Brian McGinnis

In April 2009, I purchased my very first smartphone, a BlackBerry Curve 8330.  Even though I had been a techie for many years now, this decision brought me to the next level.  The BlackBerry became my new laptop on short trips, using it for navigation, local search, emails, instant messaging, social networking, news, and even as a portable entertainment center for music and movies.

I instantly could see I would rely heavily on this device, and therefore wanted to maximize its usage in every regard but especially in staying connected with people.  Contact information and calendar management soon became a big deal to me.  I could be organized and motivated like never before.

The first thing I did was reach about to a bunch of people I knew had used BlackBerries and inquired about their favorite applications, and where they went to research for further information.  While I had received a great amount of feedback from people, their was one commonality I found in the responses from every techie that I had asked. Download the Google Mobile App, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Sync.

This was hands-down the best recommendation I had received. The Google Mobile App was simply a bundle of applications similar to how the Google Pack is offered on computers. Within that application, installing Google Maps and Gmail was as simple as could be. The key element to the whole equation was the Google Sync application. By using that application, one can sync all their contacts from Gmail on the computer wireless over-the-air directly to their BlackBerry.  The same functionality exists with the Google Calendar application where you can sync it to your BlackBerry native Calendar over-the-air. One can also sync multiple calendars using this functionality.

Now, the central place for my contact management on my BlackBerry would be my computer which is way easier for me to enter information in.  I was able to export contacts from my other email account address books, and import them into Gmail.  I was able to cleanup and organize the contact cards a lot better on the computer. Ultimately, I could now choose to delete my BlackBerry Contacts and Calendar databases at any time, and I would be able to sync it back  using Google Sync.

This comes in very handy when doing upgrades to your BlackBerry or if it crashes on you, it would have to be a bother to have to ask for hundreds of contact’s information again. With the ease of a computer to manage contacts, it now makes sense to add restaurants, place of interests, home addresses, work addresses, and other information most people don’t usually enter on their mobile phones.  By having this information, I can easily get directions to locations using Google Maps without having to type anything.  I can do local searches using a variety of applications.  I also can feel safe and secure knowing that my calendar and contacts will always reside safely on Gmail and Google Calendar, and can easily be restored to my BlackBerry without even hooking up a cord to a computer.