Tips: How to Organize Blackberry Messenger Contact

Share

For those having hundreds of contacts in Blackberry Messenger, you often get hard time to find a contact or you need to scroll all the way down just to get to it. It can be buried deep down in single category or the person use a weird character so you can't find it using the find function. Organizing your contact and a bit tuning up your Blackberry Messenger might save you a lot of time, here is few ways to organize it:

Categorize Your Contacts
You can create new category to classify your contact. It can be based on what kind of relationship you have, such as family, colleagues, clients etc or based on contact frequency like often, seldom, never. This will help in finding your contact. Here is how:

1. Go to Blackberry Messenger 
2. Press  menu and choose Add Category
3. Give the new category a name and hit OK
4. Choose from list of contacts to move to the new category
5. Hit Ok when you are done

To move a contact to existing category:

1. Choose the contact
2. Press  menu and choose Move Contact
3. Select the new category
4. Hit OK to move it

Rename Your Contact Name
If you go your contact list, you might notice some of your friends/contacts use special character, e.g. Ғє̲̣̣ЯΔiп̥aп̥Δ , If I use this as my name, you can't find me via find function. So if you have someone in BBM whom you often contact, use special char and of course, asking them to change their name to use standard characters will be near impossible, here is the workaround:

1. Choose the contact
2. Press  menu and choose Contact Profile
3. Change the Display Name to something more meaningful for you. (You can reset it to default if you change your mind)
4. Press  menu and Save

With this, you can use find function to find them quickly :)

Sort Your Contact
If you have a lot of active chats in your Blackberry Messenger and app Messages, that compile all your message from different media into one place, is not your fave, finding the recent chat will be troublesome as it is sorted based on alphabets. You can change the sorting to be based on activity, so your recent chat will be on top and the last active will be at the bottom. To change it, take these steps:

1. Go to your Blackberry Messenger again
2. Press  menu and press Options
3. Change Sort Chats By from Alphabet to Activity
4. Hit Save

Happy trying.

I'm reading: Tips: How to Organize Blackberry Messenger Contact

Tips: Turn Your Blackberry to Emergency Flashlight

Share

If you are caught up in the dark or power failure and with only Blackberry in your hand, like most people do. (People don't bring around flashlight but they will have their Blackberry close hehe). Here is quick steps to turn your Blackberry to flashlight without any app:

1. Press your camera shortcut button, the default is the right-side button. You will go to camera
2. Press  menu then choose Video Camera. You will enter video camera mode
3. Press  menu, press options
4. Change Video Light from Off to On
5. Hit Save 

The flash will light up and only turn off when you change the options back to Off or when the screen is dimmed. Now, there will be light.

I'm reading: Tips: Turn Your Blackberry to Emergency Flashlight

Tips: How to Change Your Icon Email Name

Share

If you have a lot of emails push to your Blackberry, like mine I have 8 emails set in my Storm for a lot of different purposes, from private mail, mailing list to my business, this tip is gonna help you a lot. Here is how:

1. Go to Email Settings
2. Log In to your BIS Email Settings
3. Choose one of your email
4. Change the Email Account Name to anything you like
5. Hit Save

So with this, you can change from a boring user@gmail.com name to something more meaningful or whatever you like it.

Happy trying

Note: If you wonder why all my emails don't use the default icon, hit here to custom it

I'm reading: Tips: How to Change Your Icon Email Name

Tips: How to Make Your Blackberry Text Bigger

Share

Here is a short tip. If you have hard time to read text on your Blackberry, change your font size by going to Options>Screen/Keyboard. Change Font Size to bigger value, you can check how big the size from the sample text before you hit Save. You can change the typeface as well by change the Font Family to other values. Hit Save when you are done.

I'm reading: Tips: How to Make Your Blackberry Text Bigger

Tips: How to Write SMS Without Autotext

Share

Often our typing style when writing SMS is different than our usual writing or when writing BBM or chat as 160 chars limitation on SMS and with autotext on writing our "abbreviation" style is a bit difficult as some of it will be interpreted as autotext. Here is short tip how to turn it off

1. Go to Options>SMS Text
2. Change Disable AutoText to Yes
3. Hit Save

Now you can type your way when writing SMS

I'm reading: Tips: How to Write SMS Without Autotext

Tips: Wipe Clean Your Blackberry Before You Sell It

Share

Here is a simple thing you want to do before you swap for new Blackberry (more Blackberry with bigger memory and OS 6 is coming this year :D ) or resell it:

1. Go to Options>Security Options>Security Wipe
2. Check all options
   
   
   
   1. Emails, Contacts, etc
   2. User Installed Applications
   3. Media Card - if you sell out your memory card too, make sure you have backup your multimedia and other important documents you put in your card
   
   
3. Type "blackberry" and click Wipe. Wait until the process finish
4. You are ready to sell your Blackberry now 

I'm reading: Tips: Wipe Clean Your Blackberry Before You Sell It

Tips: How to Setup Blackberry Email Filters

Share

Blackberry Email filter is used for a lot of purposes, you can use it to send certain email with level 1 notification, not push certain emails to your Blackberry, push only important emails etc. Hence, it can help you to organize your inbox to your taste.
Here is how to set filter from your Blackberry:

1. Go to your Email Settings (Setup > Email Settings)
2. Login to your Email Settings, if you already have username
3. Choose which email you want to put filter on
4. Press button  to go to filter wizard
5. First screen is list out all filters applied to the email and also what to do when no filters apply. The default is forward messages to the device. Click Add Filter to enter new filter.
   
   
   
6. Enter filter name, for example "email from colleague"
   
   
   
7. Next, choose what field to filter on:
   
   
   1. CC address
   2. From address
   3. High priority email
   4. New email
   5. Subject
   6. To address
8. After you choose what field, then you put what kind of content it has to be filtered. For example: I choose Field Subject that contains "project update"
9. Click Add. You can add more conditions if you want to. For example: I want to be notified with level 1 notification for Subject contains "project update" that comes From address "ferdinand@drifesolution.com"
10. Next you choose the action, whether to forward the messages or not. If you choose to forward then you have 2 options: header only (means you need to Get More to read the content, this is very unlikely used if you have unlimited plan) and level 1 notification (you can set level 1 notification on your profile)
11. Click Save

For this tip, I setup 2 filters on my email:

1. Do not forward me any emails that the subject contains "oot". OOT stands for "Out of Topic"
2. Give me level 1 notification for email with subject contains "project update" and comes from "ferdinand@drifesolution.com"

Note: here is some notes to be considered when designing filter for your Blackberry

1. the contains is case-insensitive and uses wildcard characters (*). So filter email with subject "project update" and "Project Update" will catch email with subject "Project Update", "PROJECT UPDATE", "this month prOject Update", "latest project update of this week" and other combinations
2. if you put more than 1 condition, like in my example; subject "project update" or from "ferdinand@drifesolution.com". It will be read like this: Forward messages to this device with level 1 notification if the subject contains "project update" or "ferdinand@drifesolution.com". Means any condition results true, the filter will be applied
3. Filters on each email is read with precedence from top to bottom and applied immediately. For example if I create my above example filters in this order:
   
   
   1. Forward messages with subject "project update" or from "ferdinand@drifesolution.com"
   2. Do not forward messages with subject "oot"
   Filter no 2 will be failed if I receive email from "ferdinand@drifesolution.com" with subject "oot" because when it reads filter no 1 and results true, it will carry out the action immediately. So put more general filter on top then less general to the bottom.
4. You can set filter from your PC as well by going to http://.blackberry.com

That's all. Happy trying :)

I'm reading: Tips: How to Setup Blackberry Email Filters

Tips: Optimize Blackberry's Battery Life

Share

There are several opinions of how to optimize Blackberry's battery life, and here I present easy tips that I do and they work for me. Here are the tips:

1. Switch to 2G Network
   yup if your Blackberry is capable to be in 3G network, the 3G speed is very tempting but it sucks more power from your battery at the same time. 2G network (GPRS/EDGE) will save more your battery life so if you use your Blackberry for merely chats and idle switch to 2G. When you need more speed to do more multitasking things, to download updates, to browse then you switch to 3G. 
2. Turn off Wireless Connection
   always remember to turn off your wireless connection when you do not need it. When switched on, it will draw more power as it keeps searching for available wifi around
3. Turn off Bluetooth
   turning off Bluetooth will help to save more your battery life. After done transferring or receiving files, do not forget to turn it off. 
4. Recharge your Battery Often
   yup you read it correctly, recharge your Blackberry whenever you have the time to full. The battery technology has grown a lot, with lithium and lithium-polymer you do not need to wait until the battery to completely drain to charge. You only need to drain completely and recharge when you use nickel-cadmium battery. All blackberry phones or even all phones available in the market use lithium or lithium-polymer, only old technology still use nickel-cadmium.
   No need to wait until the battery indicator turns red, just recharge and overcharge for few hours is ok. I normally charge my Blackberry from 11PM to 8AM everyday and my battery is still in good condition.
   
5. Change Your Brightness Setting
   Change your brightness setting to lower setting (Options > Screen/Keyboard). I set mine to the lowest. Make sure the setting Automatically Dim Backlight is On.
   Turn off LED Coverage Indicator will help to save more battery life as well.
   
6. Turn Notification Off for High-traffic Email
   If you subscribe to mailing list that has high-traffic or your email is high-traffic turning off notification for that particular email will help.

If you have more useful tips to optimize battery's life just share in the comments

I'm reading: Tips: Optimize Blackberry's Battery Life

Lose Your Phone Book No More

Share

I have heard a lot of horror stories people losing their mobile phones either left at public places or by criminal action, or simply your phones had "heart attack" and just died and refuse to revive from its state. It just happened to my in-law and friend, my in-law's phone suddenly just died when she needed to contact her client while the latter got his Blackberry spilled with water and got short-circuit.

Losing a phone is not as hurt as losing all the data inside, especially your phone book. Your list of vital clients, their numbers, emails, addresses can be very hazardous for your health (sorry for the bad pun :P ) or your business. Recovering from the dead phone will not be easy either, normally, it involves flashing ROM which means erasing all the data a.k.a restore to factory settings. So before it happens, prepare yourselves. Here is few options you can choose:

1. Sync your Blackberry via Desktop Manager with your desktop organizer app
   I use Windows and Outlook so synchronizing my contacts, tasks, memos, and calendars are part of my daily backup. Just plug my Blackberry Storm, turn on Desktop Manager and it will sync automatic. Backing up all my important organizer data.
   You can setup one by following this step by step:
   
   
   
   1. Open your Blackberry Desktop Manager and click Synchronize
      
   2. Click Configure>Synchronization
      
   3. Click Synchronization to enter the setup wizard
   4. At the wizard you will ask what data to synchronize. There are Calendar, Memopad, Address Book, Tasks or basically your all organizer data. Click on the data you want to setup then click Setup.
   5. You will ask to put your organizer desktop application you want to sync to and the direction. I choose one way from device to desktop for my address book as I always add/edit/delete from my Blackberry.
      
      
   6. After done with the wizard. Make sure you tick Synchronize organizer data and then click Synchronize to sync. If you want to sync every time you connect your Blackberry, tick Synchronize the selected items when your device is connected to the Blackberry Desktop Manager. 
   7. That's all, now every time you connect it will sync your organizer data to your desktop application
2. Wireless Synchronization to Your Google Account
   If you use Gmail as one of your email, this could be the easiest way to backup your contacts.
   
   
   
   
   1. In your Blackberry, go to Setup>Email Settings
   2. Log in to your email settings, if you already have a user
   3. Choose which gmail account you want to sync and open it
   4. There is an option for Synchronization Options, tick 
   5. Save it
   It take a while before the sync kicking, you can read further from KB19270
   
3. Backup Regularly with Desktop Manager
   If you are not using any Desktop Organizer Application and not using GMail, you still can backup your contacts but it is required some discipline to make sure it is up-to-date
   
   
   
   
   1. Open Desktop Manager and connect your Blackberry
   2. Click Backup & Restore
   3. Click Backup
   4. Choose where you want to save it & click Save
4. Use 3rd-party Apps
   There are 3rd-party apps that offer backing up your contacts as one of the features. You can use free services like from smrtguard.com they provide backup all your Blackberry data OTA with reasonable price. Or you can search in appworld to find alternatives for backup your contacts.
   
   If you are in Indonesia and happened to use Indosat, they bundle smrtguard and name it i-guard.
   

Do it now :)

I'm reading: Lose Your Phone Book No More

Tips: Autotext Bahasa Indonesia

Share

For those who get Blackberry Storm and Odin as their Blackberry and primary language is not English, SureType is a no no. You will get frustrated or worse throwing your Blackberry as typing can be as pain as hell. If you use Indonesian as primary language worry no more, as you can inject Autotext that is built by someone (anyone know who the first one build this?) into your Blackberry. Immediately, you will fall in love all over again with SureType as it is the best one-handed operation typing.
Here is how

1. Make sure you backup your Blackberry using Blackberry Desktop Manager before performing this. Here is how to backup: 
1. Connect your Blackberry with your Desktop
2. Open Blackberry Desktop Manager
3. Click Backup and Restore
4. Click Backup
5. Choose where you want to save in your Desktop
2. After your backup is complete, click Advanced (in Backup and Restore) and click File>Open
   
3. Choose the autotext IPD you have downloaded and then choose the database you want to transfer to your Blackberry.
4. Click  wait until it finishes
5. Done

You can download the following autotext:

• Autotext 5k words http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PXNM5LJ4
• Autotext 25k words http://www.megaupload.com/?d=U3HVKR9J
• Autotext 50k words http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UFVOGCRX

Now you can type much much faster with SureType :D happy trying.

For Storm 1 users, I recommend using autotext 5k words as memory limitation it has and work more words as you use it.

I'm reading: Tips: Autotext Bahasa Indonesia

Tips: How to Re-Arrange Your Blackberry Application

Share

For those who just get a Blackberry and find you waste a lot of time to navigate to your Blackberry Messenger , Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM, Gtalk or even ICQ (anybody still use ICQ? I still remember my ID though :D ) . Or open your email, you just set, way down so you need to scroll to the bottom. You are starting to get frustrated and your thumb is aching of scrolling, tapping. Here is how to re-arrange your Blackberry Application so the most frequent/ your favorite applications are placed conveniently, just a thumb away.
Re-arrange items:

1. Choose the application icon you want to move. For this example, I want to move my SMS & MMS application from bottom of the screen to the top of my screen
2. Press  and choose Move
   
3. Now, scroll up to choose new position. afterwards just hit again and choose complete move
   

Move your frequently used Blackberry Application to home folder:

1. Go to where your application located. For example: I want to move my Blackberry Messenger to home folder. Currently, it is located in Instant Messaging folder
   
2. Press  and choose Move to Folder and select Home to move to home page
   
3. After you move the application to Home folder, normally it will located at the bottom. Just re-arrange it to put in other position

That's all. Happy trying :)

I'm reading: Tips: How to Re-Arrange Your Blackberry Application

Tips: Speed Up Your Blackberry Messenger 5.0

Share

Maybe this tips is a bit old but I found it quite recently at berryreview.com and it works. So I thought I will share it here. You just need to change small thing and you can notify slight improvement of your Blackberry Messenger (BBM) in individual chat or even in Blackberry Group (BBG). I found big improvement especially in BBG.
Here is how:
1. Go to your Blackberry Messenger. Press  menu, choose Options
2. Under Chats, you need to change Conversation Style to Standard. Bubbles and Stripes have the alternate colors between you and the other recipients with blue and White. So change it to Standard means no alternate colors.
3. Hit  and press Save

You should notice improvement over your chat. Give it a shot.
I found this tips from here

I'm reading: Tips: Speed Up Your Blackberry Messenger 5.0

Tips: Adjust Your Picture for Wallpaper

Share

I snap a lot of pictures with my Blackberry Storm since that is the handiest tool I always have around. But for several reasons sometimes the picture composition not as right as I thought to become wallpaper. And I'm not a fave of retouch, resize & crop my mobile pictures with image editor in my PC, as I'm lazy to copy, edit and move it back. But luckily Blackberry OS is smart enough so we can recompose the picture for wallpaper. The steps is very simple and no 3rd party app:

1.  go to Media>>Pictures and choose the picture you want. For example, I found this picture in my gallery. If I want to use this dove as my wallpaper, setting it as it is, is not that attractive, in my opinion. I need to recompose it
   
   
   
2. What I need to do is just tap on my Blackberry Storm or Blackberry menu and select Zoom In and repeat until certain level and move it around so it can fit nicely on the front page.
   
   
   
   
3. After that press Blackberry menu, and choose Set As Wallpaper, there is also option Set As Caller ID   for picture profile in your contact.
   
   
   
4. and here is the result.  Looks much nicer :)
   
   

   Happy trying :) remember don't go bigger than its resolution, or the picture will look awful

I'm reading: Tips: Adjust Your Picture for Wallpaper