Viber Media, the company that it is challenging Skype and a plethora of cross-platform communication app makers with its free calling, texting and photo sharing application for mobile phones, is doubling the number of platforms it supports.

Already available for iOS and Android, and used by over 70 million people, Viber is releasing its communications app in beta for both BlackBerry and Windows Phone.

Said Viber founder and CEO Talmon Marco:

“We believe if you’re connected to the Internet, you should be able to enjoy a free, high-quality communications experience, and Viber is working to make it possible for users of all mobile products to communicate with each other.”

For now, both beta versions will, however, not support free voice calling. That’s obviously a bummer, but the Viber app for BlackBerry and Windows Phone does support free texting, exchange of photo messages and location sharing with other Viber users, which is something.

In a statement, Viber says it wants to expands to BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 quickly because people are bombarding the company with requests, but that it will not include its free voice calling feature until it meets its “quality standards”.

Needless to say, Viber did not say how long that might take.

Viber says its existing users talk for more than 1 billion minutes and send more than 1 billion messages every month. On a daily basis, Viber users worldwide are said to make more than 7 million calls and send more than 40 million messages.

Photo apps are the hottest thing out there right now. Ever since Instagram was purchased by Facebook, people have been wondering if it the door is now closed for other players in the space to emerge. Similarly, video apps are also getting attention as the next space that’s ripe for big acquisition things, with Viddy in the driver’s seat.

One up-and-coming app does both photo and video and is seeing some impressive growth that is about to explode thanks to Facebook’s Open Graph and Timeline integration. That app is Israel-based Mobli, which has been available for about seven months.

When I met with the company, it told me that it just hit 2 million monthly active users, and has just launched its new Facebook features, so that number should go through the roof as we’ve seen with other apps that have done the same.

The company has some interesting investors and advisors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Lance Armstrong. Mobli has raised 4M to date, and is set to expand its functionality for its iOS, Android, and BlackBerry app that lets you share and discover photos and videos based on topics that interest you.

Set to take on both video and photo apps

The thing that stands out to me about Mobli the most is that it is already on iOS, Android, BlackBerry mobile platforms with a plan to expand to Windows Phone soon. In addition, it has a really nice web version that’s fully functional. I truly believe that even mobile app networks need a Web destination, something that I always thought would have gotten Instagram even more traction.

The app itself is set up to let you follow people and discover content based on subject channels such as sports, pets, or music. This is a bit different from other apps too, which are entirely relying upon the fact that you’re following your friends or are interested in the most popular content. You can definitely lose yourself in Mobli for a few hours.

When you’re shooting a video or photo, you’ll be thrown into a feature called the “darkroom” which is Mobli’s editing suite. Much like you can alter photos with other popular apps, Mobli lets you do the same. The secret sauce the company tells me is that all of their filters are server-side, meaning they can add new filters on the fly without having to update any of its apps, which is brilliant.

You can also import photos from Facebook and Instagram and share it on the network as well. Adding those photos into channels is great way to repurpose content that you’ve already taken and shared on other networks.

By “watching” both channels as well as people on the Mobli network, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll never run out of things to check out. I personally enjoy spending extra cycles looking at my Instagram feed, waiting for someone to post something.

While sometimes it’s ridiculous to call something “the next big thing” for the sake of doing so, Mobli has the functionality, features, backing, and user growth that will only make great things happen for the company. The people that use the service absolutely love it and enjoy sharing photos on Facebook and Twitter using it. That’s the magic that a lot of popular apps have seen, and I bet that even Instagram would attribute most of its success to its community.

If you’re looking to place bets on what the next popular video or photo app may be, it might be all wrapped up into one with Mobli.

➤ Mobli

Foursquare is still the check-in app of choice for many of us, and part of that strength comes from the fact that it’s cross-platform.

Today, the foursquare team announced some major updates for its BlackBerry version, including some bug fixes and speed enhancements. That’s not the cool part though.

For those CrackBerry hounds, you know that your inbox is the most important place on your phone, so foursquare is now including its notifications within that heralded space.

The team didn’t stop there though, and has also added NFC capability into the app, which means you can now check-in if a place has a special sticker that lets you tap your device against. It’s kind of like Peet’s coffee when you pay with an NFC-enabled Visa card:

We’ve also added NFC capabilities to the app, which means you can share places and tips among other BlackBerry and Android devices (or even check in at places with NFC stickers), with a simple tap of your phone

That’s awesome, and was an Android-only feature up until now.

➤ Foursquare for BlackBerry

We’re seeing reports of an unfortunate incident at a BBM party BlackBerry is holding in London. Apparently there is at least one stabbing victim, and those at the party aren’t allowed to leave.

Here are some of the tweets reporting from the scene, along with photos:

Two people stabbed at the #BBMParty, venue now a crime scene. Shizzetwitpic.com/959ldt

— George Eason (@mrgeorgeeason) April 3, 2012

There’s been an incident at the Blackberry party and no one is currently allowed to leave #bbmparty #OMG

— Edward Gleave (@Ed_StarOnSunday) April 3, 2012

So I can’t leave the #BBMparty cos some1 got shanked in the neck #ThisCantBeLife lockerz.com/s/198284823

— Joe (@NotUrAverageJ0) April 4, 2012

OhmyGOD someones been stabbed with a broken bottle at the #bbmparty !? That’s awful. How absolutely horrific.

— Jennifer-Rosellen (@JRosellenM) April 4, 2012

We sincerely hope that everyone is OK and that the crowd at the event stays calm as the police do their job. As of now, there is no official word from BlackBerry on what has happened or how it will handle the event moving forward.

UPDATE: According to a reporter at the Daily Telegraph, the police department have made one arrest:

Met: Man in serious condition in hospital after incident shortly after midnight at #bbmparty in SE1. One arrest. Guests still held.

— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) April 4, 2012

More to follow, please refresh for updates.

We realize that not all Twitter users are iOS or Android fans, that’s why there’s a version of the app for BlackBerry. It hasn’t been a fully-integrated experience, but it’s been serviceable at best. That changes today with a brand new version of the app that ties Twitter closely to BlackBerry Messenger, the platform’s most used functionality.

Here’s what Twitter had to say about the update today:

Twitter for BlackBerry makes it easier to share links to web pages directly from the browser. When you tweet a link it will automatically be shortened so it takes up fewer characters. And, you can upload photos to Twitter (pic.twitter.com) right from your device’s camera or when writing your Tweets.

Now you can connect your Twitter account with BlackBerry Messenger. This makes it possible to share your latest Tweet as your BBM Personal Message. You can also access your contacts’ Twitter accounts right from their BBM profiles.

With BlackBerry embracing Twitter, it will be interesting to see if the number of users and interactions increase on the platform, especially now that you’ll be able to find someone’s Twitter name on their BBM profile. BlackBerry keeps BBM extremely closed, so the fact that it’s opening it up to Twitter means that the two companies are working closely together on the product.

Being able to actually tweet from BBM, which we thought was the case at first, would be an absolutely killer feature, but might take a chunk of out the traffic that takes place on the messaging network now.

➤ Twitter for BlackBerry

Canadian phone and tablet manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM) has – finally, one might add – started selling BlackBerry smartphones in Finland, which is obviously the birthplace of one of its fiercest rivals, Nokia.

Finnish media are reporting that RIM, which has had trouble regaining relevance in a world quickly getting overtaken by Apple, Android phone manufacturers and the Nokia/Microsoft alliance, believes it can sway business users.

It’s the first time Finns can purchase BlackBerry phones; Finland was the only European country that didn’t have them up for sale until now.

RIM announced last month that it had teamed up with mobile virtual network operator Cubio, but BlackBerrys are now ripe for the shipping.

Paul Lucier, who runs RIM’s operations in Northern Europe and Russia, told reporters that he’s well aware that BlackBerry will not become the primary smartphone vendor in Finland any time soon, but that the company felt the need to increase its presence and awareness of its phones in the country regardless.

We say it’s time for a quick poll. Who do you think has the best chance of success: beleaguered Nokia killing it in the United States and Canada, or fading star RIM becoming a top phone vendor in Finland?

As we reported today, Wikipedia will be shutting down its English version on Wednesday in protest of SOPA and PIPA. It hopes to educate its users on the two proposed acts and ask them to contact their local congress members to stop them from passing.

Wikipedia is a huge resource of information and many rely on it for homework or just for personal browsing purposes. It’s such an important resource that most of its pages surface as a top Google search result for a prominent figure or event. Having said that, there are ways that you can keep a copy of Wikipedia for yourself. Yes, the entire thing.

There are extremely geeky ways to do this, such as mirroring the entire site, but this will take a lot of technical knowledge, know-how, setup. Instead of downloading the entire Wikipedia database, here are a few ways that will cost you a few bucks, but are infinitely simpler.

The apps below don’t require you to be online to view the pages, and you’ll be able to reference Wikipedia no matter where you are, even when it goes dark on Wednesday.

All of Wikipedia

All of Wikipedia is a brilliant and feature-rich app for your iOS device. It will even prompt you to download a dump of the latest Wikipedia pages in a way that requires no technical knowledge whatsoever. All you have to do is give it some time. And by “some time”, I mean generally between 3 and 4 hours depending on the speed of your connection.

➤ All of Wikipedia / $8.99

WikiPock

WikiPock also brings Wikipedia to your mobile device no matter where you are. It’s available for Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian devices. In a nifty spin, if you don’t have the space on your device for Wikipedia, they will ship you a pre-loaded memory card with Wikipedia on it. Of course that won’t help you when it goes dark on Wednesday, but it’s definitely good to know. While not as pretty as All of Wikipedia, WikiPock gets the job done.

➤ WikiPock / $9.99

Offline Wiki

Offline Wiki is an extension for the Chrome browser that lets you grab a copy of Wikipedia for your computer. The extension does all of the downloading and decompressing of the massively huge files so you don’t have to. The other great thing is that you can read Wikipedia in your browser as you’d normally do.

➤ Offline Wiki / Free

Kiwix

Kiwix is an offline reader that you can download for Windows, Linux, and Mac. It’s a project supported by Wikipedia itself, so it definitely has a thriving community behind it. This software requires you to download a copy of Wikipedia yourself, which you can do here. Once you’ve downloaded the gigantic file and decompress it, Kiwix will take it from there.

➤ Kiwix / Free

Wiki Offline

Wiki Offline is a Mac app that works extremely well on your desktop. It includes features like full-screen reading and image galleries. Like most of the apps listed above, it prompts you to download Wikipedia and takes care of all of the heavy lifting for you. Since it’s for the desktop, you can customize things like the fonts and theme of the application.

➤ Wiki Offline / $9.99

So there you have it, five ways to get your own copy of Wikipedia in English before it shuts down on Wednesday in protest of SOPA. So far, the foundation is getting quite a bit of support in its efforts to raise awareness about acts that could endanger free enterprise on the Internet, as well as call politicians out on their failures at communicating why an act like SOPA is necessary. Even though it will be down, Wikipedia is a resource a lot of us rely on, so it’s best to be prepared.

In what sounds like a lost episode of The Sopranos or CSI, reports are surfacing that clues to the murder of a Canadian mob boss were found hidden in encrypted BlackBerry messages.

According to The Vancouver Sun, mobsters tend to communicate using BlackBerry Messenger since its messages are encrypted and unable to intercept. Apparently, the encryption doesn’t mean that police can’t ask RIM to get involved to bring messages to a trial as evidence.

While the Quebec police aren’t commenting on their methods, it seems like there is some history for getting RIM’s assistance as part of a court case.

After a case in Pakistan, RIM gave a statement suggesting that it would follow the law and hand over any information that is required on a case by case basis:

Like others in our industry, from time to time, we may receive requests from legal authorities for lawful access assistance. We are guided by appropriate legal processes and publicly disclosed lawful access principles in this regard, as we balance any such requests against our priority of maintaining the privacy rights of our users.

Of course RIM isn’t handing your messages over to just anyone, but in the case of Salvatore Montagna’s murder, the case against suspect Raynald Desjardins appears to revolve around BlackBerry messages between the two. One lawyer, Marcel Danis, called it a first for him:

In my experience, this is the first time police intercepted blackberry conversations.

Did RIM hand the data over, or is the BlackBerry thing a smoking gun? Since all of the requests for information are sealed, I guess we’ll never know.

Glympse, a unique location sharing app announced today that the Android version of its app has been downloaded over one million times. This is a huge milestone for the service, that also offers iOS, Windows Phone, and Blackberry version.

Regarding the milestone, Glympse Co-Founder and CEO Bryan Trussel had this to say:

We’re thrilled that our Android install base has grown over 400 percent in less than a year. It’s a testament to the value users see in our simple and safe approach to location sharing.

The Glympse app allows you to share your real-time location to friends and family for short periods of time. For example, you could send a Glympse alert to your wife to let her know that you’re on your way home. She could then track your movement on a map in real-time from an app or on the web.

It’s not as creepy as it first sounds, it’s actually quite useful if someone wants to ask you to pick up something from a nearby store and sees you’re nowhere near it.

The app doesn’t care about “what” you’re doing, but focuses on the “where”. There aren’t any check-ins or badges with the app, just simple sharing on Twitter and Facebook.

The Android Market has taken a long time to even compare to Apple’s App Store, but numbers like this show developers that if they haven’t ported their iOS app for Android yet, it might be time now. On any platform, 750,000 downloads in less than a year is huge.

In June, the company announced that it raised a $7.5 million series B round, and that it had crossed the one million user barrier.

➤ Glympse

There are quite a few restaurant and food recommendation apps such as Dinevore, TV Foodmaps, Alfred, and Yelp. And that’s only a few of them.

Chefs Feed aims to change the food recommendation game by bringing you suggestions from actual well-known and respected chefs in your particular city. Right now, Chefs Feed has information and chef recommendations for Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. The company promises that Seattle, New Orleans, DC, Boston, and Philadelphia are on the way. The app is available for iOS, Android, and Blackberry.

The company isn’t alone with the app, as Virgin America is an official launch partner and is airing a documentary about the Chefs Feed app on its airlines.

Here’s a video from the company, which explains Chefs Feed:

Let the chefs show you the way

Once you sign up and choose your location, the Chefs Feed app grabs your location and gives you the option to look for restaurants and food by Chef or by dish. Since these aren’t your friends and are trained professionals, their recommendations might actually help you make a better decision quicker.

The app for iOS is gorgeous, and everything is tied together beautifully. The food items, restaurants, and chefs are all objects in the system and flowing between them is simple and fast. Once you tap through to a chef, you can read about what restaurant they work at, what foods they recommend and where, and what accolades they’ve received during their career. Chefs Feed has launched with very well-known professionals, some of which have been on the popular TV show “Iron Chef”.

Rating and reviewing

While the chefs are driving the experience on the Chefs Feed app, you can review an item yourself if you’ve already tried it, or add it to try later. Your account stores your list of reviews and plans to try things, so while you’re out and about, the app can lead you to your next restaurant destination.

It’s actually a great experience to let your friends suggest where you go to eat and what you eat once you’re there. I’ve personally experienced some reviews on Yelp though that weren’t helpful, because the person may have been at the restaurant at the wrong time, or was having a bad day. Having trained professional chefs tell you what they think is well cooked, in season, and something that has impressed them, has a very different and important value.

I’d like to see Chefs Feed expand to the cities we mentioned above quickly, and provide an easy way for chefs and restaurants get themselves onto the platform. It doesn’t seem like its site provides an application to do so at this time.

If you’d like a professional to tell you what they suggest for your next meal, then give Chefs Feed a try.