BlackBerry App World is the source for most of the apps that I download, finding myself scanning through looking for new applications that might prove useful.

There is a lot more trust in downloading from here, rather than browsing the internet and downloading from less trusted locations. It allows you to manage any of the paid for or free apps you have downloaded.

WordPress for BlackBerry allows me to quickly check the numerous blogs that I contribute to. It makes it easy to manage new comments or even start writing a new post (as I am doing this very minute by writing this).

This means I can manage most aspects of my blog whilst on the move and still have available a lot of the functionality of the browser based version.

The Internet Browser is something I often use to browse twitter more than anything. I still haven’t managed to find a client that functions well like they do on the iPhone.

Depending on the context of what I’m looking for I sometimes switch to using Opera Mini instead due to it’s improved rendering of graphical web pages with full CSS support and ability to view video content.

BlackBerry Messenger is a more recent addition to my collection, with the majority of my friends and contacts opting for the iPhone over the BlackBerry I’ve only recently started communicating through it.

It allows me to send and even broadcast free messages to the people on my contacts list. It’s a bit more subtle than MSN messenger as it can quite happily sit running in the background.

Google Mail reinforces the fact that I can’t get away from what I do in life, allowing me to be contacted via email, even when I’m not sat in front of my laptop.

It provides all the basic functionality of your standard web client and the browser based control panel. As far as I’m aware, this application, along with all the others from Google are only available directly from Google.

Google Maps id the last on my list and although isn’t used as frequently as the others is just as useful, especially if you’re in a situation where don’t have satellite navigation.

It makes available most of the features found on the web based version, including driving directions and geolocation. The introduction of Google Latitude also allows me to browse my list of friends and see where they are in the world – creepy!

So there you have it, my list of frequently used applications. If you would like to recommend any similar ones or use any of the above I’d be interested to hear what you have to say .

This tool tells Google that it’s the same site, just a new domain. Unfortunately for me, they don’t recognise “.re.it” as a root level domain, so was unable to make use of this feature.

Instead I have to rely on a 301 redirect. If, like me, you’re using cPanel and have the old domain as a parked domain it will not issue a 301 header, however you can override this in your .htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?sha.re.it$
RewriteRule ^.* "http\:\/\/36flavours\.com\/$0" [R=301,L]

Here we check to see if the domain is sha.re.it or www.sha.re.it and if so, redirect to http://36flavours.com with the 301 header.

On my last visit I noticed a post mentioning new functionality that allows you to include the standard user interface elements you get on the main Google Maps site, plus the standard behaviour of keyboard and mouse handling.

To include the new UI and behaviours, include the following code:

// var map = new GMap2(mapDiv);
map.setUIToDefault();

This function will ensure that any updates to the maps.google.com UI will also be reflected on your site without you having to carry out any updates.

Read the full blog post here.

Following up on the success of sockandawe.com the latest leader bashing game has now arrived with the release of bailoutbrown.com.

The format is the same, except instead of throwing shoes you are armed with a wad of cash! So even if you have no interest in the political side of things you can still have a bit of fun playing the game.

I’ve also written a new Google Gadget that displays the amount of cash thrown at Brown, assuming we are throwing wads of £200 at him that is.

Include this on your website using the following script:

<script src="http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.bailoutbrown.com/gadget/module.xml&amp;synd=open&amp;w=220&amp;h=50&amp;title=&amp;border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&amp;output=js"></script>

As the maps I wanted to display were only a small addition to the panel providing a quick snapshot of a location, using the full JavaScript API would have been rather unnecessary.

This is where the static maps prove very useful and are an easy and quick addition to any web page, whether or not you use Google’s static map wizard.

Static maps are displayed as images and are configured by a number of parameters sent as part of the image source in the http request, for example:

http://maps.google.com/staticmap?center=51.235912,
-0.751019&zoom=13&size=460x250&key=API_KEY

To use the static maps you are required to sign up for a Google Maps API key which can be obtained from here, although if you already have a JS API key this can be used.

When it comes to road map views the static maps provide you with many of the features available in the JS version, including but not limited to zoom levels, markers and polyline paths.

One downside I encountered was that static maps does not provide the ability to display satellite or hybrid imagery, or at least as far as I am aware.

There is also a query limit of 1000 unique (different) image requests per viewer per day, but a quick browse at the Google Group for the Maps API highlighted a few posts encouraging people to cache their results.

Even if you prefer to stick to the JS version at least now you can display some form of output to any visitors without JavaScript or with JS disabled, although they’re not as dynamic at least there’s something for them visually.

UPDATE

Since originally posting this, Google have announced the new static map features on the Google Maps API Blog, bringing to our attention the introduction of the new marker styles, paths, map image formats and the ability to translate labels into a number of languages. Read the full post here.