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I was reading up on a new application that I thought would be a very helfpul tool for EVERY Blackberry owner to have. It is myBoxTone and it seems to be a diagnostics program to help ensure your Blackberry is running smoothly at all times. If there is anything to threaten that, it would normally tell you how to resolve the issue.

Either way, the good people over at Crackberry have some screenshots of the application in action. According to Crackberry when you click on the icon you receive a list of the alerts, you can select the alert, once that is done it gives suggestions on resolving the issue. For really advanced issues you can even screenshot your Blackberry to send to your company’s tech team, or your carrier’s tech team.

So this should be a really helpful tool for those power users and not so power users. If you are interested click here. If you have any other question please contact us.

I heard about Poynt beta some time ago, but sometimes I am trying out 10 betas at a time, it is hard to really focus on other betas and available programs. So Poynt is basically a GPS/Phone Book application. It is difficult to try anything like this since TeleNav has always been one of my favorite programs for finding directions or points of interest.

Do not get me wrong, there is space on my phone for both, and Poynt is unique enough for it to take up real estate on my home screen. Actually both are part of my main L theme on my phone. Anyways, back to Poynt. Something I really do a lot of on my phone is look up movie times. There is usually a movie that I want to watch, and sometimes when I am out and about town I decide I want to watch one of them.

I have always bookmarked Fandango on my phone and it has worked well, much better than calling the box office number and wading through all the showings. Poynt “PinPoynts”(I spelled it wrong on purpose) my location with GPS, and tells me what is showing close to me. I have a few options, I can select one of the top 10 movies, and Poynt will show me all the times it is playing at all theaters close by. I can browse by theater near me, search movie genres, titles, and theater names.

The other really cool feature are the yellow pages. I can search for a business in a nice clean interface. Both movies and yellow pages will give me directions to my destination. So I have not had this application long, but it is free and it is very cool. To download on your Blackberry point your browser to http://m.mypoynt.com. If you have any questions contact us.

Our phones do so much for us now. Some of us do online banking, read our local newspapers with RSS Feeds, and a million other things. The Apple iPhone(3G) really upped the ante, by giving us a cool all in one device that looked nice and was pretty functional. Don’t get me wrong I love my Blackberry 8830, but the iPhone has really become a very popular multi-faceted device.

So I was reading that cameras will be getting another boost in the near future in cell phones. Of course this is an evolutionary thing and was bound to happen, but with 32GB SD cards becoming available at retail, our phone will soon also be our camera and our multi-media device. It is bound to happen, and when our kids get older and have these all in one devices they will make fun of us for carrying 5 things around.

So we are not where I hope we will be yet, but I can squeeze hours of entertainment out of my Blackberry when I need to. I know people can do the same with iPhones and high end Nokias, Helio Oceans, and so on. If you have an iPhone sync your Itunes and put some music on there, or use the great Roxio media manager for your Blackberry and let it convert your files for you.

So hopefully next year, I will be writing this blog on my phone, uploading high resolution pictures to Myspace, and be able to use a super intuitive interface to control all my media.

I was looking at some pictures on Flickr.com and I found a picture of a Blackberry, by terren in Virginia, and it was titled Modern Camping Tool. I thought it was funny, not because it was so ridiculously far fetched, but because it was fairly true.

When I used to go camping if something bad happened, you had to hope you could make it to a payphone or a nearby store for help. With a cell phone you can send a text from most places, or try to make an emergency call. Now when it comes to GPS you all know who my favorite is, TELENAV, and that could usually get you where you are going or where you want to be.

What else can you use your phone for? Maybe if you have an Otterbox you can crack open shelled nuts with it’s extra strength case. I know I am not the most outdoorsy person, so if I saw a snake, a nut, or plant I was thinking of getting close to or eating, I would try to look it up using Google on my phone and get an guess on how safe or unsafe it is.

So yes, it is not a shovel, or a tent, or a compass, but it is a great tool to have for everyday life, and it should help out for camping too. So Terren in Virginia, thank you for the picture and the inspiration!

I love my Blackberry, but since it is completely wireless I usually do not connect it to my computer and see some of the other stuff it is compatible with. This weekend I was determined to get some movies on my Blackberry.

I have Blackberry Desktop Manager 4.5. I can change the option to synchronize, transfer data from a device to a Blackberry, load applications, backup and restore, and manage my media. This particular version has Roxio Media Manager. Anyways, I was ready to have to Google how to convert files and “hack” my Blackberry to play my media back the way I wanted. I dragged the media to the Media Manager and Roxio did the rest. It asked if I wanted to Convert for Optimal Playback, I checked yes. And a few minutes later I was done. So no extra work required, just drag and drop.

Soon after I was watching Gotham Knight on my phone, I had a ton of music, and was easily able to put my daughter’s cutest pictures on my phone. So I love that my Blackberry helps me save so much time, but I also love that it helps me pass the time as well. As always any questions contact us.

All work and no play makes Alex a dull boy right? Well as many of you all that read this know, I have a Blackberry. I love my Blackberry because it basically brings my work world to me, instead of me having to go to it. Thankfully I am not always too wrapped up in work stuff to enjoy mobile games.

So  thanks to the awesome folks over at Blackberry Cool, I found out that Street Fighter 2 is available for only $9.99. It would be a good game to download and practice with before Street Fighter HD Remix comes out. At times I find myself playing games while I am waiting in the lobby for an appointment. Of course with the extra hour a day Blackberry gives you, you have a little more time for fun.

The other games I have on my phone are Brickbreaker (Which every Blackberry owner has their own experience with), Sudoku, Tetris, and Guitar Hero. You can’t go wrong with any of the games and they are all good ways to spend some of your free time. As processors in phones become better, the gaming options in them become better and there is much more variety. To find out what games are available for your device, I would recommend going to your carrier’s website and checking it out. If you have any other questions contact us, and we will be happy to help.

I just read about a really cool and polite new application from Toysoft Inc. It is an application that allows you to Ignore a call and immediately reply with a default text message like ” Can’t talk. In meeting”. I always feel really bad ignoring calls, but at times I have no choice because I am usually on a call or helping a client out. So hitting the Red Phone to ignore usually makes me sad.

Thankfully they created a beta version of this application. Like many other developers out there, they looked for a solution to a problem, and found a great way of addressing the issue. If you are reading the blog on your Blackberry ( 4.2 or higher OS) then you can follow this link http://www.toysoft.ca/beta/NotNow.jad for OTA download. If not just type that address right into your browser’s address bar. Check out Toysoft’s store, they have many really cool applications available for purchase. As always if you have any questions contact us.

I know in this day and age we are picture crazy, and with rising prices we are always looking for ways to save money. I have found a fun application that does both. Its called iTookthisONmyPHONE.com. One of the best things about this particular application is its automatic. You sign into the site one time from your Blackberry and as long as you don’t turn your phone off it will automatically upload all of your pictures and videos to the online site.

And with iTOOKthisONmyPHONE’s automated web transfer, you don’t have to worry about filling up your smartphone’s memory as you take photos or record video. Plus if something happens to your phone your pictures are safely stored online.

With a few fun options you can view your photos and video full size or watch a slide show, plus you can invite friends and family to visit your albums and easily share your photos with them.

I have found it saves me a lot of space and protecs my favorite phone pics for me. Enjoy!!!

I was reading an article on one of my favorite tech blogs Gizmodo and they were taking a poll on whether you love, hate, or do not care about push e-mail. For those of you who do not know what push e-mail is, it is basically your phone retrieving e-mails from the server for you. The results are what I thought; 40% love (whether they use it a lot or not), about 20% feel they need to stay on top of things, 20% do not need, and about 20% hate.

When it comes to push e-mail Blackberry is still the king. They did a side by side comparison with the iphone and it takes the iphone approximately 5 times longer to receive their e-mails. Now I am currently on an Exchange Server hosted by Rackspace, and I only get my work e-mails on my Blackberry. It can be very annoying if you have G-Mail or Yahoo Mail, because the push e-mail may deliver 30 spam messages at 4 in the morning ( I know because it happened to me and my wife was not happy).

Many small and medium businesses out there thrive because they can stay on top of their customers needs. Push e-mail really helps that. If you have another device it can be very draining on the battery life since it is constantly trying to retrieve the info. The Blackberry servers deliver the info to your phone. If you have not tried a Blackberry try one out. If you are a business owner take The Smartphone Challenge and see what an extra hour of productivity a day can do for you!

I got a great tip from our friend Nan from Sales By 5, that Windows LIve Messenger is finally available for Blackberry. I do not know how many of you use any type of Instant Messaging service on your Smartphones, but it is another very helpful way to communicate. Blackberry has their great Blackberry Messenger built in, and most Blackberrys are  highly compatible with G-Talk, Yahoo Messenger, and AIM.

Every single staff member with our company has a Windows Live Messenger address. Not all members have Blackberrys, so we can’t use the Blackberry Messenger to communicate with everybody. With Windows Live Messenger we can communicate perfectly again for free. There are third party applications that provide an all in one messenger, but I would rather get the official one for free! Windows Live Messenger and other Instant Messaging products are great for quick communication, I like to think of it as the “Walkie-Talkie” of the e-mail world. It is less formal and more to the point. You can download MSN Messenger now!!!