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.

In a previous post, I gave you a couple of things you can do to free up the memory in your Blackberry Pearl.  It’s vital you keep as much memory open on your Pearl to help optimize performance.  There’s something you can do right now to free up a massive amount of space on your Blackberry Pearl.

Put Multi-Media Items on External Memory

If you don’t have a MicroSD card installed in your Blackberry Pearl, you really should invest in one.  With picture, video and audio capabilities, you’re severely limiting the options you have for your Pearl.

Once you have your MicroSD card, make sure you move as much data over to it as possible.  Also make sure you configure your Pearl to store any new pictures, video or audio files to automatically go to your MicroSD card.  This is something your Pearl should guide you through automatically.

Now it’s time to move all of your previous media to your new MicroSD card. Here’s how:

1. Start on the main home screen (with all the icons)
2. Scroll to and click on “Media“
3. Press the Blackberry Button (with the 7 little dots)
4. Scroll to and click on “Explore“
5. Scroll to and click on “Device Memory“
6. Scroll to and click on “home”
7. Click on “user“
8. Scroll to and click on “music“
9. Select each item and press the “Blackberry Button“
10. Scroll to and click on “Move“
11. Click “Up” until you can see “Media Card“
12. Click on Media Card and select “Open“
13. Continue until you reach “Music“
14. Click on “Music” and select “Move“
15. Continue with the above steps until you’ve moved all your media over

This is all it takes to free up a large amount of space on your Blackberry Pearl. If you’re someone who has replaced your iPod with your Blackberry Pearl, you’re going to want to get as big a card as you can afford.

I stumbled upon something very cool specifically for those of us who are constantly looking down moving our little thumb around on our Blackberry Pearl.

Social networks are popping up everywhere these days with the big dogs still out there.  MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Twitter and the rest.  But, there’s a new trend toward niche social networks.  These are social networks where everyone starts with one thing in common.  It could be a genre of music, a hobby, or in the case of Blackberry Ave, an addiction…

Blackberry Ave is like most other social networking sites.  It’s all about being social and networking (duh).  But, this is different.  This site is designed to be viewed on your Blackberry browser.  Of course it works great on your Mac or PC, but it’s designed to be a WAP site. There is a rumor, if you try to view it from an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ll get a special message.  I don’t have one so I’ll have to check at the Mac store to see what it says.

The other thing you’ll notice about Blackberry Ave is the listing of PINs.  Before I had a Blackberry, I saw people post PINs on a website and wondered if they were opening up their bank accounts to theft.

If you’re one of the underprivileged without a Blackberry, a PIN is what you use to message exclusively between Blackberry users.  It’s like your AIM or MSN screen name but it only works with the Blackberry Messanger.  Which, by the way, only works on a Blackberry… neener.

There’s also a very cool feature giving every user 10mb of free space on the site to upload your favorite ringtones, wallpaper, themes, or whatever.  Not sure if the owner is going to be able to keep that up.

As of this writing, Blackberry Ave is just getting off the ground after launching 2 months ago.  But, already there is a great group of VERY friendly people on the site. One in particular, is a Blackberry addict who goes by Bull.  He’s got to be one of the most active people on the site as well as one of the most helpful.  Not only does he have his own blog at BloggedBull.com, he’s also writing reviews at BerryReview.com.  Make sure you find him and add him to your friends list.

The “Tom” of Blackberry Ave is a guy named Luigi Raw.  He’s hanging out in Leeds in the UK and unlike Tom on MySpace, he doesn’t force you to be his friend.  So, make sure you take some time to add him to your list of other addicts.

To keep your Blackberry Pearl running at the peak of it’s capabilities, you’re going to want to make sure you’re not wasting valuable memory on stuff you don’t need. You’d be surprised at what hogs up the memory. We’ll look at a few of the main items and how to delete or manage them.

First of all, how much memory do you have available? It’s very easy to find this out. Here’s how:

1. Click on the options icon (probably looks like a wrench).
2. Scroll to “status” and click
3. “File Total” is the total amount of memory available on your device.
4. “File Free” is the amount of memory free at this time.

Ok, so now that you know how much you have to work with, let’s see how big we can make that “File Free” number.

Clean out your inbox. I explain how to do this in another post, so I won’t go into the details here.

Content Compression

One of the quickest and easiest steps you can take to free up valuable memory on your Blackberry Pearl is to enable “Content Compression”. I don’t know exactly how much room you’ll gain from this, because I’ve always used it on my Pearl. If you’re isn’t already enabled, here’s how you do it:

1. Start on your main screen (the one with all the icons).
2. Scroll to and click on “options” (should look like a wrench).
3. Scroll to and click on “Security Options“
4. Scroll to and click on “General Settings“
5. Scroll down to “Content Compression“
6. If it doesn’t say “Enabled” click on it and select it now.
7. Press the Blackberry Button (7 dots left of the pearl)
8. Scroll down and select “Save“

That’s it. You’ve just enabled Content Compression. This will reduce the amount of memory used for all content, including picures, videos, music, calendar information and messages.

If yours wasn’t enabled before leave a comment to let me know how much memory you gained using this feature.

Delete Applications You Don’t Use

If you never play BrickBreaker, don’t let it hog up all the memory on your Blackberry Pearl. You might be surprised at how many programs are hanging out on your Pearl. Here’s how you find them and delete the ones you don’t want or need.

1. Go to your main home screen
2. Scroll to and click on “options” (looks like a wrench)
3. Scroll to and click on “Advanced Options“
4. Scroll to and click on “Applications“
5. Wait for your Pearl to build the list of applications
6. Scroll through and find any applications you don’t want, need or use
7. With that application selected, press the “Blackberry (menu) button“
8. Scroll down to “Delete” and press the pearl button

Note: Some applications will require you to restart your Blackberry Pearl before they’re completely removed.

There are a number of other tricks you can use to free up memory on your Pearl. I’ll explore some of those in a future post. Until then, take some time to impliment what we’ve gone over here. It will pay off in having a faster running Blackberry Pearl.

It’s tempting to simply ignore your inbox and let the messages pile up. It’s really important you don’t do this. If you’ve already read something, taken action on it by replying or putting it on your calendar, and have no need for a message on your Blackberry Pearl, DELETE IT.

As you let your messages pile up on your Blackberry Pearl, you’re taking up valuable memory space. To give you an example. Right now I have messages on my phone that date back to Sunday. I don’t know how many messages, but I’d guess it’s about 50 or 60. I currently have 3.2 MB of memory available. I’ve just deleted all of my message (more on how to do this quickly in a moment) and I now have 3.3 MB available. One quick action and I’ve freed up a bit of space. It’s not a ton, but it all adds up.

Here are a few options for managing and deleting your messages.

First step: Save what you need. Go through your list of messages and “save” the ones you think you might need. This is very simple.

Using your pearl button scroll down to the message you want to save, click on the ‘blackberry button’ (that’s the one with the 7 dots on it, just left of the pearl button). Scroll down to save and click on it.

Now it will be kept in a special “saved messages” folder. It won’t get deleted when you bulk delete your messages in your inbox (more on how to do that in a moment).

There are a number of options for deleting messages.

Delete only one TYPE of message. If you want to just delete your SMS messages in your out box, or if you want to only delete your MMS (pictures, video, sound) messages, you can do just that. Here’s what you do:

From your home screen, click on messages. Click on the “Blackberry Button” (remember that’s the one with the 7 little dots) and scroll down to “View Folder”. Select the appropriate folder and click your pearl button. At this point you can do one of several options. If you want to just delete one message at time, you can scroll to the message, press the Blackberry button and select “delete”. That can take a long time, so there are some other options.

Select and delete a group.

• Start at the top message of a group you want to delete.
• Press and HOLD the “shift” button.
• Use your pearl button to scroll down to the last message in the group.
• Release the shift button.
• Press the “Blackberry button”
• Select delete.
• That entire block of messages will be gone.

Delete all messages prior to a specific date

• Scroll to the bar at the top of each date (or the top of the entire list).
• Press the Blackberry button
• Select “delete prior”.
• All of the message from that date backwards will be deleted.

If you click the bar at the very top of the list of messages, select “delete prior”, you’ll delete ALL of your messages. Be careful with this option, you could end up deleting too many messages.

Note: If you want to delete your outgoing messages (SMS or MMS), you’ll need to go into that specific outbox under (View Folder) and delete those separately. You can use the same select and delete techniques as noted above.

That’s it. You’ve now cleaned up your messages and helped to free up extra memory on your Blackberry Pearl. There are several other ways to free up even more space on your Blackberry Pearl, but that’s a great start.

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.

I was forced to have my first experience with Roxio Media Manager today. It didn’t go well! Let me explain and offer the worlds greatest solution to managing the media on your Blackberry Pearl without using the Roxio Medio Manager.

It all started when my iPod was stolen from my car the other night along with my bluetooth headset. Nobody broke into my car because they didn’t have to break in. I was kind enough to leave it unlocked for them. I felt like an idiot. I live in a very safe neighborhood, but it was the first day of Spring Break and I think the neighborhood kids were bored.

I used my iPod for audio books more than anything else. My car was my rolling university as I listed and learned everywhere I went. That was over now. Fortunately I had everything on my iTunes in a secondary hard drive.

It was now time to try out the media capabilities of my Blackberry Pearl. I knew my Pearl was also an MP3 player, but I hadn’t run it through it’s paces. The first thing I did was install the Roxio Media Manager I recieved from Verizon Wireless. Over 180 gigs to download this gigantic program. Once I installed it, I was ready to put my beloved audio books onto my Blackberry Pearl. But wait… and wait… and wait…

Roxio Media Manager is VERY slow. I just upgraded to a very fast computer and everything runs perfect except Roxio Media Manager. It’s brought my machine to a crawl. No wait, not a crawl, a screeching halt! I couldn’t do anything with this software. I can’t imagine this ever went through any type of testing period. When I did manage to get a song from my iTunes library to Roxio Media Manager I couldn’t remove it. I would right click, click on “remove” and the next time I started Roxio Media Manager it was back.

Here’s the Solution:

Update: I wrote the below instruction before I discovered something very cool. Here’s how to move music directly from iTunes onto your Blackberry Pearl.

Uninstall Roxio Media Manager immediately. The only reason you need this is to access the internal memory on your Blackberry Pearl (I never store anything on there and if I do, I can manage it from within my Blackberry Pearl). If you have a memory card installed in your Pearl, you can use Windows Explorer to transfer music, videos, pictures, ringtones and voice notes. It’s as simple as dragging and dropping just like you do with any other drive or directory. No more dealing with Roxio Media Manager. I wish someone had told me this sooner.

What is Windows Explorer? It’s not Internet Explorer. Press and hold the Windows key (it’s between Ctrl and Alt in the lower left corner of your keyboard) and then press “E”. Get it, Windows (E)xplorer? Should be easy to remember.

Make sure you turn on Mass Storage

If you plug your Blackberry Pearl into your PC via the USB cable you should see it show up as a removable drive (just like a thumb or flash drive). If it’s not there, you probably haven’t turned on the “Mass Storage” on your Blackberry. Here’s how you do that:

1. From your home screen, press the Blackberry Button (just left of the “pearl”).
2. This should bring up all of the icons. Now click on Options icon (for me it’s a little wrench).
3. Scroll down to “Media Card” and select it.
4. “Mass Storage Mode Support” should be set to ON.
5. “Auto Enable Mass Storage Mode When Connected” should be on YES or PROMPT.
6. Save those setting and reconnect your Blackberry Pearl with your PC.

If you still don’t see a new “Removable Disk“, you may not have a memory card installed. You can check this by opening the little door on the left side just below the USB port on your Blackberry Pearl.

Once you have your Blackberry Pearl showing up as a removable drive, you can drag files in just like you would any other drive or folder. No need to convert your MP3’s for your Blackberry. Best of all, no more dealing with Roxio Media Manager and that’s a GREAT thing! Sorry Roxio…

Attention Research In Motion: The Blackberry Pearl is the best phone I’ve ever owned. You’re hurting your reputation by having your product associated with such a horrible piece of software like Roxio Media Manager. There must be a different solution if you plan on competing with the iPhone and iTunes. This is a battle you can win, but not with Roxio Media Manager.