Industry coverage, news, original feature articles, how to guides, videos, podcasts and reviews of BlackBerry service providers, software, accessories, hosted exchange providers and more

One thing I’ve always wanted to do with my BlackBerry is really customize the call and message alerts. Not that the BlackBerry defaults are bad. It’s just that sometimes I’m away from the phone or more than 15 minutes, at which point the LED stops flashing. Sometimes I want my phone to vibrate and ring at the same time. Sometimes I want a different LED for my SMS than my email. Then I stumbled across BerryBuzz, a custom alerts application for your BlackBerry. I downloaded it to see how good it actually is. Is it worth the $6 price tag?

Integration

Unlike many other similar applications, BerryBuzz creates its own listing in your Options. The icon still appears on your Applications Menu, but you can go ahead and hide the icon. No sense in keeping it around if it doesn’t actually function. If you click on it, it will remind you that BerryBuzz is now in Options. So let’s head over there.

      &nbsp:

Keep the LED flashing

You can customize a number of alerts by clicking on the BerryBuzz menu in Options. We’ll start from the top and work our way down.

You can turn off BerryBuzz at any time and return to the natural device settings. This helps eliminate the need to uninstall and reinstall, and since the program doesn’t take up much memory it’s something that can stay on your device. In fact, you could consider it an additional profile setting and turn it on and off as needed.

After turning on BerryBuzz, you can take advantage of the ability to extend the flashing LED beyond 15 minutes. As you know, when you get a new message on your Berry, whether SMS, MMS, PIN, or email, your red LED will flash for 15 minutes. After that, it ceases until you get another new message. You can set it to Never, as pictured, and have that LED flashing until the end of time. This is helpful if you leave your Berry at home for certain trips. For instance, I don’t take mine to the gym anymore, so I leave it at home. When I come home, the thing isn’t flashing unless I got a message in the past 15 minutes. With BerryBuzz I don’t even have to check the thing when I get home unless I see a flashing LED.

Change colors of alerts

Another advantage of using BerryBuzz is the ability to set multi-color LED alerts. You can do this globally for email or you can do it address by address. For instance, I have three email addresses connected to my BlackBerry, each serving a different purpose. I can go in and change my Gmail alert to blink purple, my work email flash orange, and my for-fun email flash turquoise. That way, I not only know that there’s a new message, but I know to which address it was sent. If there are multiple new messages in different addresses, the LED blinks in a rotating fashion, which is pretty if nothing else.

This also applies to PIN messages, SMS, missed calls, and Calendar alerts. You can set everything to a different color, so you know exactly what type of messages sit in your BlackBerry. For instance, I might let an email or SMS sit unread for a while, but if I have a PIN message, I know it’s probably urgent so I jump to it. It also allows me to ignore calendar alerts, as the blinking light indicates that it is a calendar alert, and that itself reminds me of what I have to do.

BerryBuzz also has the option to set incremental reminders of new messages. You can set this from 60 seconds to 60 minutes, or turn it completely off. What it does is send you an additional reminder that yes, you have a new alert and that you’re a terrible person for not paying it any attention. I don’t personally use this function, but I can absolutely see how it can benefit BlackBerry users.

Vibrate while ringing

A complaint I often hear, and voice myself, about the BlackBerry is that the vibrate and ring option is actually vibrate and then ring. The two do not happen simultaneously. With BerryBuzz, however, you can set that right up. On the bottom of the options are settings for incoming calls. You can change the LED color for this as well.

There is the option not only to vibrate while ringing, but to set the duration of the vibration. By default this is set to a two-second vibration burst, followed by a two-second pause. You can change this, of course, and it ranges from 0.25 seconds to 5 seconds.

Final thoughts

For the money, BerryBuzz is a highly useful application. The custom alerts save time, which is always a plus. It might be a matter of seconds, but it can extend further than that. For instance, if I’m working on a project and get an email to my for-fun email address which isn’t particularly fun (a bill, invoice, complaint, or an otherwise nasty email), I can ignore it while I forge ahead with my current work. If I had seen the email I probably would have read it, thus affecting my mood. But because it’s in a non-important email address, and because I can see that before even looking at the subject line, I can continue until the time is appropriate to read it.

Also, the vibrate plus ring function is something I’ve been wanting for a long time. Not that I miss a lot of calls because of it, but it’s something I’m used to. Three vibrations and then a ring just doesn’t cut it. Vibrations while ringing ensures that I can hear/feel the call even if my Berry is encased and shoved in my front pocket.

As I mentioned above, the price is right on this application. You can get BerryBuzz at the BBGeeks Store for just $5.95. For an application that will get eternal use (rather than the novelty applications which you stop using after a month), the value stretches far.

Share on Facebook | Add to De.licio.us | Digg This! | Technorati