iNotes
To integrate your iNotes account with your BlackBerry, perform the following steps 1. Log in to your BlackBerry Internet Service account. 2. Click the Profile link at the top of the page. 3. Click Other Email Accounts in the e-mail accounts section of your BIS profile. 5. Enter the information for your iNotes account, including e-mail address, username, and password. 6. Under Lotus Notes Domino, choose the option I can access my mailbox using a Web browser iNotes . 8. In the iNotes URL field,...
WorldMate
Figure 9-6 WorldMate's World Clock tab provides current time for up to five different world locations. Figure 9-7 The WorldMate Flight Schedule display Check out MobiMate's home page, www.mobimate.com, for more information on WorldMate and other mobile software applications, as well as a free trial download. WorldMate Standard Edition is priced at 34.95 for a one year subscription, while the Professional Edition adds wireless access to flight schedules and goes for 49.95. I've heard it said...
Copying Files Between BlackBerry and Desktop
eFile is a free BlackBerry software program from the folks at DynoPlex, makers of the eOffice BlackBerry office suite. When you install eFile, you wind up with a program that installs and runs on your BlackBerry, as well as a companion program called eFile Desktop that runs on your desktop computer. On a BlackBerry device, eFile is clearly intended to play a role similar to the one File Explorer plays in Windows. Indeed, the main screen for eFile pictured in Figure 7-2 strongly resembles the...
Keeping Score with BlackBerry Software
The traditional way on the course of keeping your golf score is to scrawl the number of strokes for each hole on a piece of cardboard with a stubby little pencil. It seems golfers have done it this way since the dawn of time. But just because cavemen golfers played that way doesn't mean you have to Nowadays there are many electronic alternatives to paper and pencil for keeping track of your golf strokes. Golf scorecard software and golfing are a great match. Many players already have their...
Vibrate Mode and the BlackBerry Alert Interface
In the previous chapter you took a look at the BlackBerry SDK Alert class. The Alert class offers a number of different mechanisms for notifying BlackBerry users of interesting events that have occurred, such as incoming phone calls and appointment reminders. Because your main goal for the PianoBerry project was to coax a BlackBerry into playing musical notes over the device speaker, you focused on the Alert interface's audio-related functionality, specifically startAudio , isAudioSupported ,...
Using the ApplicationMenuItemRepository Class
The BlackBerry SDK offers support for registering your own menu items, which will be added to the BlackBerry built-in applications.The ApplicationMenuItemRepository is a system service that tracks menu items registered for this purpose and the applications they belong to. Registering a menu item with the Repository involves the following steps 1. Create an instance of your menu item object. 2. Obtain an instance object from the ApplicationMenuItemRepository. 3. Pass your menu item object to the...
Creating a Design for SketchBerry
In designing the SketchBerry program, the main challenge is to decide how to best replicate the Etch-A-Sketch functionality described in the preceding section on a standard BlackBerry device. When you think about it, a BlackBerry device is actually not a bad piece of hardware to model an Etch-A-Sketch on. Consider the following It has a rectangular display screen capable of rendering graphics. The screen is not touch sensitive, and there is no stylus. All user interaction and navigation is...
Creating the Main SketchBerry Application Skeleton
SketchBerry's basic code structure should look familiar to you if you understand the HelloBlackBerry program from Chapter 11. Most BlackBerry programs, even complicated ones, follow the same basic structure of having a UiApplication class that contains your main method and handles program startup, as well as a MainScreen class that handles screen layout and display. SketchBerry's code skeleton follows the same model, and later you will see how you add to this structure to create the...
Intercepting Trackwheel Events
In Chapter 11, the simple HelloBlackBerry program you created was extremely short about 15 lines of code. Yet HelloBlackBerry managed to exhibit many of the standard features of a BlackBerry software program, including a title bar, a screen display, and automatic handling of the BlackBerry trackwheel. Adding these features required no effort on your part they simply came free for the ride because your program by default included the features found in the base UiApplication and MainScreen...
Capturing Keypad Events
At this point the hard work is done. You've coaxed your BlackBerry into playing 12 different notes from a piano scale. The only problem is that every time you want to play a note you have to click the menu to choose a note. That's kind of tedious, right If this was how a real piano worked, Beethoven might very well have decided to take up gardening Obviously you need to have a more intuitive way to play notes if you want to convince anyone to compose a piano sonata on their BlackBerry. A quick...
Adding the PianoBerry Menu System
The first thing you will do to enhance PianoBerry is add a menu system. Although your ultimate goal is to play music notes using keys on the BlackBerry keypad, when developing a new program I always like to start out by hanging the main program functions I need off of a menu. As you'll see, besides providing an alternative way to select a note to play, creating your own menu offers additional benefits, such as a means for adding custom handling for application closing as well as a menu for...
Installing Applications from the Desktop
Once you find an application that interests you, you will need to somehow get it installed on your BlackBerry. The traditional way to install add-on software applications to any handheld device, including BlackBerry, is to connect your device to your computer and install via your desktop. To enable this, RIM provides you with the BlackBerry Desktop Manager program. The BlackBerry Desktop Manager software is a Windows application that manages how your BlackBerry connects to and exchanges data...
Avvenu
Avvenu is a file sharing solution that allows users of mobile devices and Internet-connected computers to access their files from their desktop computer. Avvenu is installed as a software application on your desktop computer, and after successful completion of the installation process, folders and files on your computer can be accessed from any computer or mobile device using just a standard web browser. A nice feature of this approach is that because Avvenu uses only standard web protocols, no...
Whats on the Companion Website
Additional materials and helpful links for Hacking BlackBerry are available on my web page for the book, found at On both pages you will find errata and updates to Hacking BlackBerry, as well as full source code for the projects in Part II. Although I cannot possibly provide answers and tech support for the entire BlackBerry user population, if you want to drop me a note to say Hello or if you have a development project and want to learn more about my company Bachmann Software, you can use the...
Playing Notes Using AlertstartAudio
In order to have your PianoBerry menu items actually play their corresponding note, you need to call the BlackBerry function Alert.startAudio .Alert.startAudio takes two parameters, one that represents the tune to be played and another that represents the percent volume you want to play the tune at. The tune parameter is actually an array of integer pairs that use the following format frequency, duration . Each pair thus plays a note of a given frequency for the length of time you specify. In...
Creating the Masseuse Application Skeleton
Masseuse will be created as a standard BlackBerry application that is built using the JDE. If you have not yet read Chapter 11, which introduces how to create your own BlackBerry applications using the BlackBerry Java Development Environment JDE , you should take the opportunity to do so now because the rest of this chapter assumes you know how to create and build a simple BlackBerry program in Java using the JDE. Also, although not required, reading the previous chapter and working the...
Handling vibrateDone with AlertListener
It is not surprising that BlackBerry does not provide a simple way to make a vibration last indefinitely. There's no real justifiable business use for such a feature and, of course, if you let the vibration go on long enough it will drain the BlackBerry battery. How long it actually takes to drain the battery will vary, depending on the specific BlackBerry model. But there is a way to get it done. If you read the description for Alert.startVibrate closely, it states that When the Alert is...
Receiving Confirmation of Message Delivery
If you would like to get a confirmation message that the message you sent from your BlackBerry was successfully delivered to the recipient, there is a handy shortcut that will do this for you. When composing your message, just include the phrase lt confirm gt in your message's subject line. The BlackBerry will automatically assume that you want confirmation, and after the message is delivered, you will receive a message back that confirms your message was delivered successfully.
PicoNews
PicoNews is an interesting combination of a software program and an online service that come together to create a very nice RSS news reader solution for BlackBerry devices. Like BerryVine, PicoNews is a downloadable BlackBerry software application that installs onto your device. But whereas BerryVine then works more or less like a traditional RSS client, PicoNews takes advantage of the PicoNews online website, at www.piconews.com. The website s main benefits are An online catalog of known RSS...
Putting It All Together
Pause here and take a look at what you have so far Call getSerialPortlnfo to determine if any Bluetooth serial ports are available for you to use BluetoothSerialPortInfo info i if info null info.length 0 no Bluetooth ports were found, give the user the bad news Dialog.alert Sorry No Bluetooth serial ports i Great - a Bluetooth serial port is available bluetoothConnection StreamConnection Connector.open info 0 .toString , Connector.READ_WRITE outputStream Create a string object with the text...
Determining If a Serial Port Is Available
In the BlackBerry Software Development Kit, SDK a Bluetooth Serial Port is modeled in a Java class called amazingly enough BluetoothSerialPort. This class has a number of useful member functions, two of which you will use in your Bluetooth printing program. The first member function is called IsSupported, and it returns TRUE if the host device supports a Bluetooth serial port connection. Although not required, it s a good idea to call this function before you attempt to open a serial port on...
Special Keys Used in This Chapter
Many of the tips and tricks presented in this chapter require you to enter special key sequences on the BlackBerry keyboard. I will assume that you are already familiar with the basics of typing using the BlackBerry keyboard. However, before you proceed, it s a good idea to make sure you are familiar with the following special keys the BlackBerry 7290 keyboard layout is pictured in Figure 3-1 ALT When I refer to the ALT key, I m referring to the special half-moon key located in the lower-left...