BlackBerry Tips and Tricks!

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

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

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…

Laptop with Data on 600,000 People Stolen

Here’s another one…

A laptop containing personal information on about 600,000 people was stolen from an officer in the Royal Navy, the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense said on Friday.

The laptop contained information about new and potential recruits to the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, and was stolen in Birmingham last week, the ministry said.

The stolen data includes passport details, national insurance numbers, family details and doctors’ addresses for people who submitted an application to the forces, the ministry said. The laptop also contained bank details for at least 3,500 people.

They didn’t say whether the data was encrypted.

Also see this post about encrypting data with TrueCrypt (free open-source encryption software).

Backup Tape Lost - 650,000 Customers Affected

A backup tape containing personal information of 650,000 customers of J.C. Penney and about 100 other retailers went missing. Social Security numbers of 150,000 customers are stored on the tape. The missing backup tape was not encrypted…

The information was on a backup computer tape that was discovered missing last October. It was being stored at a warehouse run by Iron Mountain Inc., a data storage company, and was never checked out but can’t be found either, said Richard C. Jones, a spokesman for GE Money, part of General Electric Capital Corp.

Jones said there was “no indication of theft or anything of that sort,” and no evidence of fraudulent activity on the accounts involved.

Click here for the full article…

Save Windows XP!

As you may have already heard, Microsoft is planning to stop selling Windows XP to OEMs on June 30, 2008, forcing users to switch to Windows Vista. But there are still many users out there who prefer XP over Vista. If you’re one of these people, please click here to sign InfoWorld’s petition to keep Windows XP available indefinitely.

Here’s the link to InfoWorld’s full article on this: Why XP must be saved

Hot Technologies for 2008

Computerworld published this article a couple of weeks ago about the 8 technologies that experts think will be very hot this year. Here’s the list:

1. Virtualization
2. Automation
3. Integration
4. Real-time Collaboration (tools such as Google Docs)
5. Web 2.0 (blogs, wikis)
6. Ideation (I honestly have never heard of this term used in technology before, but it sounds like it’s basically just a tool where people post ideas and work on them)
7. Consumer-oriented devices
8. Unified Communications

We’re actually working on Unified Communications right now, it’s a pretty big project, so it’s good to know it made it in the list. Good stuff.

SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Connectors Unveiled

Reg Hardware posted some pictures and diagrams of the connectors for the upcoming version of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) shown at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2008) in Las Vegas. USB 3.0, also known as ‘SuperSpeed’ USB, will be able to transfer data at speeds of up 4.8Gb/s, ten times faster than the current Hi-Speed USB 2.0 standard (480Mb/s).

USB 3.0 will be backwards-compatible with both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0. It is expected to be released later this year.