It all started off great.  I was getting email on my Blackberry Pearl from about 4 different email accounts and managing to stay on top of it all.  Like you, I would respond to the ones that needed an immediate response and delete the ones that didn’t, knowing I could handle it once I got back to my computer.  Then it happened…

SPAM!

My work email is all over the company website and the spam robots found it.  I started getting over 100 spam emails a day.  That wouldn’t be bad if I just accessed my email from work, but I don’t.  All of these emails were going to my Blackberry.  I would hear the distinct tone of another email coming in, look at my phone and see an offer to increase the size of .. well, you know what I mean.  I was getting more spam than I was legitimate email.

My company wasn’t doing anything to filter the email on the server side, so I saw stuck getting all of these emails and feeling helpless.  I couldn’t just remove my work email from the phone, since they were giving me a monthly phone allowance.  Hard to justify that.  So, I would look at the emails and delete.  Look and delete.  Look and delete.  All day long.

Server Side Filtering

Then I remember how I was able to filter my email so I wouldn’t get a copy of every message I sent out through Gmail (I’ll post instructions for this soon).  It was in the BIS site but I hadn’t been there in a LONG time.  If you’re using your Blacberry Pearl with a regular email service (not an Enterprise server) you’re probably using a BIS (Blackberry Internet Service).  If you’re using Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo mail, there’s no doubt this is what you’re using.  Here’s a link to the main BIS sites (open them in a seperate tab or window) so you can follow along:

• Verizon BIS
• AT&T BIS
• Sprint BIS
• T-Mobile BIS
• Rogers BIS

If your wireless provider isn’t listed, try doing a Google search for your wireless carriers name and BIS.  That will usually bring it up for you.  If all else failes, give your customer service a call and they can point you in the right direction.

If you’re getting email on your Blackberry Pearl, you should already have a login for your BIS. If you don’t know this, you’ll have to get help from your wireless carrier.  Once you’re logged in, we can get started filtering your email so you only get the important items you need to have when you’re on the go.

Creating Your Filters

The first filter I created was to tell the BIS that I only wanted emails sent from people with the same domain name as mine.  This would most likely be your company name.  For example only get emails from other people with @blackberry-pearl.net in their address.  I did learn it’s a LOT easier to tell your Blackberry what you WANT than what you DON’T want. Here’s how you do that.

You email account or accounts should be listed on the screen once you log in.  On the right side of the screen, there will be an icon like this under the heading “Filters”.  Click the one that corresponds to the appropriate email account.

1. Now you’ll want to “Add Filter” and give it a name.
2. In the section “Apply filter when:” select “From:” field
3. Under “contains” put @yourcompanyaddress.com
4. Then click on “Forward message to device.”

Next I created a rule to forward email addresses that are not part of my company email, but I still want to get on my Blackberry, such as my wife.  I did that by repeating the above process and including the full email address in the “contains” section.  You can put more than one email address in there if you seperate them with a semi-colon.

Once you’re done with this filter, you’ll be back at the front page with a list of your filters.  You’ll notice part way down, there’s a choice for handling items not listed in your filters. Make sure you click “do NOT forward messages to device.”

That’s it.  Now you’ve got it done.  If you find you’re not getting some emails that you need, simply add their name to your safe list on the BIS and they’ll start to come through.  Truth is, most of these people don’t really need an instant response and it frees you up to enjoy your “out of office” time a little more as well.

Blackberry Pearl users are seldom known to be lazy or “slackers.  Business people who are keeping everything organized in the ultimate handheld device.  Blackberry pearl users are instantly able to pull up that latest corporate memo, just about anyones contact information, all of their appointments for the next 7 months and now they can call up a custom designed streaming radio station on their phones.

With Pandora failing to provide Blackberry applications, many have turned to Slacker.com which just might be even better.  Pandora is another company pandering to the hype of the iPhone rather than looking the considerably larger market share owned by Research In Motion. I still don’t understand why it’s so difficult for these software companies to see the mistake they’re making by ignoring the Blackberry.

Slacker.com has a very well made application you can load onto your Blackberry Pearl and stream your favorite music.  This is done through your mobile provider, so make sure you’ve signed up for an unlimited data plan.  The Slacker.com application is free download and use, but you will have to listen to some commercials infrequently after the initial 7 day trial period.  Don’t worry, you won’t be cut off or billed after the 7 days, Slacker will just drop in a quick commercial once in a while (not even close to the amount you’ll get from your local radio stations).  It’s a small price to pay for an amazing application.

Slacker.com does an excellent job of building a custom station that meets your specific taste.  If you hear a song or artist you don’t like you can “ban” it from Slacker and it will never play again. The more you use Slacker, the smarter it gets at predicting what you’re going to like.  Slacker also employs some music experts to build some general genres of music.  If you love reggea, classic rock, jazz, and even comedy, it’s all already pre-programed on Slacker.  Of course, you can still ban a song or artist you may not like and never hear it again.

Slacker also includes all of the album artwork as well as some very in depth artist bios in the event you’re so inspired you want to know more.  You can also choose to read a review of the album while the music continues to play.

Music caching may be the greatest advantage offered by Slacker.  Imagine yourself sitting at your gate in the airport.  You’re enjoying your favorite music through your unlimited data plan as it streams down into your Slacker application.  Since you’re about to jump onto a plane and will have to turn off your phones signal, you’ll lose your connection while in the air.  Slacker to the rescue.  Simply “cache” the station your listening to and Slacker will store it on your MicroSD sim card.  Once you’re on the plane you’ll be able to continue listening even though you have absolutely no connection available.

If you subscribe to the Slacker premium edition ($3.99 per month billed annually at $47.88) you can also cache individual songs on our MicroSD card.  Imagine hearing a song you absolutely love and click click it’s now saved onto your phone.  Slacker will evaluate your available memory and let you know how much room you have left in terms of numbers of songs or stations.  You can then either continue saving that song or cancelling it.

The premium service also gives you some other benefits which may be worth the very small fee.  Unlimited music skipping means you can continuously scroll forward through the songs until you find just the right one.  You can also make an unlimited number of song requests which allows you to create a specific playlist of your favorite songs.  It’s about as close as you’ll come to having an unlimited number of MP3’s on your Blackberry. Of course, you don’t need to go the paid route and you’ll still find plenty of enjoyment using Slacker.com

With all of this great music on your Blackberry, you may want to consider picking up the Bluetooth Stereo Music Gateway to pipe your tunes into your home audio system.  Plug in an FM transmitter and you can have your customer slacker station through your car stereo on your daily commute.  Of course, this means you may want to also invest in a mobile battery charger to use on long trips.

You can download Slacker right now by pointing your mobile browser directly at www.slacker.com.  If you’re not near a computer, don’t worry, you can register on your phone and be up and running in no time.  Of course, you can log into your Slacker account via your high speed home connection and build all of your custom stations.  That way they’ll be waiting for you the next time you fire up Slacker.

Have you ever been typing an email or text message and your Blackberry keeps trying to suggest words that don’t actually exist?  This is caused by nonsense words being found in your “custom dictionary”. Here’s how you keep this from happening.

When you type a message on yoru Blackberry Pearl, RIM’s SureType technology will try to “guess” (an educated guess) the word you want to type.  Sometimes you’ll type a word that isn’t in the default dictionary and your Blackberry will suggest one.  You can add your unique words when you do a spell check, by pressing the Blackberry button and “Add to dictionary.”

Unfortunately sometimes you can end up with words in your dictionary that aren’t actually words.  This can mess you up when your Blackberry suggests one of these “non-words.”  It’s takes a little more effort to get to the real word you were trying to spell.

To prevent this from happening, every couple of months, you should go into your custom dictionary and delete the words that aren’t real.  I just had to do that today when spelling the word “I’m” ended up being “Um”.  Not sure how “Um” got in the dictionary, but I had to do something cause it was driving me nuts.

How to clean up your custom dictionary:

1. Click on “Options”.  This is usually a wrench icon with most themese.
2. Scroll down and click on “Custom Dictionary”.
3. Work your way through the list of words and delete any you didn’t intent to have in the dictionary.
4. The list is in alphabetical order starting with capital letters first.

This will help to minimize your frustration with SureType.

Wow! I love this Blackberry application! I had been waiting to get on Facebook and this is what put me over the edge. It will revolutionize the way the use your Blackberry Pearl (is that too strong of a statement?).

Here’s what it will let you do:

• Update your status. This is something on Facebook that says “Patch is blah blah blah.” It lets your friends know what’s going on with you. Kind of cool. You can now update this from your Blackberry Facebook application. So if you go from lunch to the beach, you can post it in the parking lot. Not sure if your friends need to keep that close of a watch on you, but they can. This same section will let you see what your “friends” are doing via their status.
• Upload and Tag Photos. This is the coolest part of this application. Take a picture with your Blackberry Pearl and a new option besides “save” or “MMS Message” is now available. You can choose to post that picture on your Facebook page. You can even tag your Facebook friends in your picture and it will link to them on Facebook. If you already have pictures on your Blackberry, you can tag and upload those as well.
• View your friends list. Scroll through your entire list of friends. Find someone you want to interact with and you can pop up a menu to choose been “writing on their wall”, “sending them a message”, “viewing their profile”, and “poking” them. I”m still not really sure what poking does, but you can do it.
• Invite a friend. Still have some friend who aren’t on Facebook? Send them an invitation to join your crazy new addiction. I think that’s pretty much all that one is for.
• Poke someone. Again, I don’t really know what this does other than telling people that you poked someone. If you know, please let us in on the secret.
• Write on their wall. You can write on your friends wall directly from your Blackberry. This is kind a public area where you can interact with your friends.
• Send them a message. Another way to interact with your friends without letting everyone else in on the conversation. It’s like email within Facebook.

All in all, this is a very cool application. If you’re using Facebook more often than once a week, you really need to get this application. The easiest way to do so is to point your Blackberry browser to www.facebook.com. It will notice you’re on a Blackberry and suggest the download. Don’t even think twice about it. Get it and start having fun.

I was going to show my wife how to transfer music from our PC to her new pink Blackberry Pearl, but she got a little impatient. I said “whatever you do, don’t mess with that ridiculous Roxio Media Manager. Instead I told her to check out the article I wrote about getting media onto a Blackberry Pearl.

Unfortunately, my wife didn’t follow direction or she got confused or something cause she ended up doing something a little different. This is a great discovery a lot of people may not know about (I didn’t).

Transfer Directly From iTunes to Your Blackberry Pearl

In the instruction I gave on getting around the Roxio Media Manager, I suggested opening up Windows Explorer and dragging files from the iTunes directory into the Blackberry Pearl “music” folder. Instead of doing this, my wife opened up TWO windows. One of them was Windows Explorer and the other was iTunes! She just started dragging files directly from her iTunes playlists straight onto her Blackberry Pearl.

I never realized you could do this. It’s so simple and it will even keep all of your Artist, Album and Genre information in tact. Of course, I tried to grab a playlist and move that over, but no luck. You’ll still have to create those on your Blackberry Pearl once you’ve uploaded your music, but it’s very simple. Maybe I’ll write a simple set of instructions for that in the future.

As for now, enjoy the drag and drop transfers from iTunes to your Blackberry Pearl. Oh, and now my wife gets to claim bragging rights for teaching her techno-geek husband how to do something on his Blackberry Pearl. Humbling to say the least, since she’s not really that technologically inclined.

* Added Bonus: Ok, now I’m starting to mess around with this and I really like what I’m seeing. I’m now able to use the awesome search and sort functions within iTunes to narrow down my songs to exactly what I want and then select them ALL and drag over to my Blackberry Pearl.

* Added Added Bonus: I think I’m going to create a “Blackberry Pearl” playlist in iTunes and then when I hear a song I want on my Blackberry, I can just drag it into that playlist. The next time I sync up my phone, I can just call up the “Blackberry Pearl” playlist and drag it’s content over to the Blackberry (remember, you have to drag the content of the playlist, not the playlist itself) and it will ask me if I want to replace the songs. Simply click “No to All” (I haven’t verified this is an option) and you’ll only move over the songs you didn’t have (kind of like a one-way sync).

I think I just found the GREATEST shortcut on the Blackberry Pearl. This is going to revolutionize the way you use your Blackberry Pearl and speed up almost everything you do.

Switching Between Applications

Until I discovered this shortcut, when I was in an application and wanted to switch over to look at something else, I would have to do one of two very inconvenient processes.

Imagine you’re looking at your messages and your boss asks if you have some time on Friday at 2pm for a quick meeting.  You need to check your calendar, so you:

1. Click repeatedly on the escape button (the one to the right of the pearl with the arrow) until you get back to your home screen.  Find and then scroll over to the calendar icon and click on that.
2. Click on the menu button, scroll all the way down to “Switch Applications” and scroll over to the calendar and click the pearl button.

That’s an improvement over the first option, but nothing compared to this quick application change shortcut.

Let’s take the same scenario: you’re in your messages and need to check your calendar.  Here’s what you do:

1. Press and hold the ALT button (it’s just below the ZX key)
2. Press the escape key once
3. Scroll over to the the calendar icon
4. Release the ALT button

That’s it!  I’m a huge user of the ALT-TAB shortcut on a Windows machine and this is just as easy.  Give it a shot and you’ll agree, even though it seems so basic and simple, it changes the way you use your Blackberry Pearl.

In a previous post, I gave you a couple of things you can do to free up the memory in your Blackberry Pearl.  It’s vital you keep as much memory open on your Pearl to help optimize performance.  There’s something you can do right now to free up a massive amount of space on your Blackberry Pearl.

Put Multi-Media Items on External Memory

If you don’t have a MicroSD card installed in your Blackberry Pearl, you really should invest in one.  With picture, video and audio capabilities, you’re severely limiting the options you have for your Pearl.

Once you have your MicroSD card, make sure you move as much data over to it as possible.  Also make sure you configure your Pearl to store any new pictures, video or audio files to automatically go to your MicroSD card.  This is something your Pearl should guide you through automatically.

Now it’s time to move all of your previous media to your new MicroSD card. Here’s how:

1. Start on the main home screen (with all the icons)
2. Scroll to and click on “Media“
3. Press the Blackberry Button (with the 7 little dots)
4. Scroll to and click on “Explore“
5. Scroll to and click on “Device Memory“
6. Scroll to and click on “home”
7. Click on “user“
8. Scroll to and click on “music“
9. Select each item and press the “Blackberry Button“
10. Scroll to and click on “Move“
11. Click “Up” until you can see “Media Card“
12. Click on Media Card and select “Open“
13. Continue until you reach “Music“
14. Click on “Music” and select “Move“
15. Continue with the above steps until you’ve moved all your media over

This is all it takes to free up a large amount of space on your Blackberry Pearl. If you’re someone who has replaced your iPod with your Blackberry Pearl, you’re going to want to get as big a card as you can afford.

I stumbled upon something very cool specifically for those of us who are constantly looking down moving our little thumb around on our Blackberry Pearl.

Social networks are popping up everywhere these days with the big dogs still out there.  MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Twitter and the rest.  But, there’s a new trend toward niche social networks.  These are social networks where everyone starts with one thing in common.  It could be a genre of music, a hobby, or in the case of Blackberry Ave, an addiction…

Blackberry Ave is like most other social networking sites.  It’s all about being social and networking (duh).  But, this is different.  This site is designed to be viewed on your Blackberry browser.  Of course it works great on your Mac or PC, but it’s designed to be a WAP site. There is a rumor, if you try to view it from an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ll get a special message.  I don’t have one so I’ll have to check at the Mac store to see what it says.

The other thing you’ll notice about Blackberry Ave is the listing of PINs.  Before I had a Blackberry, I saw people post PINs on a website and wondered if they were opening up their bank accounts to theft.

If you’re one of the underprivileged without a Blackberry, a PIN is what you use to message exclusively between Blackberry users.  It’s like your AIM or MSN screen name but it only works with the Blackberry Messanger.  Which, by the way, only works on a Blackberry… neener.

There’s also a very cool feature giving every user 10mb of free space on the site to upload your favorite ringtones, wallpaper, themes, or whatever.  Not sure if the owner is going to be able to keep that up.

As of this writing, Blackberry Ave is just getting off the ground after launching 2 months ago.  But, already there is a great group of VERY friendly people on the site. One in particular, is a Blackberry addict who goes by Bull.  He’s got to be one of the most active people on the site as well as one of the most helpful.  Not only does he have his own blog at BloggedBull.com, he’s also writing reviews at BerryReview.com.  Make sure you find him and add him to your friends list.

The “Tom” of Blackberry Ave is a guy named Luigi Raw.  He’s hanging out in Leeds in the UK and unlike Tom on MySpace, he doesn’t force you to be his friend.  So, make sure you take some time to add him to your list of other addicts.

To keep your Blackberry Pearl running at the peak of it’s capabilities, you’re going to want to make sure you’re not wasting valuable memory on stuff you don’t need. You’d be surprised at what hogs up the memory. We’ll look at a few of the main items and how to delete or manage them.

First of all, how much memory do you have available? It’s very easy to find this out. Here’s how:

1. Click on the options icon (probably looks like a wrench).
2. Scroll to “status” and click
3. “File Total” is the total amount of memory available on your device.
4. “File Free” is the amount of memory free at this time.

Ok, so now that you know how much you have to work with, let’s see how big we can make that “File Free” number.

Clean out your inbox. I explain how to do this in another post, so I won’t go into the details here.

Content Compression

One of the quickest and easiest steps you can take to free up valuable memory on your Blackberry Pearl is to enable “Content Compression”. I don’t know exactly how much room you’ll gain from this, because I’ve always used it on my Pearl. If you’re isn’t already enabled, here’s how you do it:

1. Start on your main screen (the one with all the icons).
2. Scroll to and click on “options” (should look like a wrench).
3. Scroll to and click on “Security Options“
4. Scroll to and click on “General Settings“
5. Scroll down to “Content Compression“
6. If it doesn’t say “Enabled” click on it and select it now.
7. Press the Blackberry Button (7 dots left of the pearl)
8. Scroll down and select “Save“

That’s it. You’ve just enabled Content Compression. This will reduce the amount of memory used for all content, including picures, videos, music, calendar information and messages.

If yours wasn’t enabled before leave a comment to let me know how much memory you gained using this feature.

Delete Applications You Don’t Use

If you never play BrickBreaker, don’t let it hog up all the memory on your Blackberry Pearl. You might be surprised at how many programs are hanging out on your Pearl. Here’s how you find them and delete the ones you don’t want or need.

1. Go to your main home screen
2. Scroll to and click on “options” (looks like a wrench)
3. Scroll to and click on “Advanced Options“
4. Scroll to and click on “Applications“
5. Wait for your Pearl to build the list of applications
6. Scroll through and find any applications you don’t want, need or use
7. With that application selected, press the “Blackberry (menu) button“
8. Scroll down to “Delete” and press the pearl button

Note: Some applications will require you to restart your Blackberry Pearl before they’re completely removed.

There are a number of other tricks you can use to free up memory on your Pearl. I’ll explore some of those in a future post. Until then, take some time to impliment what we’ve gone over here. It will pay off in having a faster running Blackberry Pearl.

It’s tempting to simply ignore your inbox and let the messages pile up. It’s really important you don’t do this. If you’ve already read something, taken action on it by replying or putting it on your calendar, and have no need for a message on your Blackberry Pearl, DELETE IT.

As you let your messages pile up on your Blackberry Pearl, you’re taking up valuable memory space. To give you an example. Right now I have messages on my phone that date back to Sunday. I don’t know how many messages, but I’d guess it’s about 50 or 60. I currently have 3.2 MB of memory available. I’ve just deleted all of my message (more on how to do this quickly in a moment) and I now have 3.3 MB available. One quick action and I’ve freed up a bit of space. It’s not a ton, but it all adds up.

Here are a few options for managing and deleting your messages.

First step: Save what you need. Go through your list of messages and “save” the ones you think you might need. This is very simple.

Using your pearl button scroll down to the message you want to save, click on the ‘blackberry button’ (that’s the one with the 7 dots on it, just left of the pearl button). Scroll down to save and click on it.

Now it will be kept in a special “saved messages” folder. It won’t get deleted when you bulk delete your messages in your inbox (more on how to do that in a moment).

There are a number of options for deleting messages.

Delete only one TYPE of message. If you want to just delete your SMS messages in your out box, or if you want to only delete your MMS (pictures, video, sound) messages, you can do just that. Here’s what you do:

From your home screen, click on messages. Click on the “Blackberry Button” (remember that’s the one with the 7 little dots) and scroll down to “View Folder”. Select the appropriate folder and click your pearl button. At this point you can do one of several options. If you want to just delete one message at time, you can scroll to the message, press the Blackberry button and select “delete”. That can take a long time, so there are some other options.

Select and delete a group.

• Start at the top message of a group you want to delete.
• Press and HOLD the “shift” button.
• Use your pearl button to scroll down to the last message in the group.
• Release the shift button.
• Press the “Blackberry button”
• Select delete.
• That entire block of messages will be gone.

Delete all messages prior to a specific date

• Scroll to the bar at the top of each date (or the top of the entire list).
• Press the Blackberry button
• Select “delete prior”.
• All of the message from that date backwards will be deleted.

If you click the bar at the very top of the list of messages, select “delete prior”, you’ll delete ALL of your messages. Be careful with this option, you could end up deleting too many messages.

Note: If you want to delete your outgoing messages (SMS or MMS), you’ll need to go into that specific outbox under (View Folder) and delete those separately. You can use the same select and delete techniques as noted above.

That’s it. You’ve now cleaned up your messages and helped to free up extra memory on your Blackberry Pearl. There are several other ways to free up even more space on your Blackberry Pearl, but that’s a great start.