Google BlackBerry calendar sync, the family calendar, and BlackBerry comments

We've had my wife's BlackBerry Pearl for about a week now. Some recent discoveries:

• The predictive keyboard text entry is slow for writing, but might improve with time. It's very tedious when entering usernames and URLs. I need to learn a shortcut to switch out of predictive mode into the standard multi-stroke letter selection.
• A Graffiti One (original Palm Pilot) text entry solution with predictive word selection would really be much better than this keyboard and would use space far more effectively. Sniff.
• The original Palm had hundreds of fine touches that mde working in the small 160x160 display efficient and even enjoyable. It's early, but I don't see anything like this on the BlackBerry.
• The AT&T personal BB service includes what I think is their "push" email. We use this instead of AT&T's costly instant messaging. We use Google's BB Gmail client for work with traditional email. We haven't tried Google Talk on the BB ... yet
• When I enabled the BB email I was directed to "att.blackberry.net" for a web interface. Ooops! Turns out that's not enabled for personal accounts. I've run into a few of these glitches. [1 - see update]
  

Our latest experiment was with Google Mobile's BB Calendar sync

Get calendar alerts - Using your BlackBerry� smartphone's native calendar, you can now access your Google calendar even when you don't have network coverage and be alerted for upcoming appointments with sound or vibration.

Always in sync - Your Google Calendar stays synchronized whether you access it from your computer or your phone. You can add or edit entries right on your BlackBerry� smartphone or on your Google Calendar on the web...

I was indeed able to configure a connection between our family Google Apps domain calendar and the BB. It's very slow to sync however, even with only a few test posts on the calendar. I wonder if this will turn out be a toy. If it works I might make another try to sync Outlook with Google Calendar, though I don't think there's been much improvement on that front.

We've not tried Google Talk yet.

Update 12/30/08: In the midst of a Blackberry debacle I finally figured some of the odd story with http://www.att.com/blackberrystart. AT&T doesn't document this at all. Most users don't need to know about this because when you first connect the phone to the network AT&T auto-configures the push email that's the only interesting feature of their "Blackberry plan" (which is otherwise a generic data plan).

Anyway, if you navigate to the BB Pearl app for "Blackberry Setup", then "Personal Email Setup", you will be taken to an AT&T web page for configuring your email account. Here you set up a password for your account. In the midst of these screens, as of 12/08, there's an option to "create a username". If you do that you will be asked for a password. Be sure to have the password for your email setup already, because you'll be asked for that too as part of this setup.

Once you do this you can go to http://www.att.com/blackberrystart and the username and password you entered via the phone will allow you access to a very limited page for configuring your BB email. The only novel function on this page is you can define email "filters".

I suggest you ignore this "feature", it's not worth the bother. Still, it's good to know what that absurd web page was supposed be for.

Good comment on Parallels versus VMWare Fusion OS X emulation

Nice discussion around an update announcement: VMware Fusion Updated to version 1.1.1 - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW). I really do need to install the copy of Fusion I bought, but I use Win2K so little that it's at the bottom of my to do list. I'm still on an early version of Parallels.

The Complete Guide to iPhone Car Integration

Via TUAW: The Complete Guide to iPhone Car Integration. Excellent work, clearly there are going to be a lot of products aimed at this issue. I guess Bluetooth headset is what Apple engineers imagine us using.

Enroll in a Google search experiment

Google's Experimental Search now allows users to enroll in one of the experiments. Like most people, I opted for "alternate views". Now all my http://google.com/ig searches have a new drop down on the right side that allows me to apply alternative views to my results. (This, of course, works only when I'm logged into the Gmail identity associated with my personalized search pages.)

Definitely worth doing, I don't see any downside. You can provide feedback.

iTunes 7.6 patches one of my biggest OS complaints!

I posted about one of my biggest OS X complaints a week or two ago:

Gordon's Tech: Multiuser machines and devices: the next most messed up part of OS X: "The real problem shows up with iPods however, and presumably with an iPhone as well.

Each user account tries to seize control of the iPod. So if I sync on my account, then switch to my wife's account, the iPod can go into a limbo state. It thinks it's attached, but the OS says it isn't."

Well, iTunes 7.6 now has an option to TURN OFF iPhone and iPod sync. I set that option for every user on the multi-user iMac.

Big problem made smaller.

BTW, they also fixed the $$%!$ broken smart playlist functionality.

BlackBerry Pearl, iTunes and Missing Sync play well together

This one got a delighted laugh from Emily, so I know it's good.

I discovered tonight that Emily's BlackBerry Pearl will play AAC encoded music (not FairPlay, just AAC). Who knew?

So I re-enabled disk mass storage support in the BB advanced options, reviewed the warnings from Mark/Space about USB mounting and told Missing sync for Blackberry to sync my new "BlackBerry" iTunes Playlist. [1]

Worked like a charm.

I absolutely did not turn The Beatles "Any Time at All" into a ringtone for her Pearl. I know that would bring Homeland Security to my doorstep.

Now I'm ordering a 2GB Micro-SD card and a 2.5mm to 3.5mm stereo out converter cable. Emily will be able to play the kids audio books on demand from her phone. Using the speaker phone if necessary.

[1] Ok, one more complication. Our iTunes music library lives in my Public folder on the iMac server. Emily has to sync the Pearl with her account. The solution is easy. I configured her iTunes to reference tunes in place, not to copy them. Then I dragged my entire music library on to her iTunes Window. Ten minutes later she had her own access list suitable for sync to the BB. Of course it won't stay in sync, but I've done this before. I just need to periodically delete all. (Actually I've done much more complex things before ...)

Update 12/30/08: Be very careful. Missing Sync stores the iTunes on your phone's main memory area -- which is pretty damned limited. If you sync infrequently, the "leave at least 5MB" default setting can start to become small, with very bad consequences ...

BlackBerry Pearl - usage tips

For us the BlackBerry Pearl is a waystation on the way to iPhone 2.0, but Google is making it at least interesting. So I went hunting for tips, and found a few on "Tong Family Blog":

• Video and music codecs
• Shortcuts

The codecs include AAC! I just tested it and they work very well.

Some of my favorite shortcuts (mostly from the Tong list but I've since added a few of my own):

• To move to the top of a screen (web page esp), press 1.
• To move to the bottom of a screen, press 7.
• To change text input methods when in a text field: Press the Menu key and then Click Enable Multitap or Enable SureType. (SureType is very unsure when entering URLs and usernames.)
  
• To switch applications, hold the Alt key and press the Escape (back) key. Continue holding the Alt key and roll the Pearl to select an application. Release the Alt key.
• To return to the Home screen, press the End (hang up) key.
• To lock the keyboard, from the Home screen, hold the asterisk (*) key. To unlock the keyboard, hold the asterisk (*) key and press the Send key
• To switch between the Default and Vibrate notification profiles, from the Home screen, hold the pound (#) key.
• To assign a speed dial number to a key, from the Home screen or in the Phone application, hold the key you want to assign. Type the phone number.
• To insert a period, press the Space key twice. The next letter is capitalized.
• To insert a period (.) in the Go To dialog box, press the Space key. To insert a forward slash (/) in the Go To dialog box, hold the Shift key and press the Space key.
• To open the bookmark list from a web page, press 5.
• To add a bookmark from a web page, press the question mark (?) key.
• To view a thumbnail version of a web page, press X. To return to the normal view, press any key. You can navigate a long web page by scrolling the thumbnail.
  
• To toggle the banner on a web page, press the exclamation point (!) key again.

I also liked the pointer to the 2GB Sandisk microSD card with an SD adapter.

Now that I've shown the BB really can play AAC I'll get a 2.5mm to 3.5 mm stereo out adapter and a 2GB SD card.