MOBILE MILEAGE: The BlackBerry Curve

Does your BlackBerry have: A streaming radio with over a 100 stations? A 40-language translator? A voice-to-text recorder, shopping list/idea manager or remin-der service? Bi-directional contact and calendar syncing with Gmail? Always updated news, blogs, stocks, podcasts?

No? Never mind. Now it can... And for free.

Anyone using a BlackBerry will tell you it’s one of the ablest handsets in business. Nay, it is almost a habituation, a religion that you unconsciously seek first thing in the morning and close your eyes with at night.

Yet, no matter how compelling the device, it lacks a versatility and coolness that people now seek on their phones. So here are some wonderful ways to soup up your BlackBerry and make the smartphone even smarter.

The applications mentioned here were checked on a Blackberry Bold and Pearl 8110. You can key the URLs into your BlackBerry’s browser to download the apps directly, over the air. The programmes work on current RIM devices that run BlackBerry OS 4.0 or higher. As some apps may be handset/OS version-specific, please verify compatibility. Lastly, things will be really hunky-dory if you’re on an unlimited data plan.

Radio Ga Ga

Pining for a radio on your BlackBerry? These ones here are all for you. Nobex (www.nobexrc.com/download) is a pretty neat streaming Internet radio app that gives you over a 100 global radio stations to listen to from classic rock to contemporary hits, lilting country to smooth jazz, wordy news to the golden oldies. You can set your favourites and even purchase songs if you like something. Unfortunately, the flavour is all-American. But for more varied fare, download FlyCast (http://flycast.fm /bby/). The Genres guide makes it easy to flick between (1,200 stations) various types of music (alternative, classical, Broadway, Caribbean, dance, R&B, Top 40 and also Bollywood!), talk (BBC Online, Loveonline, mystery, comedy) to world music. FlyCast has some issues with non-Wi-Fi BBs, so watch it.

Check out Slacker Personal Radio (www. slacker. com /mobile/blackberry/) and its beaming bandwagon of five score and more stations. If you’re hungry for more, hang around for Stitcher’s (www.stitcher.com) imminent BlackBerry launch — you can try out the desktop (http://flycast.fm/) version meanwhile. All these work best over a Wi-Fi connection, of course.

Language Timothy!

The BlackBerry Pearl

Travelling to lands foreign and worried about how you’ll comprendre the local lingo? Download bbTtran (http://ota.bbtran. com/), an any-to-any word translator and if it’s Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish... actually about 40 languages, you should be able to get some respite. Easy to use, the programme allows you to use multiple online translation services (Google Translate, Systran, Reference.com) to grok your words.

You can ask for the literal translation; or you can ask for the meaning of a particular word. Woefully, you can’t feed it phrases (so no question of it giving you a quickie response to a “can I have fried fish” kinda query?) or colloquial verbiage (“veggie”). But it can prove to be a really nifty tool that will always be at hand when you need it. Especially to tell the Kraut kellnerin (waiter) that the fisch (fish) is ubelriechend (smelly) when dining in Deutschland.

How About a Video Soiree?

Bips Basu gambolling in Aa Dekhen Zara right on the screen of your BlackBerry! Yes, she could — in a trice if you wanted. If the business of work keeps you so busy that you tend to miss out on the business of life, thumb your way to VuClip (http://vuclip.com/?mo bile). And you can eyeball everything from bikinied babes strutting their stuff in Sports Illustrated’s Sultry Summer Surf, Victoria’s Secret videos, alongside Bart Simpson soliloquies, the beatific Beatles, boisterous Bollywood hit numbers to trailers of forthcoming flicks.

VuClip is a mobile-friendly search engine for a large video pool of sites — YouTube, Yahoo! and Daily Motion included — that lets you watch (as well as download and keep) reams of celluloid. You can sign up and stick all your favourite videos in a row via a cliplist. Don’t frown, but the quality of some of the video can be pretty yucky. That’s why the streaming works well even without Wi-Fi. If you have a Pearl 8130, try Videostreams (http://videostr eamsmobile.com).

Psst! Meet Me in the Library

If you want to catch up on your reading, you can do it on your BB smartphone anytime, anyplace. Installing Viigo (www.viigo.com /partner /blackberry) will push regular news, sports, weather, entertainment, audio, podcast, etc. updates to your handset. Equally able at fetching you all this and more, is PocketExpress (www.pocketexpress.com). If you are travelling to the US or Canada, this will get you travel assistance, restaurant referrals and even help in locating products and services.

And you can get your regular fix of everything from Time magazine (www.time. com/time/mobile/), Newsweek (www. newsweek.com/), Wall Street Journal(www.wsjmobilereader.com/), New York Times (www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/bb_faq.html) via these specialised downloadable auto-updating apps for BlackBerrys. And remember you’re not venturing to any of these sites individually each time... All the content comes to you automatically the moment you launch the app.

If books are your trip in life and you don’t mind reading a few pages on the cramped screen of your mobile (you read lengthy emails on your Blackberry so why not read e-books eh?), try your vision with Mobipocket Reader (http://m.mobipocket.com/). Download a free e-book or two from the e-book store before shelling out any greenbacks.

Your Voice is My Command

Vlingo (www.vlingo.com/) is an amazing little programme that gives your BlackBerry a voice-powered user interface. Yes, once you’ve learnt the nitty-gritty you can use your phone — not just to dial numbers as lots of phones can — but also to post an email or an SMS, create and store a memo or task, compose a social-networking status message, naah even launch the web browser and nose around the Internet, performing Google and Yahoo! web searches.

A Notes2Self function allows you to add tasks, memos, or send emails to yourself. You can opt for the programme to read out message subjects or full messages. With the multitude of options, there is an obvious learning curve. So you will need patience to master this one.

From left: the BlackBerry Bold; the BlackBerry Pearl Flip and the BlackBerry Storm

Moolah Rouge

Bean counters and book-keepers who live and breathe inside their spreadsheets will appreciate GridMagic (www.simprit. com/free/ gridmagic/index. html). The whippersnapper is compatible with Microsoft Excel, offers unfettered ease-of-use, basic input, viewing and editing, and allows synchronisation of spreadsheet data between the smartphone and the desktop.

If the daily rate of dollars and dimes or pounds and pennies matter a lot to you, grab a copy of a lightweight mobile currency conversion applet called Oanda FX Converter (http://m.fxconverter.com/). The multilingual converter fetches foreign exchange rates for over 160 currencies and three metals in a jiffy.

Jog My Memory

Pick dog food for Puggy. Check. Drop credit card payment. Check. Blank DVDs. Check. Xerox ration card. gaaawd! $%#@$%^^. With life and times getting more and more complicated and hectic by the day, it’s only natural that we need constant reminders to get things — primal or petty — done. And while a paper and pencil are not always at hand, our phone usually is. ReQall (www.reqall.com) is a very useful all-in-one application that works as a task/shopping list jotter, idea keeper, voice-to-text recorder, reminder service and memory aid.

Since everything that you put down or record is auto-synced (every 15 minutes to once a day) with your Web account, you can access and manage it all online as well. Or make it work the other way around — key in your concepts/ideas/tasks/lists/notes on the Web and have them synced to your BB over the air. You can receive reminders by mail at preset times before an event/task, a once a day daily summary, as well as a “jog your memory” mail every two hours.

The Browser Brouhaha

Unlike human kind, not all web browsers are equal. Or perfect. To shrug off your dependence on BlackBerry’s default browser, download the popular lightweight Opera Mini (www. opera.com/ mini/download/blackberry/). It’s fast at rendering pages. It’s feature-rich. It’s friendly. It makes using the Web on the diminutive screen of your phone much easier. Therefore, it’s a must-have. Yet it stumbles on YouTube. Therefore, we give you Bolt (http://boltbrowser.com/), the newest kid on the browser block. While it’s as fast as Opera (often faster) and as stable too, Bolt suffers from rather jerky scrolling. But both these add-on browsers will irk you for inability at copy-pasting if and when you want that.

Journey Without Maps, Mr Pico Iyer?

If your BlackBerry is blessed with GPS you may have winced at the default maps on the device — or frankly the lack of them. Downloading Google Maps (http://m.google. com/maps) therefore quite literally brings the world right into your pocket. Replete with satellite imagery mobile mapping, the application can provide location-based information and services to mobile handsets even without the use of GPS (by using cellphone towers in the proximity). Okay, you won’t get your turn-by-turn instructions. To a limited degree (in India) you can also use the search function to find specific locations in towns and cities.

And then there is Latitude (http://google. com/latitude), Google’s location-aware software or “geo-broadcasting” app which can transmit to your family and friends your current location, albeit with a great degree of flexibility (best available location, city level or hide).

New York Minute Googlisation

Without making you watch a spinning hourglass while the browser loads, Google Mobile App (http://m.google.com) gives you single-click, fast and furious access to Google Search, Gmail, Google Suggest (auto-completing queries which translates to minimal typing), direct links to your Google Calendar and Documents/ Spreadsheets, Photos, Notebook, Reader, news, and blogs.

Further, Google Sync for BlackBerry (www.google.com/sync/blackberry.html) synchronises Google Calendar and Contacts to your handheld. And you don’t have to lift a finger to coax matters once everything is set up; Sync works automatically in the background. The Sync is two-way (bi-directional). This means that whether you add/edit/ delete on your BlackBerry or on your PC, it doesn’t matter. All your ducks will be in a row. Lose your phone or buy a new one? Simply get Sync again and download your Google address book and calendar to the new device.

More for Nothing

And when you are done, you can also try:

• KeePass for BlackBerry (http://f5bbutil.sourceforge.net/keepassbb/) A password keeper.

• WorldMate Live (www.worldmatelive.com/li-web/index.jsf) A business travel
companion.

• TwitterBerry (www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry) A mobile client for posting updates to Twitter on BlackBerry devices.

• bbTools (http://sourceforge.net/projects/blackberrytools/) A set of five add-on tools.

• bbTracker (www.bbtracker.org/) Creates GPS track logs for you.