The Rabapab Blog

So I finally got my Google Voice (GV) invite last night. I was able to get my account mostly setup and the GV app for Blackberries installed on my phone. I have been waiting for a while for GV to be available to check out, but they have been under a closed beta with the existing Grand Central users since GV was announced. The basics of GV are the following.

• One number for all your calls and SMS, which basically means that all of your phones can ring at the same time when someone calls your Google Voice number. You are in complete control over which phones that you have added to your account will ring when a call is received.
• Voice Mail Transcription, completely automated voice to text transcriptions can be sent via email or SMS text message, whenever someone leaves a voicemail. Very nice when you do not have time or the ability to check your voicemail.
• Listen In, which allows you to listen to voicemail messages as they are being left, just like with a physical answering machine. Upon hearing the callers message you can decide to then take the call if it is someone you want to talk to.
• Phone Routing, which allows you to send calls to certain phones based on who is calling.
• Personalized Greetings, allows you to setup Personalized voicemail greetings for individual callers.

And those are just some of the features of GV. I have begun to use my GV number for business contacts, as in companies that I do business with that require me to give them my phone number. With the spam features built into GV I will easily be able to filter out the unwanted telemarketing calls that might come from giving my phone number out to those companies. I normally don’t get too many telemarketer calls anyway, one of the beauties of using only a cell phone, which are naturally unlisted numbers anyway. So with the GV number that adds just another layer of filtering that I did not have before. Over time I will be switching all of my existing service accounts over to my new GV number. That way every one of them will be using that number to reach me, and I will be able to take advantage of the features included in GV to make sure that I am getting only the calls that I want to take.

As I spend more time using GV and start getting regular calls on it, I will toss up a quick post to update everyone on my thoughts for the service. I have been excited for some time to check GV out and now that I have a chance I really want to see how useful it could be.

So I just picked up a copy of Tetherberry tonight, decided I could certainly get some use out of something like that.  And I will especially now that I have this netbook pretty much running how I want it.  Battery life is rather good so far with Windows 7, although for the best battery life I must reduce Windows 7 to its Power Saver mode.  It takes away some of the prettiness of the operating system, but oh well, it still does what I want it to. 

So Tetherberry will allow me to use my Blackberry data plan as my internet connection, wherever I can get data service on my phone.  I have nationwide coverage and it is a pretty big network, so I should pretty much be able to hop online from anywhere.  Now obviously with the type of connection that I have I do not plan on watching a movie over the internet with it.  I really intend the connection to be for email, light web browsing and messaging.  That is mostly because I don’t want to over use my connection, and since I would only really use it when I am travelling it shouldn’t be a problem to keep the bandwidth usage to a minimum. 

I will be checking out Tetherberry over the next couple of days, and I will throw my thoughts up in a few days.  This is certainly not new software and has been out for several months, but I felt the need to type something so this is what I came up with.  LOL. 

If you would like to check out Tetherberry for yourself, feel free to visit their website at http://www.tetherberry.com.  The software currently sells for $49.95, but compared to the monthly recurring cost of tethering service with most of the nations cell phone providers, that is a small price to pay.  And more importantly it is a one-time fee.  As I mentioned I don’t intend to use anymore bandwidth than I would normally use on my cell phone during a given day, not to mention that I would most likely only ever use the software a few times a month.  But to be able to look at map on a screen the size of a netbook or laptop instead of that tiny Pearl screen makes it worth it 10 times over, I would even take it over the Storm screen.

Figured I better finish this set of posts, but to start off lets update the 1st post a little.  I am no longer currently using  Viigo, due to what seemed like a memory leak from the application.  It was also a really large application, and would entirely consume my phone while it was loading articles.  I now use the Mobihome webpage launcher that was designed for touch screen phones.  It has links to mobile news related sites from all over.  I will also be making some minor edits to the previous post to add links to the Google apps that were mentioned.

Now to move on thru some more of my current favorite applications for my Blackberry Storm.  Lets start off with browsers.  The BB Browser has been getting better with every new OS leak, but it is still got a ways to go.  3rd party wise there are a few to choose from currently available and another in the works.  Of the two available now (Bolt and Opera Mini) I personally prefer Opera Mini.  It is much faster than the Berry browser, and has several other cool features.  One turn off for some people on Opera Mini is the fact that SurePress is not involved in the link clicking process.  You just simply touch the link and it is selected.  Sort of like the iPhone.  It personally does not bother me, as I quite like the browser.  The browser being worked on by SkyFire will most likely become my new favorite browser once it gets released, as it will support Flash.  That will make it most likely the single greatest app available.

Moving right along, I have for quite some time been removing the Voice Activated Dialing files from my OS install packages.  I have replaced it with vlingo, which is essentially the VAD on crack.  Not only can it handle voice dialing, but it also support voice commands for the phone.  You can do things like search Google, update your Twitter or Facebook status, send an e-mail or SMS, and many other cool things.  Upon installing vlingo you will go thru a short setup process and then you will be able to begin using vlingo on your phone.  The only down side to vlingo is that it does not yet support Bluetooth headsets, so it does not respond to the headset dial command.

The next couple of apps I recently picked up thru the store as paid apps.  The 1st is called PeekaWho, and it provides nice pop-up messages showing a preview of e-mail and SMS messages with several quick actions that you can perform without needing to even go into the Messages folder.  The pop-up also contains your Contacts picture for the person if they are in your Contacts list and their name.  In addition to this great app, I also picked up another great one called FollowUp, which actually integrates nicely into PeekaWho.  FollowUp does exactly what its name implies, it provides follow features similar to Microsoft Outlook.  It integrates nicely into several of the standard BB menus, and makes it easy to set follow up reminders on things.

The last few apps that I will be covering are what I use for maintaining my Twitter feed from my BlackBerry.  The 1st is called SocialScope, which is currently in closed Alpha.  I cannot cover much about it as I am involved in the Alpha, but I can say that it is by far the best Twitter client I have used for the Berry.  It is full of features and in general just works wonderfully considering that it is an Alpha application.  The mass majority of my Twitter traffic actually comes from that client.  While SS is quite a wonderful Twitter client, I have also been checking out the ÜberTwitter public beta.  It seems to be quite nice as well.  I have been thoroughly impressed with it.  I really like its location tracking features, even though I chose to turn the location status update feature off unless I want it on.  It still seems to update my Location on my Profile which is what I have it set to do.  UT also includes a nice photo feature that allows you to post a picture taken from your camera phone and then have it hosted on a special UT web page.  The link to the photo is included in your status update.

So that is it for the App Picks series for now.  I will try to circle back around to this series soon to update it and potentially add additional parts.  More to come soon.

As previously mentioned I have developed quite the Crackberry addiction.  I love my Berry, I am not quite sure what I did without it all these years.  Needless to say developing an addiction to the things is quite easy, since they do everything.  I have never felt more connected and organized.  The unexpected part was that after I got the Berry I have become active in some of the Social Networking sites, which I never got into before.  I created and have been maintaining a Facebook page, and have a Twitter feed that I update quite frequently.  Of course that just means there are more things that I can do with my Berry.  Which brings us to the reason for this post.

Since getting my Berry I have tried several different applications.  One of the 1st apps that I picked up is called QuickPull, which is a must have application for any Blackberry owner.  The most annoying part of the Blackberry is that so many things seem to require you to “pull the battery”, which essentially reboots the phone.  The application allows the user to simulate a battery pull, eliminating the need to open the battery compartment.  The more recent versions allow the user to schedule reboots, which is nice to keep the phone running smooth.  The best part of QuickPull is that it is a free download.

Another great app that I found, and actually paid for is called MeterBerry, another must have application for any Blackberry owner.  MeterBerry provides all kinds of information to allow the user to see how their phone is running.  Detailed battery and memory information, including logs and the ability to reboot the phone.  Some would argue that MeterBerry replaces Quickpull, but I still find a use for both of them.  The icon for MeterBerry is also very nice as it allows the user to customize what data it displays to the user, and it can also be set to rotate thru all the possible options.  I think I have mine set to show Available Application Memory.

Another big must have Blackberry application is called Viigo, which is a RSS based reader application.  Viigo is pretty much my one stop shop for anything news related, as it has feeds available to it for pretty much any source.  Viigo is also a free applications which makes it definately worth picking up.  Poynt, which is a location driven local search application, allow the user to search thru SmartPages for business listings, locate movies playing in theaters near you, and provide maps to those services.  The business directory service seems to be somewhat accurate and useful, although there are some items that are out-of-date or not listed.

Of course you can’t forget the Google applications, like Google Maps w/Latitude and Google Sync.  If you have a Google account and make use of the Google Calendar service, then Google Sync is for you.  It will sync automatically any change that you make to your Berry calendar to your Google Calendar.  It will also sync your contacts to Google Contacts.  Maps is probably one of the best map applications out right now.  While it does not have turn by turn directions with voice support, it does offer satellite view and the ability to zoom into street view elements.  They have also built Latitude into the new Maps application, which makes Maps that much cooler.

That is enough for this post, stay tuned for part two of this series.