Datasheet

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.
The items you place in QuickLaunch are ones that are available else-
where, but are more convenient when brought to one place. And
QuickLaunch adds a few of its own small but useful utilities.
There is no limit to the number of quick launches or keyboard
shortcuts you can set up using this product. To help you keep them
organized you can create subfolders that hold groups of apps, using
whatever organizational scheme makes sense to you. You can posi-
tion the pop-up menu on either side of the screen and make it appear
within most other applications.
Standard launches include jumps from the home screen directly to a
particular Web site, a speed dialer for phone calls, and a shortcut to
specific e-mail or text message recipients. And you can also jump to
any of the apps that come with the BlackBerry operating system or
third-party apps like the ones I write about in this book. You can also
jump to a video or sound file to play back immediately; somewhere
out there is someone who wants to be able play the “1812 Overture”
or “Who Let the Dogs Out?” at a moment’s notice.
In addition to putting your favorite apps a pop-up screen away, you
can use any of the extra goodies that are part of QuickLaunch. These
include a memory optimizer, a utility to clear your call or event logs,
and a device reset that substitutes for the battery pull required to
restart the BlackBerry for housekeeping or to clear up certain errors.
Other utilities include a mute that turns off the camera shutter noise
on most but not all BlackBerry devices, a tilt lock that keeps Storm
phones from automatically switching screen orientation, and a menu
to set a particular backlight level for your screen. (And a related tool
that some people really seem to think is a great use for a smartphone:
you can turn on the video camera light to make your BlackBerry into
the highest-tech flashlight in the house.)
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