Since then, I’ve fallen in love with my BlackBerry Storm, and it’s become a better friend to me, too. It keeps track of my day, alerts me to emails and text messages, plus has ample storage capacity for my every musical whim. The onboard camera makes Iphone users flush with envy and the touch screen and nifty buttons make it especially fun to tap out messages. Yes, we’re in love. And here are some free tips and apps to help you fall in love, too.

Stop Draining the Battery: Close Your Apps
One of my initial gripes is the battery life – which seemed non-existent. Until recently, I couldn’t understand why my BBS would lose juice in less than 24 hours. A flaw in the design, I’ll admit: all apps you run STAY running until you close them completely. Four apps will always be running, no matter what: Home Screen, Messages, Browser, and the Phone. In order to not drain your BBS, make sure to completely close each app when you’re done, exiting doesn’t cut it. I imagine at some point someone will have an app that closes all stuff with one click, but for now…

How to know what’s running in the background? Press and hold the BlackBerry button (the one between your “phone” and “back” buttons) for three seconds and all the apps running will appear. Go to each one you’re not using and close it. Do the 3 second trick again untill you have all the unused apps closed. Eventually, this will become routine as you see your BBS keep powered like never before.

Reset the Easy Way – QuickPull
Every so often, you’ll need to reboot the BBS with a soft reset; it is, after all, a little computer. Resets are used for reclaiming memory leaks or even shutting down when you get a website that locks up.  I don’t like pulling the back off my little gem, so found a really nifty way to get the reset without the hassle – it’s free and it’s called QuickPull. This little app acts like a system reset, and it’s painless and quick…sort of like the name implies. Get it here.

Dress it Up – AppleBerry Theme
The BBS screen is pretty, but it could be prettier. Themes are  finally showing up on the scene and one I particularly like is AppleBerry. I know, sounds like I want my BBS to look like an Iphone, right? Wrong. Good, clean, pretty design is not owned by anyone and can be appreciated by everyone. It’s bouncy and engaging. I can’t wait for more cool themes.

Tunes on the Go – Slacker.com
Always the audiophile, I have a lot of music loaded on my BBS. Slacker.com allows BBS users to have all the music they can handle without downloading it. Instead, it’s a personal radio, ala Pandora-style. (To date Pandora doesn’t have the app ready for BB Storm users.) This app is free and it’s gotten some pretty nice writeups. I don’t know how they do it, but the music is CD quality, no static. It’s magic to the ears. One drawback on the free version, some ads come into the stream, maybe one an hour and it’s short. Deal with it.

Tweeting on the Run – Twitterberry
With so many promising apps available for the Twitter addict on the go, I’m sorely disappointed that many don’t perform as expected or promised. I turned my back on Twitterberry a couple of times, tempted by fancier Twitter apps, but the fact is Twitterberry just works. I hope they improve it a bit, but for now, it gets the job done, while other apps just come up short. Until something really steals the scene, grab it here.

So there you have my shortlist of what has helped me fall in love with my BlackBerry Storm. If you have some tips or apps you’d like to share, please include them in the comments below. And when people ask you why you’re using a BBS versus an Iphone, you can say what I say: some people like toys and some people like tools. I’m in the latter group @bizcoachdeb

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Can you find them? My sister sent this pic to me and while I found many right off the bat, I thought I’d share this fun and interesting waste of time with the community. Happy hunting! (You’ll likely have to click the image to make it bigger.) Here’s my list so far:

• Led Zeppelin
• White Zombie
• Cowboy Junkies
• U2
• Smashing Pumpkins
• Scissor Sisters
• Guns and Roses
• Queen
• Matchbox 20
• Phish
• Presidents of United States of America
• Styx
• Gorillaz

  

As promised, I recently tested out a couple new (to me) WordPress Widgets and the results are in – I really love these two: Snap Shots and WP Cumulus Tag Cloud. Snap Shots is set up fairly straight forward, but take the instructions literally and it will be more of a piece of cake for you than it was me. Apparently the interface doesn’t have controls through WordPress, with the exception of “activation.” Instead, the controls are on the Snap Shot website and “feed” to your WP site based on the key code. Once configured, if properly coded in your page, links to other pages will pop up a little window, giving a tiny preview of the linked page. Pretty nifty and makes your own page seem a little less static. A guest can actually move the Snap Shot page wherever they like on the page while viewing.

The other widget, Cumulus, is another pretty object. Instead of the typical tag cloud, this variety features a “Flash” presentation of tags on your site, which move around like, well, a cloud. Settings include speed, word size, and size of the widget on your page. If some links are a little long, they may defy the confines of a box, but not for long.

I’ll leave Cumulus up awhile to see what kind of feedback I get. While I think it’s kind of fancy, some might think it’s too distracting and of course my site is for visitors and I want them to enjoy the stay. Oh, and for the SEO folks wondering, the actual tags are what show up for search engines, not the Flash code, so it doesn’t appear to interfere with rankings.

Please share your comments on these widgets and others you enjoy. I’m always up for trying a new one out!

First, This Important Message
This is just a nugget that helps me so I don’t blow up my own site: have a backup or test site in which you deploy and fiddle with things like plugins and changes to the css and php files. I use mine before using anything on my “real sites” and it’s saved me a lot of aggravation and embarrassment. I tweak it to death or I kick it to the curb, and my visitors are never the wiser because it all happened on a “pseudo” site.

The Shortlist of Goodies…uhh, Plugins
In order, these are my favs and what they do:

• Lighter Menus-makes navigating the WordPress interface smoother and more intuitive
• TinyMCE Advanced: Awesome editing tools for your posts and pages
• Simple Twitter: Shows your Tweets automagically in your blog or website
• Share This: a way for visitors to share your site, but more cleanly than showing a bunch of icons
• All In One SEO: Lets you customize your posts for better ranking

There are so many fabulous plugins, but these are the ones I use personally. When I build a site for the first time,  the first two plugins are deployed immediately so designing and navigating everything is easier and faster. Every so often, I dabble in the WordPress Plugin Toybox but be careful; once there, you will find yourself grabbing everything that looks fun and get sidetracked with your build!

Have a favorite of your own that you’d like to share? Please do, comment or shoot me an email.

Does this beer make me look fat?

This morning I was reading an article about a couple of University of Colorado at Boulder graduates who invented a contraption called the, “Booze Belly.” At first glance, it seemed like a dorky toy for frat boys and tailgaters, but what occurred to me (and likely them) is what a cross-section of customers they could really reach. Imagine how many applications something this simple could have and not only that, what types of things could be developed from this idea? Kids with “Juice Bellies”, runners with “Water Bellies”, and so on. What has been made isn’t a revolutionary idea, but it’s one that has taken things a couple steps further than the ordinary “Camel Back” you see hikers running around with. It’s also less conspicuous and than the traditional flask or the not so traditional refillable binoculars. (google it, they exist.)

When a business brings an idea from concept to production, a key to it’s longevity is to see beyond the first move and look to the next move. These entreprenuers hopefully have done that, and it’s a lesson for you, too.

How flexible is your product or service? Can you adapt it to fit a variety of needs? If you answered “No”, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

In a nutshell, your site must be compelling, guest-centered, fresh, relevant, and a host of other adjectives. The point is to study before you think you need to have flashing animations and 4 pages all about you. Customers want to see themselves in your site. If you are working with a designer, make sure they understand the things that make a marketing piece and that they are able to bring that together in a way that creates ease of use and evocative messaging and imagery. Also, is it clear from this study and others that people exit sites very quickly if they look like are past an expiration date. Keep things updated, current, and if something changes, revise right away.

And remember, no amount of cool imagery can make up from bad content.

If you’re looking for a user-friendly online calendar that really plays nice right now (not next year or?….),  check out 30 Boxes. While I was having a love affair with Scrybe, I also felt like I was being lead along a primrose path, with no hope of a real exciting future. Sometimes you have to shake things up to get what you need.

I’ll report when I experience it myself. By the way, they might have one in your own neighborhood – they are opening stores all over the western states, but particularly here in Colorado. Enjoy!