I was forced to get a Blackberry by work. It's an 8820.

Surely someone else out there has one.

What sort of cool stuff should I load on it? I already found an SSH client, MidpSSH, and a few other things, but I guess I'd rather people suggest what they like.

I asked my friend who works at RIM. He says "I wouldn't actually know, 'cause I don't run any 3rd party apps."

He just came back with some websites to look on, though:

http://www.bplay.com/
http://www.builtforblackberry.com/
http://www.handango.com/

I'm sure you've already found those, anyway...

I have an 8830. It's the spawn of Satan as far as I'm concerned.

I installed Opera for a browser, which is slightly less suck than the one that comes with it.

In my experience, the only thing this device does well is email. I've been quite disappointed with every other application.

Can you share the link to the ssh client? That might be useful.

FWIW,

Jim

MidpSSH

Yeah. I don't like it much, either, and I certainly don't want to be that tied to my email. But as long as I'm forced to have it, I might as well try to do something vaguely fun or useful with it.

Well I wouldn't actually know because if it wasn't bad enough I have to be a corporate monkey with the damm thing in my pocket 24/7 the security policy of the company I work for locks it down so I can't run 3rd party apps at all!

Major suck-fest!

No.1 reason for wanting to quit corporate rat race = my Blackberry!

It becomes habit to take it every where, I now make a point of leaving all mobile technology when I go out, I figure if some one really needs me they will find me the old fashioned way, and if it isn't important enough to wait for my reply it couldn't be that important in the first place

Cheers

Cris.

Smoke signals or drums?

A beta IMAP client

http://www.logicprobe.org/proj/logicmail


Regards

Mark

No here in Yorkshire things are a lot more simple than that, more of a shouting and waving your arms around system

Cheers

Cris.

Looks like I will be forced into getting one (which will of course be fully locked down - I helped write that part of the security policy...d'oh) and my biggest annoyance is that I will have to pay for it. So I'm refusing until it gets paid for by the firm - it's not like I want it. Jeeez - my phone is on 24/7 anyway so if it is really important I can always be contacted, and email is so asynchronous comms

You have to pay for it? Wha?

When I took this new position at work (about two years ago), I was required to get a cell phone. They even took my desk phone away (which I had for eight years - people still call that phone instead of my 'new' number) since managers and above are the only people important enough to have both. I hate the idea of a leash, so I either leave it at work locked in a drawer if I am there past normal hours. If I leave early, I take it home and dump it on my dresser and forget about it until the next business day. I guess it is so folks (like my customers) can get ahold of me while I'm tooling around campus.

Why is having your email with you all the time is such a problem? I recently lost my ordinary work phone and it was replaced with an HTC Tytn II with Vodaphone Business Email and it's great. Nobody expects an instant response, so if I don't feel like replying until I'm back in the office it's no great problem. If it was urgent they could ring me. Maybe it's just the way different companies work. Or maybe the fact I quite enjoy my job (the practical aspects of it at least).

That said cellphone coverage is patchy where I live so the phone doesn't always work, they've never asked for my landline number.

BTW, my Tytn is completely unlocked (even down to the carrier, my orange sim works in it). I've even got the demo applications from the new Qt/CE 4.4.0 build running on it.

That's great for you, but I believe that the point of giving them to employees in general, especially those who have desk jobs and are not frequently on the road or out of the office, is to tie them to work 24 hours a day. They already had my personal cell phone number and that apparently wasn't good enough. There's nothing inherently wrong with the Blackberry (well, I could complain about a number of UI and other design decisions), but the implication when given one by your employer is that you should always be doing work.

Yup. If it gets to the point where an employer expects me to carry a phone (for other than a short-term support rotation), I'll be renegotiating my salary, billing them for being on-call 24/7.

I had a company give me a pager. The batteries ran out, and I left it on a shelf at home for the next two years. Not once did anyone try paging me (pages got sent to email, too). When I left the company, I handed it back, dead batteries and all.

Surely if your job involves getting phonecalls at all hours of the day and night then why would a few emails make any difference? If it galls you that much just turn it off and blame the cell carrier if you miss something critical. I've always informed my employer that cell coverage is very patchy at home and they've never said anything.

The only people in my company that use them all the time are company directors or people on call, both have signed contracts of employment that state this as a requirement. If you've been given a blackberry but your contact with your employer hasn't changed or you've been explicitly told you need to answer emails at all hours of the day and night then what's the big deal?

If I look at the emails I get after 5:30 it's usually from some piece of critical kit that's fallen over and it's in my best interests to fix it before it affects on air output, assuming it hasn't already, in which case I'd probably get a phonecall.

Because the expectation has switched from "call me if something breaks" to "why didn't you respond to the inconsequential email I sent you at 3AM?".

That's the difference between an expectation and a contractual obligation. If someone asked me that, i'd have to say that I was busy being asleep.

I think part of the issue here is culture difference. I get the feeling that the expectation afforded to managers in the UK is that they are reasonable. That is not the expectation afforded managers here.

In the days before I had a mobile phone (before Empeg), my boss once asked me for the phone number of my parents' house where I'd be spending Christmas. I gave him the number, but I also said outright, "You don't pay me enough to ring this number."

Peter

You all must be very secure in your jobs or in your ability to find a new one.

To be honest, a lot of it is probably the stronger employment legislation in the UK (and AFAIK the rest of Europe) as compared to that in the US. For instance, an employee sacked for refusing work outside his/her original contractual obligations can fight and win an unfair dismissal case. And in the particular case of working hours and being on-call, in most circumstances the employer has committed a criminal offence if they require more than 48 hours' work in a working week.

Peter

I wouldn't say that I'm that secure. I just know that they couldn't legally fire me over something like that. Heck, if it was that easy to get rid of someone, the team I manage would be down by one tomorrow.

To my knowledge the only way I could be fired would be fraud, deception or gross misconduct.

Oh. Wow. In the US, unless you're part of a union that has a contract with your employer, you can be fired outright for any reason at all. And many states don't allow those sorts of union contracts. (Edit: that's not entirely true, but that's the ultimate result of the laws involved. For more information, see Right-to-work law.) Salaried employees are not restricted as to the number of hours that they can be required to work, at least nothing as low as 48.

If you felt as if you were unfairly terminated, you can sue your former employer, but you've already lost your job and you'd better get on to finding a new one.

If I wanted to guarantee my exit from the company tomorrow I'd probably have to go and punch the CEO in the face. Not that I would as he's quite a nice bloke.... and also the fact he could probably pop my head with his bare hands.

Everything else would go though the whole verbal, written 3 strikes you're out thing.

Also, on a technical note. we're encouraged to set the connection schedule on the handsets to disconnect over night to save on unnecessary data costs!

I do freelance IT work these days. My blackberry is my business lifeline.

Back to the original question (with OTA links) for the ones I use daily. (I find some links work best if I don't have the built-in browser set to IE emulation.)

The free ones:

beyond 411 - fabulous (and fast) localized yellow pages. Set up Home, Work, and Other locations. Remembers all the Other locations you've used. If you look up an address, you can quickly set it to the Other slot.
http://thebogles.com/blog/projects/berry411/

google maps - with traffic and GPS (or cell tower) auto-locating
www.google.com/gmm/

opera mini - does some things better than the built in browser, some worse. I routinely have both open.
www.operamini.com/download

The ones worth their small fees (trial versions available):

message alerts - customized alerts, by sender, time of day, etc. My clients can use a code to page with a true emergency at night. Anything else won't set it off. (I'm not sure how well supported it is since Apptix purchased it, though. It took me a week to get a new code when I replaced my blackberry.)
http://www.webmessenger.com/products/mablackberry.htm

pocketday - puts a summary of all your main info (new messages, missed calls, calendar, tasks, etc.) and a bit extra (weather, stocks, rss feeds) on the front screen. Very customizable.
http://www.crossriversystems.com/pocketday_downloads.htm

empower mail viewer - html mail viewer. My blackberry only does text email.
http://www.mobihand.com/eidevices/download.asp?id=16058&pdid=518595

If I still worked for the company I was with, I'd have the remote connectivity tools, too.

Good discussion site here: http://www.blackberryforums.com/

-jk

The week I work less than 48 hours will be the first in a lot of years. Typical weeks in this part of professional services are up above 65. And guess what, we don't get overtime or on-call pay.

I am happy to check my work email before going to bed, and even reasonably having a blackberry. I just don't want to have to pay for it - it doesn't give me any benefits, so if it is worth something to my employer for me to have it, they should pay.

Well I hope they pay you well. I certainly wouldn't do 65 hours a week with the salary I'm on.

I just refuse to be a limp dishrag.

Saying "no" to your employer is a pretty tough skill to learn, but it's invaluable. For example, I've said things like "I have a prior commitment that I have to follow through on tonight, and won't be able to stay late. I talked to Joe, and he said that he has other things he can work on until I can get this fixed tomorrow." It's none of my employer's business that my commitment is just going home to have dinner with my wife, or to go play hockey.

Or, perhaps something like "If you're now requiring me to carry a phone, it feels like the job requirements, and your expectations of my duties have changed. If that's the case, we need to review my compensation package, to ensure it's still fair considering these new expectations. If not, then I need to make it clear that outside of my regular work hours, I'll be turning the cell phone off."

I wouldn't do 65 hours a week for any(*) salary. Way back when I was a naive, fresh from university grad, I tried it. The only things I succeeded in doing was turning out substandard work, and making myself physically and mentally exhausted.

My physical and mental health are more important than work. End of story.

edit: (*) Okay... you want to pay me a few hundred thousand dollars for a month of 80 hour weeks, I'd probably consider it, but it's not something I'd do for any sustained length of time.

I wonder if that is a difference in professions? People at work have my home number, but the only time it is called is when my boss is checking up on me (making sure I'm not dying) after being sick or when I'm supporting an international trip, and I don't think it has ever been called outside of those two reasons. The expectation here is that you do your work while at work or on the clock at home if you are going virtual that day.

I think it's a difference in professions and also individual companies. I think in some places the upper levels of management have the attitude "I have to work unpaid overtime/at home/on holiday and so should you", despite not realising that they are either partners/directors or on a heck of a lot more money.

I do the very occasional 1/2hr of work from home or while away, but I am the only technical person here so if I don't do it then it won't get done.

At a company a friend used to work from they would close the offices at 5.30pm and the managers would sweep through the building turfing people out. Probably a bit extreme because when you are working on something tricky it's nice to wait until a natural break point.

Oh yes - the pay in this line of work is rather nice. And if I did decide to go for next promotion and actually become a partner I could add another zero to the end straight away - however then I would have no personal life at all, whereas I quite like to spend time with my family, play with cars and karts, and do other things. Seriously - 65 hours is fine, I only get tetchy when it goes up over 80ish...but then I would probably do 50% of what I do now even if I didn't get paid. It's such good fun.

We have the policy that you are to answer your city paid for cell 24/7. I blithely ignore this though. They've gotten used to me not answering and have stopped trying until the next Monday. If it's REALLY important, several top management know my home number, or at least know people that DO know my home number, so if the building catches on fire on a Saturday, I'll find out quick enough. I'm lucky enough to be expert enough on our systems that nobody else can do what I do, especially as quickly, so it's one of those cases where I do as I please, and they don't hassle me about it too much.