AIM for the BlackBerry
Yahoo Messenger for the BlackBerry
GoogleTalk for the BlackBerry
Windows Live for the BlackBerry

About a week into getting the Bold (AT&T released the service books for AIM and Yahoo a bit later than usually, don’t ask me why), just about all chat clients now have support for the Bold, so with the included BlackBerry Messenger, the Bold has become the ultimate messaging phone. All are integrated very well and there is very little lag between sending and receiving messages.

Google Maps
Good thing that the Bold’s (a-)GPS isn’t locked down by AT&T and you can use any application that you want that uses GPS/a-GPS except for BlackBerry Maps, which AT&T decided to axe to include AT&T Navigator, which is $10 a month.

Gmail
With the Bold not supporting IMAP, there is only one way to sync Gmail with your Bold and is with the Gmail App by Google. Mind you it doesn’t support things such as labeling and I struggled to get it to auto suggest contacts and groups. There was also the issue of the updates not coming in real time, it seems that the Gmail App only checks sometimes, which is probably because it doesn’t want to be a real resource and network hog.

Facebook
Not great, but a decent way to view facebook on your BlackBerry other than using the subpar browser. You can only write messages to one person and not multiple people though, which is a real downside (note to facebook dev crew: implement a real mail and messaging system already, will ya).

FlyCast
Until Pandora/RIM (or an ambitious developer) codes up a Pandora app, this is probably the best alternative. Works decent, but it was hard to navigate seeing as the UI was just an emulation of the iPhone interface.

qik
Streaming video from your Bold to the interwebs, works well enough, but you don’t really know that it actually streamed online, but you can just go online later and check that it did and if it didn’t upload it later from your Bold.

Opera Mini
Great alternative to the built-in browser. It runs quicker, but it can’t run Javascript and it feels a bit slower than Opera Mini in the JVM of my old WinMo Tilt.

Mobipocket Reader
If you are a reading addict this is a great alternative to dedicated E-Book readers like the Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle or the iRex Illiad. I can’t say I can stare at the insanely bright screen for extended periods, but for those short trips to work on the subway where I don’t have any cell signal this holds me over pretty well.

Yahoo Go!
This is actually a very well done application by the Yahoo! team. It is very slick, supports Flickr where you can actually view photos, Yahoo Mail (not full HTML), news feeds (RSS) with full image support, weather, stocks, maps and directions which make use of the GPS. One complaint is that it is a tad slow sometimes. When I attempted to add the feed for Engadget, it took a few minutes for it to add to my news feeds.

TwitterBerry
For all you twitter fanatics, works extremely well and only updates when you want to unless of course you have it open, which it will update whenever one of the people you are following updates.

Newgator Go!
Probably my favorite application for the BlackBerry, one that I like so much that it is in my top five row. I am pretty much addicted to RSS and this is by far the best RSS application for the BlackBerry. The only downside is that it doesn’t support images, but it makes up for it in strides with the ability to clip articles, quickness and the ability to sync with your own news feeds on newsgator, where if you have multiple devices or are using the desktop applications FeedDemon or NetNewsWire you can customize what news feeds it updates.

Styling and Shortcuts:
So shortcuts are all generally the same as Firefox, which is a great thing, since I’m just about a shortcut freak. I’ve been known to stop using applications if they don’t have shortcuts. The clean fullscreen style look is really nice, it gives it this strange inverted fresh feel that has been lacking in many browsers.

Performance:
I thought this multi-process thing was a great paradigm when I first read about it, but I have some reservations about it. Right now I have about 15 tabs open in one window and bringing up the task manager I seek 10 “chrome.exe” processes running. I’m not sure where the other 5 are, but it takes up roughly 215 MB of ram. Opera with 17 tabs, takes up roughly 96 MB. Firefox with a whooping 32 tabs across two windows and 14 plugins installed eats up 457 MB. Granted, these aren’t true benchmarks, I’m just making a note of all this so do with it what you will. Chrome hasn’t really chugged along on my machine, but my thinkpad is handling it all (all browsers at the same time) pretty well.

I currently have version 0.2.149.27, so it has a ways to go. If Google keeps this thing on track, it has a wealth of possibilities. But my prediction now is that everyone and their mother is gonna create a competing browser now, which could be a disastrous thing.