Nov 16

Homer Simpson has a Refurbished Blackberry

By Chase Buckner Interesting No Comments »

homersimpsonLast night on The Simpsons, Homer got a new position at work and was given a refurbished Blackberry (I figure it has to be refurbished as it appears to be a new looking 7230, and you know Mr. Burns isn’t going to miss the opportunity to save money by purchasing refurbished cell phones for his employees). We can now add Homer to the list of celebrity Blackberry holders. Later in the episode, a refurbished Treo made an appearance as well.

Apparently, Homer now Tweets as there is a Homer Simpson page on Twitter. Judging by the tweets, however, I’m not convinced that it’s actually run by any of the real writers of the show. Matt Groening needs to take some action and get the real Homer behind the Twitter helm of his new Blackberry.

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Oct 24

Dictionary.com Delivers Great App

By Chase Buckner Reviews 1 Comment »

phonesDictionary.com, one of my favorite websites, now has an app for Blackberry cell phones. The Dictionary.com app also includes their sister site, Thesaurus.com, and the two sites combine to give you an app containing over 500,000 terms and definitions as well as more than 275,000 synonyms.Picture 2

The app also includes a word of the day in both English and Spanish, spelling suggestions, and phonetic and audio pronunciations. And the best part about the app is that IT’S FREE! The Dictionary.com app is really handy as you’ll be surprised at how often you use it (or should use it) throughout your daily routine. The word of the day feature makes it really easy to inflate your vocabulary. Now go forth, download, and teach thyself.

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Oct 20

UK Police Outfitted with Blackberrys

By Chase Buckner In The News, Interesting 1 Comment »

16oct09_britishpoliceEarlier this year, over 1,100 of Bedfordshire’s frontline police force were outfitted with Blackberry cell phones. Sir Ronnie Flanagan of Police Review feels that for the first time, Bedfordshire police will be able to submit written (typed) documents in from the field as well as access data bases and other systems like their crime management system, intelligence database, warrants, Police National Legal Database, and its custom-built briefings application without the need of a computer. The idea behind the program is to decrease the need for the officers to be at their desks and increase their visibility in public.

Before the program was launched, a research team spent time with several Bedfordshire officers on the front lines in order to identify the specific needs of the officers in order to maximize efficiency and meet the officers’ daily demands. A spokesman for the department estimates that the program is currently saving the average officer a half of an hour to an hour of time per day. An hour a day saved multiplied by 1,100 officers equals significant savings, especially during such a severe economical situation as the UK is currently facing.

The significance of the program is being compared to the implementation of walki-talkies to the police force. Bedfordshire police Inspector Jim Hitch says: “I liken this to the change from Police boxes to Police radio. That was a huge step and quite expensive and had its doubters who asked why we needed radios. What we’re moving to now with these devices is a similar sort of scenario. There are people doubting and asking why we need them but I think that will become clearer and we will depend on these devices more and more and wonder how we ever did without them.”

Equipping police with smart phones seems like a no brainer, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see something similar to this come to police forces in the US in the near future. Let’s just hope the smart phones come with a block on Facebook.

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Oct 14

Finally, The Blackberry Desktop Manger for Macs Has Landed

By Chase Buckner In The News, Reviews 1 Comment »

Picture 1After years of anticipation, the Blackberry desktop manager for Mac has finally arrived, and it’s getting great reviews. You can now sync your Blackberry cell phone with your Mac and easily manage your contacts, music, applications, and media. What seems to be the greatest feature of the new Desktop manager is that iTunes syncs with Blackberry Media, and it does it in the same application that manages your info, so you don’t have to deal with any other programs like Roxio, which PC users have to mess with. It is now really easy to sync music and playlists from your iTunes account to your Blackberry.

Mac fanatics are a little disappointed with the straightforward layout of the application as it is not really aesthetically pleasing as is standard for all things Mac, but this is something that will undoubtedly be taken care of in the near future.

Other crucials like your contacts, calendar appointments, tasks, and notes also effortlessly sync with the Mac applications that users love and use on a daily basis. The manager will backup and restore all of the data on your device (which can be encrypted), but, by default, the application is set to only create weekly backups. You can also manage more than one device with the manager, so His and Her Blackberrys need only one Mac. You can also, of course, wipe data from your Blackberry via the manager as well.

BlackBerry_Desktop_Manager_For_MacThe system requirements for the desktop manager are:

*  Mac OS X v10.5.5 and above (Only 32-bit mode is supported on Mac OS X v10.6)

* BlackBerry® Device Software v4.2 or higher

* iTunes v7.7.1 or later

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Oct 13

New Blackberry Apps Review

By Chase Buckner Uncategorized 2 Comments »

blackberry-app-worldBlackberry App World is constantly offering new apps for your Blackberry cell phone, and we like to take the time to review a few of the newer ones. If you use any of these apps, please let us know what you think of them in the comments section.

TiVo(R) DVR Scheduler App– If you’ve ever felt the stabbing pain of frustration from forgetting to set your TiVo before you left the house, fear not as this app will never allow it to happen again. The TiVo app basically turns your Blackberry into your TiVo remote control. The app looks very much like the TiVo menu that you are familiar with and you can do everything from your Blackberry from accessing your channel listings; searching for listings by title, keyword, or actor; to adding shows to your calendar. Note – if you download the app, you need to go to http://www.tivo.com/mytivo/mytivohome/index.html to register your TiVo.

No Smoking App – Personally, I’ve never been a smoker, so I can’t attest to whether or not this app works, but it seems like a good idea, and it seems pretty thorough. The app is designed to slowly wean a smoker away from their habit by first recording data about the frequency of your habit and then providing data for you to review. The app then develops a plan based on your particular data to slowly reduce the frequency of your nicotine intake until, finally, you’ve quit.  During the quitting process, the app will also provide interesting and motivating statistics about the amount of money being saved by quitting as well as health statistics. The app is ten bucks but, today, that’s basically just a pack of cigs.

Quote of the Day App – I’m a sucker for all things quotes. I find that a good quote is the easiest way for me to change my attitude or mood, instantly. This app provides you with “witty, funny, and inspirational” quotes and proverbs in order to get your day started on a positive note. If you like the quote of the day, the app allows you to email it to a friend to spread the good vibes. The only downside is that it costs four bucks.

THE Flashlight App – There are several Blackberry apps that do this, but this one has good user feedback, and it offers a free trial period. The app was also rated Top 5 BlackBerry Apps by Fortune Magazine in August 31st edition. The app turns the camera flash on your Blackberry into a flashlight, which can be really convenient. While you can manually turn the flash on your Blackberry on, the screen light will stay on and the flash will go off after a certain period of time. This app is a shortcut that allows you to turn just the flash light on with one touch, and it doesn’t use as much battery as keeping the light on manually.

Call You Back App – I’m not totally sold on this app because I’m not sure how often I would use it, but I can see how it could be a benefit to certain people. The app is designed to send pre-programmed text messages to anyone who calls you during a period when you do not wish to answer your phone. So let’s say you’re in a movie, you program the app to text anyone who calls you with something like: “Hey, I’m at a movie. I’ll call you after.” I don’t know that I really care enough to let everyone know why I don’t want to answer the phone, but it could be useful for business people who often have meetings and what not. Note – If you download the app, you need to change some settings in your Blackberry:

Options — Security options — Application permissions — modules — Call you back — edit permissions — Change the permissions of Connections (Carrier Internet & phone) & interactions to ALLOW.

The instructions can also be found in the “Help” menu of the application.

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Oct 07

How To Fix a JVM 102 Error for Blackberry

By Chase Buckner How To No Comments »

phoneInstallErrorHere at The Blue Dot, we often have customers contact us for assistance because they are getting a “JVM 102 Error” on their Blackberry cell phone. First of all, it is important to note that all cell phones, like all electronics, are prone to malfunctions so if you have important data on your device, you should be sure to frequently back it up on your computer. That being said, the JVM error means that a .code file on your phone is corrupt, so your device will not load the file. You can do a hard reset on the device, which will totally wipe the phone clean so that you can start over but if you do not want to lose everything on your device, you can follow the instructions below (I am pretty sure you can only do this on a PC).

  • Download the JL Cmder
  • Connect your device to your PC via USB cable
  • Run JL_Cmder and select option 2, which is the event log
  • Go to the bottom of the log and look for “JVM Error 102.” The line before it will tell you exactly what file is causing the error. Here is an example of what it will look like. The text in pink shows the corrupted file. Save the file name because it will be needed later but do not include the numbers in parenthesis.
  • Go to Start > Run, and type “cmd” then press Enter
  • Change directory to the JL_Cmder installation folder. EXAMPLE: type: cd “C:\Program Files\JL_Cmder\” and press enter
  • Type the following command to remove the offending file:

javaloader.exe -u erase -f FILENAME
(FILENAME is the name of the .cod file. NOTE – do not include the numbers in parenthesis after the file name)

  • Disconnect your phone from your PC and restart it.
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Oct 06

Blackberrys are, like, the coolest

By Chase Buckner Interesting 1 Comment »

beyonce_boldFeel like everyone who’s anyone is using an iPhone? Think again. Many of Blackberry’s most severely addicted users are high profile celebrities who are eager to flaunt their Blackberry cell phones for the camera. In addition to the list of reasons why Blackberrys gain favor over the iPhone, which include a removable battery, a camera with a flash, the ability to copy and paste, optional memory expansion, and stereo Bluetooth, it seems that Blackberrys have become a fashion accessory on par with handbags and fedoras.

The list of celebrities that are on the Berry is endless, but here are the names of some of the hottest celebs who have been recently seen sporting their Blackberry: Britney Spears, Rihanna, Lindsay Lohan, Reece Witherspoon, Kristin Cavallari, Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, Shenae Grimes, Jennifer Aniston, Anna Kournikova, Eva Longoria, and Sarah Jessica Parker. For the boys, Justin Timberlake, John Mayer, 50 Cent, Nas, Cary Hart, Kanye West, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, and Tom Cruise are all frequently seen with their Blackberrys in hand. Most of the boys on HBO’s Entourage, including E, Vinny, and Ari, always have their Blackberry in the scene. Even the biggest celebrity of our time, and the leader of the free world, President Barack Obama is a known Blackberry addict.

Like with most facets of life, celebrities get their cell phones for free. Because they have access to so many different brands of phones (for free), the fact that so many celebrities stick with their Blackberry says a lot about the company and it’s product. Many celebrities, like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, have been seen using some new phone only to quickly return to their trusty Blackberry. Interestingly enough, most celebrities pass over Blackberry’s number one competitor, the iPhone. Dale of GeekSugar feels that in the celebrity world, “The iPhone just kind of faded away.”jt_bb

To keep up with the latest celebs and their current Blackberry, checkout GeekSugar where there are frequent opportunities to “Match the Celeb” with their Blackberry. Celebrityblackberrysightings.com will also keep you up to date with photos of celebs and their newest gear.

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