We are very excited to be announcing the release of Viira 3.0! The latest version contains a lot of productivity enhancements that many of you have requested and we are very happy to be bringing all these new capabilities right at your fingertips.

Here is what’s new in Viira 3.0:

• In-Basket: Designed specifically for the collection phase of Getting Things Done, Viira’s In-Basket provides a convenient place to quickly enter a number of tasks, ideas and reminders. All tasks, native tasks, email and SMS tasks that have not been assigned a project, context or day will appear in the In-Basket.
• Search. Quickly find the task that you were looking from Viira’s Tasks View with Viira’s fast search.
• Reminders. Many of you have asked for the ability to add a reminder to a particular task, and we are happy to bring this feature to you! Although David Allen warns against relying too heavily on reminders in your GTD system, if used properly they can be a powerful ogranizational tool.
• BlackBerry Tasks integration: Viira loads all tasks from your BlackBerry’s native Tasks application in the In-Basket from where you can further assign then to a project, context or day.
• Hide Completed. Hide all completed tasks and focus on what remains to get done. Hide completed is available from all of Viira’s views and all your completed tasks will appear once again when you select “Show Completed”.
• Quick new project/context creation: Have you ever started entering a task only to realise that the project or context you want to classify it under has not been created yet? With Viira 3 you can quickly create a new project or context right from the new task editor without having to switch views!
• And more! Viira 3.0 contains a number of other smaller enhancements, too numerous to list here.

So grab the free trial and see for yourself what Viira 3.0 can do! You can download the Viira 3.0 free trial from the Viira download page or by pointing your BlackBerry’s browser to our mobile site www.kartamobile.com/bb.

For all of you using Viira 2, Viira 3 was designed to run alongside Viira 2 so that you can check out the free trial before committing to the new version. Viira 3 will also import your Viira 2 data. Buyers of Viira 2 are also eligible to upgrade for a special upgrade price of only $19.99.

Viira 3 is compatible with all modern BlackBerry devices all the way back to OS 4.6.

In this week’s update we have added 24 hour time formatting to Viira capabilities. Appointments, both when edited and when displayed in Viira’s Day View will display in 24hr time format for all of you using Viira in countries that traditionally use 24 hour time format (or all of you who have set your device to 24hr mode). For example instead of appearing as “2:00pm-3:00pm” your appointments will now show as “14:00-15:00″.

The 24hr time formatting kicks in automatically when Viira detects that your device is set to display times in 24hr format. Otherwise the familiar 12 hour time format is used as before.

As always, this update is a free upgrade to all buyers of the full version and can be downloaded OTA by pointing you BlackBerry to our BlackBerry site www.kartamobile.com/bb.

Over the past few weeks since Viira Outlook Suite version 1.1 was released we ended up performing various housekeeping updates and bug fixes that are now collectively being bundled in this software update. There haven’t been major features introduced or affected in 1.1.03 as the scope of this update has largely been minor fixes, stability enhancements and UI touch-ups.

The bulk of the touch-up were in the The Outlook Plugin though the BlackBerry client did receive a minor tune-up as well.

Here are some of the more notable fixes/ehnancements we did in version 1.1.03:

• Fixed a problem where in certain environments an exception was being generated when closing Outlook (Outlook plugin)
• Added the ability to scroll with the mouse wheel in the task notes field (Outlook plugin).
• New projects and contexts are immediately available for selection when creating a task from email (BlackBerry client).
• Ability to insert a newline in the task notes field by pressing ENTER (Outlook plugin)

You can download the latest version 1.1.03 from the Viira Outlook Suite download page.

This article describes what to do in order to make sure your Viira data is transitioned successfully when you upgrade the device software (OS) on your BlackBerry.

Many of you are “taking the plunge” and upgrading the OS on your BlackBerry devices. While there are many benefits from doing this, the steps below will ensure that your Viira data follows you along on your freshly-upgraded BlackBerry.

It is important to keep in mind that upgrading the OS on your BlackBerry starts with erasing all data from your device . A new OS version is essentially a fresh start, and the new OS versions require a clean blank slate to start from. This is why it is critical to perform a full device backup before upgrading your OS. Otherwise, your old data may simply be lost forever.

Here are the steps to take in order to ensure your Viira data is restored correctly on your upgraded device:

1. Backup Your Viira Data. The BlackBerry Desktop Software performs a quick, one-click back up of all your device data which will automaticlly back up your Viira data in the process as well. More information can be found from our Backup/Restore How-To Article.

Note that data backup/restore is only avaialable on the full version of Viira.

2. Perform the OS upgrade. We won’t provide much details here. You know what you are doing here.

3. Re-install Viira. After your OS upgrade is complete you will need to install Viira on your newly-upgraded device. The backup file contains only application data and not the applications themselves, so performing a data restore will not re-install Viira.

Restoring your Viira data (step 4) requires that Viira is properly installed on your device, otherwise the restore will not take effect.

You can download the latest version of Viira by pointing your BlackBerry to our mobile site www.kartamobile.com/bb, or by visiting the downloads section on our site.

4. Restore your Viira data. At this point your can either perform a full restore all of of your pre-upgrade device’s data, or select only to restore Viira’s data. It really depends on what makes most sense in your case. You can select to to restore only Viira’s data by using the advanced backup/restore tips we describe in our Backup/Restore How-To.

As version 6.0 of the BlackBerry Deskopt Software introduced significant changes to the backup/restore UI and workflow, below is a screenshot that should give you a good visual idea of how to perform selective, Viira data-only restore on BlackBerry Desktop Software 6.0:

With your BlackBerry plugged in to your computer via USB, open the backup file you created in step 2, clicking “Select device data and settings” then click on “Viira 2″.  Pressing Restore will restore your Viira data to your BlackBerry.

Outlook 2010 support is now available in the Viira Outlook Suite! As promised earlier to many of you upgrading to MS Outlook 2010 or about to upgrade in the coming months, you can now take full advantage of the only fully-synchronized BlackBerry-Outlook GTD organization system using the latest version of MS Outlook.

You can download the latest version 1.0.5 of the Viira Outlook Suite Outlook plugin from the Viira Outlook Suite downlod page and install the Outloook Suite BlackBerry client OTA by pointing your BlackBerry to our mobile site www.kartamobile.com/bb/outlook.

***IMPORTANT*** To install the Viira Outlook Suite Outlook plugin, you must uninstall any previous versions of the plugin from your computer (via Control Panel->Programs and Features)

While we are still actively working on the Viira Outlook Suite 1.1 and you will be seeing the results within a matter of weeks, we wanted to make MS Outlook 2010 support available as soon as we completed the work on it. Those of you that have Outlook 2010 can continue to apply the principles of Getting Thigns Done day-to-day with your BlackBerry and Outlook!

A month and half after the release of version 1.0 of the Viira Outlook Suite, we are very glad to hear that many of you are using its unique capabilities to  stay on top of your commitments and get things done. As this is the first step in what will be a long journey of bringing you the most powerful Getting Things Done-based personal organization system for Outlook and BlackBerry, we wanted to share with you what we are working on and give you a glimpse of what will be coming out next.

• Outlook 2010 support. With teams and organization around the world slowly but surely migrating to the latest version of MS Office, Outlook 2010 integration is at the very top of our to-do list. Outlook 2010 support will be available in the Viira Outlook Suite 1.1, and all buyers of version 1.0 will receive it as a complimentary upgrade.
• Email integration. Incorporating your email in your Getting Things Done organization system is a must-have for many of you who receive dozens, sometimes hundreds of emails a day. We are actively working on email integration and will be rolling it out in the Viira Outlook Suite 1.1.
• Faster startup. Speed of access to your GTD-based organizational system is a critical aspect that we never loose sight of. We constantly strive to make things faster and more efficient and will be rolling out performance enhancements starting with the upcoming Viira Outlook Suite version 1.1. Our internal benchmarks show our enhanced designs having drastic improvements for both the Outlook Suite plugin and the BlackBerry client - so stay tuned!
• The Viira Outlook Suite plugin - accessible from anywhere. We know that many of you power users of Outlook regularly switch between the multiple view in Outlook - Tasks, Email, Contacts, etc. We are actively working on integrating the Viira Outlook Suite plugin with different areas inside MS Outlook in order to provide you with quick, one-click access to you trusted GTD system and all your Viira Outlook Suite data.

We are all very excited for the upcoming 1.1 release, so stay tuned! If you haven`t already done so, you can sign up for updates and be among the first ones to know when the 1.1 is available for download. As we always do with any of our software products, the 1.1 release comes as a complimentary upgrade to all buyers of version 1.0.

Every year the BlackBerry developer community gathers for a week-long conference to discuss the leading-edge of BlackBerry technology as well as to catch a glimpse of the future of the BlackBerry platform. For the third year in a row, Karta Mobile was among the proud attendees, and we were particularly thrilled to have been there during one of the most exciting announcements ever made at DevCon.

During the conference keynote to DevCon 2010 at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, Mike Lazaridis, the Co-CEO of RIM unveiled the next frontier for the BlackBerry platform - the BlackBerry PlayBook. Rumours about a BlackBerry tablet had been swirling around for some time leading up to the conference, from sites like biygeniusreports.com to mainstream media, so it wasn’t entirely a surprise for many there.

While a lot can be said about the PlayBook’s fascinating hardware - the dual core 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 1080p HD video - what we found most fascinating is the ability to pair a PlayBook to a connected BlackBerry. The pairing will be secure and done via Bluetooth, essentially empowering a PlayBook to become an extension to your BlackBerry. In addition to making email attachments instantly viewable on a larger screen, the PlayBook will no doubt enable a new class of mobile applications based on this PlayBook - BlackBerry pairing. One thing for sure, we are all very excited to port Viira to the PlayBook as soon as the device becomes available!

Full press release of the BlackBerry PlayBook announcement can found here.

We recently received our much anticipated BlackBerry Torch 9800 through our partnership with RIM, and got fast at work at making Viira available on the Torch.

The most recent version of Viira, version 2.1.2 is now available for OTA download directly from our mobile site www.kartamobile.com/bb. And here are some screenshots of Viira live on our Torch:

Viira 2.1.2 is also compatible with the newly-released BlackBerry Curve 9300, also known as the BlackBerry Curve 3G.

While we normally don’t comment on new devices and the excitement surrounding them, our entire dev team has been absolutely wowed by the Torch 9800. Everyone feels like it is an incredible additional to the BlackBerry roster, nothing short of a game-changer. What makes it so remarkable? In addition to much of the OS 6 goodness, we found the ability to type with precision with the pull-out QWERTY while at the same time reaching in and “working” the touchscreen makes doing almost anything incredibly fast.

To all of you migrating to a BlackBerry Torch or just joining the BlackBerry world with it, congratulations on a great acquisition. The Torch looks like an incredible platform for getting things done!

he Viira Outlook Suite version 1.0 has been released. We are very proud to be the first to bring you an integrated BlacKBerry-Outlook GTD solution, and hope that it will help you stay on top of your commitments and get things done in your day-to-day lives.

Download The Viira Outlook Suite

Here are the new features that the 1.0 release introduces over the beta version 0.9.8:

• Inbox. All unassigned tasks (i.e. tasks without a project, context or date) appear in your Inbox. A must-have capability for the collection phase of GTD®!
• Outlook Tasks Integration: Your Outlook tasks appear in your Viira Outlook Suite Inbox, ready to be assigned to a project, context or day. Switch from using Outlook for GTD with ease!
• BlackBerry Tasks Integration. Your native BlackBerry tasks appear in the Inbox of your Viira Outlook Suite BlackBerry client.
• Viira 2 Data Import. Buyers of Viira 2 can easily transition their BlackBerry GTD system to the Viira Outlook Suite. Just go to Settings->Import Viira 2 Data (activation required).

The Viira Outlook Suite comes with a 14-day free trial. As with Viira, buyers of the full version of the Viira Outlook Suite will receive point upgrades for free. For example, buyers of the Viira Outlook Suite 1.0 will receive the 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. as free upgrades.

For more information on how to install, set up and make the most out of the Viira Outlook Suite Outlook plugin and BlackBerry client that comes with it, please visit the Viira Outlook Suite page.

Beta Members, Buyers Of Viira 2 Receive Almost 50% off!

To show our appreciation to everyone who took part in our beta program and helped us ensure that the Viira Outlook Suite works and works well in a wide range of environments, we are extending a one-time offer of $30 off the regular price!

As promised before, buyers of Viira 2 interested in migrating to an integrated BlackBerry-0utlook GTD system get the full purchase price of Viira 2 as a purchase credit towards the Viira Outlook Suite (updated amount will appear in the Paypal checkout page).

In our ongoing effort to continuously enhance the Viira Outlook Suite and solidify its position as the ultimate GTD solution for Outlook and BlackBerry, we have released another update to both the Outlook plugin and BlackBerry client.

Following up from the previous update, the new version 0.9.8 adds a few new capabilities to help you get things done:

• Delegate. You can now delegate projects and contexts from the Outlook plugin as well as the BlackBerry client. Simply select “Delegate” from the BlackBerry context menu as well as from the “More Options” dropdown meny in the Outlook plugin.
• Support for MS Outlook 2003. We are constantly striving to make the Viira Outlook Suite available on as many configurations as possible, and are happy to report that Outlook 2003 is now officially supported.
• Feedback. We love hearing from you and your feedback is crucial in helping us decide what to build next. The Outlook plugin now offers a convenient way for you to send us your thoughts and suggestions for improvement - directly from the Viira Outlook Suite.

You can download the latest version of the Outlook plugin from the Viira Outlook Suite beta page, and you can grab the updated BlackBerry client by pointing your BlackBerry’s browser to www.kartamobile.com/bb/outlook.php