Where Are You?

Sanjay K. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:20:24 +0000

One of the most common questions I get asked when I am chatting with my friends and family is, “Where are you?”

If you are using BlackBerry® Messenger, we have a neat way to send your location to your friends. Choose “Send Location” while you are in the conversation screen.*

Your friend will receive a visual description, with a map and a pointer to where you are, in the conversation window of your friend.

If your friend does not have the latest version of BlackBerry Messenger or BlackBerry Maps installed, they will receive the location information as a URL. If they plug the URL in any desktop internet browser, it will display a map and your location in the browser.

*Note that you and your contact need a device with 4.6 and above with BlackBerry Maps installed to take advantage of this feature.

Instant Messaging 101

Sanjay K. — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:12:22 +0000

One of the cool things about a BlackBerry® smartphone is the ability to keep in touch with friends using popular IM programs like Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, AIM and ICQ, (not to mention BlackBerry Messenger) which can be downloaded from www.blackberry.com/instantmessaging. Whichever instant messaging client you use, they all share some really useful and fun features.

Take the ability to set an alert letting you know when one of your friends comes online, for instance. If you need to chat with a friend , but you see she is offline, select the contact, and click on “Set Alert.” When your friend comes online, a notification pops up and you can start chatting.

Say you want to show her how much snow fell in the last couple of days. Fire up your camera and take a picture. Once you have taken the picture, you can use your favourite IM application to send the picture right from the camera. Select your friend from the list of online contacts, and the picture is sent to her and shows up in her conversation window.

Now, if you’re like some of my more popular friends, you’ll have a long list of contacts in your IM application. You can easily find the friend you want to talk to by typing the first few letters of your friend’s name on the contact list screen. The application will display the matches at the top, under “Search”. This is especially useful if your friends name starts with “Z” – you don’t have to scroll all the way down to start a conversation.

Want to add a friend to your IM contact list? When you’re in the contact list screen of your instant messaging application, you can add your friends to the BlackBerry Contacts. Select the friend and choose “Link to BlackBerry Contact” and the contact will be added. After you add your friend(s), you can see their presence and availability from the address book, and also call, email, SMS, MMS or IM your friend from anywhere on the device. If you’re in the message list, you can select your friend’s name in the email screen and choose “Instant Message”, it allows you to IM your friend in one or two clicks.

What is your favourite IM feature?

Inside BlackBerry » Sanjay K.

Where Are You?

Instant Messaging 101