My sidearm in the trenches of e-triage is a T-Mobile BlackBerry 7100t. As you have probably seen, I've had my share of serious problems with T-Mobile USA, but slowly but surely shining enough lights on them is making them more accountable and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel for BlackBerry users on their network.

So this is a brief overview of what I keep on my BlackBerry and why, in an effort to help the new BlackBerry user know my BlackBerry workflow without using a BES, and without using a Windows PC (except for when I have to install packages).

Jason O'Grady has recently been covering some of his tips and tricks, and I recommend you read them as well. Part 1 is about his switch. Part II is about some software he's settled down with, and Part III is the wrap-up with some notes on accessories, caveats, and accessories.

First, the UI. T-Mobile's theme for the 7100 was quite possibly designed by war criminals. Certainly not UI experts. The icons are bad, the details are fuzzy and sometimes seem mis-matched, and the color scheme sucks. I changed over to the old-school Icon theme that just puts everything on one screen. That way I could hide unused icons like that stupid "Download Fun!" one, and the "Compose" shortcut. If I want to compose an email, I do it from Messages or from the Address Book.

I really like the Vodafone theme. You can find it online at BlackBerryForums along with instructions on how to install it. I really want a theme creation kit to make my own. I'm not a UI designer, but it's obvious that the person that did the T-Mobile theme isn't either.

Second, the email.

I don't use a BES on my 7100. I may come back at some point, but the reason I don't is because I have a BlackBerry from my employer and I like to keep things seperate. I may end up moving everything to the 7100t in the near future.

For tips on how I manage my email to the very best of my ability using the BlackBerry Web Client (BWC) read about it here on MobileWhack.

I use my "virtual inbox" hack to quickly surf email that is specifically to me when time is scarce.

Third, the software. BlackBerry 3.8 (and 4.0) address most of my nags about the previous BlackBerry software releases when it comes to PIM functions. They support categories for items now, allowing you to quickly filter things. The Calendar application has a nice feel to it, and it is easier to reliably dial a number from an appointment detail, or navigate items therein.

Third-parties are really starting to ramp up support for the BlackBerry, which is a good thing. RIM lags behind everyone else on third-party application development, and they're trying hard to remedy that situation.

Currently my application stack is as follows:

BBToday | BBToday is a "Today" screen for the BlackBerry. It is simple, clean, and nice. I hope for more improvements in the future to make it fancier, but to be honest its awfully good now. It is, certainly, a one-trick pony. But what a great trick! Your email total, your next appointment, and upcoming tasks, all right before your eyes. I don't know why RIM doesn't have something like this standard.

VeriChat | VeriChat is a multi-protocol IM client that sucks substancially less than the bundled T-Mobile client. It isn't perfect, but at least it lets you use "Return" as a way to send a message, so that you're not constantly hitting the scroll wheel like a mental patient. While I admire T-Mobile for trying to get IM right, I have a whole rant about it on my homepage if anyone cares why I don't like it. VeriChat was just updated today to 1.47b, giving some UI enhancements. It is also faster. Thats right! Faster!

Berry 411 | Updated 1/4/2005! Berry 411 is an awesome utility that feeds the right query to Google and gets a nice and neat search result back to you for local shops, movie times, and price checks via Froogle. It is free. You are crazy to not install this.

midpSSH | This SSH client is more usable than puTTY on Series 60. Does SSH and Telnet from the 7100t to remote hosts. I have used it several times and liked it. I wish it had an easy buffer for text input instead of using the menu, however. Supports SSH1 and SSH2. Most MobileWhack readers probably know what SSH is.

eFile | eFile is a file manager. I don't know why I have it installed except that it has a PDF viewer, and I want to be able to read eBooks on my BlackBerry. I haven't really played with this much, though it has a Doc viewer and a Notepad-like program that seems pretty interesting, so I keep it around for those times when I have a few moments and want to fiddle with it.

Newsflash | Newsflash is an RSS reader. I paid money for it, and I'm sorry that I did.

Bloglines | Use Blogines Mobile to fix your need for feeds. It is fast, easy to use, and what I like to do is use the tag feature to save things I want to see again when I get back to a desk or my PowerBook. Makes idle time in line less idle, since you can catch up and anything really cool you need to examine more gets put somewhere you can easily get to later.

del.icio.us | I really love using del.icio.us. Plus, it is very accessible using the BlackBerry browser, and what I usually do is stuff anything I can't read now into a category called "!later" on del.icio.us, and then when I have that spare time I covet, I go through my !later file and remove, read, and re-categorize as I need to. Since you can get yourself an RSS feed of the !later file via Bloglines Mobile, that makes it even more accessible. The only thing missing is an elegant way to put things into del.icio.us for !later while I am on my BlackBerry. Not that you can't, it just isn't as simple using the 'Berry.

I carry a Gameboy Advance SP with me (and a copy of Final Fantasy 1 & 2!) so I don't usually install games on my mobile phones. There are some good ones out there for the BlackBerry, including a really interesting horse racing sim that has you buy, breed, and train horses and it really seemed awfully involved but certainly looked beautiful.

If you need more industrial-strength SSH because you're a professional sysadmin or regularly need bullet-proof access to machines, check out Idokorro SSH, which is expensive but much better than the free (but adequete for me) midpSSH.

Deaf or Hearing-Impaired users should check out PhoneWire, which coverts voicemail to text emails. See also: Dictomail.

BlackBerry Jedi Master Mark Rejhon maintains a thread about useful third-party applications for the BlackBerry on the BlackBerry Forums. He also has a wealth of information about using devices like the BlackBerry when you are hearing impaired.

He also rightly points out that most J2ME applications will work fine on the BlackBerry, such as those at j2me-software.

In the future I will give more details into how I manage my daily schedule and keep track of my life using the BlackBerry 7100. Any must-have applications on your BlackBerry that I didn't mention?

Sam Pullara strings together an XQuery engine and TinyURL-alike to transform the web into something his mobile can understand.

What I decided to do was to build a server that would let you define a source of information (either HTML or XML) and then process that information using an XQuery transformation and then give you a short little URL that is easy to put on a phone. Here is the XQuery web transformation service. You'll notice that the hostname is mjg.md. This is only 6 keystrokes on a typical phone keypad, i.e. 654763. When creating a new service it will also generate a similar shortname for the service and you can either choose to use that or not, much like tinyurl for the web.

From the EFFector 18.1:

There's only half a year left before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) takes away your right to watch digital television on a device that isn't Hollywood-approved. Under the new "Broadcast Flag" regime, the FCC will mandate that every digital television device include the kind of technology that we see in cable personal video recorders (PVRs) and media center PCs - technology that allows entertainment companies to do things like arbitrarily erase your stored episodes of "Six Feet Under" after two weeks so that you'll be forced to pay-per-view your end-of-season marathon, or stop you from burning "The Sopranos" to DVD to force you to buy the DVD boxed sets.

While TiVo and others are playing right into the hands of the enemy, the EFF recommends grandfathering yourself now to avoid the horrors of the Broadcast Flag. A fantastic review is available: EFF's Review of Elgato's EyeTV 500.

T-Mobile USA is my mobile operator. They have great coverage where I live and where I frequently visit, and they have great prices.

Recently I fell victim to a total hustle and had to go toe-to-toe with T-Mobile over their changes to their network that prohibited outbound access from my BlackBerry to the Internet unless it was via the BlackBerry web browser. The bigger insult here is that it used to work fine until they did something to cut off the freeloaders that were using the T-Zones Internet plan to tether handsets to laptops and PDAs.

It was very short-sighted of them. This aggression will not stand, man.

So I set out to get it rectified. All told it took three weeks of me being incredibly persistent and aggressive, but the basic steps on how to get your way when they've done you wrong are as follows:

Call Customer care via 611 and report the issue. You'll talk to several people who will demonstrate various levels of competence and get transfered several times until you find someone who is in the right ballpark of your problem.

In my case it takes four transfers to get past the Billing and Customer Service rep, the Wireless Data Group, The PDA and Handhelds group, and an "Advanced Wireless Data Group" which may have just been a team lead in the Wireless Data Group.

The person you get there will not know what RSS is, what an RSS reader is, and what the difference is between going to a web site with a browser, and an RSS reader is. They will put wrong information in the ticket, but let them do what they gotta do. If you say the words "third-party" they will tell you that you're out of luck.

What I did was repeat the following statement:

"I am not asking you to support a third-party application. I am asking you to stop blocking access to the Internet for this third-party application. I purchased a device that can use applications developed by parties other than T-Mobile and RIM. T-Mobile is breaking my device."

The first ticket I got was supposed to get escalated to a supervisor and then after we hung up the call the next morning I found out that this bozo just deleted the ticket and closed it. His name was Willy, and he's probably the worst customer service representative I have ever encountered. Willy, if you're reading this, you totally suck.

So I had to turn things up a notch. I wasn't going to get my problem solved by talking to random people that didn't know what I was talking about and didn't care.

The following is my hack for how to get things done at T-Mobile USA:

You can call the Wireless Data Group directly, with no queue. You will instantly get a person that is going to assist with data issues faster than going in via 611. You can call them direct at +1-877-369-4588.

Odds are good that they will be unable to help for some reason. Ask for a supervisor. Escalate. Get a ticket. Be assertive. Tell them to check in Streamline for an issue regarding the BlackBerry and the Internet (if you have my problem).

Get a ticket number out of them and if they're not grasping the problem or are telling you there is no problem and you disagree, you take it to the Customer Relations group.

Customer Relations

PO BOX 37380

Albequerque NM 87176

Fax number: +1505 998 3796

Wait a couple days for action. When you receive none:

Follow-up with this number, which is the corporate office in Bellevue WA +1425-378-4000.

Talk fast. Tell them you filed a formal complaint with Customer Relations and haven't heard anything back. I was able to seduce myself an actual transfer to actual customer relations staff. Don't be mad at the person there, they're a switchboard op that doesn't care. They've always been exceptionally nice to me, but they are trained to keep you out of the hair of people they can transfer you to. Make your case quickly.

Once I was in the loving hands of Customer Relations, I was fine. I never felt I was being ignored, and even though the technical staff I was given to out there in New Mexico also wound up back-peddling and failing me, a follow-up to my Customer Relations rep got me resolved and my account was now able to function as normal again. I don't think the guy I was talking to out there (Juan) really understood the problem. He was downloading and installing applications to see what the problem was and told me he had to add his BlackBerry to a BES to make it work. Of course he did. He wasn't running BlackBerry 3.8 or 4.0 on his 7230, so he had to use a BES to get IP outbound. That isn't required on the 7100t, so I lost faith that he had any idea what he was talking about.

Now some people have this problem and some don't. It is clearly an internal screw-up at T-Mobile that they're fixing or trying to fix. I have been giving my mobile number to people that need it in oder to assist in getting the problem resolved for other BlackBerry users on the T-Mobile network because apparently they can't just reference the ticket number.

You can contact me at emory at mobilewhack dot com if you need my mobile number to let the T-Mobile reps find out how they fixed my account.

This is hopefully the last time I have to write about how to social engineer yourself some customer service.

Somewhere in the holiday lull, we missed this announcement going by. If we missed it, then you probably did to. In short, the Python interpreter for the Nokia Series 60 phones has been released.

Of course, T9 and hacking may not be the perfect hacking platform, but it's great fun regardless.

Previous MobileWhack Series 60 Python Posts:

* Amaretto Thoughts: Python on Nokia * Python For UIQ Smartphones * Symbian Python * Python on Nokia w/Screenshots * Something Beginning With "P"

Today while buying my ration of ink cartridges for my Epson printer at Staples, I picked up a Jabra BT110 to try out, because my BT200 started making a horrible squealing noise. After taking off the ear-gel and finding no family of hamsters inside, I have decided to try out some new headsets and see how things have progressed in the last year.

The Jabra BT110 is very inexpensive. You can find it for around US$50 at Amazon, and it uses a AAA battery for power. This doesn't seem to adversely affect the weight at all, and it nestles neatly behind my ear, even when I'm wearing big glasses.

There aren't a lot of controls on the device, only the on/off button and a volume control. This means I can't do any call-control features like my BT200, but if you just need a replacement headset, or are looking to try out a Bluetooth headset, it may be best to stick to the basics.

Jabra says you can get 15 hours of use on one battery, which is pretty good. I like that I can just put in another battery, it's one less charger to carry around. The Nokia headsets were always pretty nice because you could just use the standard Nokia charger to feed them, but I found my HDW-2 too uncomfortable to wear for extended periods of time.

If you just got a fancy new handset and spent your holiday winnings on that but still wanted to try once of those fancy wireless headsets, the BT110 is worth looking at. Without hesitation I would recommend this over the no-name competition, even if they boasted more features.

My friend Ben Brown is a brilliant fellow. You have no idea how smart he is unless you know him, but needless to say every now and then something cool shakes loose from his head and I love it to death.

This is something totally simple, but makes perfect sense.

Sort your buddy lists by location.

Usually you'll have "friends" "family" and "people i pretend to like" for your groups in your buddy list. Maybe something like "MobileWhack" to keep close tabs on your intrepid handset heros.

Anyway.

What my friend Ben does is to sort buddies by location. If you have a smartphone, Hiptop, or VeriChat for the BlackBerry, you can quickly surf your buddies by location when you get off the plane. This may seem kind of silly, unless you ever travel.

Often times I'll get sent somewhere on business or take a spontaneous trip somewhere. Maybe I'll go to Boston for the day, or I get sent down to work in DC for a spell. I can easily see who is around and obviously slacking off in DC or Los Angeles, and send them a quick message asking them to buy me lunch.

There are buddies I have that don't quite fall into any location because they're always all over the place. They get filed into "Friends - JetSet" in almost every circumstance.)

How do you sort your mobile buddies?