Posts Tagged ‘Curve’

Get More Productive with Voicemail on Your Blackberry

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Here are some tips for getting your voice mail messages more quickly:

One-touch voicemail access – Hold down the number one. OK, you probably knew that.

Pre-program your voicemail password – By pre-programming your voicemail password, you can have one-touch access directly to your recent messages. Keep in mind that anyone who picks up your phone can now easily get into your VM:

  • From your main screen, hit the green button to get to your calling menu
  • Hit the Blackberry button (the one with seven dots)
  • Select “Options”
  • Select “Voice Mail”
  • In the Password field, type your voicemail password followed by “#1″. The “#” is a 3-second pause – this allows your voicemail to accept your password before automatically asking to play back messages.
  • Hit the Blackberry button and choose “Save”
  • Now, you should get right to new messages when you hold down the “1″ key

. . . or stop using a voicemail password – If your initials aren’t POTUS and you don’t care about the security of your voicemail, you can remove requiring a password for access:

  • Enter voicemail
  • Press 3 for Personal Options
  • Press 1 for Settings
  • Press 1 to skip your password

Streamline voicemail menus - If you have used voicemail before, turn on Expert Mode. This will simplify the often lengthy instructions from the voicemail lady:

  • Enter voicemail
  • Press 3 for Personal Options
  • Press 3 for Expert Mode
  • Press 1 to turn on Expert Mode

Stop playback of VM date and time info - If you don’t care much about when someone called (you can always look in your call log), you can stop playback of this info:

  • Enter voicemail
  • Press 3 for Personal Options
  • Press 1 for Settings
  • Press 3 to turn off message date and time. (You can still hear this info during the call as necessary, however, by hitting 1)

Put your time savings to good use - Now that you have so much more free time in your life, call your Members of Congress and ask them to support a public option!

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My Favorite BlackBerry Tips & Tricks

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

I’ve had my BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone for a couple months now, and really love it. The biggest advantage, in my book? My email’s in my pocket now, so no need to power up the laptop to check in with work if I need to.

I’m still a novice, but seems like every other day I learn a new way to do something cool with my Curve. so I figured I’d share my favorite tips and tricks with everyone here. (Some may work with other BlackBerry devices, but your mileage may vary with that.)

  1. Go to the top of an email inbox to see the newest messages? Just hit the “T” key — no need to scroll, scroll, scroll with the trackball. (The “B” key works to go to the bottom, too.)
  2. Check voicemail quickly? Just hold down the 1 key.
  3. Avoid the butt-dial. My colleagues were getting sick of unintended calls from me, dialed from my pocket…so I just put a simple password on my device and set it to kick in after 60 seconds of inactivity. Go to Options…Security Options…General Settings…set password to “enabled” and security timeout to 1 minute.
  4. Use the company directory on a switchboard system. This one flummoxed me for a while — many automated phone systems say “Press one for our company directory” …OK…but then how do I spell a person’s last name when I can’t tell what letters are assigned to what numbers on my phone? It’s simple — just hold the ALT key and then press the alphabet characters to spell someone’s name. The handset will send the right numeric tones as if you’re typing on the numbers keypad. (This also works for typing a number in a password field.)
  5. Insert the “.” and “@” characters while typing an email address? Just use the space key.
  6. Turn the speakerphone on or off. See that little key in the lower right with a speaker symbol and the dollar? That’s the one. Toggles speakerphone on and off.
  7. Zoom in or out of a picture (or pan up or down) Zoom controls are the keys 3 and 9; keys 2, 4, 6, and 8 pan up, left, down and right respectively.

There’s lots more tips and tricks here on the BlackBerry site. Odds are, if you’re thinking “there must be a better way to do this” — there probably is.

Have you discovered any other cool tricks to get your BlackBerry working better or faster? Please share them in the comments thread below. Thanks!!

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Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Quickly Add Contacts on Your BlackBerry Curve

Monday, July 20th, 2009

There’s something very satisfying about small, elegant time-savers.  Recently I discovered Anagram for BlackBerry devices.  It’s does something beautifully simple: captures contact information from an e-mail and quickly turns it into an address book entry.  No more scanning business cards–or worse, typing them in by hand.

(more…)

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Posting to YouTube from your BlackBerry Curve…

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

(…or other mobile device…)

Since my parents live on the other side of the country and don’t get to see their granddaughter very often, I’ve been exploring ways to use my new BlackBerry Curve to keep them in touch.

First, I discovered the Flickr app for BlackBerry — so now I just take a picture, hit the BlackBerry key, scroll down to “Send to Flickr” and upload it. No computer required…I just start the upload and put the phone back in my pocket…and the pictures are actually pretty good in terms of pixel quality.

Then, I started trying do the same thing with videos. There’s no YouTube app for the Blackberry just yet…BUT, YouTube does provide an email address unique to each account where you can send videos, and they’ll automatically post to your account. So I set it up this morning and it was a breeze.

Just log on to YouTube from your computer, click on account, and then look for a link on the left-hand side called “Mobile Setup.” You may need to specify and/or register your mobile phone number…but at the end of that process, YouTube will tell you a unique email address to which you can send your mobile videos. Save that into your BlackBerry as a contact…and then once you’ve taken a video from your phone, just email it to that address, and presto! Your BlackBerry video is now uploaded to your YouTube account.

I haven’t used it in a social change setting yet, but it’s easy to imagine where/when it might be very handy to get a video right onto the web from my phone. For example, situations like the Oscar Grant shooting…politicians’ “macaca” moments…or, on a broader scale, the very important human rights work done by Witness.org.

(You’ll want to keep an eye on your data usage, however, as videos are usually pretty big in terms of file size. If you want to upload more than one or two videos per month, it’s probably a good idea to get on an unlimited data plan so you don’t have to worry about going over your limit.)

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Posted in Video | 6 Comments »