Three must-have applications for your BlackBerry

Get a new BlackBerry? I did (finally), and of course the first thing I did was search the web for some new applications. Here are my top three picks.

BeeJive's JiveTalk: I am an instant-messaging fiend, which is why I decided to go with a phone with a great keyboard. JiveTalk offers a great all-in-one IM solution for those with accounts on all the major players. It supports AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, and more, and you can sign into multiple accounts at the same time. It also uses your data account instead of text messaging—a definite plus for those with an unlimited data plan. Short load times coupled with a robust feature set makes this worth every penny of the $19.99 price. Give it a trial run with their downloadable demo.

Opera Mini: BlackBerry's integrated web browser gets the job done for mobile web pages, but for pages without a mobile portal, it leaves much to be desired. Opera Mini can load full web pages and supports basic mouse functions using the trackball. It also supports RSS feeds, file downloads and some CSS and javascript, but it has no flash support (sorry YouTubers). It loads quickly and starts on a really simple and flexible landing page. Oh, and I forgot to mention its best feature—it's completely free.

Yahoo! Go 3.0 Beta: I know it sounds like I'm advertising for the mothership, but it wouldn't be on this list unless I really wanted it to be. Yahoo! Go features your standard search and email access, but the magic happens with the installable widgets. You can choose from adding news, sports, finance, maps, weather, entertainment, eBay, and more. It's still a little buggy and load times are a bit slow, but being able to bid on an auction while finding the route with the least amount of traffic makes it a winner for me.