February 03, 2008
Crackberry Here I Come
So I've wanted an iPhone since it was released—I was in Israel with a bunch of geeks the day it actually came out and we talked all week about the "Jesus Phone"—but I've long resisted the urge to get a smartphone since I don't really want to be able to get my email at every moment of the day. When I finally set out last week to buy an iPhone, it turns out that AT&T doesn't offer ANY coverage in the state of Vermont (I still have an 802 cell phone number) and so I can't get an iPhone with my existing phone number even though I don't live in Vermont anymore. It seems unfathomable to me that AT&T can get away with not offering coverage in AN ENTIRE STATE and still call itself a national network, but c'est la vie. So I'm stuck with a Blackberry or switching to a 202 number. I decided my Vermont heritage was more important than the Phone To End All Phones, but I'm not thrilled with the result.
I've spent a chunk of time this weekend trying to set up my new mobile device with some cool applications, but I had trouble finding a site that offered the must have Blackberry apps, so here's what I've downloaded and installed to get my Blackberry up to snuff:
- Facebook Mobile. Exactly what it says.
- Opera Mini, a much better web browser than the one that comes pre-installed on the Blackberry, it allows you to see actual web pages. I haven't mastered it yet but I like it so far.
- TwitterBerry, which lets you update your Twitter account straight from your Blackberry without using SMS (thus saving your monthly text message quotient). Then if you use TwitterSnyc with Facebook, you can get Facebook to automatically draw from your Twitter updates, saving you from updating in both places. Dorky, I know, but it lets me do more with two applications I don't do enough with now. Twitterberry would be a brilliant solution, but it doesn't appear to work so for now I'm just using the Google Talk application to Twitter.
- Googles Maps Mobile, which is scarily accurate in tracking my location even without any GPS capability in my phone. Using cell phone towers to triangulate it can place you with a 1,000 meters but when I'm in my apartment it gets me to within a block of my actual house. Yikes!
- And I quickly set up my Google Reader for mobile too. One of my biggest challenges in tech life is keeping up with my reader feed and the chance to do even some of that on the Blackberry is pretty cool.
That's it. We'll see how my first week on the 'Berry goes. I'll be on the road for all but 24 hours of the next eight days, so I think it'll come in handy.
I wonder when the GooglePhone will come out with all of these handy Google apps preinstalled....
