BizBuzz -

Posts Tagged ‘slacker.com’

I’ll admit it, I loathed my BlackBerry Storm the first few days I had it. It appeared to be the biggest time sink and simple things I did before seemed way more complicated. This was supposed to make my life easier! But like any relationship worth having, I just needed to start finding out what made it tick.

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

——————————————————————————————————————-