBerry.com and only shows the 8220 and 8230 available. Could it be a typo or a sign that RIM is getting ready to launch the GPS enabled Pearl Flip 8210?

Update: After running a google search for “BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8210″ I found another ad at the top of Google’s search for the 8210. Very weird.

We have received several rumors that RIM’s updated Facebook client for BlackBerry (version 1.5) will be launching today. You may remember the screen shots that BGR showed us earlier in the week. The new Facebook version 1.5 will intergrate your Facebook contacts, calender and messages with your BlackBerry address book, calendar and inbox. If this rumor turns out to be true you should be able to download it within the next few hours. Stay tuned for an update!

See Facebook Version 1.5 screenshots here >

UPDATE: No sign of Facebook 1.5 yet, but RIM did launch MySpace 1.5 therefore it may not happen today but it will VERY soon.

We just received a tip that an upcoming BlackBerry Storm OS will introduce better finger movements for copy/pasting and selecting text. In the picture above you see the little box which you can drag along to highlight text. It’s quite a good idea!! We can’t tell you just yet what OS this will appear in however expect it soon at the rate of all these beta leaks. Using the box to slide your finger on the screen it makes it a lot easier to select text and copy/paste things. This little box at first reminded me of the hover on the iPhone, however it does not show the words magnified. Regardless it’s a great addition to the BlackBerry Storm and will for sure come in handy!

Here’s a video so you under.. Forgive me trying to operate camera and Storm at the same time…

As always stay tuned for more details…

_{If you have a great BlackBerry tip and would like to keep it confidential please use our secure tip form.}

We’ve received a solid tip regarding TELUS and the un-released CDMA BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230. Sources have confirmed that TELUS will be launching the Pearl Flip 8230 most likely next month (February). The tipster says that TELUS will likely launch it around the middle of February (Valentines Promo?) in both Black and Pink. Just like the other Pearl smartphones the Flip is expected to be highly customizable with a varrity of OEM BlackBerry accessories and have a very reasonable price tag. So just to recap Pearl Flip on TELUS sometime next month? Stay tuned for more details when we get them!

^{Thanks, Frogger – Frogger previously confirmed the 8130, 8330 and Storm launches for TELUS.}

I’ve received a lot of emails regarding the OtterBox cases for the new BlackBerry Storm. I contacted the folks over at OtterBox today and they told me yes they will have a case to protect your new touchscreen BlackBerry sometime Early 2009. For those of you who haven’t seen OtterBox cases before they feature three layers of tough protection from nature’s elements such as dirt, dust and droppage. Keep your eyes peeled to BlackBerry Sync for more details when they arrive…

Our TELUS ninja has reported that TELUS’ Mike iDEN network will finally see a new BlackBerry soon. The BlackBerry Curve 8350i is the new addition to the iDEN BlackBerry lineup (joining the 7100i and 7520i). It will feature Wi-Fi, OS 4.6, Direct Connect (PTT) and a little more ruggid but similar design to the current Curve 8300 series. Unfortunantly for now this ninja doesn’t have an exact release but they are expecting it to come soon with tons of accessories to make it a more consumer friendly market.

So what do you think? Will TELUS introduce two BlackBerry smartphones (Storm and iDen Curve) in the month of December or will they wait until early next year??

Thanks, Frogger