Taking notes on a BlackBerry While Calling Someone

So, you're on the phone with your friend, and your friend says "so, I'm like, so, like, hungry right now, want to meet me for lunch at this cool new place?". And then you say, "Sure, just let me know where it is". And then your friend starts telling you: "Okay, so walk 5 blocks south from King and Younge, and turn right and go down the dark alley but..."

What happens when you don't have a pen and paper handy to write down the instructions?

No worries, if you have a blackberry, you shouldn't have a problem taking notes, even while you're talking on the phone with your friend (some conditions apply since you will have to type out the notes somehow).

Here's what you do: If you're not on a headset, tell your friend to wait because you'll have to push some buttons first before you can take notes.

First, hit the blackberry home button, causing a menu to pop up. Then, click on the Notes option.

Now in the blank space start typing the notes. You might have to put your friend on speaker as you type the information, but at least this way, you won't forget it.

Once the call is done, it should save the note along with the call details, which can be accessed form the same place as your email messages. Consequently you can easily find the note just by looking at your call list, so you should have no trouble figuring out which note was for which call.

That's it. Happy note-taking!

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Num Lock and Caps Lock on a Blackberry

While it feels amazing to type away on a blackberry keyboard (even for a person with big fingers like me), one thing that I have recently discovered is how to enable "numlock" and "caps lock" (yes I do sometimes have a reason to use this feature) on a blackberry.


Turns out that the makers did anticipate users to use the number pad (albeit as a secondary function) exclusively without having to press the alt key every time.

Enabling NumLock on a Blackberry

• First press the alt key
• Then press the left shift (the one that says aA) key
• This will enable the numlock and you will see a symbol on the top right corner of the screen displaying 123 indicating this
• You will also be able to use the associated "alt Characters" that appear on the top of each key
• To get rid of the numlock simply press the left shift key again

Enabling Caps Lock on a Blackberry

• To turn on caps lock, press the alt key
• Then press the right shift key (aA on the right side of the keys)
• To remove it, press the right shift key again

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Deleting Multiple e-mail messages on a Blackberry

Another thing that I've recently discovered is how to delete multiple messages from a blackberry. Instead of having 500 emails on my phone, I'd rather just have the most important emails and delete the rest. But until now I was just deleting the e-mails manually, one by one, pressing the delete button in the e-mail list to delete the e-mails. However, it seems like there's a faster way to delete several e-mails together.


Interestingly enough deleting several messages (e-mails or call messages) on the blackberry is the analog of doing so on the computer (where one holds the shift key or ctrl/cmd key to select multiple things). One simply needs to:

• Hold down the Shift Key (the one on the bottom row, to the left most or right most side of the keyboard with the aA symbol)
• Scroll along with your trackball to select messages (hah, take that touch screen phones... let's see you do this! well actually it is quite possible)
• Press the Delete key (the one that says del with the left arrow)
  
• Choose your option (your blackberry will choose Cancel as the default if you do this... instead of automatically going on your preferred option):
• Either delete it from your handset
• Or delete it from the server too
• Enjoy your empty/skimmed down inbox!

And there you have it. No longer will you have to scroll through the spam and facebook messages to reach that important email.

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