I’m a recent adapter to the world of the Blackberry with my BlackBerry Curve 8330 (or Crackberry as they are so honestly referred to). While friends and family have had them for a while, I was dead set on getting an iPhone. Well, without going into details, the network I choose was not AT&T, so I obviously didn’t get an iPhone.
I’ve found the Blackberry to be quite a unique tool. I’m using just standard Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) which seems to pretty much be push email with my Gmail account. I’m a Mac user and am left to use Boot Camp to do updates to the OS, but I do have a sync option in PocketMac. While this is great, it still means I have to connect my Curve to my Mac whenever I want to update my calendar. Then I remember, I have Gmail, which gives me Google Calendar. By simply adding the Google Sync app to my Blackberry, I now have, for all practical purposes, push email and a calendar that syncs with a server.
Before we get technical, I know, my contacts don’t sync, and I don’t have folder sync. I do, however, have an environment that resembles an Exchange environment, including sharing calendars since you can subscribe to another users calendar with Google.
Want to get on this boat? It’s simple, setup your Blackberry to use your Gmail account, then in your browser on the device, visit http://m.google.com/sync. That’s it, now enjoy your new environment, never having to connect your device to your computer unless it’s to do an OS update.
While I am quite the fanboy of Apple and I fully support freelance program development, there are few things I wish Apple would admit would make their products better. In the past they have done this with things like Cover Flow and iTunes so I know that they would at least consider it.
1. Integrate a method of “Letterbox View” in Mail.app
I’m sick of having to add a plugin to Mail in order to have a simple “letterbox” view of my mail. Ever sense the popularity of widescreen monitors, the real-estate for programs like Mail has increased so much potential for the availability of more information without scrolling. Even worse is the fact that Outlook has this as a setting you can simply just enable.
Download LetterBox for Mail from harnly.net
2. Add an auto-rate system for iTunes
I love my music, and this in turn means that I love using my iPod Touch and iTunes. Something I do is base my playlists to sync with my iPod off of the ratings, play counts, and last played meta data. Something that has made my music listening more explorative and interesting is using an auto-rating program which rates based off of previous rates, play counts, and play frequency to rate songs for my play lists. This can’t be that hard, and I think could be pretty intuitive to include with the addition of Genius now. But alas, I still have to use AutoRate.
Download Auto-Rate from Tzi Software
3. The ability to unarchive .rar files
This one I just do not get. I can work with .zip files, but I’d have to go to command-line to mess with a .rar? This doesn’t make sense at all. For this I can only offer one thing, UnrarX.
Download UnrarX from Sourceforge.net
So there are a few things I think would be simple to add into OS X that Apple shouldn’t have a problem including. For the mean time, enjoy those downloads and I hope they help you out with using your Mac a little more efficiently.
I have added a few new sites to my portfolio. The first was a mockup of a site, and the other was implemented for a short while, but the site was later closed and the live theme was removed and deleted. Stop in and check them out.
http://www.chriskdesigns.com
In the other news, I know I am a little behind on those two posts, but I am working on them as I go.
Cheers