Because Buzz adds an easy to use label on your Gmail home page, there’s no need to receive email updates. If you want the Buzz emails to skip your Gmail inbox, follow these instructions. Thankfully, that reduces the number of Buzz emails sent to your BlackBerry. For all I know, it could eventually prevent all Buzz emails from being sent my way, but I created the filter at about 1:00 yesterday afternoon and was still getting random Buzz emails on my BlackBerry at around 5. Again, it will probably work itself out. But until then…

To set up a stronger filter, log into your BIS account, and next to your email address click the filter icon. Name your filter, then from the drop-down box select “Subject” field. In the contains field type Buzz from, since that’s how each email subject begins. At the bottom, leave the radio button set to Do not forward messages to this device. Click Add Filter, and you’re set.

Anyone else find a better work around?

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Google Buzz annoying for Gmail-synced BlackBerry users

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Google Buzz annoying for Gmail-synced BlackBerry users

Beyond knowing the BlackBerry inside and out, Al is quite the wordsmith, so make sure to read through his entire post. I’ll provide some highlights and personal anecdotes for support.

First, he recommends that you limit your contacts. There have been a number of hoaxes circulating on BBM — attempts to solicit money and attention to illegitimate causes that, of course, seem legit. His rule of thumb, and one I agree with, is to limit your contacts to people you’ll respond to instantly, and who will afford you the same courtesy. Even better advice:

So, to the point: Do NOT share your BlackBerry PIN or barcode with just anyone; Do NOT post your PIN or barcode on your public Twitter account or any other social network; Do NOT include your BlackBerry PIN or barcode in your fixed e-mail signature.

He adds later on to be cautious when creating and joining BBM groups. If you do, make sure to change your settings as to limit notifications, not save group message history, and to not automatically save pictures. If you allow those things, they can really slow down your BlackBerry.

Also, back up your contacts. I’ve had quite a few BlackBerry devices crash, and each time I’ve lost my BBM contacts. Trust me, people get annoyed when you send an add request for the third or fourth time.

Finally, as any responsible writer would do, Al warns that only expected and trusted file transfers should be accepted. Who knows what some random person will send you.

Does anyone else have any BBM tips? Any especially egregious etiquette infractions that you see people doing often?

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Tips for dealing with BlackBerry Messenger

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Tips for dealing with BlackBerry Messenger

Despite the name hoopla, it appears the new software will be called BlackBerry Messenger 5.0. This takes a leap over versions 2.5, 3, and 4 and right into some new territory. It’s likely just a nominal thing, though: the release should line up well with OS 5.0. Plus there are many features on BBM 5.0 that are only available for OS 5.0 users — though that makes the October 7 release a bit suspicious.

From the leaked email, here are the new features of BBM 5.0:

• Enhanced SMS -Allows for a conversational chat-like user experience with a single contact list for the most personal mobile-to-mobile communications
  • Note: BlackBerry® Device Software 5.0 and later is required for the SMS functionality.
• Avatars - Users can choose a picture from the BlackBerry Smartphone gallery and save it as their personal avatar, which will be seen by their contacts. They can also view other avatars in the contact list and zoom in on the avatars of contacts participating in a conversation by selecting “View participants.”
• Large Media File Transfer - Users can send/receive large file transfers up to 6 megabytes for pictures, files and audio.
  • Note: BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 is required to receive large media files.
• Enhanced Group Functionality - Allows for the ability to update, share & communicate with a subset community.
• Bar-code Identity - A user can add a contact to the BlackBerry Messenger contact list by displaying a 2-dimensional bar code that invitees can capture with their device cameras.
• Reliable Contact Backup and Restore - Contacts are backed-up on a server and do not require the need for BlackBerry® Desktop Manager.

It’s pretty much just how BGR laid it out back in June. If anyone has been enjoying the leaked BlackBerry Messenger 5.0, let us know what you think of it in the comments. Otherwise, we’ll keep you updated on this release as we get closer. Make sure to check the BBGeeks Twitter feed, where we provide updates on matters like this. If it is released, surely you’ll see it in News From The Wire for Thursday.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Look for BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 on October 7

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Look for BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 on October 7

What’s surprising is that only 51 percent of respondents said they check email more than four times a day. Really, though, what constitutes one instance of checking email? I’ve got my Gmail and a mail client, plus my BlackBerry, around all day. If I click over to Thunderbird, does that mean I’ve checked my email? If so, I probably check it a dozen or two times a day. I’m sure more than 51 percent of the people I talk to can say the same.

Then there’s the whole vacation issue. Over half of those surveyed, and 78 percent of those who have BlackBerry or other mobile devices, check their email on vacations. Whether this means checking it once or checking it multiple times, the survey does not say. The worst part, though, is that 19 percent chose vacation spots based on email access. Though that’s a far less limiting proposition than it was years ago.

They also rank the most addicted email cities. New York is No.1. No surprise there. Houston is No. 2, and Los Angeles isn’t even in the top 10.

The survey covered email etiquette, a delicate subject. Some people use a salutation, some don’t. Apparently, some people get offended if they receive a salutation-less email. The survey notes that 88 percent of people pay attention to spelling and punctuation when emailing. In a business setting, you’d think 100 percent would pay attention.

As far as sign offs, 63 percent of respondents are annoyed by at least one of them. Personally, I’m not a fan of “Best.” Some people aren’t a fan of “Cheers.”

You can check out the whole survey at the link. There are way too many numbers to cover right here.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

AOL Mail survey: We’re pretty addicted

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

AOL Mail survey: We’re pretty addicted

What it does

It’s easy to say that the service transcribes your voicemails to text, so let’s go into how it accomplishes that. The first step, obviously, is signing up for a GotVoice account. In this you will include your phone number. After the initial sign up, you have to go into your account and set up calls to forward to GotVoice. This will allow them to transcribe your voicemails.

You’ll actually notice that your outgoing message is not the same anymore. It is now on the GotVoice system. This is actually a benefit for a Verizon user like me. It takes people an hour just to get through their outgoing message menu (“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system…”).

After a few seconds of leaving a message, GotVoice will beep. This signals the cutoff point for SMS forwarding. Callers can continue leaving a message — the full transcript will be sent to email. However, the message will be truncated when sent to SMS. It’s a good thing GotVoice can send to both.

No more than a minute after you’d normally receive a voicemail, a text message will pop up in your inbox. This, as I said, will have a truncated version of the transcribed voice message. The message will also be emailed to you in its entirety, including an MP3 file of the actual voice message. It’s of an easily acceptable quality, so you’re covered on all fronts.

Super-accurate transcription

While oneSearch makes good with its promise that it will learn your voice over time, it seems that GotVoice has that capability right out of the box. They claim a 90 percent accuracy rate, and I can’t disagree with them. My trials of the service have yielded wonderful results. I even had friends call with funny and even ridiculous accents. Still, the GotVoice transcription service got most of the words right.

This is because they’ve got back and pulled data from carrier voicemail servers. That’s millions and millions of messages over the past five years. And they’ve all played a role in shaping GotVoice’s transcription engine. The difference is in the accuracy. As I said, they’re around 90 percent accuracy, while they claim competitors top out at around 65 percent.

Honestly, at first I thought it was a live transcription. I came to my senses soon enough (how uneconomical would that be?), but it still speaks to the accuracy. Subsequent tests have shown a few garbled words, but they were mostly names and otherwise indiscernible words — I checked the MP3 for each call, and yeah, sometimes my friends just mumble.

Security assurance

Of course, it would be difficult to run such a service without some level of human interaction. There are going to be some words that just can’t be recognized by the speech engine. There might not be someone transcribing each and every message, but surely there has to be some quality assurance. This raises the question of security. Just who is looking at your messages? And how much do they see?

I spoke to Colin Lamont, VP of marketing for GotVoice, about this issue. He tells me that humans only come into play for individual words or phrases that the engine does not recognize. So rather than a GotVoice employee listening to your entire message, they are limited to only those problematic voice strings. This creates a high level of security — it means random GotVoice employee isn’t listening to your intimate message to Mrs. BBGeeks Reader.

Additional features

If 90s sitcom characters had GotVoice, they might have avoided some comically awkward phone calls. Everyone has wanted to send someone a voicemail at some point without actually making the person’s phone ring. And while some carriers’ voicemail systems allow you to do this, it’s not nearly as easy as it is with GotVoice.

You can send the voicemail to single or multiple recipients. Just log into your account and go to “send message.” After that, you can either record your message with a mic, on your phone, or have GotVoice run a text to speech program — in a male or female voice. You can also add audio backgrounds, either from Audio Library or from an MP3 you upload.

GotVoice also has a Mobile Compose program, which allows you to record a message by dialing a number. You can then have it sent to groups you precreate. So if you need to let your dinner guests know you’ll be running a few minutes late, you can do it, even if you’re not near a computer.

Want to hear something really cool? (Well, only real if you’re an uber-geek.) You can have your voicemail sent to you as a podcast. Once you log into your GotVoice account, click on the “messages” tab, and then click on “Podcast/RSS.” Drag the podcast icon at the bottom of the screen into your podcast subscriptions in iTunes, and you’re set.

Get it free!

You can nab a version of GotVoice — their Lite offering — for free. This will give you access to most of the service’s features, though not as comprehensively as their paid tier. The Lite version sends you your new voicemails three times per day, so it’s not ideal if you have urgent phone needs. Also, there is no transcription service or MP3 attachment, so the free tier merely provides an online playback option.

The Premium service is what I’ve been describing. It gives you real time voicemails, transcriptions sent to SMS and email, MP3 attachments, and online storage. You can nab 20 voicemail transcriptions for $4.95 per month, 40 transcriptions for $9.95 per month, or $24.95 per month for unlimited.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

GotVoice for the best in voice to text voicemail accuracy

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

GotVoice for the best in voice to text voicemail accuracy

The BlackBerry plan’s base price is $54.99. It includes unlimited SMS, picture and video messaging (which you can’t use with a Verizon BB anyway), email, data and web browsing, and instant messaging. If you do need to use the phone, the cost is 25 cents per minute. That’s not a nutty rate, but it really only works if you make very few calls per month.

Not sure if this is something I’d actually switch to. I guess I’ll have to monitor my voice usage over the next month to see what it would cost me. Anyone else considering a switch?

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Verizon introduces messaging-only plan

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

Verizon introduces messaging-only plan

If I’m so inclined, I can install any messenger I want on my BlackBerry. I’ve got MSN, AIM, and GChat on my computer at home, and it’s a simple process to install those programs and use the very same accounts I use on my laptop. Plus, I have the added bonus of text message. And then there’s the hidden gem of the BlackBerry world: BlackBerry Messenger.

SMS

It’s tried, it’s true, and it works to and from every cell phone nowadays. The best part is that the recipient doesn’t need any special software installed. As long as they’ve got a mobile phone, you’ve got a means of communication. There are some pitfalls, of course, including the fee you’ll incur if you don’t have a bundled text message plan. But in terms of simplicity, this is the tops — even if some messages get a bit bungled with T9.

BlackBerry Messenger

Ah, the hidden gem in your BlackBerry. See, RIM has these messages routed through its BIS service, so these messages are not marked as text messages, nor are they marked as data. They’re actually free as free can be. So if you’re talking to fellow BlackBerry Geeks, this is probably the best method.

All you need is your PIN number, and the PIN number of whoever you want to talk to. Of course, in order to do this, you’ll need to know your PIN. It’s printed on the box your BB came in, but chances are you don’t have that lying around anymore. Just click “Options” and then “Status.” Your PIN will be listed there. It’s eight digits long.

Once you know your PIN, head to the BlackBerry Messenger icon — the red dialogue bubble with the dots — and start adding contacts. You’ll have to get everyone else’s PIN, but once you do, it’s hellooooo free messaging.

GoogleTalk

This has really revolutionized the way I IM on my computer. Forever and a day, I was an AIM user. But once I graduated college, I got a bit frustrated with it. Don’t ask me why; I don’t think I can properly explain it. It’s a combination of a number of things, really, including all the people I had added during my college years and don’t talk to at all.

It was around this time I started to use Gmail. No, it’s not the prettiest interface, but it’s uber-efficient. The “conversation” system is so good that I’m very surprised that other email clients haven’t adopted it. And while it doesn’t have traditional folders, organizing and archiving your emails into “labels” is an acceptable substitute.

But the best part of Gmail is that you can chat with other Gmail users while you’re checking your mail. And since many people keep their mailboxes open all day, this has led to a kind of instant messaging revolution. The best part, of course, is that the list starts fresh, so I’m only talking to the people I want to talk to.

Installing GoogleTalk on your BlackBerry is simple. Just point your BlackBerry to http://www.blackberry.com/GoogleTalk. You can access it from your computer if you wish, but only if you’re using Internet Explorer (which you shouldn’t be — though maybe it will get better). You then just have to follow a few steps (selecting you language, agreeing to terms, finally hitting the “download” button, which downloads and installs it for you). From there, just click on the GoogleTalk icon, and enter in your Google account info. If you don’t have one, you can sign up at Gmail.com.

MSN and Yahoo

This is the computer IMer of choice here at BBGeeks. And so it makes perfect sense that I would want the application on my BlackBerry. Installing it is as easy as it was for Google. Just point your BlackBerry browser to http://www.blackberry.com/livemessenger, and you’ll see a similar screen to that of the GoogleTalk download. It warns that you’ll need a Passport ID, which you can obtain at http://www.getlive.com, though you’ll have to do so from your desktop browser.

Unfortunately, I get a message that tells me that my system doesn’t meet the requirements of MSN. That’s because apparently it doesn’t work on Verizon. So we’ll go over a workaround later on in this piece for all you VZW people.

This was a bit disappointing, since I used MSN Messenger to handle both my Live Messenger contacts and my Yahoo Messenger contacts. I ended up using an all-in-one client to solve this problem, and yes, I’ll go over this in just a minute (or you can scroll right down to the heading if you so desire). But Yahoo’s messenger goes by the same process. Point your BB browser to http://www.blackberry.com/YahooDownload and follow the uniform RIM download instructions.

AIM

Ah, old faithful. And because it’s run through RIM, it’s an easy download. Same process as before, actually. Just point your BB browser to http://www.blackberry.com/aim and click through the download. You can nab a user ID if you don’t have one — though if you don’t have one now, do you really want one at all? — at AIM.com. The installation is simple, and you’ll be chatting to your fellow AIM junkies in no time.

ICQ

Yeah, some people still use ICQ. And I don’t meant that in a derogatory manner. I used to use a ton to collaborate, so I understand the virtues of the system. And since there is still a demand for it, RIM has made it available through its website. So go to http://www.blackberry.com/icq and follow the download instructions. You’ll have to visit ICQ.com to get a user ID. But after that, it’s as simple as ever.

All-in-one

There are a number of all-in-one instant messaging applications out there, and each has its ups and downs. Unfortunately, many of them cost money. It makes sense, since people took the time to write these applications. However, If you want the free version, head over to EQO. Their application gives you free access to MSN, AIM, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, QQ, ICQ, and Jabber.

To use this, click “Get EQO” from eqo.com. You’ll have to register, which literally takes a minute. You’ll then be sent a text message that brings you to the download. You can also download it to your PC, or download it from your BlackBerry browser at get.eqo.com.

Once you have it installed, run the program. It’ll take a few minute to initialize, and then you’ll be at the main screen. Click all the way right to the IM services icon, and click the menu button to add new IM services.

Of course, it isn’t perfect. The lists take a while to populate, and there’s a “$2.50″ sign in the upper left corner. It does offer voice and texting services through it, which might account for that $2.50. I don’t plan to use those features, so I can’t report on them. But I’ll certainly update if I see something on my bill next month.

Pay services

There are a number of other multi-network applications, but as I said, they do cost money. Some are an annual subscription, some are a one-time fee. But you can check out the following:

IM+ — one time $49.95 fee, free to try for 7 days.
Bee Jive — $29.99 for a user license, $19.99 for a device license, free for 30 days.
Yak On — $19.99 for a license, free for 15 days.
Causerie — $29.99 for a normal license, $39.99 for a premier license.

Know of any other quality all-in-one IM clients? Leave ‘em in the comments.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

The ins and outs of BlackBerry messaging

This post originated at BBGeeks.com - home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

The ins and outs of BlackBerry messaging