I’ve decided to add some forums to the StudentBerry site. The main reason for this is that we’d really like you all to get involved by telling us just what exactly you’d like to see from StudentBerry. The initial release is just around the corner, but that doesn’t mean we can’t begin coming up with some new features already! Also, until further notice, the forums will now act as your means to get in contact with us here at StudentBerry. So go ahead and drop on in and shoot us a question or maybe some suggestions! In other news, screen shots are well on their way and should be available in no time. We just want to make sure every thing is good and polished looking for the camera. See you in the forums!

One of the most frustrating things about owning a Blackberry while in college is getting everything setup in a way that works for me, as a student, and not a professional. This being the case, and seeing as I’m now on my third Blackberry, I’ve gotten a pretty good listing going of what programs are necessary, what settings to change, etc… I hope you’ll find this useful.

First Things First: What to Install

One of the most exciting steps in getting your Blackberry ready for school is installing new apps. Below are a few of the apps that serve me well over the course of a semester.

Viigo: Viigo is an amazing rss reader designed specifically for mobile devices. It’s actually quite a bit more than an rss reader, but seeing as this is the only feature I’ve actually utilized, I really can’t attest to the quality of the rest of the application. Viigo allows me to keep up to date with my favorite blogs during the brief sections of time I often find between classes, on the trip home, or while waiting for a class to start (or end). Definitely recommended for any student who enjoys keeping up with rss feeds. OTA install available at: mobile.virtualreach.com

Viigo Tip: Go ahead and sign up for an account as soon as you get this program up and running on your Blackberry. It takes only a few seconds, and saves you a lot of time and frustration in the future. Though Viigo is a solid application to say the least, it does have its occasional problems. Instead of having to re-enter all of your rss feeds, signing up for an account will automatically restore them for you. Simply go to Options –> Account and fill in the necessary information.

Viigo Tip 2: For an extra dose of time saving awesomeness, couple your Viigo account with a FeedRinse account. FeedRinse allows you to filter your rss feeds and weed out any posts that you don’t want to have to dig through. Best of all, FeedRinse is now free and offers OPML links! You can log into your Viigo account, enter in the OPML link provided, and your Viigo will always be up to date with your newest feeds.

Google Applications: I’m going to go ahead and lump all the google apps together under one heading. Why? Because they’re all awesome (with the exception of google news and google search, which both seem pretty useless to me). A good majority of my friends currently use GTalk to keep in touch, so installing this one for me was a no brainer. Newly released GTalk v 2.0 for Blackberry improves even more on this amazing application. The GMail app, while seemingly redundant to the already great mail applications included with the Blackberry, has actually been a life saver for me more times than once. Better, more complete search functions, the ability to download your attachments more effectively, and an easy to use interface will ensure this app a permanent spot on your Blackberry device.

Beyond411/Berry411: This application is, hands down, the most useful application ever made for the Blackberry device. It provides a powerful information search, phone number/address lookup, directions, and more. Get this application onto your screen and I promise you won’t regret it. OTA download available at: Beyond411

FaceBook: RIM has recently released a Facebook application that allows you to connect to your facebook account directly from your blackberry. Though several people are reporting having trouble getting it installed properly, I’ve heard no complaints once it is up and running. I was able to install it pretty hassle free, and can honestly say that I love it. Definitely beats using the default Blackberry browser and facebook mobile site. To download the facebook application for your Blackberry, simply log into your facebook account on your Blackberry device and follow the links provided.

MobiPocket: This is a free, easy to use, and well designed ebook reader for your blackberry. I’ve tried several readers in the past, and this one definitely seems to be the most complete package I’ve found. Great for killing some time in between classes or on the bus (if you happen to be as unfortunate as me and take the bus every day). OTA Download link available at: MobiPocket Reader

MobiPocket Tip: It took me a while to find a good free ebook source. there are several out there, but I’ve found manybooks.net to be the best one. you can even download the ebooks directly into the native mobipocket format. I can personally recommend Arabian Nights as being a quality time killer.

Though there are several other amazing blackberry applications out there, these are the few that I have found to be particularly useful to me every day. With luck, StudentBerry itself will find its way onto your list shortly. Please add your name to our contact list if you’d like to be informed of when this application can find its way onto your Blackberry device.

Next: Setting up your Blackberry

This section is, unfortunately, only going to be relevant to those of you that find themselves in my exact situation. But, I’m hoping the information will be helpful to some of you anyway.

Gmail: If you use GMail, you know that one of its best features is the discussion format they use for displaying your e-mail conversations. If you use GMail on your Blackberry, however, you know that this quickly becomes one of its worst features. Basically, everytime you send out an e-mail under that account name, you recieve it back again in your inbox. Very frustrating. The best way that I’ve found to correct this problem is to apply a filter to your GMail account that will not send these messages to your phone. To do this, simply point your desktop browser (will not work directly from phone) to https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw Please note that the last part of this url is the name of your phone provider. I happen to use Verizon, so this is where I have mine pointed. I’ve only ever tested Verizon and Cingular (brand=cingular), but I’d imagine that the other companies brands are pretty easy to guess as well. Once there, select the filters icon for your gmail account. you can now select “From” field from the drop-down box, and enter your own e-mail address into the input field below it. Give the filter a name, save it, and pat yourself on the back. The only problem I’ve found with this method is that it no longer allows you to send yourself e-mails (something I frequently do). To solve this problem, you can either send yourself e-mails to one of the other accounts you currently use on your device, or simply use the gmail application to retrieve e-mails you send yourself.

UPDATE: visit http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/software/internet.jsp and scroll to the bottom for links to all the different providers internet sites.  This is SO much easier to work with than just guessing.  Thanks to Andrew for this tip!

Removing the branded signature: One of the most annoying things about any Blackberry device purchased directly from a cellphone provider is the use of branded signatures at the bottom of each e-mail. You may have noticed that whenever you send something out you’ll see “sent from my Verizon Wireless Blackberry” (obviously different for other providers) added in at the bottom. To remove this signature, simply point your desktop browser to the same address mentioned for the Gmail trick. You can now select the edit icon next to the e-mail address you’d like to remove the signature for, and change the signature to say whatever you’d like, or nothing at all.

Finally: Change the way your Blackberry Looks

Lets face it, default themes are pretty boring. Thus far, the best sources I’ve found for blackberry themes are Pinstack and eveek. Registration is free, and most of the themes are as well. The best ones that I’ve found are the iphone and vista themes (both available for free at eveek).

So there you have it. That’s how I setup my Blackberry each time I end up getting a new one. You may have noticed that there isn’t much mentioned that specifically relates to students, but that’s because there really isn’t much out there. Keep a lookout for StudentBerry sometime in the near future.

Though StudentBerry is a solution to one problem commonly faced by students with blackberries, it is by no means the only problem. For instance, one of the main time wasters of my past year in school has been trying to come up with an effective way to sync Google Calendar with my phone. Unfortunately, I am yet to find the solution. Currently I’m bound to some hybrid, make-do method that really just isn’t cutting it. In an effort to minimize the hassle on other students, I’ve decided to post a few of the methods I tried, and how they turned out. I’ll start with the ones that work, and move on to those that you should probably just avoid all together.

Google Sync: Companion Link

The first method that I tried was Companion Link for Google Calendar. This app actually works great, and does exactly what it’s supposed to do. The application works by syncing your Google Calendar both directly to your phone, and with your Outlook program. Unfortunately, you have to have your Blackberry connected to the computer for this to work. I can see how this is an adequate solution for frequent Outlook users (read: most business types), but it simply did not work for me as a student. I needed an OTA (Over-The-Air) solution that could be synced from anywhere I had a data connection. If you’re the type that frequently backs up on the computer, or otherwise uses outlook, however, than this is a great solution. Keep in mind that it’s pretty pricey though (29.95 at the time of this writing), and is therefore not a viable option for most students I know.

Google Sync: GCalSync

This is my current solution to this problem, but let me warn you: it’s far from perfect. the GCalSync application was well on it’s way to perfection. Actually, as far as I can tell, there’s really only one problem I’ve ever encountered with the program. Unfortunately, the creators have decided to suspend development until further notice. Hopefully this is only temporary, however, cause I’d really like to see this app in all it’s bug-free glory. Best of all, GCalSync is completely free. So what’s the problem? Recurring appointments don’t sync correctly. It’s a shame that this is a large portion of what all students will be syncing. Basically, all your recurring appointments will show up on the right day, but the times will come up as 12:00-12:00 no matter what. Pretty useless. My current solution was to enter my class schedule into the Google Calendar, sync with my blackberry, and correct the times on the blackberry for the entire series. Once this is done you can continue to use GCalSync to synchronize all future single-occurrence appointments. Keep in mind, however, that the next time you enter anything recurring you will run into the same problem.

Other great features include the ability to sync multiple calendars, no additional software required, and runs pretty well. Just a suggestion: when you launch the program, let it run it’s login process before you exit out. This gets pretty annoying if you accidentally select the application, but if you don’t, it tends to freeze up pretty bad.

Google Sync: Goosync and ScheduleWorld

In short, just avoid these. I’ts possible that they may become viable options in the future, but they definitely aren’t even close at the moment. Both services claim to support the blackberry, both do not. They require the addition of third party software called syncje to connect. This is because they aren’t specifically designed for the blackberry OS. Instead, they are standard java applications that happen to run on the Blackberry as well. Instead, both application utilize SyncML to sync your Blackberry calendar with Google. Unfortunately, SyncML is not natively supported by the Blackberry OS, and SyncJE is both expensive and ridiculously difficult to get working properly. In the end, I never got these services to work correctly, so I can’t provide any information on how well they function once they get going. (Thanks to the GooSync commenter for explaining this problem, I’d known what the issue was before, but wasn’t thinking when I originally posted)

Please Expect an update to the GooSync and ScheduleWorld section after giving the funambol option mentioned in the comments a shot. If this proves to be an adequate solution I’d be happy to update again.

Update: An install guide/review for the Funambol SyncML client has been released.  view it here.

We realize that it’s difficult to keep track of things like this, so we’ve decided to add a nifty new mailing list to our site. As new developments occur with the finalization of StudentBerry, we’ll let you know about it.

So go ahead and sign on up along the left side of this page, and you’ll be sent a confirmation to subscribe to our mailing list. We’ll never sell your information or utilize it for any purpose other than keeping you up to date with our progress. We suspect that you really wont’ hear from us other than a few announcement and a final release notice. You’ll be the first to know as soon as we go live!

Welcome to StudentBerry, the only task application for the Blackberry OS geared specifically towards students. Please be patient during the inception of our site. We’re confident that you won’t be disappointed with what we have to offer when the time comes.