Utilities and Security Top Apps ▶ Contacts Cleaner ▶ Ascendo Data Vault ▶ CropIt ▶ BuddyGuard Pro ▶ Find My Phone ▶ ControlBBanel ▶ Human Voice Ringtones ▶ File Manager Pro ▶ MileageMeter ▶ Fixmo Tools ▶ Neelam Scientific Calculator ▶ PhoneBAK Anti-theft ▶ Parking Meter ▶ QuickLaunch ▶ Quick Convert MA TE RI AL ▶ Repligo Reader ▶ Snapscreen ▶ Remote Print ▶ Signal Strength TE D ▶ What’s Running? Repligo Reader GH $$$ US PY RI I just bought a nifty new pocket camera to go alon
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security If only I could carry the manual around in a tiny but still useable form. And then I found Repligo Reader. It is a nicely designed app that opens and reads PDF (Portable Document Format) files on (let’s be honest here) the relatively tiny screen of a BlackBerry device.
10 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security But for me, the best feature is the Reading View, which doesn’t attempt to hold on to the predefined design of the PDF document and instead renders it in a single column of text and graphics. In this mode I was able to go through the manual as if I were reading it in from a book. (Actually the type was a tiny bit larger and the backlit screen a bit brighter than the printed page.) Another press of the BlackBerry menu key gives you the option of using bookmarks.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 11 And using the app with a file downloaded or stored on your BlackBerry does not require the use of any data. You can load up your phone with PDF files and examine them on an airplane or while roaming anywhere in the world without additional charge.
12 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security Ascendo DataVault $$$ US Every time I travel my wallet comes with me, which is necessary, I guess. But along with as little cash as necessary, in that wallet are three or four credit cards, as well as health and auto insurance cards. I also carry international phone cards for use in places where voice calls made using my BlackBerry would cause me physical pain, and other important pieces of plastic and paper.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 13 information I had entered from my computer keyboard — and both were protected by the same complex password. On the BlackBerry you can display information in Tree view, which is a clickable list organized by category, or List view, which is like a spreadsheet. You can organize items by categories and search for any entry by name.
14 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security BuddyGuard Pro $ US If you lose your BlackBerry, you can hope that some Good Samaritan will find it and give you a call to arrange its return. That’s one reason I always have a few obvious listings in my contacts: Home This Phone, Return This Phone, and Whose Phone Is This. Or someone could take your phone and see what kind of information there is that can be used to their benefit. Or they might choose to remove the SIM card and keep or resell the phone.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 15 A stranger who finds the phone can silence the alarm with one click and can call or e-mail you from your phone with another. All of the other functions of the phone are disabled. The phone will remain locked — even if it is rebooted — until the proper password is entered. You can also merely lock the phone by sending bg-lock. This command also displays the contact screen.
16 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security ControlBBanel $ US The only thing worse than spam on your personal computer is spam in your hand. This simple and useful toolkit allows you to control your BlackBerry apps and consult a banel, I mean a panel, of information about the device. Under Info, you can quickly learn the following important information: ✓ The percentage of charge remaining in the BlackBerry’s battery. ✓ The unique PIN that identifies your phone and can be used in PIN-to-PIN messaging.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 17 And then under the last tab of this Swiss Army knife of a utility, you have four tools to help you manage your device. If you click Clean Memory, the utility will reorganize the applications running on your BlackBerry to make the most efficient use of system resources. Every time I tried it, ControlBBanel was able to improve efficiency by roughly 10 percent; the more apps you have running on your BlackBerry the more efficient this tool becomes.
18 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security File Manager Pro $ US The BlackBerry OS is your device’s equivalent of Windows for the PC or the Mac OS for Apple computers. With File Manager Pro, the BlackBerry takes one more giant step over the line toward being a full-featured computer in the palm of your hand. This is the equivalent of Windows Explorer on a PC or Finder on a Mac: a full-featured organizer and manager for all of the files stored on your BlackBerry.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 19 You can also use the Text Editor that is part of File Manager Pro to perform more-than-basic editing, search and replace, and other functions. You can also skip several steps by saving files or folders to your Favorites list, which allows you to jump directly to them. And the Favorites are managed dynamically: the ones you use most often (or those used most recently) are moved to the top of the list. The app permits you to sort files by name, size, type, or date.
20 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security Fixmo Tools $$$ US Most of the utilities in Fixmo Tools are ones that I had never imagined I might need, right up until the time when I did. Here are some of the elements of this BlackBerry tool belt: ✓ Undelete is an oops tool. It allows you to retrieve most e-mail, PIN messages, calendar events, contacts, tasks, and memos that you removed from your phone. Now the fine print: you’ve got to act as quickly as possible to claw back items you have deleted.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 21 Other protections in this tool warn against use of naughty words (it won’t prevent them, but it will make you stop and think before sending them). Flame Retardant will ask you to stop and think before sending words in ALL CAPS. ✓ Speed Test is just what it sounds like; it measures the download and upload speeds of 3G, EDGE, and Wi-Fi networks. It’s a good way to find out if slow response is the fault of your phone or the network to which it is connected.
22 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security PhoneBAK Anti-theft $$ US Here’s another take on the shut-it-down, wipe-it-out, and try-toretrieve-it app. PhoneBAK acts as your agent to report on the approximate location of your phone, alert you if someone inserts an unauthorized SIM card into your BlackBerry, provide details about that usage, and display a warning on your phone declaring that bad things happen to bad people (or whatever else you’d like to say).
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 23 Now what if someone doesn’t change the SIM but intends to use your phone and troll through the data stored within? That’s been dealt with here, too: send an SMS text back to your phone with the command phonebak+wipe (include the plus sign) with your very secret password, and your BlackBerry will wipe from memory contacts, e-mails, phone logs, memos, calendar entries, and other information you have preset for the command.
24 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security QuickLaunch $ US On the one hand, it’s great to be able to have a few dozen amazing and entertaining apps stored in the memory of your BlackBerry and ready for use after a few clicks and a bit of navigation. On the other hand, chances are you will use some apps more often than others. That’s where QuickLaunch comes in. You can think of it as the BlackBerry equivalent of the taskbar on a PC running Windows or the dock on a Macintosh.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 25 Best features QuickLaunch does not run in the background which means it does not use resources until you need it; it runs only when opened. Click on a menu item you’ve added or enter the keyboard shortcut you have defined, and the program exits the scene until you run it again. Worst features There is close to nothing in the way of help for new users.
26 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security SnapScreen $ US One of the first things I had to do when I sat down to write this book was figure out how to capture an image of the screen on my BlackBerry. I could have called in a courtroom artist to make a sketch or I could have used a camera and a closeup lens, but neither of those solutions would have been very satisfactory.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 27 If you plan on doing any editing of the image, the best way to work is to immediately save the JPG as a TIF file, which prevents any further compression of detail. Once you are through with any work in PhotoShop or other digital editors, you can make a final copy in any format you choose. You might want to use the Save to Media Card if you are roaming and don’t want to pay data charges.
28 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security What’s Running $ US When cellphones became smartphones — with Research in Motion’s BlackBerry helping to lead the charge — they took the next step and became tiny computers. Depending on what I am doing and where I am traveling, my BlackBerry can have 50 or more little apps. Some of them are demanding the attention of the microprocessor in the phone all the time — applications that manage the connection to the nearest cellphone tower or Wi-Fi system, for example.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 29 Is your BlackBerry still running an app you thought you had deleted? (Sometimes free trials of apps will linger long after you have decided not to pay for a license.) With the click of your action key you can take it away. Is an app you want to run refusing to cooperate? From What’s Running you can attempt to force it to start without having to go to the bother of restarting your phone.
30 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security Contacts Cleaner $ US Do your contacts need cleaning? The solution comes not in a bottle but in a Plug-and-Play app that does what it promises all by itself. With just a bit of regular use, the list of contacts in your Blackberry can quickly begin to look like the clutter on your real desktop: duplicate entries with multiple phone numbers and addresses, partial entries, and other forms of electronic scrap. Contacts Cleaner is a completely automated process.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 31 CropIt $ US Sometimes it is truly a wonder to find a tool that does just one thing, but does it so well you wonder how you ever lived without it. Such is the case for CropIt, which works with any photos you have taken using your BlackBerry device’s built-in camera or any photo you have downloaded to the phone’s memory. Use its facilities to locate an image, then set an anchor point in one corner and another in the opposite corner . . . and then crop it.
32 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security Find My Phone $ US My phone sometimes ends up under a stack of papers. My wife’s? Well, let’s just say we find it in the last place we look (and the last place we’d expect it to be). Most of the time you can find your phone simply by calling its number. But sometimes it’s hidden beneath the sofa cushions. Enter Find My Phone.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 33 Human Voice Ringtones $$ US For a short period of time I worked at a prestigious institute at a major university and my secretary had a secretary. Between the two of them, I never had to answer my own phone directly. There was a little speaker on my desk and I’d hear a message: “Mr. Bradbury is on the line.” And then I went back to the real world, where I had to answer my own phone.
34 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security MileageMeter $ US One quick and easy way to keep an eye on the performance of your car is to look for sudden and unexplained drops in miles per gallon you get in typical driving. Your engine could be experiencing problems, the tires may be underinflated, or your next-door neighbor may be siphoning fuel in the middle of the night.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 35 Neelam Scientific Calculator $$ US Somewhere out there, a BlackBerry owner is asking, “How come I can’t do Reverse Polish Notation using the built-in calculator on this so-called smartphone?” And for that matter, why can’t we work with sine, cosine, and tangent functions, plus polar input, Cartesian-polarconversion, and all of the other easy stuff that my desktop scientific calculator can do? Well, that someone out there isn’t me.
36 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security Parking Meter $ US Okay, this one is as simple and to-the-point as you could hope. You park your car and insert coins (or buy a time card) or simply claim a spot where the sign says something like 30-minute parking. And then you rush around like a mad person to get all of your errands done in time. Or you play it loose and forget about the ticking of the clock. After all, you’re made of money; who cares about a $100 parking ticket? Not me.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 37 Quick Convert $$ US Criminey, it’s too hot out there. It’s at least 32! You sit there nodding your head as Dundee objects, wishing you could remember the formula to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit. (It’s easy: multiply the temperature times 9⁄5 and add 32. Quickly.) The fact is that we still live in a world where some people use inches and ounces and others millimeters and grams.
38 Chapter 1: Utilities and Security Remote Print $ US You’ve got a wireless phone. Why should you have to use a cable to connect to your desktop PC or to a printer? Well, you don’t if you use this utility. It allows you to print or send any file from your BlackBerry (including e-mails, photos, documents, contacts, and just about anything else) using its built-in Wi-Fi. The app consists of two modules.
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security 39 Signal Strength Free You may have heard of a computer company named after a large red (not black) fruit and of their misadventures with one of their latest cellphones. According to most experts (except for Apple) if you held it like a normal human being, your hand blocked the path the antenna needed to pick up a strong cell signal.
