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 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.

I have to admit, I have done my fair share of salivating over the iPhones in the Apple store. They’re not only fast, sleek and intuitive, they’re made by Apple and I love them. But… I have Verizon and I’m not willing to change to an inferior provider just to have an iPhone. Not to mention the fact my contract isn’t up yet.

So, instead of an iPhone I ended up getting a Blackberry Pearl. I’ve used Windows Mobile devices on several occasions and hated it. The last phone before the Blackberry Pearl was the VX6700. Nice slide out keyboard, but Windows Mobile is too bulky. In typical Windows fashion, it claims to do a ton of things, but ends up not being able to do any of them well.

I’ve fallen in love with my Blackberry Pearl. Now, when I see or hold an iPhone, I think “wow, this is a cool, but it doesn’t do what I need it to do.” Let’s compare the iPhone to my Blackberry Pearl:

• You can’t send MMS (pictures or video) messages with an iPhone. That seems really dumb for a phone these days. Especially when the phone has a camera. Why can’t I send an MMS? My Blackberry Pearl does a great job of sending photos, video and even audio. Check one for Blackberry Pearl.
• You can’t even receive MMS messages with an iPhone. If your friends have a regular phone and try to send you a picture message, it won’t come through. True, they can email it to you, but it still seems silly that the iPhone can’t receive a picture message. Check two for Blackberry Pearl.
• You can’t play 90% of the videos you find on the internet, unless they’re in .MOV format. Sure, the iPhone has a nice YouTube application, but what about stuff on other websites? I’ve only had one instance where my Blackberry Pearl couldn’t play a video. Check three for Blackberry Pearl.
• You can’t save a picture you find on the web to your iPhone. It just won’t do it. Want to make it a background? Not going to happen. The Blackberry Pearl is very intuitive about this stuff. It knows right were to save a file based on it’s type. Check four for Blackberry Pearl.
• You can’t take video recordings with your iPhone. Seriously, you can’t do it. Again, it seems strange to hear people talk about this being the phone of the future and then finding out it doesn’t do something even the most basic entry level phone can do. My Blackberry Pearl has a VERY nice video recorded and the playback is extremely sharp. People are amazed at the picture quality. Check five for the Blackberry Pearl.
• Ringtones can only be purchased through iTunes. If your friend has a ringtone they want to send you, it won’t work. Even with Verizon, I can still download ringtones from the internet with my Blackberry Pearl. It even knows it’s a ringtone and asks me if I want to set it up as my current ringtone. Check six for Blackberry Pearl.
• Uh, there’s no keyboard on an iPhone. I do love the look of the iPhone virtual keyboard, but too many people complain about it. I was a little nervous about the SmartType feature on the Blackberry Pearl, but it’s really smart. It’s almost like it can read my mind as I’m typing. The more you use it, the smarter it gets. Even though the keyboard on the Blackberry Pearl isn’t it’s strongest item, it’s better than the iPhone keyboard. Check seven for Blackberry Pearl.

Yes, I have a lot of things I LOVE about the iPhone, but overall I’m thrilled with my Blackberry Pearl.  Wait, did I mention the iPhone is only available through AT&T?  Yeah, that’s the major deal breaker for me.  Even if they corrected all the issues above, I’d have a hard time making the switch from Verizon to AT&T.

If I missed some items, please comment below and let me know.