Picture this: You’re at home late one night, putting the final touches on a brilliant presentation that you are certain will wow your boss. Having skipped dinner, your stomach groans for sustenance. Confident with the progress on your near-completed masterpiece, you get up to raid the kitchen.
As you return with a mammoth hero sandwich, you notice your kid sitting at your desk, pretending to be you at work. He’s way too young to know how to use your mouse and keyboard, you think to yourself. Then you realize: He really IS way too young to use that! You dash to his side but it’s too late – somehow your presentation is deleted and the recycling bin emptied!
But what about the prior version that you happened to have downloaded onto your BlackBerry smartphone? Unfortunately, it’s sitting on your desk in your office which is now closed. You don’t need to start from scratch, though – if you have BlackBerry Blend, that is.
BlackBerry Blend to the Rescue!
With BlackBerry Blend installed on your computer or tablet, you can spend less time scolding your child and more time getting important stuff done. Even if your BlackBerry device is thousands of miles away, you can access BBM, email, text messages, calendar, contacts and files on your BlackBerry 10 device or your corporate network, keeping you prolific, even when life doesn’t want you to be.
(Read some of our introductory and how-to blogs for Blend.)
IT managers will appreciate how BlackBerry Blend changes the focus from managing mobile devices to enabling secure information flow, such as access to a company intranet without the need to log in to the corporate network (if your BlackBerry Smartphone is managed by BES, that is).
Let’s think of some other scenarios where BlackBerry Blend could come to the rescue:
– You want to e-mail someone you swapped contact info with at a conference. Forget searching online – you are much better with faces than names. And good luck Googling ”that guy I met last week with the hipster beard”. However, as long as your BlackBerry smartphone is connected to WiFi or a mobile network, you can use BlackBerry Blend to access your address book from a PC or tablet. You an even send them an email or text message using Blend ‘from’ your BlackBerry smartphone.
– It’s the first day of vacation and you forgot to sign off on a slide presentation for your boss. You would normally have it saved on your BlackBerry but company policies require documents to be saved and accessed through your corporate intranet. No, you can’t call a colleague and share your password with him/her. If your organization employs BES, you and still gain access to network-stored files through Blackberry Blend without the need to log in again into your corporate network.
– You have an extremely important conference call that’s about to commence. The problem is that you forgot your BlackBerry (sensing a pattern here?) and you need to find out the number and passcode on your work calendar. Who you gonna call? No one. Calendar entries can be viewed and managed through BlackBerry Blend.
– You’re on your way to an important pitch meeting with a potential client. You’re ready to show them the presentation on your tablet when you realize you never uploaded it onto that device. Once again, BlackBerry Blend comes to the rescue. Though your only copy is on your BlackBerry smartphone in the car, you can still retrieve and display the file and save the meeting.
– You’re working on your laptop at home when you feel a pair of impatient eyes on you. Your child needs to be entertained, electronically entertained. Not wanting to sacrifice the larger screen, you give them your BlackBerry to play games or watch videos. BlackBerry Blend can still let you access much-needed files and applications, even if the BlackBerry smartphone is engaged in more important tasks, such as maintaining the lead on the final lap of a racing game. If you employ BlackBerry Balance, you can also ensure your company data remains in a secure container separate from games and videos.
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop Productivity
With BlackBerry Blend, absent-minded workers have no excuse anymore. You can manage your files, mingle with contacts and maintain your uptime, even when you and your smartphone are separated. Until you reunite in a warm embrace, you can still perform as though it never left your side. For enterprise managers, BlackBerry Blend transforms employee BlackBerry smartphones into mobile network hubs.
If you missed the adventures of a BlackBerry Passport-less Donny Halliwell, and how BlackBerry Blend saved his bacon not once, not twice but thrice, I strongly suggest that you read his story.
