It's Time to Pimp Your Blackberry

I’m one of those annoying Blackberry addicts who barely watches where he’s walking while he thumb-types away.

At least I can admit it. But only getting my email and taking calls on the same device is so 2002.

I’ve been tricking out my Blackberry lately to let me do a variety of things faster. And while there are a ton of free applications you can download (here are a couple sites highlighting them), there are three that I’m using routinely now.

I won’t be so silly as to say “they’re indispensable,” but they’ve proven to be nice time-savers and productivity enhancers.

I’m stuck with Lotus Notes (not by personal choice) and the calendar in that thing is terrible. On the other hand, I’ve been sucked in to Google Calendar when I’m at my desk or on my home computer.

As of a few days ago, I have my Blackberry calendar and Google calendar syncing automatically via the instructions here. No muss, no fuss. It took a no-big-whoop download to my Blackberry, a couple clicks, and voila!

Meanwhile, most of you are still writing things down in a planner. Ha!

This calendar syncing business comes a few months after I started using Google Maps on my Blackberry. Wow.

Find some businesses, get driving directions, it’s good stuff. Don’t use it while driving, of course, but it hasn’t let me down yet. After I’ve found my destination, I click 3 to page through each step of the driving directions.

And to think, 13 years ago I thought a Thomas Guide was the coolest mapping system on earth.

Finally, I just started checking out Beyond411 Search. Download it. Install it. Tell it your home and/or work address. Then you can do a Yellow Pages, White Pages, or web search (in which it guesses what you’re going to type as you type it), and you’ll get a results page of the locations closest to you. Pretty nifty.

You can go all-out with your Blackberry geekery. I don’t advocate that. You hopefully get a bigger rush out of exceeding your sales quota than downloading apps to your handheld device. But if you want a faster way to get info, using a device you already have with you, these are a few options.