BlackBerry Tips and Tricks!

Posted on January 30th, 2008 webmaster No comments          Print

I just read this article on CIO.com about the best BlackBerry shortcuts. It’s a pretty big list, 39 total. Here are the 20 that I found most useful and I hope you find them useful as well:

Typing Shortcuts

1. To capitalize a letter with one click, hold down the letter key.
2. To insert a period, click the Space key twice.
3. Turn CAP Lock on by pressing the ALT key followed by the right Shift key. Turn it off by pressing either Shift key.
4. Turn Number Lock on by pressing the ALT key followed by the left Shift key. Turn it off by pressing either Shift key.
5. Type an accented letter or special character by holding the corresponding letter and scrolling left or right with the trackball.

Messaging Shortcuts

1. In e-mail inbox, press the S key to search for a sender or a word within a subject line, and any mail folder regardless of message was sent or received.
2. Within inbox, access the complete list of messages sent by hitting the ALT key followed by the O key.
3. Within inbox, access the complete list of messages received by hitting the ALT key followed by the I key.
4. Within inbox, access the complete list of SMS text messages received by hitting the ALT key followed by the S key.
5. Within inbox, access phone log by hitting the ALT key followed by the P key.
6. Within inbox, access voicemail log by hitting the ALT key followed by the V key.
7. When reading a message, press N to go to the next message, press P to go to the previous message.
8. Within inbox or when reading a message, press T to go to the top of the page, B to go to the bottom of the page, Space key to go to the next page, Shift + Space to go to the previous page.

BlackBerry Browser Shortcuts

1. Bring up the Enter Web Address field from any Web page by pressing the G key.
2. Insert a period in Web address by clicking the Space key.
3. Add an item to bookmarks list by clicking the A key.
4. Bring up your bookmark list by clicking the K key.
5. Refresh a Web page by clicking the R key.
6. Open browser options with the O key.

BlackBerry Acting Up

1. If your BlackBerry slows down, starts malfunctioning or freezing, always try removing the battery and SIM card–if the device has one–and waiting a few seconds before reinserting it.

I should probably add this list to our corporate wiki tomorrow .

BDD 2007: Can’t connect to the deployment share

Posted on January 29th, 2008 webmaster 4 comments          Print

Error message: “A connection to the deployment share (\\server\deployment_share) could not be made. The deployment will not proceed.”

I ran into this problem this morning when trying to load Windows XP on a new computer using Business Desktop Deployment and Windows Deployment Services. It turned out that the reason for this is because my WinPE boot image didn’t have the network drivers for the new computer (when you type in ipconfig /all in the command prompt in WinPE, you’ll notice that there’s no IP assigned).

I fixed this problem by doing the following:

1. Download the network drivers for the computer having this issue.
2. Open the Deployment Workbench.
3. Add the network drivers to Distribution Share->Out-of-Box Drivers.
4. Go to Deploy->Deployment Points, select your deployment point and click Update. This will update your WinPE boot image (LiteTouchPE_x86.wim) to include the new drivers.
5. Open Windows Deployment Services and replace your boot image.
6. Reboot the client machine and boot in WinPE again, it should now be able to connect to the deployment share.

IP Addresses As Personal Information

Posted on January 22nd, 2008 webmaster No comments          Print

From ABC News: Peter Scharr, Germany’s data protection commissioner, said that when someone is identified by an IP Address then it should be regarded as personal information. Google disagrees with this argument and insists that an IP address merely identifies the location of the computer and a user does not always use the same computer and IP address.

Treating IP addresses as personal information would affect how search engines record data. Google, for example, already cut the time it stored information to 18 months and reduced expiration of cookies from 30 years to 2 years.

Google argues that the reason they collect IP addresses is to give customers a more accurate service by identifying what part of the world a search result comes from and what language they use, which is not enough to identify an individual user.

Read more here…