• Neighbors service is out of beta
• VKontakte & Yandex IM services are now supported (cheers to our users from Russia!)
• IM+ is now also offered in Russian language
• SMS+ service is no longer supported
• Bugfix and performance optimization

1.6.6 Release Notes

• Support in Group Chat of BBM
• Modified User Interface
• Improved Stability & Performance

July 19, 2011 (Toronto, ON) – Polar Mobile today announced plans to launch over 500 mobile Apps with Metroland Media Group Ltd for 104 local community newspapers across smartphone and tablet devices. Metroland is Canada’s largest community newspaper publisher with a combined distribution of 5 million copies per week across all of its community newspapers.

“We are truly excited to take our leading community brands into the mobile application space with this unique and comprehensive solution, giving our readers and customers new ways to interact with our award-winning local content,” said Ian Oliver, President, Metroland Media Group.

Polar Mobile’s SMART Platform powers over 1,000 mobile Apps today across iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone smartphones for over 300 Publishers in 10 countries, including the likes of Conde Nast, Rogers Media, Khaleej Times, Digital Journal, Pro Football Weekly and Transcontinental Media.

“The local newspaper space is an untapped opportunity in mobile, as the content is exclusive and the advertiser needs are unique”, says Kunal Gupta, Chief Executive Officer, Polar Mobile. “We are proud that Metroland selected Polar Mobile to partner with to launch over 500 mobile Apps and plan to grow our presence in the local newspaper market globally”.

Local newspapers are the top source for community and neighbourhood news, local youth and high school sports, local business news, shopping and entertainment. The demographic is an appealing one for advertisers, here are results from a study released by the Suburban Newspaper Association (SNA) covering the US market (Polar Mobile is a member of the Suburban Newspaper Association):
*Median household income is $76,500 with 39% earning over $100,000;
*63% are inclined to shop on a Friday or Saturday;
*82% have attended college; and
*92% interested in local and community news.

Polar Mobile’s SMART™ Platform provides Publishers with an affordable solution that is fast and easy to get to-market across every major smartphone and tablet device. The Platform is a fully hosted and managed solution, incorporating mobile advertising, reporting, support and other key platform services. To learn more about launching Apps with Polar Mobile, visit Polar Mobile.

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About Polar Mobile
Polar Mobile provides media companies globally an industry-leading Platform that makes it fast and easy to launch branded mobile Apps across every smartphone. Over 1,000 mobile Apps are powered by Polar Mobile’s SMART™ Platform for 300 media Publishers in 10 countries, which include top tier magazines, newspapers, broadcasters and online portals across news, sports, entertainment and lifestyle media verticals. For more information, visit Polar Mobile.

Shape’s Development Head Alex and myself just had a talk with Tyler Lessard, RIM’s VP, Global Alliances and Developer Relations.

Tyler was really friendly and helpful and we have now a hope that IM+ for Playbook will be approved within two weeks or so. We understand that to approve such an complex app can take the same time or more as the development of IM+ for Playbook itself. Just as remember, the app is now for two months in the testing queue.

And the best of the talk: after years of our requests to RIM we got from Tyler a promise to consider BlackBerry Push usage for IM+. It would make user experience on the BlackBerry platform the same kind of beautiful like on iOS.