Labels: 3G iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Blackberry Bold, Blackberry Storm

I recently picked up a BlackBerry Bold and I must say I love it. I would tend to put my phone onto silent at night and this has led me to miss a few important calls. So when I got the BlackBerry I wondered if it had anything up it's sleeve to prevent this and it does. I thought I'd blog this tip for anyone who hasn't found it but is interested.

1. From the home screen navigate to the profiles menu item and select it.

2. Scroll to beyond the bottom of the screen, after Off, and you'll find an option for Advanced.

3. Select it and you'll see an option called "Use Active Profile Except for:". Scroll down to the check box "Important Calls"

4. Press the BlackBerry key and select Edit from the menu.

5. In the resulting screen you will be able to choose the contacts from whom a different profile can be used, the profile the phone should use when they contact you and finally the ring tone for any incoming calls.

6. Once you've made the changes press the BlackBerry button and save the changes.

That's you done. Now when one of the contacts you have selected contacts you, including texts and hopefully emails too but I still need to test emails, the phone will ignore the active profile and will use this one instead. Great for filtering out calls if you've work to do or if you have your phone on silent at night.

Any questions about this or anything else give me a shout.

Image from blackberry.com

Labels: Blackberry, Tips

Downloading the SDK for version 6.1 is nice and easy from Microsoft.com but the problem emerges when you start looking for a supported environment. Android and BlackBerry use Eclipse plug-ins which are free to download as is Eclipse itself. If you own a Mac you will get Xcode when you download the iPhone SDK and once again these are free. Microsoft’s free Visual Studio Express environments are not actually supported for mobile development. You have to go out and purchase a copy of Visual Studio before you can develop for the Windows Mobile platform. To me this is a massive flaw in the Microsoft model. Google, RIM and Apple are making the most of innovative developers who might think twice if they had to purchase the development environments.

Microsoft may be able to boast about the number of applications they have for Windows Mobile but many of them are pretty awful. I do feel that if Microsoft doesn’t want to get left behind in this field and lose developer support they must offer a Visual Studio Express version that hooks into the 6.1 SDK and allows developers to play and build apps for free. After that they can charge for distribution because everyone else basically does.

Image from msdn blogs

Labels: Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, Visual Studio Express, Windows Mobile

Labels: Blackberry, Blackberry Storm, N96, Nokia, Nokia 5800

The Times of London is reporting that Apple has placed an order with it's suppliers for 200,000 of the new 3G iPhones by the end of May. According to reports the new iPhone will be different to the current device. The possibilities given are a flip version giving the user a larger screen and sliding version which would have a fully functioning QWERTY keyboard rather than a touchscreen keyboard.

The most likely outcome is that we will see all three versions of the device released. This would give the touchscreen version for users who want music and videos, the flip version for those who want Internet browsing on a larger screen and I would also say easier use of enterprise software and the slide for the average user and the Blackberry users who want a device similar to the one they are using.

The release of these three products could catapult Apple into a dominant position in the handheld market and bump RIM into second place. The timing should also guarantee an excellent quarter 2 for Apple. The image above shows the next Blackberry which RIM hope will be the iPhone killer, I doubt it though,

Labels: 3G iPhone, Apple, Blackberry, iPhone