Remember the Milk is one heck of a ToDoList application. It will plug into your Blackberry, your Gmail Account, and your Google Calendar Account. I absolutely love it! The integration is amazing! I highly recommend everyone start using this website to manage their lives…
Here is a screenshot of the Gmail integration:
Here is a smaller image:
Aydin.
Bravo Telus!!! That’s not something I’d usually say… but, this is truly a good deal. If you were ever looking to buy a BlackBerry, now is the time… As a promotion, Telus is now giving out the new BlackBerry Pearl / HTC Touch / or HTC S720 for free when you sign up for a 3 year plan: http://www.telusmobility.com/on/plans/pcs/toronto_smartphones.shtml
You can of course sign up for a $15 unlimited email and instant-messaging plan as well. This is a good deal.
Although, I wish that they would let other BlackBerry owners sign up for the $15 unlimited email plan as well (pretty please???)…
Aydin.
I wrote previously about the fact that Telus is only offering Unlimited Email to owners of the new BlackBerry Pearl and HTC Touch. It seems that the only reason this offering was made was because Bell Canada was doing the same. I heard this the first time when I called Telus to ask them if it was possible for me (I own a BlackBerry 8830) to get the unlimited email plan (they said no)… I heard this a second time when I visited the Telus Store in the St. Laurent Shopping Center. In other words, Telus will not offer anything more to users unless it is forced to do so if the competition offers it too. Granted, this is probably a bit of an unfair analysis on my part, but at the same time, I’m not too happy that only BlackBerry Pearl owners can subscribe to an unlimited email plan 
Aydin.
If you are like the other 8 million people around the world that have BlackBerries, you are in luck! RIM has recently added an integrated Facebook Application to its popular mobile phone. The BlackBerry Facebook application is based on the Facebook Mobile API, which is still fairly new.
To be honest, I am very impressed and delighted by RIM’s move to integrate Facebook into its phones. If you have a BlackBerry, just go to m.facebook.com (on your phone) and you will be given the option to download this application.
Aydin.
So, the long journey is finally over.
Telus finally gave me a replacement BlackBerry. The first one I received was defective and so they graciously replaced it. The new phone works just fine. I’m finally happy 
Aydin.
About a couple of days into life with a BlackBerry I realized that the mobile internet features don’t always work. This was slightly disappointing; but, being the nice guy that I am, I brushed it off. Then there was the massive outage. I learned that a lot of people were affected by this and so I remained on the sidelines once again. But even for the nicest of guys, there is a threshold that if crossed will force action. I called Telus (my provider) and demanded an explanation. After about 2 minutes on the phone (and 18 minutes of being on hold: yes, Telus customer support seems to be horrible - thumbs down to them - although, thanks to the headset that came with the phone, I was able to stay productive) I was told my handset was defective.
Learning that I had a defective handset, I went to two different Telus stores that just referred me to other places. Finally, the Telus store at the Rideau Center (in Ottawa, Canada) went ahead and ordered a handset for me. My handset arrived after two days. I went to pick it up but they wouldn’t give it to me since I had my phone for under 30 days. They said that if the phone was under 30 days old they would not replace the handset and would have to replace everything (i.e. everything that came in the box and not just the handset). This was fine by me; but of course this would only work with an original receipt. After finding the receipt and taking it back to them, they said that since I bought the handset from a reseller of Telus and not the company directly, I would have to go back and deal with the place through which I made the purchase. Off to the Billings Bridge Mall…
Now, Michael Hutchinson who is the store manager at the Telus location here is a nice guy and ordered another handset for me. It’ll be here next week. Looking forward to it. I am hoping that I can finally use the phone without interruption…
Conclusions
- I had a defective Blackberry (has RIM ever heard of Six Sigma???).
- Telus customer support is aweful (why is it so hard to talk to a customer representative???).
BTW,
I will call Telus and complain as I’m not paying this month’s bill with the type of service they offered me.
Aydin.
RIM& Telus…. the good vs the bad…
The Good:
I have to admit that when I first got the brand new BlackBerry 8830, I was very excited. The 8830 is a CDMA phone but can also connect to GSM networks when you decide to roam globally. This essentially means that if you plug in a roaming SIM Card from a trusted supplier like Celtrek (http://www.celtrek.com):
you will be able to travel abroad and not pay ridiculously high roaming fees. You’ll get to make your phone calls for about 90% less. Amazing? yup
Other than the world phone functionality that the new BlackBerry 8830 offers, it also has push email, access to the internet, native mp3/video player, IM services, etc… All good stuff. The interface is also very simple to navigate.
The Bad:
a) Well, there is no camera which is a downer. Why not?
b) For the two weeks that I’ve had the phone I’ve experienced downtime almost every day. This is ridiculous. I don’t think I’ve had one day without any downtime. There are constantly delays in receiving email and I can’t access the internet a lot of times. I get errors like “The service is currently not available. Please contact your service provider.” or “you do not have enough network coverage to process the requested service.” How dissapointing
c) For about 100 bucks/month that I end up paying for the phone, I get about 100 daytime minutes, unlimited incoming calls, and a measly 4 megabytes of data. There’s not much I can do about the low data offering. Fortunately, there is something I can do about the limited daytime minutes thanks to bOK (http://www.bOKnow.com).
The great thing about bOK is that I can use it to make ridiculously cheap long distance and international calls while in my roaming area.
My Question at the end of the day is, does everyone get so much downtime on their BlackBerries? If so, how is it tolerable?
Aydin.
