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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.

This time tomorrow I’ll be on a plane headed to San Francisco for Macworld. This is my first trip anywhere and my first time flying, so I’m excited. Right now I’m packing and trying to get all my ducks in a row.

My planned itinerary is:

Sunday - settle in then grab a bite to eat.

Monday - free day that I want to do some site seeing

Tuesday - going to follow the keynote online then head to the exhibit hall for 11am. Kevin Smith at 2p, Macbreak at 6pm then Macbreak Get Together at 7pm

Wednesday - exhibit hall at 10am, diggnation at 4pm then Macworld Party at 9pm

Thursday - expo at 10am and Capcom Lost Planet release party at 8pm

Friday - expo at 10am and rest of the day free for whatever. plane leaves at 10:30pm

Saturday - back home

If anyone is going and would like to meet up or just lives out there and knows some good places to eat or hang out. Feel free to contact me.

Blackberry PIN - 23e00a28
GTalk - jadedhalo
AIM - jadedhalo78

or just leave a comment here.

January - started using Mac OS X

February - built dedicated computer to run Mac OS X on

March - Starting using iTunes to manager my media

April - stopped using Bloglines, switched from Exchange to Google Mail and Google Calendar, bought a Jimi wallet

May - switched Layout, Skype is free for the rest of the year, started a new job, Macbook’s released, went to grand opening of Apple 5th Ave store, bought my Macbook

June - joined valleyshwag, MC360 released for XBMC, bought a Nintendo DS Lite, canceled my Final Fantasy XI account after 3 years

July - switched to Flock, Macbook got hit with discoloration, started running using the Nike+iPod kit, Macbook Random Reboots started

August - switched from del.icio.us to Shadows, started using OpenDNS, got hard to find Trauma Center and Phoenix Wright for the DS, new mc chris and Evanescence albums, bought the Timbuk2 blogger bag

September - started new full-time job, fall TV season starts, bought a Xbox360 after Guitar Hero 2 is announced with new controller, canceled my Myspace account

October - got tickets for macworld 2007, Xbox360 troubles, 300 trailer, Macbook RSS fixed, bought my first Blackberry, my Xbox360 has its own blog

November - interviewed for MacNewsWorld, Gears of War, Guitar Hero II and Elite Beat Agents all released on same day, turned 28, XBL Video Marketplace released, subscribed to Netflix and Gamefly, bought an HD DVD

December - Geekdrome dead, started reading comics again, finally found out what all the hype about Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars and Greys Anatomy was all about

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.