BlackBerry is looking to create brand evangelists with its latest user-generated content (UGC) contest and by turning consumers personal stories into viral sensations across the web.

Touch It. Love It. Share It. Win It. began midway through September and is nearing the end of its submission phase. Participants can upload their BlackBerry Storm smartphone stories to the contest website in either North America or the United Kingdom. (more…)

So you want to know what teens are thinking? With all the social networking sites, blogs, fanzines and microblogs floating around the Internet, how hard can it be? The trick is to figure out how to filter all that unfiltered user-generated content and turn it into something useful.

That’s exactly what Pulse purports to do. Created by Long Island New York’s Echometrix, Pulse claims to be the first real-time Web-based sentiment analytics tool that specializes on collecting information on the teen market (ages 7 to 21). It aggregates chats, blogs, instant messaging and other UGC to provide constant summaries on what teens are thinking and feeling about a given subject. (more…)

Upickem sports contests has launched its new mobile version for the NCAA basketball championship. The contest will be the first Upickem sports contest that is fully operational on iPhone, iPod Touch, Windows Mobile Devices and newer BlackBerry phones. This custom contest engine lets companies run online, and now mobile, contests without the expense of building their own platforms. (more…)

E.W. Scripps has selected Cell Journalist to provide its platform for users to submit images and videos to its chain of 15 newspapers in nine U.S. states.

The Cell Journalist platform enables any individual with a cell phone, iPhone, or Blackberry to upload images and videos of breaking news and newsworthy events as they happen. The platform will also allow Scripps’ editors to publish user-generated content online (and in print) quickly. (more…)

Qik has launched a new application that will allow its users to stream video live from their cell phones to the Web without the hassle of uploading.

The software enables its users to share anything with anyone at anytime creating two way communications with video, to chat in real time to the device’s screen while the video is being broadcast.

The Qik Web page has its own social networking capabilities, including a self-serve events page, top ‘qikkers’, hot qiks and qik groups, as it tries to create a community out of its users. (more…)