Woke up with a case of the Mondays, but all has since subsided with another visit from Mr. Bacon himself and another edition of “Bacon on BlackBerry”. This issue sees Magmic’s BlackBerry guru Jeff Bacon attack your questions about BlackBerry’s namesake, transferring your address book to your SIM card (the answer’s got bad news written all over it), and so much more. Read on.
Q: How did the Blackberry come to be called the Blackberry?
A: When a company creates a new product, they often hire a branding company to come up with a name for it. When RIM developed the BlackBerry, they hired Lexicon Branding, Inc. to help come up with a marketing plan for the new product. Since the small keyboard resembled seeds on a berry, Lexicon suggested naming the product after a fruit. They initially considered “Strawberry†but ultimately settled on “BlackBerry†which has sharp sounds and was more memorable.
Q: How do I copy or transfer my entire address book to my SIM card?
A: There’s no way to copy the entire address book all at once to the SIM card. As far as I know you have to copy them one at a time.
Q: I recently bought a blackberry 7105t. Can I load pictures or other data from my computer to my cell phone? What is the software for? I had installed it in my pc but don’t know what it’s for.
A: The Desktop Manager software is for installing and removing applications/games from you BlackBerry. It’s also used for doing backups and restoring data from/to your BlackBerry, synchronizing your BlackBerry with desktop PIM applications and setting up the email forwarding.
The Desktop Manager 4.2 will allow you to transfer media files between your desktop and your BlackBerry but it will only work with the new BlackBerry Pearl/8100 device.
Q: I have a 7130c and want to connect to my pc to retrieve my address book from outlook, But I don’t want to connect to BlackBerry’s service just to do this, is there any 3rd party software that will allow me to use the USB interface and do what I have mentioned?
A: You don’t have to have BlackBerry service to use the Desktop Manager from RIM to copy your address book from Outlook to your BlackBerry. If you plug in your BlackBerry to your USB connection and run the Desktop Manager you can copy your Outlook address book that way. It’s the easiest and most reliable way of doing it.
Q: I’m trying to use Bluetooth to pair my computer with my BB 7290. They seem to find each other and recognize the BB as a smart phone, but no services are listed. At a minimum I’d like to use the phone to allow me to dial up with my lap-top. Can you do this?
A: A BlackBerry can be paired with another Bluetooth device easily as it acts like any other Bluetooth device in this respect. However, the BlackBerry does not support very many Bluetooth profiles. It supports only the headset profile and the serial port profile – neither of which are very useful when pairing with a desktop.
Some models of BlackBerry can be used as a tethered modem. There is a great post on this here.
