i'm Crackburried .
Nov 06
Ok, I think I can call it official now : i’m crackberried ! Yep , its true, its the horrible horrible truth, but my name is Knightwise and i’m a crackberry addict.
I’ve had the little device for over three weeks now and must say, that I can hardly live without it. Not that i’m one of those work-a-holics that needs to read and forward every piece of CC-mail they recieve, no its not that . I’m a blackberry addict because to me, its my digital lifeline to my virtual lifestyle. The 8310 I bought, second hand of kapaza.be cost me about 200 euro’s. The device was in mint condition (can you say : bubblewrapped ) and had obviously never been properly used when I took ownership of it. The first thing that I noticed is how light but sturdy the device is. The sceen is big and bright, the interface is very modest but very productive and the buttons remind me of my beloved Treo. Hardwarewise ? I loved it right off the batt. What makes it stand out from the other smartphones that I owned is that its very sturdy and built for productivity, instead of bling – centered and being cluttered with all kinds of applications that don’t realy DO anything for you, besides waste your time. The camera is pretty good and shooting pictures at the 2 mpixes setting results in something more then 1600 x 1200 blobs of noise. The mp3 functionality is awesome and the one gig SD card onboard is home to a duplicate of my daily podcast list.
The true power of this device however, lies in the software that is available. Pretty soon I had found the MAC OS version of the blackberry sync program and was pushing pictures, ringtones and music back and forth with ease. It also syncs up nice with Icall (nice but useless) and syncs up the contacts with my address book on the mac. So after some cleaning up of both calendar and address book, I had all my contacts on the device.
Now what ? As i said : I was looking for a completely wireless solution to my daily activities. Mail, contacts and Calendar should NOT be synced via a computer ! It should be done right away over the air .. thats what a blackberry is for. Enter Google and the Google plex ! First off all : Gmail supports full imap and instant delivery services on the Blackberry. No pop3 stuff , no sending under the wrong name , no delays. Instant mails on your blackberry from your Gmail account , Instant replication of forwarded messages, sent items and deleted items ! Love it ! .
But Google took it a step further : Gcalsync does an INSTANT 2 way sync between your Google calendar and your Blackberry. That opened up a fantastic way of ‘groupware working’ between me and Nyana. She can add items to my calendar , I can add items .. and that way she knows where i’m hanging out and what’s on my schedule. The sync is instant and happens behind the screens. I don’t even need to run the app.
For instant communications I’m using the Googletalk client that i installed and that also gives me enhanced communication skills. (i must say , I hardly use the blackberry for calling people, its all mail ) and my facebook and Twitter traffic also goes over the respective clients I installed.
The bottom line ? I have not switched on my classic cellphone in a few days now. i’ve left a greeting message on my voicemail telling people they must email me instead of using the telephone. And guess what ? It works ! Finally i’m casting of the lines of direct communications with endusers in favor of a new way of "doing my digital thing". I’m not at the point where I get ‘blackberry deprived’ just yett, but even with the simple functionalities i’ve installed .. I’m crackberryfied !
