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I had a interview for an upcoming article in the Wall Street Journal today. They are doing a piece on first time Blackberry users. Not sure when the article is going to be published but I’ll blog the link once its live.

Mark/Space released a public preview of The Missing Sync for BlackBerry on Wednesday. The Missing Sync for Blackberry allows you to sync your Blackberry with your Mac. This includes calendar, contacts, tasks, notes and iPhoto and iTunes if you have a 8100 or 8800. Ever since I seen this product demo’d at Macworld back in January, I’ve been waiting for this.

I’ve been using Pockmac 4.0 which is provided free from RIM themselves and I’ve been lucky enough to not have any real problems like others have. I’ve been testing the preview out for 2 days now its been rock solid for me. I did have to completely uninstall PocketMac for Missing Sync to work however. I’m loving the fact that I can sync on connect now and the iTunes/iPhoto intergration is awesome too.

The preview demo is good for 40 days so it looks like the final product should be shipping by the end of this month like expected. While $40 is a lot for a syncing program, I’ve read they will be offering 50% off if you cross-grade up from one of there other products. Lucky for me I fall into this as I purchased The Missing Sync for Windows Mobile when I still had my MPx220.

[Download]

One of features I can’t wait for with the Apple iPhone is the visual voicemail feature. I’m a notorious caller dodger and add the fact that I do not get cell service in my house, voicemails add up fast. I’ll usually check my messages and see i have 15 VM’s and have to listen to all of them if I just want to hear a few.

Callwave has a free product that replaces your cell phone provides voicemail with there own. This allows you access to each voicemail individually. You can still access it like your regular VM from your phone but you can also access voicemail’s through their webpage or have them delivered right to your inbox. My personal favorite? The OS X Dashboard Widget. I can see who called and when; listen and delete emails all directly from the widget.

Its a free service and its easy to setup on your phone. Took me all of 5 minutes to setup on my phone and everything is seemless. Even pressing the voicemail button on my phone brings me directly there.

Since I got my 1GB MicroSD card for my Pearl, I’ve been toying around with trying to get Videos to work. Either the videos don’t look good, dont play at all or lag the controls. The best method I’ve found so far was using mencoder but due to its command line usage and not being able to find a UB for it made it difficult to encode videos. This is where this guide come in.

Getting Started

1) First off this is the command line we will be using:
“mencoder -vf scale=240:-10 <input.file> -o <output.file> -of avi -ofps 15 -ovc lavc -oac lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=230:acodec=mp3:abitrate=64″

2) Download the Universal Build of mencoder

Encoding

At this point you can just drop the mencoder into the same directory as the file you want to convert, start a terminal window and copy the command line to encode it. Be sure to change the input and output file. In a few mins you should have your video ready to be loaded on your Pearl. But as Mac users we will want a more elegant way of doing this. Enter Applescript and more importantly Automator.

1) Download my Automator Workflow (Updated 3/2/07)
2) Unzip the file into
“/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/”

3) Unzip mencoder.zip on your Desktop, start up Terminal and type “cd Desktop” then “sudo mv mencoder /usr/bin”. Enter your password when prompted too.

3) Now when you Right Click(Ctrl+Click) on a Video file, you will see the Automator Menu and under that you should see “Encode for Blackberry”

4) To encode, just chose “Encode for Blackberry” on a Video file

Thats it

The only visual indicator you have is a “Run Shell Script” in the Menu bar.

A Blackperry Pearl compatible file will be created in the same folder as FILENAME-bb.avi. You can edit the Workflow to output to the filename of your choice. You could even go as far as modifying the Automator Workflow to copy the file to your Pearl if you would like.

A 54meg Music Video that runs 3:32mins takes about 30secs to encode on a Macbook 2.0G and the ending file size is about 8megs. Not too bad at all. Most TV shows will be about 50megs for a 30min show and movies are between 150megs to 250megs in my tests. I’ve also noticed that the mencoder build will not take advantage of Duo Core’s.

UPDATE - 12/20/06
Here is a widescreen version that needs to go through some testing. Please feel free to try it and leave a comment on how it works for you. YMMV

UPDATE - 02/11/07
Dave Taylor has whipped up a shell script that does the same thing if you would like to do the command line route.

UPDATE - 3/2/07
Thanks to Chris for the tip, the Workflow now keeps accept ratio when encoding.

Setting your Blackberry 8100 (Pearl) to work with Gmail is pretty straight forward. There is two methods you can use but I’m only going to cover the one I’m currently using. I’m going to assume you have the Unlimited Data plan and its working and have already set up your blackberry.net address. This instructions are geared towards T-Mobile users but should be easily modified to fit your provider.

Gmail Setup

1) Log into Gmail and goto Settings
2) Click on the Forwarding and Pop tab at the top
3) Check “Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on”
4) Save Changes

Blackberry Setup

1) Log into T-Mobile
2) Under Messaging, click on “Set Up Blackberry Internet E-mail”
3) Click “Setup Account”
4) Enter your @gmail.com address and password
5) You should now receive a TXT message saying your account has been successfully setup

You should now start receiving your Gmail emails almost instantaneously.

Filters

One small problem you will notice with Gmail is that every time you compose a new email or reply to one, you receive a copy of that email on your Blackberry. Its annoying to say the least. We can fix this with a Server side filter.

1) Log into T-Mobile
2) Under Messaging, click on “Set Up Blackberry Internet E-mail”
3) Click the Filters icon under your Gmail account
4) Click “Add Filter”
5) Create a Filter name. This can be anything, I call mine “Gmail Sent”
6) Choose “From field” in the Apply Filter when:
7) Type your gmail.com address in the “Contains Field”
8) Select “Do Not forward messages to handheld”

You should now no longer receive replys on your Blackberry.

I bought my first Blackberry this past week and I love it. I was eyeing the new Blackberry Pearl for a bit but didn’t really think about switching to it until I talked to Jon over at www.jonsthoughtsoneverything.com who recently picked one up. I have to just say right off the bat, this is the best phone I have ever owned. The Pearl does everything I would of dreamed of and then it does more.

Pros:
Small sexy form factor
Works with Gmail
Works with Outlook Web Access
Expandable Storage
MP3 Playback
Video Playback
Sync with Mac’s
1.3MP Camera with real Flash
Volume is loud
RSS Feeds in the Browser
Unlimited EDGE Internet
Mac Bluetooth Tethering via Bluetooth
Voice Dial
Maps
Message Indicator
Supports Sleep Mode

Cons:
No Syncing with BT under Mac
Bluetooth doesn’t support AD2P Profile
Gmail replys show up in my Inbox

So this week was another onslaught of iPhone rumors mostly fueled by entries found in the iPod Updater and rumors of an August launch. Let me be the first one in line to buy this thing. Give me a flipphone that syncs over Bluetooth with iCal and Address Book plus 1gig memory to sync iTunes and I’m sold. I dont care what provider nor the cost of the phone. Right now I’m using a Motorola RAZR and frankly it sucks. Its only saving grace is its size. While I doubt it will happen, if it does drop, I’ll be the first one in line.