Tips

Some must have FREE apps for your Blackberry

Here are a few absolutely fantastic and must have (well, for many of us anyway) apps for your Blackberry, not necessarily in order of preference:

1) Google Maps: download from m.google.com/maps
Get Navigation, Places, Compass Mode, Directions, Latitude (find your friends), Traffic, Layers (overlay information on Maps), Indoor Maps, 3D Maps, Place Pages, My Location, Street View etc all depending on your location and device.

2) Opera Mini: download from http://mini.opera.com
Awesome web browser.

3) Gmail: download from http://m.gmail.com
Great app to have if you ever need to quickly access the Gmail contact or mail that isn’t saved in your BB Mail.

4) Blackberry Travel: download from BB AppStore
Great app for flight status, Weather, Currency Calculator, and World Clocks.

5) Pandora for Blackberry: download from www.pandora.com on your mobile browser.
Pandora Radio is a free personalised Radio.

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MTS USB Internet dongle with Mac OSX Lion

For those who are facing a problem with MTS USB Internet on MAC 10.7+ system, here’s a solution:

Uninstall/delete your older MTS dialler application.

You will need ‘CrossPlatformUI-V2.1.2-SSTL.dmg’ (which is available on the ZTE website)

After installation, plug your MTS dongle and  go to
System Preferences > Network > ZTE Wireless Terminal.

Settings:

Configuration: Default
Telephone Number: #777
Account Name: internet@internet.mtsindia.in
Password:  MTS

Save and click connect. That should work.

Blackberry Bold 9900 (Touch) as Bluetooth Modem with Mac OS X Lion

RIM recently launched the Blackberry Bold 9900 with touchscreen in India. Its an awesome phone, with good build quality (though at first check, it feels a bit plasticky), and a very fast and responsive OS. All in all, a great phone to buy. Now the question is, can you tether it to your Mac as a modem via bluetooth? Of course you can. I called up Airtel for help and they said they didn’t support Macs. So here it is for all fellow Mac users.

Blackberry Bold 9900

Before you start, you will have to call up your carrier and request them to enable internet on your BB (in this case Airtel, and you should mention that you want to access the internet on your laptop/pc via your laptop. You need them to tell you whats your APN, username and password).

For Airtel, call 121 for enabling internet and call 7070 (dial and then press 2 once connected) for BB instructions.

Download BB modem script from here. Place the contents of the zipped folder inside your Mac HDD -> Library -> Modem Scripts

Bluetooth Pair your BB with your Mac. In the end of the process you will get the dialog box which says you can use your BB/Device as a modem to access internet. The details for access are as follows:

Phone Vendor: research In Motion
Phone Model: Blackberry IP Modem (GSM)
Username: (leave blank)
Password: (leave blank)
APN: airtelgprs.com
CID: 1

Now go to Network Preferences: Locations -> Edit -> Add New and name it, lets say, BB9900
Configuration: Default
Telephone Number: airtelgprs.com
Account Name: (leave blank)
Password: (leave blank)

Click on ‘Advanced’ and your settings should be as per the following:

Click ‘Ok’ and save the settings.  Now click ‘Connect’ to enjoy the internet.

Reliance Broadband Connect+ USB Modem and Mac OSX Snow Leopard

I just got myself a Reliance Huawei EC1260 3G USB data modem.

The good thing is when you connect, it shows a disc image of a Mac installer. The bad thing is, the Mac installer is for a 32 bit OS, and Snow Leopard is 64 bit. Of course you can boot in 32 bit mode by pressing 3+2 when booting, but that isnt a good solution.

Fortunately Huawei has released a 64 bit driver which sadly the Reliance customer care don’t know about yet.

You can download the Huawei driver here. I downloaded the MobileConnectDriver (4.16.00.00).

Make sure you get your modem ‘activated’ by the folks at Reliance when you buy it. Activation can ONLY be done on a Wondows PC. Unless activated the modem wont work.
Double click to go through the standard installation procedure.

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Use your GPS enabled Nokia as external GPS receiver with your Mac

Symarctic ExtGPS allows you to use your phone’s built-in GPS module externally on laptop via Bluetooth. It is mainly targeted for Nokia N95, E90, 6110 Navigator handsets, allowing you to use existing, more sophisticated GIS applications.

Here’s a How-To connecting to Mac OS X Leopard and Tiger

Andriod G1 and Mac

The T-Mobile G1 running Android can be media-synced with a Mac using this method discussed at the android community. There is some more info at the O’Reilly blogs here

droider

Nokia 9300 iSync

I recently tried to iSync a Nokia 9300 via Bluetooth on Mac OSX 10.5.2Out of the box it doesnt work. But this hint did work easily! (Nokia doesnt have a plugin on its site for this phone) 

 Nokia 9300

Nokia 6275 Reliance CDMA and Mac

 Nokia 6275

The Nokia 6275 running Reliance CDMA connects to a Mac as a tethered modem easily:

The settings are simple:

Username : your 10 digit Reliance phone number

Password: your 10 digit Reliance phone number

Telephone number: #777

Modem Script: au cdmaOne Bluetooth Adapter

Connection Speed:

PC Pitstop bandwidth Speed Test
PING: 1028 ms
Download Speed : 57 kbps
Upload Speed : 72 kbps

Full phone details are here

(iSync doesn’t work with this phone. BitPim doesn’t seem to support either. PhoneDirector MAY have support, but it’s as yet untested. Will test soon as I can manage the 18MB download. Am on the road, connected via this phone only, and the speed’s too painful and expensive to attempt an 18MB download. )

Nokia E71 : What I didnt like

I was on the lookout for a Nokia E61 upgrade and when the E71 first showed up at sites like e-series.org and engadgetmobile, I was thrilled. So I got myself one, soon as it was available and soon as I could afford it.

Connecting it to the Mac for iSync and using as a tethered modem was as easy as expected.

Get the compatible iSync plugin from Nokia

The E71 looks drop-dead gorgeous and works amazingly well too! You will find tonnes of reviews of this phone on the net, so I am just writing what I am missing, after having a two year stint with the E61.

*) When making a call the ‘Loudspeaker’ function is not enabled until the called phone starts ringing. Its really annoying. On my E61, I would often dial a number, immediately put it on the loudspeaker and wait for the other person to pick up the phone.

*) I miss the first bracket keys and the exclamation key was better on ‘Q’ than on the ‘?’ key. I could type really fast on the E61′s expanded keyboard layout, but no more! In short I really really loved the keyboard layout of the E61. Please give it back to me.

*) There’s something with the font of the OS. Somehow, it seems to be taking a lot of screen real estate. Even setting it at smallest doesnt seem quiet right.

*) the QuickOffice 4.x.x that comes with the E71 doesnt support charts and graphs, a feature I miss terribly from the the E61′s spreadsheet program.

*) GPS is a fun feature that I have been toying with. A more detailed review of that soon. I tried Nokia Maps, and in two different locations, I saved my locations. Then I asked Nokia Maps to show me the way. It was bang-on accurate for most of the way except towards the end it asked me to take a steep left, which left me baffled, since the left would have taken me AWAY from my destination, which I could see was some 200 meters straight in front of me!

potpourrie

Enable Google Contact Sync without an iPod touch or iPhone

Fantastic post at LifeHacker