The five best open-source downloads for your BlackBerry

If PC Advisor says that Funambol is one of the five best open-source downloads for your BlackBerry... you should give it a try. I have it on mine and it is quite good. The UI of the email client is definitely better than the native one. We are missing some features here and there but for your consumer email it should be good enough.

Funambol for BlackBerry
If your RIM smartphone is connected to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), you very likely already received 'push' email, at least from your corporate Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise mail account, and can sync PIM data such as calendar and contact information via USB.

But users who want push 'email' for web mail and OTA PIM sync have largely been out of luck... at least until Funambol released its latest free, open-source software.

The software consists of two parts: a push email component and PIM sync component. The push mail functionality works with popular web mail services such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail and it also supports any POP or IMAP server, according to Funambol.