Browsing on the Blackberry: It’s About Compromises

February 20, 2008 by 6 Comments

I’ve had a Blackberry (the 8700g) for about four months (although it seems like longer). I usually spend a couple hours a day mobile, and I’ll often use the web browser to check Twitter, Google Reader, or a few other mobile sites I visit. From what I’ve been able to tell, I essentially have two real browser options: the built-in Blackberry browser, or Opera Mini.

The Blackberry browser is just a hair more advanced than lynx. It’s quite text-focused, but has some nice usability features. To refresh the page, you just hit “r”. Pressing the center hotkey brings up the bookmarks menu. You can type text directly into text fields.

Opera Mini is closer to a “real” browser. You can view a full web page and “zoom in” on sections. It’s much more graphical. In short, it’s prettier. On the other hand, the usability stinks. The center hotkey doesn’t bring up the bookmarks; it does nothing. You can’t enter text into fields on webpages, instead you have to select the field and then open up another text editing window. There are no single-key hotkeys, everything is a combination of the # or * keys along with something else.

I would love a browser that looked good and was easy/fast to use. Please?

Perhaps the sometime-in-the-future mobile version of Firefox will make me happy…

[tags]blackberry, browser, operamini, opera[/tags]

Filed Under: Blackberry ·

Jason Grigsby on the Mobile Web: Where are we Going?

February 13, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Tonight at the Portland Web Innovators group Jason Grigsby gave a presentation and led a discussion about the mobile web. He’s very passionate about mobile and presented some interesting statistics about mobile device usage and adoption rates (the U.S. lags far behind the rest of the industrialized world).

One of his major points was that the mobile web space is currently in a situation similar to that of the general web in the mid 90′s. Standards are absent. Most people aren’t yet on the platform, but it’s quickly growing. There are many browsers. Each browser renders content differently. Nobody is sure who will “win” the browser wars. Nobody knows the direction the mobile web will take.

It’s an exciting time for those who want to jump into mobile. Porting existing web applications to the mobile space is one aspect to the situation, but the real innovation in the mobile web will be with applications that haven’t yet been invented. Who would have thought a few years ago that one of the biggest mobile apps would be a hybrid web/SMS system where folks can send 140-character responses to the question “What are you doing right now?”. As mobile device adoption rates grow, new b2b and consumer applications will rise.

There was a brief discussion about tools; right now all of the major phone manufacturers (except for Apple) offer developer tools such as emulators to help with development efforts. Jason mentioned at least one vendor that is offering commercial tools that help translate code between devices. The commercial tool wasn’t cheap, which brought up another key point: at this point in the mobile web game, tools can be expensive because they’re rare. That stinks as a consumer, but is a great opportunity for someone who wants to work in the dev space.

As someone who started working in the web space in 1995, the next few years could be very interesting if things parallel the development of the web.

Keep an eye on the CloudFour blog, where I’m expecting Jason will post some followup information/links from his presentation.

[tags]mobile, mobileweb, pdxwi, jasongrigsby, grigs, cloudfour[/tags]

Filed Under: Blackberry, Software Dev ·

Google Calendar Sync for the Blackberry

December 12, 2007 by 7 Comments

The one ugly point in my digital lifestyle on my Blackberry has been calendar synchronization. I use Google Calendar to manage my schedule, and our family uses the shared calendar features to keep everyone on the same page while still being able to separate events as needed.

As noted previously, there hadn’t been a good synchronization solution for Blackberry users with Google Calendars. I’d been using gSyncIt which worked, but required a clunky three-way synchronization with Outlook in the middle.

Until today, when Google announced Google Sync, which lets me synchronize my Blackberry with Google Calendar, over the air, in real time.

It’s fairly straightforward… install the sync app on your phone, give it your Google credentials, and it’ll perform an initial sync. You can set options for whether you want it to synchronize automatically (which means every 2 hours, or anytime you update something on the Blackberry) or manually. You can download any number of Google calendars that you use, although you can only make Blackberry updates to your primary calendar (presumably because there is no way to indicate which calendar you’d want to use when entering an event in the Blackberry calendar app).

I didn’t run into any problems other than a couple of recurring events that had exceptions that didn’t sync 100% smoothly and created a couple duplicate events. Fortunately the Sync app allows you to clear the Blackberry and force an authoritative sync from the server, meaning that if things get messed up you can wipe the slate clean on one side.

I’m happy because I no longer have to do a desktop sync with Outlook just to get calendar entries moved. My wife is happy because now I can sync her calendar too, and she doesn’t have to remember to enter shared events onto my calendar. Life is grand.

Time will tell how things work long-term, but it’s great to see new options for increasing productivity. No word yet on which other devices might be supported in the future.

[tags]googlecalendar, blackberry, gcal, googlesync[/tags]

Filed Under: Blackberry, Technology ·

Evernote and the Blackberry

October 11, 2007 by 3 Comments

I really like EverNote. It’s perfect for my info storage needs. Except that I spend at least 2-4 hours a day mobile, and it’s useless via my Blackberry.
[Tags]evernote, blackberry[/tags]

Filed Under: Blackberry, Technology ·
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