Making GPS on your Blackberry Useful

With Verizon customers getting their GPS on now that the overly-restrictive wireless carrier has finally unlocked the feature to 8130 and 8330 customers, I though it a good time to write a post about how location-based services can be very helpful and fun. Obviously RIM includes Blackberry Maps as an app with its OS, and it works fairly well, but personally I find it to be an inferior product in many ways to some third-party apps that are available.

The first mention has to go to Google Maps. It is a superior (IMHO) replacement to Blackberry Maps and offers search and approximate location based off cell tower triangulation when indoors or whenever GPS positioning is unavailable. I use Google Maps not only for mapping directions to or from somewhere when traveling, but as my information service as well. While Beyond 411 and other similar apps work well, I don't see the point when you have google maps. You simply choose search from the menu and you not only get a spot on the map that you can navigate to, but the phone number, typed address, Ratings, link to their website, and information like types of payments accepted and store hours, depending on the information available. You can also save the search result as a favorite for future reference. The one feature that is lacking that would be nice is the ability to save a result directly to your contacts, like Microsoft's Live Search mobile app has. The newest feature for Google Maps is a social feature more than a business tool. Latitude allows you to broadcast your position to whoever you have friended through the service. For example, two people at, say, Disneyworld, could see where each other are in order to meet up after being separated during the day. There are tons of useful applications for this service that I can think of, but you can use your own imagination to apply it to your lifstyle and activities.

If you travel a lot and want a GPS navigation system such as the in car systems, you can purchase a lifetime subscription to Garmin's mobile system for Blackberry for only $99.99. This gives you turn-by-turn voice instructions and allows you to use the navigation while talking on the phone.

Another brilliant feature that I wish RIM would integrate into their system is location-based alerts. Until they do, this can be handled by got-2, which is primarily a task management application which bundles your tasks and calendar events from the native Blackberry apps into a single list. This function of the app is a bit cumbersome and slow to me, and cannot be disabled, which is why I deleted it eventually. But the location-based alerts part I loved, and I wish that I could get it separately. With this you can set your current location or search for a location and set a task or reminder to alert you when you come into close proximity of the location, for instance, to pick up milk when you drive near the grocery store. This could be a real lifesaver for those of us who need lists and reminders to remember what to do throughout our day.

There are many other services out there which use the internal GPS on your Blackberry for different things, like geo-tagging photos when you upload them or tracking your travels. Are there any good apps I'm missing out on? Comment to let me know or catch me on Twitter(@petersonwally).

Saving Pictures To Your Blackberry's Memory Card By Default

Using the camera on your Blackberry is fun and useful both as a business tool and for personal stuff, but the pictures can eat up memory quickly on the device, particularly some models with less internal memory like the Pearl. The answer to this is to have a memory card inserted and to set your options so that your pictures save to your memory card automatically, but people often look in the wrong menu to try to do this. I got this question from a follower on Twitter the other day (I am @petersonwally if you want to follow me, btw), and they were doing what a lot of folks try to accomplish this, which is Media>Pictures>Menu>Options. This makes sense logically, but it is not where the option is found. The correct place to do this is Camera>Menu>Options, scroll down to Store Pictures: and choose On Media Card instead of In Device Memory. This will send pictures to the card every time you save one, freeing up your device memory so that your Berry can run smoother.

Help with your BlackBerry

Does anybody ever read the "about?" file for their software? What about the owner's manual for your cell phone? Most of us will figure these things out through trial and error or just asking someone how to do this or that. When it comes to a Blackberry, you can do the same to a degree. However these amazing devices are so feature-laden that even those of us who constantly play and explore with them and their capabilities still never master all of the intricacies embedded in them. They don't even come with a user's manual, do they? Just a CD or DVD with some general info, but not what you were wanting to find. So what's up?

The answer is pretty great as far as instructions go. The Help feature, shown as a question mark icon (not "Blackberry help", which takes you into the browser), is a fairly complete instruction manual built right into the device, so you can look up what you need anytime and anywhere without the need for some badly written glorified pamphlet, like most phones get. When you open the help app, you get a fairly detailed list of options ranging from basics to shortcuts to third party application control, and everything in between. Click on a subject and you get a sub-menu for that topic. For instance, if you click on Phone in the main menu, you get sub-topics like phone basics, speed dial, conference calls, call logs, smart dialing, etc. Click on one of these options and you get fairly succinct but good explanation of how to do whatever it is you're trying to do. A built in owner's manual that is easy to navigate and actually tells you what you need to know most of the time. Genius. But most people will never know it's there, because most of us never look at the help files :-).