Posted on August 13, 2008, at 9:34 am .
BlackBerry Answers, a rather underwhelming mobile support service launched in July for North America, released internationally recently, although it’s still only in English. The results tend to cover the more basic stuff (good luck finding results on tethering or OS upgrades), but the answers that are there tend to be pretty well-documented. If you’re still learning your way around the BlackBerry environment, it might be worth your while to bookmark the help page on your mobile browser. Maybe we can see some more language support soon…?
(Support Community Forums via BerryReview)
Posted on July 24, 2008, at 6:40 pm .
As you can tell from our Zumobi hands-on impressions post, the mobile widget application can be quite the memory hog by BlackBerry standards (highly understandable considering what it provides) and has been a little troublesome for members of the BlackBerry Nation rocking, ahem, less-than-new devices. However, our friends at Zumobi aren’t ones to rest in times of need, and have put together a video of handy memory management tips so your BlackBerry is running clean and your Zoomspace is quick.
Check out the video above (compiled partially from tips offered right here on BlackBerry Cool), but make sure to post your own memory management tip in the comments. Special thanks to the lovely Beth for compiling the video!
Watch the BlackBerry memory management video after the jump
Posted on July 3, 2008, at 9:32 am .
Hooah, that’s a sale, alright. Punch in the coupon code JULY30 at checkout and get 30% off deals at Bplay – that includes, themes, ringtones and games. Feeling patriotic? Why not grab the Stars and Stripes theme, or O Canada? Maybe looking for a more political angle? Democrat and Republican themes are still up. If games are more your bag, Call of Duty 3 and Whitehouse Rumble are both in the 4th. of July spirit. Looking for ringtones? Bplay has a whole category of patriotic ringtones for ya. If you’d rather save your coin, check out Astraware’s free Fireworks app, so you can get all warmed up for the real thing.
Of course, not everyone’s the flag-waving type – maybe you’d rather just get a good deal a slick iBerry theme. And hey, if you’ve got the Wallet application loaded, Bplay can now get all your payment info from there.
Posted on June 2, 2008, at 1:23 pm .
Ever get the feeling that your used BlackBerry is… not so fresh? Want to make sure the BlackBerry you’re looking to sell finds a good home without giving away any of your personal information to its new owner? If so, make sure to read the new BlackBerry Technical Support Document detailing everything you need to know about buying or selling a used BlackBerry. If that BlackBerry happens to be one of the new Bolds, well, you know who to email next.
Download and view the .pdf here
Posted on April 27, 2008, at 3:30 pm .
The delirious post monkeys over at our sister site QuicklyBored recently received BlackBerrys to increase productivity (i.e., they wanted a raise, so we gave them some of our hand-me-downs instead). Since then, they’ve been blogging like crazy, describing both the joys and the frustrations involved in their new addiction. Our boy Simon also sat down with them for a podcast on the BlackBerry’s mobile entertainment capabilities and the most recent BlackBerry 9000 rumors. You can listen to it here, and check out some of their most recent posts below.
Installing software to your BlackBerry via OTA
Taking BlackBerry screenshots is a huge pain
Using TinyTube on your BlackBerry (Part 2)
Feel free to mock their blatant newbery, but make sure to also include some handy tips to help them along their way. The BlackBerry community takes care of its own, after all.
Posted on February 15, 2008, at 8:26 am .
InsideCRM has just busted out a great list of resources spanning the whole BlackBerry community, and covering topics from simple keyboard shortcuts to highly recommended software. There are a lot of layers of functionality to a BlackBerry, and this list of links is a great tool to help you dig through ‘em. One new tidbit I found out was how to dial letter numbers like 1-800-GOOG-411 by holding down the ALT key. There was also a guide on there for installing BlackBerry apps through Mac OS X, which I’m sure some Mac users out there would appreciate. I’m a little sad not to see Viigo on that list, though… Thanks Amy!
Posted on February 5, 2008, at 1:29 pm .
Just stumbled on this solid guide to conserving battery life on mobiles. One of BlackBerry’s big selling points is killer battery life, but that’s no excuse to get lazy – you can stretch it even farther by following some of these easy-to-remember tips. A no-brainer is to turn off extra wireless functions like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS or dual-mode roaming on the World Edition, and turning off vibrating alerts.
Some lesser-known tips include only using your BlackBerry in areas where you have a strong signal, since more battery life is used up trying to establish connections over weak signals. Initializing a new battery with 5-6 hours of juice before using it should also increase the maximum capacity in the long run. The guide also suggests cleaning battery contacts every once in awhile in order to keep power transfer optimized. There’s plenty more there, so take a look.
Posted on January 24, 2008, at 8:03 am .
Margaret Genet is an operations analyst at the insurance company Aflac who doubles as a tech concierge, teaching BlackBerry tips and tricks to other members of the company. CIO.com got her to share some of her secrets with them and posted the results. The tricks are organized by category: typing tricks, such as holding down a key to type a capitalized letter or inserting the date by hitting the L key followed by D and then space; messaging tips like how to turn on automatic spellchecking; phone suggestions, including how to access email and other documents during a call; and even a few solutions for common problems or errors. All in all, there’s a wealth of information even for BlackBerry gurus, with the only caveat being that some of the methods might not work on older models. Between this guide and our other tips, anyone can get the most out of their phone.
Posted on January 16, 2008, at 4:20 pm .
Josep just pointed us to a way of updating your Facebook status message through your BlackBerry’s GTalk client. Now, why you wouldn’t just get the Facebook application is beyond me, but maybe you spend a lot of time on GTalk and not much on Facebook. I don’t know. Anyway, FON Labs is behind this, and seem to have a few cool projects under their belt.
1. Add facebook@fon.com to your Gtalk contact list
2. Type help in the chat window to receive instructions
3. Get your identification code clicking on the link in the message
4. Type “identify facebook code” in the chat window
5. Type your status message in the chat window
6. Click on the link to authorize the application to update your Facebook status in the future (this will be asked you just the first time).
Posted on January 10, 2008, at 12:43 pm .
Speaking of Viigo, they’ve recently posted a tip on how to keep an eye on a bunch of your networks on your BlackBerry through a little something called Plaxo. What Plaxo does is tap into your various online services like Facebook, Digg, Yelp, Twitter, and the like, and funnels all the events happening in them to a feed called the Pulse, which can be broken up into Friends, Family, Business and Me streams. From Plaxo you can create RSS feeds which you can pop into Viigo via the Add Web Feed option. Since I started using the Flock browser, I’ve gotten a nice taste of this growing multi-network shtick, and it’s hard to deny the appeal if you use any one of them. In fact, having a bunch of services under one roof often gets you involved with new networks you hadn’t known about before.
