Originally posted September 30, 2010
On August 19, Facebook created a new service through its site called Places. This pits the social networking giant against existing location-based applications such as FourSquare.
The new feature aims at helping existing users find friends and their locations in real time, and actually works with the existing services such as FourSquare. The advantage for Facebook is that is doesn't have to find new userts - it's 500 million users have access to this new option.
This is another addition to the social networking site's move to monetize its network usage, particularly among its mobile users. More than one quarter of Facebook users access the site from their Smartphones, and this allows the site to promote the use of mobile coupons for various services (as FourSquare currently does).
Facebook's Places essentially turns a user's Smartphone into a combination of GPS, social network (the world’s biggest), loyalty card, ad space and coupon dispenser - things that will potentially draw millions of retailers to start offering real-time, location based deals to users.
Of course, this comes with its fair share of concerns about privacy, but unlike the release of Places in other regions, such as the US, Facebook users have the option to turn this feature off if they don't wish to participate. It remains to be seen how successful this new feature will be, but with the increase in Smartphone users growing every day, it is only a matter of time before Places touches millions.
Originally posted June 16, 2010
Here are some helpful tips to making the most of your BlackBerry smartphone!
Messaging Tips
- Create a custom icon for BlackBerry Messenger v5.0 contacts
- Highlight the contact, press menu and show on home screen
- Delete multiple emails
- Highlight any email and hold down caps while scrolling up or down (then delete)
- To move to the last cursor position after you close and reopen a received email message or PIN message, press G
- In a message press the Shift key and the Space key to move up a screen. Press the Space key to move down a screen
- View the email address of a sender
- Highlight the sender name in an email and press Q
- Don't want to receive SMS or MMS messages?
- Go to Options>Security Options>Firewall. Check off SMS and MMS
- To view received messages press Alt I. To view sent messages press Alt O. Hit the back button to view all messages again
Typing Tips
- Type "B" to go to the bottom or "T" to go to the top of your Messages list, or Space to skip a page
- Hold the ALT key and press the Right Shift key to lock caps when typing. Press the Right Shift key again to unlock
- To insert a period, press the Space key twice. The next letter is capitalized.
- To type accented/special characters, press and hold the letter key and slide your finger left or right on the track pad/trackball
- To capitalize a letter, press and hold the letter key until the capitalized letter appears
- To reply to all in an email message or a PIN message, press L.
- Hold the ALT key and press the Left Shift key to lock numbers when typing. Press the Left Shift key again to unlock
- To insert an at sign (@) or a period (.) in an email address field, press the Space key
Other Helpful Tips
- Ever have to dial a 1-800 number with letters using your BlackBerry?
- Hold ALT while typing the letters and dial
- To zoom in before taking a picture, press the Volume Up key. To zoom out press the Volume Down key
- Having trouble reading the text on your BlackBerry? Change the font!
- Options >Screen>Keyboard>Font Family
- When updating BlackBerry App World make sure to perform a reboot of your BlackBerry
- While listening to music in the media player hit N for the next track or P for the previous track
