I was exchanging messages with King and thought I’d post my thoughts on the software that I currently use on the BlackBerry.
Hey King,
I don’t use a lot of apps on my 9000 Bold BlackBerry, but I swear by Pocket Informant. It’s great for getting tasks on your calendar and I like its presentation for contacts as well.
I haven’t used the “keyboardless” version of it yet. I used to use it on my iPaq and the BlackBerry version is up to par.
I don’t have any recommendation for a calculator as I pretty much use only the 4 functions these days, but other software I use frequently:
– BerryWeather – my favorite feature is setting my “home” screen to my GPS coordinates so it is always showing me the current and forecast weather for wherever I happen to be. I keep 3 other permanent locations set as well so I can always check home, Toronto and my airport’s weather.
– Profile Scheduler – I use profiles heavily (along with filters) and the scheduler automatically puts it into phone only mode for night time. So I don’t get woken up when a friend sends me some funny message at 1 in the morning…
– I often have used google maps on my device – haven’t had much cause to lately since I’m always near a computer or my gps.
– Something that has potential but IMHO isn’t quite there yet is drivesafe.ly (yep that’s spelled correctly). It can detect when you’re driving (by gps speed) and will auto respond to email and text if you wish and will read you your incoming email and texts. Pretty cool to know whether or not that new incoming message is something to deal with at the next light or not.
– Besides those products I regularly use the Blackberry Facebook App, Enterprise Messenger (with our corporate SameTime IM system), Viigo and UberTwitter. All are OK but none are drop dead gorgeous apps.
I synch wirelessly via BlackBerry Enterprise Server to my Lotus Notes for mail, calendar and journal/memo/notebook. But I synch manually to Lotus Notes at work and to Outlook at Home (outlook is my master) and am able to take advantage of outlook’s superior print and formatting capabilities with no major issues.
I have tried several flavors of synching contacts, calendars, etc. with google-centric products but I have found all of them lacking.
There is a product that you can search for that you would pay some modest monthly fee for that will wirelessly synch your outlook with the BlackBerry that I researched somewhat for one of our SLT folks who was leaving the company and I would definitely give it a try over any of the other solutions I’ve seen to date if I didn’t have a work-provided wireless solution.
Marc
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 7:43 PM, King wrote:
I have taken the plunge, and gone for the BB Storm 2.
Any recommendations for ‘must have’ software?
Particularly…..a Calculator? The one that comes with it is just basic +-*/ and I use the
more ‘impressive’ functions a fair bit on my treo.A contact list? I was able to import the contacts from my trio, but it
has not converted as cleanly as I would like.Also, what do you use on the desktop to sync to, Outlook? Google service,
Lotus notes? What I would really like is a full address book, from which
I could print mailing labels on the PC side as well as maintain all
contact info.King