Making It Up As I Go Along - BlackBerry

121 Blackberry Tips - some good ones, too!

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0600

A friend and fellow Blackberry enthusiast just turned me on to this blog post featuring a very comprehensive list of BB tips and resources, including several very useful keyboard shortcuts and other tricks I was not aware of at all.

Here's the full link: http://www.insidecrm.com/features/121-blackberry-tips-021408/

YouMail VoiceMail for Blackberry

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:35:00 -0600

If you call GoWest Web outside of office hours, or during an important meeting, you will get our voicemail. As part of the business image upgrade for GoWest Web Design and Hosting, I went looking for a solution with features that would allow us to respond more quickly to customer voicemail.

I've always used my mobile voicemail for the business (via a simple call forwarding option w/ my local phone company), which allows me to get forwarded calls and dial in to hear voicemail, but I know there are better options. I tried Vonage for a while, and though I prefer working with my local landline company, I really liked some of the features, especially the option to have an email sent with an audio attachment of the voicemail message. It just makes sense.

On the recommendation of several trusted professionals, I just set up YouMail on my BlackBerry curve and so far I am really impressed.

You can read about YouMail here: http://www.youmail.com/youmail/home.do
I don't have too much interest in the pay-for services like transcription to text, but could see that being useful in the future. For now I am using the Free version of YouMail, which is plenty.

I had one issue with the YouMail client for BlackBerry, where the screen came up blank with no options, just a heading and no inbox. Has something to do w/ being logged out while connected... or something... but, while seeking that solution, I found this blog post about VYMail , and now I think I've got the best setup possible... I used the very nice YouMail interface to set up my account, verify my phone, etc, and installed VYmail on my Blackberry for viewing and managing messages.

The thing that won me over (and sent me racing to my blog admin to write about the wonders of YouMail): when I had a problem during testing, I called YouMail support, got a very friendly, very clear-speaking helpful person, and within 20 seconds, the solution!(Calls forwarded from landline to mobile were being greeted with a login prompt instead of a greeting message - fix was adding the landline number to youmail account, and removing 'automatic login' from that number).

So.. I am totally sold. There are a number of features that I haven't checked out yet but here's my current setup

1) Landline w/ Local phone company ( call me... 435.644.8523 )

2) Forwards to Mobile after 4 rings when in office, instantly when out or on other call.

3) Mobile is set up on YouMail, with a custom greeting - if I don't answer (or I push 'ignore' when I see you on caller ID) you get my YouMail instead of my usual Verizon mailbox message.

4) When you leave me a message, I get an SMS text notification, and within seconds, an Email with the voicemail attached. Even better, the 'VYmail' app on my BB notifies me that I have a new message, and downloads the audio for me. One click - no dialing, no password - and I hear the message, knowing I can replay anytime and will have a backup on my pc when I get back to the office.

Thanks YouMail for a great free app, and vyMail for an excellent add-on tool!

BOLT Beta Download (for BlackBerry)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:23:00 -0600

hah. Got me too. Not the ColdFusion IDE 'Bolt' we're all waiting for, but a new BlackBerry browser by the same name.

http://www.boltbrowser.com/download.html

They're giving away invites, link just went up on www.crackberry.com

I've been Twittered...

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:41:00 -0600

...or tweeted... or twitified... whatever.

Ever since watching my buddy the Flying Tiger annoy his wife through an entire vacation to the states with BlackBerry in hand, I have wondered in awe, 'what is this Twitter thing' ?

A few days ago I decided to finally find out for real. So far it has burned up a good part of my time with relatively no real value i can think of... and i love it.

If anybody wants to Follow or Tweet me i am "GoWestWeb" ( http://twitter.com/gowestweb )

I also just found TwitterFeed.com ( http://www.twitterfeed.com ) which will supposedly post this blog entry and all that come after it to my Twit friends.

Next very important thing to discover...
how can I post photos from my BlackBerry to Twitter?

Mobile jQuery Cheat Sheet

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:13:00 -0600

http://colorcharge.com/jquery/

made for iPhone/iTouch but works great on my blackberry in Opera mobile. Unlike most of the things I bookmark on my mobile, I can actually see using this one.

here's the actual URL, click this link in your mobile browser:
http://labs.colorcharge.com/jtouch/

BlackberryBloggers.org : new site based on ColdFusionBloggers.org code

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:17:00 -0600

Fellow CF developer Chris Chin just came up with an ingenious reuse of Ray-the-CF-jedi-Camden's "ColdFusionBloggers.org" base code (an aggregated blog feed which includes posts to this blog and many many others of far greater relevance)... also a fellow BlackBerry lover, Chris decided to combine several top BB-oriented blogs into one simple, easy-to-swallow feed...

Introducing www.blackberrybloggers.org ! (also available in RSS - see the link at the bottom of any page)

More about the creation and concept on Christopher's site, here
http://www.christopherchin.com/blog/index.cfm/2009/1/2/ColdFusion-Bloggers-code-reuse-BlackberryBloggers

HTML Email on Blackberry

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:14:00 -0600

http://www.blackberryforums.com/rim-software/137798-how-enable-html-email-your-blackberry.html This post on the BlackberrryForums.com site explains how to get HTML email on your blackberry. I love having the internet in my pocket - what did I do before I had my BB Curve? - but one of the major annoyances has been the way that HTML-formatted email is displayed. Links and images are shown as HTML code, even for multi-part email where the text part would be more appropriate that the messy, pseudo-source-code view. It seemed strange to me from day one that this nifty device, with two browsers, a dedicated email system and a newsreader all running at once, didn't have a smart way to handle html email messages... until now, that is. [More]