by qubit – via pdastreet.com

Message:
I combined your list with some from PDA Prophet, others from the BBUsers egroup mail list, and a few of my own:

ALT key = has half moon on top of it. left side of keyboard below the A.
CAP key = bottom right key (AKA SHIFT key)

In General
———–
1) Hold the ALT key while you roll the thumb-wheel to scroll horizontally in any field where you can enter or view text.

2) Hold the ALT key while you roll the thumb-wheel to scroll through a field to view options.

3) Hold the CAP key while you roll the thumb-wheel to select multiple items in a list.

4) Type the first letter of an item in an options list or menu to jump directly to that item.

5) Type the first letters of a name or the initials separated by a space to find a contact in the Address Book screen.

6) Press C to compose a new message from the home screen or within Messages

7) Rearrange the ribbon: In the Home screen (ribbon), hold the ALT key and click the thumb-wheel to bring up a menu. You can then select Move Icon, Hide Icon, or Show All. If you hide an icon, to show it again click Show all and it will appear with an X over it, bring up the menu on it and uncheck hide icon.

The Blackberry display can be backlit to allow reading messages in the dark. To get the light to come on, hit the backlight button usually in the lower right of the keyboard. Hopefully you have a backlit keyboard as well so you can type in the dark.

9) Turning the radio off and back on when coverage is spotty and you’ve lost signal seems to help. Also going into network and selecting register now will help. And if you have a phone/combo BB then on some you can go into network and select Scan for networks. then select the network you are on, for example T-mobile, then save. After doing this the radio will reset and you may receive a register message and a new service book, which you can accept from the service book menu in options.

10) Password protect your BB. To set a password, go to the Options menu to the Security item. Set the desired timeout (I use 15 minutes) and enable/set a password. In conjunction with this, you should also go to the Options menu to the Owner item, and enter your name, phone number, etc. When the password protection kicks in, this is what is displayed on the screen.

11) After five incorrect attempts at typing in your password, the password starts echoing (figuring you really need all the help you can get). After ten attempts, it performs a lobotomy on itself and almost all data is cleared. The Memo database, however, is retained and visible.

12) To support more than one signature. Wipe out your auto-signature in the Redirector of the Desktop Software and just use ‘AutoText’ to configure alternate sigs.

In the Message List
——————-
(Some of these work in tasks, memos, and appointments also)

Sorting:
1) ALT-i: show only incoming mail

2) ALT-o: show only outgoing mail (messages you have sent – i.e. checkmark icon)

3) ALT-p: show phone log messages

4) ALT-s: show SMS messages

5) ALT-v: show VoiceMail messages

Navigating:
1) t: go to top of message listing

2) b: go to end/bottom of message listing

3) backspace: close message listing and return to home screen (ribbon)

4) spacebar: pagedown

5) cap + spacebar: pageup

Deleting multiple messages at once:

1) Highlight a date (i.e. Fri, Oct 05,2001) in the message list, hit the thumb-wheel and select delete prior. All messages prior to that date will be deleted.

2) Hold down the CAP key and use the thumb-wheel to scroll up or down to select messages. Click the thumb-wheel and select ‘Delete Messages’. Combine this with a sorting tip to make it even more useful (i.e. To delete the last 5 messages that you have sent (checkmarks), press ‘ALT’ then the letter ‘o’ (for outgoing) this will show all of your sent messages, then per this tip scroll down and select the last five.

While In A Message
——————
Navigating:
1) enter or spacebar: scroll down a page/screen at a time

2) ALT-enter or spacebar: scroll back a page/screen at a time

3) b: scroll to end of page

4) t: scroll to top of page

5) u: jump to closest unread message

6) n: jump to next message

7) p: jump to previous message

backspace: close message and return to message listing

Reply-to/Forward:
1) r: reply to or answer this message

2) f: forward this message

Select Text (OS v2.1+):
1) Press the CAP key and then scroll the thumb-wheel to select. If you release the CAP key and scroll the thumb-wheel you will select entire lines. Press the CAP key again at any time to start selecting by character again.

2) Hold down ALT key + CLICK the thumb-wheel (click it don’t hold it down), release the thumb-wheel and then use it to scroll whole lines. You can press and hold the ALT key at anytime to start selecting by character again.

3) Click scroll wheel and select SELECT from the menu. scroll wheel to select entire line. click scroll wheel again and select copy.

With either method, click the thumb-wheel and select ‘Cut Selection’ or ‘Copy Selection’… to paste, open a new message or whatever, click the thumb-wheel, and then select ‘Paste Selection’.

Composing Message
—————–
1) Press and hold a letter to capitalize it (with Key Rate enabled).

2) Press the SPACE key twice to insert a period and capitalize the next letter.

3) Press the SPACE key to insert the “@” and “.” characters in an Email field. Backspace and type again to over-ride this like you would with AutoText.

4) Press and hold a letter key and roll the thumb-wheel to scroll through international/accent characters, equation symbols and other marks.

Calendar (from Agenda screen)
——–
1) Press T to go to “Today” in the Calendar screen.

2) Press G to go to a specific date in the Calendar screen.

3) The default date range for Calendar synchronization in Desktop Manager may not suit most people. While configuring the Calendar synchronization, click the Advanced button and specify the desired range.

Battery
——-
1) The largest draw on battery life is the transmitter, so if you are transmitting a lot, you can expect reduced battery life. And the backlight.

2) Being in fringe or no coverage areas will eat up your battery as it attempts to transmit. If you’re in an area that is out of range, turn your BB’s radio off manually or use Options / Auto On Off to conserve battery life.

Geek Tips
———
1) Rather than looking at the bars, you can change the display of the ’signal strength’ to read in real numbers. While at the home screen (ribbon), hold down the half moon ALT key while you type NMLL. The bars should change to read numbers. For the ’signal strength’, if you are in the 100 area (that means -100 dBm), you will be transmitting at maximum power (2 Watts), and since coverage is hit and miss at this weak a signal, you may end up transmitting many times before the packets make it through. This might help explain any poorer than normal battery life. I consider anything at -90 to -50 excellent.

2) To get the bars back: While at the home screen (ribbon), hold down the half moon ALT key while you type NMLL again.

3) Hold down the half moon ALT key -AND- the CAP key at the same time, then the letter ‘h’. This brings up the “Help Me!” screen that lists version, app version, pin, imei, uptime, signal strength, batterylevel, file free, and file total.

4) Hold down the half moon ALT while you type LGLG. This brings up the event log where you can clear events (frees some memory) or view them or copy the contents to mail to someone.

5) ALT-CAP-Backspace will reboot your BB.

Slacker has announced the release of an update to the Slacker Radio Mobile App for BlackBerry. Version 2, 2.0.2 actually, is now available and it includes a variety of bug fixes and enhancements. Highlights include faster performance / app response and much (MUCH) shorter gaps between songs.Users will now experience near instant skipping while streaming (results may vary based on connection quality). There are many bug fixes in the latest version the major changes outlined below.

The major enhancement of the application update is that we have optimized the application to perform faster and remove many of the “Gaps” when skipping or transitioning songs. When a song first starts, there’s alot of activity going on, but after 10-15 seconds you should get near instant skips (Depending on your connection speed).

You can get the new version by navigating to www.slacker.com on your BlackBerry. To upgrade to the new version, please start by uninstalling the current version by going to Options > Advanced Options > Applications on your BlackBerry phone. Then find the Slacker Application, highlight it and press the BB Menu button and choose Delete. Once completed restart your device and grab the latest version from Slacker. – via cellphonehits.net

So, you’ve gotten yourself a brand new BlackBerry Storm.  You’ve updated to the latest leaked OS and have figured out how to type on the touch screen that you actually have to click an not just touch.  You like your BlackBerry Storm and plan on sticking with it.  The one thing bugging you about your BlackBerry Storm, however, is why the virtual keyboard on some BlackBerry applications is permanent.

Often times when you are running an older BlackBerry application on your BlackBerry Storm you may notice a blue border around the main application window and the SureType virtual keyboard won’t go away no matter what you do.  This is because your application is running with compatability mode enabled.  The blue boarder and the keyboard significantly decrease the size of the application window and it makes navigating and selecting fields or buttons very difficult.

Fortunately, you can disable compatibility mode by going to  options >> advanced options >> highlight the application that you want to disable compatibility mode on >> hit the menu button (the one with logo) >> select disable compatibility mode.  Once you disable compatibility mode, restart your application.   the blue border and the persistent virtual SureType keyboard should be gone.  You may be able to use the application in landscape mode as well.

Why RIM choose not to have compatibilty mode disabled as the default is beyond me.  I have yet to see an application react adversely when compatibility mode is turned off.  Developers can, using the latest development tools, chose to have this feature turned off automatically when their applications install, but, that does nothing for all the apps that have already been developed. – via rimarkable.com

…using any printer in sight. HP kick-starts Printing 2.0, where the printer itself becomes agnostic. Vishnu Anand spoke to Sridhar Sood, Principal, Office of IPG CTO – HP, London via Halo Telepresence

 Untether the printer from the Operating System, and imagine it as a Web service operation, where your BlackBerry comes armed with a print button and ’seeks’ the nearest printer, having geo-located where you are currently stationed.

In a typical use case, HP’s CloudPrint allows you to be at a shopping mall, an airport terminal, or any public location that is likely to have a ‘critical mass of printers’.

You receive an e-mail, shoot a picture from your phone camera, or just feel like printing out some random text message while waiting for your delayed flight. Your BlackBerry (which will soon be equipped with a ‘Print’ menu option), will geo-tag your location using GPS, and links up to HP’s repository of registered printers that are being used by a retail outlet, a cyber café, or even a copier shop in the vicinity.

Alternatively, you can enter your detailed location (Eg: Singapore Changi Airport, Terminal 2, Departure Security holding), and the HP application embedded on the BlackBerry identifies the printer closest to you, gives you directions on how to identify it, and lets you give a ‘print’ command.

And since HP’s CloudPrint initiative is aimed at creating a social printing ecosystem, the printers in the repository do not necessarily have to be HP printers.

At the back-end, HP creates a Cloud Print operation layer that sits between the Network layer and the wireless (device) layer. When a search query for a printer is generated by the device user, the Cloud print layer pulls out the query from the device layer, communicates it through the network layer, in order to access its repository of registered printers. Having found the relevant ones (one or many), it returns the response to the device, using the network layer. HP promises this operation cycle to last anything between 6 to 12 seconds.

The obvious challenge, of course, is to populate the repository with a ‘critical mass of printers’ worldwide. To begin with, HP is planning to start with small corporate environments, before putting in place a mechanism where cyber café owners, for instance, can register themselves with HP to have their printers under the Cloud print umbrella. The monetary transaction would be limited to the Blackberry user and the owner of the printer, while HP hopes to rope in advertisers to fuel the operation.

“We at HP hope that CloudPrint will give a meaning to the concept of Social Printing. It would also go a step further and bring people closer. Imagine a scenario where you happen to visit a distant place of worship, shoot a picture and choose to print it on your home printer many thousand miles away, that your grandmother can see. This is the broad aim of social printing,” said Sridhar Sood, principal, Office of IPG CTO – HP, London.

“A more realistic example would be a simple scenario where you visit your branch office in a different city and need to print out a document. The printers in the office are not registered with your laptop/handheld and invariably you need to email the document to an email ID of another employee and take a print out. CloudPrint begins at this level”, he explained.

Sridhar explained that the starting point for HP would be to target corporate networks of this nature and have the printers registered, before expanding the ecosystem and spreading outside corporate walls.

“Beyond this, the growth will be driven by individuals – users, service providers, printer owners, whoever they might be – and that will be the birth of Printing 2.0,” he said.  – via blackberry-news.newslib.com