Squeezing maximum juice out of BlackBerry

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Research in Motion, the developers of BlackBerry mobile phones, recently announced that the total number of BlackBerry subscribers now exceed 14 million. The phones are so addictive that they are often referred as ‘crackberries’ where crack is actually short for crack cocaine, a highly addictive form of cocaine drug.

While there’s no denying that a BlackBerry can turn you into a more efficient worker, it certainly helps if you can spend some time exploring all the time-saving keyboard shortcuts and features of a BlackBerry for getting things done quickly and more efficiently. Here are some ideas:

Save web pages: When you come across an interesting web page but have no time reading it, you would normally send a link of that page as an email to yourself. To save time, simply open the menu of your BlackBerry internet browser and select

‘Save Page’. The page will be added to your message list just like other emails.

Delete your emails: If you are looking to clean your BlackBerry Inbox, press the CAPS key and scroll UP or DOWN using the wheel to select the email messages that you want to delete. If you want to completely clear the Inbox, press t in the Message view to move to the top and select ‘Delete Prior’. This will delete all your BlackBerry emails.

See what’s running: To see a list of all open applications, press the ALT key, followed by Escape. It’s pretty much like doing an Alt+Tab in Windows to help you navigate through open applications or switch from one application to another.

Multiple email signatures: By default, BlackBerry will append a text signature to all your outgoing email messages that you have set through the BlackBerry internet services portal. If you like more personalised signatures, compose a new email message in your BlackBerry, go to ‘Edit Auto-Text’ and set up multiple entries corresponding to your different signatures.

Type URLs and email addresses quickly: When typing a web address (URL) in the Blackberry browser, type a space and it is written as a dot. To insert a slash(/), use Shift+ Space. When typing email addresses, your first space is recognised as @ while subsequent spaces are recognised as dots. So labnol google co uk will be written as labnol@google.co.uk.

BlackBerry clipboard: If you are looking to copy text from an email message and save that as a note, position your cursor in the email, hold the Shift key (left Caps) and roll the track wheel. When you are done selecting, click the track wheel to put that selection onto the clipboard. BlackBerry Internet Explorer has a special select mode to help you copy-paste text from web pages.

Convert case without CAPS: When writing an email message, hold down the key of any letter for a slightly longer duration and it will automatically turn into a capital letter. To type an accent or a special character (like a => a), hold the letter key and roll the track wheel.

Prolong battery life: You can set BlackBerry to completely shut down at a specific time and it will automatically wake up with the alarm. You won’t be able to receive phone calls when the phone is switched off so don’t turn off the device too early.

Erase everything: If you are looking to sell your Blackberry phone or planning to exchange an old model with an upcoming version, it is a good idea to completely erase all your BlackBerry data. For that, go to Options -> Security Options -> General Settings and choose ‘Wipe Handheld’ from the menu.

I use these tips regularly on a BlackBerry Curve but they should work on other models as well.