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Double-Whammy Review: Empower HTML Mail Viewer and InstaSpell

August 17, 2007 | Posted at 3:48 pm by Simon Sage in Features, Reviews | Comments [8]

Screen7 If there’s one thing folks hate about the BlackBerry e-mail experience, it’s the ridiculously long URLs spanning multiple lines, be they for images or links to sites. That’s why Empower caught our interest back when they were in beta. Since then, they’ve been working hard and have two full products now ready for the downloading. I also had the chance to check out their next app, InstaSpell, which provides an ongoing spell check for those of us not carrying a fancy-pants. BlackBerry 8300.

The Empower HTML Mail Viewer boasts a fair bit, aiming to eventually bring full HTML to mail viewing. It’s not there yet, but they’re certainly making a decent stab at it. InstaSpell provides real-time spelling error alerts by underlining the words it doesn’t find in its dictionary.

Presentation

Screen4 Part of Empower’s efforts are to beautify e-mail, and in so doing offer to change the fonts and backgrounds of your e-mail view. Personally, this seems a little superfluous; generally, I’d rather keep the default font that I see everywhere else on my BlackBerry, and graphic backgrounds tend to just be distracting. Call me a cold-hearted business drone.
Regardless, some folks might want more fluffy clouds in their e-mails, and more power to them. Empower also tacks on a little promotional bit to your signature on out-going e-mails, which is a bit of a sore point. Guess they’ve got to promote somehow, right? Regardless, a quick option change can get rid of it.

InstaSpell’s very discreet about berating your horrible language skills. A slight red underline follows words until they sate the beast that is InstaSpell’s 66533-word dictionary.

Screen1

Installation

Getting Empower HTML Mail viewer and InstaSpell set up was quick and painless. It’s a speedy OTA download, and shouldn’t pose any problems.

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Posted by Simon Sage in Features, Reviews

Comments [8 Responses]

woodi68
August 17th, 2007 at 10:20 pm

I was going to make the same comment about the signature because it was my first complaint email I sent them and they quickly and gently corrected me that their signature was easily removed.

Also the “fluffy clouds” are removable.

Did you test the product before posting a “review”? Or did you just go with your cold heart?

Double-Whammy Review: Empower HTML Mail Viewer and InstaSpell - eVeek - Blackberry Forum
August 18th, 2007 at 7:23 am

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