Play Things : blackberry

Import that office directory into your Blackberry

Sidin Vadukut — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:45:00 GMT

Two days ago one of our very resourceful admin staff emailed out a mammoth excel sheet with contact details of everyone in the national Mint network. It had names, extensions and mobile numbers.

And I don’t have to tell you how, in a newsroom environment, this sort of thing is pretty helpful. When you MUST have a quote from that someone in Kolkatta it helps to have the city bureau chief on speed-dial no?

So a lot of people have nice print-outs tacked up to their soft-padded cubicle walls for ready reference.

But if you have a Blackberry this is an intolerable offence. In this web 2.0 world, my friend, you are living a steam-powered life.

Let me tell you how you can painlessly upload all these contacts into your Blackberry in ten minutes without any form of formal education in engineering.

Step 1: Install Google Sync on your Blackberry. It is a tiny application that can sync all entries in your Google Contacts list and Google Calendar with the corresponding applications on your handset. You can get it here. (Works for non-Blackberry handsets as well. Investigate please.)

Step 2: Next you need to take the excel office telephone directory and format it in such a way that Google Contacts will accept it. To make things easier you can download a copy of a blank Google Contacts ready excel sheet here. Remember to save the excel sheet as a CSV file. It is the only format that Google Contacts will accept. (Look under File -> Save as.)

Step 3: Log in to Google Contacts or sign up to create an account. (Also how are things under that rock you live beneath?)

Step 4: Import the CSV file of the contacts you just created into Google Accounts. The software gives you the option of grouping the imported contacts. DO THAT. This way if you goof up later you can always delete them all in one shot.

Step 5: Once import is complete check the contacts to make sure that the details come in the proper fields.

Step 6: Now go the Google Sync app on your Blackberry and ask it to be nice and sync everything.

Step 7: Overjoyed, send money to blogger.

Drop comments if something didn’t work out according to plan. Also the good thing about Google Sync is that you can later add or subtract details from your contacts and the app will take care of changes. And it is pretty good at catching duplicates too.

So when I want to give my Editor a call I don't need to rifle through print-outs. All I need to do is punch in the first few letters in his name and VOILA! I immediately have the number of Sukumari Kuriakose!

Awesome. Wait...

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Use the Delhi metro to overcome writer's block

Sidin Vadukut — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:21:00 GMT

Ever since moving to Delhi late last year I'd made a solemn pledge to use my two hours worth of daily commute from Dwarka to Connaught Place to catch up with my reading. With a reasonable chance of getting a seat at least on the return journey I figured that I'd get at least a printed out New Yorker story or two out of the way daily. Alas I am cursed with magnanity and most days I give up my seat to a worthy old man or have it squeezed out from under me by scheming Delhi aunties.

And now this news in the New York Daily News makes me feel terribly inefficient:

Brooklyn author Peter Brett's first novel is a dark, demonic fantasy - he wrote it on the F train. Brett, 36, tapped out most of "The Warded Man," which hit U.S. bookshelves last month, on his smartphone on daily trips from the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop near his Kensington home to his job in Times Square. "I started out just trying to take notes. I'd sit on the subway, I'd get a good idea and I'd jot something down," said Brett, who works in medical publishing. "I got very fast at writing with my thumbs. I found myself writing more and more." Soon, he was averaging 400 words each morning and evening.

Brett managed to thumb out a grand total of 100,000 or so words using only a smartphone. So if you are one of those budding authors who just can't find the perfect setting to compose your prose why not try the comforts of the Delhi Metro. The air conditioning is working splendidly, trains are mostly clean and comfy and fares are most reasonable. A BlackBerry should do nicely and you get signals over most of the Delhi Metro even in some of the underground bits.

Just watch out for those pickpocketers who "have been spotted in the very train you are traveling in". And if gallantry makes you give up your seat remember Brett's words:

"There's no way to write with your thumbs when you're standing up," he said."I was raised to give up my seat to just about everyone. [Now] unless you're really old or pregnant, I'm getting that seat."

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Lenovo Constant Connect: No dirth of new ways to you get your email fix

Sidin Vadukut — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:54:00 GMT

So you have a shiny new BlackBerry. Which means you have email access all the time. And just in case your handset runs out of battery or your network drops you can always fall back on that Thinkpad with the wifi card. So what more could you ask for?

Even more email reliability you say? Auto synching between BlackBerry and laptop? But that already happens! Oh you mean even when the laptop is switched off? That is impossible!

Or is it?

Business travelers will be able to use their BlackBerry smartphones to automatically forward e-mail to their ThinkPad notebook PCs with a $150 device developed by Lenovo Group Ltd. and Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM), the two companies said Monday.

Called Lenovo Constant Connect, the service has a hardware and a software component that was developed over two years by Lenovo engineers in Beijing, Japan and North Carolina, Rich Cheston, a distinguished engineer and executive director in Lenovo's software and peripherals business unit, said in an interview Friday.

The hardware part is a small ExpressCard device with 512GB of flash RAM and a Bluetooth antenna that pairs up with the user's BlackBerry via Bluetooth to download any new e-mail. That e-mail is stored on the ExpressCard device and replicated to the ThinkPad e-mail client after the user turns the laptop back on.

I can't think of a single occassion when I would be this desperate to sync my email across both laptop and BlackBerry. But Lenovo can think of plenty:

That way, a traveler rushing between flights or in a taxi can get the latest e-mail without having to stop, turn on the PC and log-in over a Wi-Fi hotspot, Cheston said.

More details on ComputerWorld and Gizmodo.

I don't know about you but this is the sort of unexplainable gadget that gives legitimate gadget lovers like you and me a bad name. People see announcements like this and then laugh at us when we support genuinely good ideas. Things like cellphone-based GPS navigation, PS2 compatible universal remote controls, and wifi-enabled internet radio devices *** media center extenders that all make such perfectly good sense.

And by we I mean me. And by people I mean my wife.

Sigh.

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