Long live the NEW BlackBerry (Tour 9630) !

So, yes.  I’ve got this new BlacBerry Tour 9630 smartphone I’m starting to play around with now.  Probably a bit overkill for what I need, but the main advantages (buying decision points) that it has over the Pearl are (in the order of importance to me):

1) Much larger screen size and resolution
2) 3.2 Megapixel camera (as opposed to 2) with autofocus and image stabilization
3) Longer battery life
4) QWERTY keyboard (finally)
5) 3G connection speed
6) GSM (worldwide) network service (although I probably won’t use this much)

The very FIRST things I’m enjoying are the new holster and belt clip that came with the box, as opposed to my old Pearl which had some flimsy  pouch thing which I discarded after the first day.  The lack of a good holster and clip was probably the MAIN reason my Pearl got dropped over a dozen times.

After the new phone was activated, I tried taking it and the Pearl to Sprint so the data could be transferred, but since the Pearl would not even power on, they said there was nothing they could do!  I found that VERY bothersome… I KNOW the data is probably on some chip, unharmed, or at least MOST is recoverable.  Another Sprint rep approached while I was making a fuss, and let me know that the Sprint techs there have very basic skills, perhaps capable of replacing a cover, fixing various small issues, but certainly nothing like unscrewing the phone mechanisms and getting to the motherboard where the internal data is stored.

He DID add one other bit of advice… telling me about Skydeck.com which is an online web site that can get access to your phone (Sprint, AT&T, Verizon), as well as  importing contact lists (directly from your phone, or Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, MAC Address Book, and more).  From there it can keep sync’d to your phone, and always show up-to-date info about current contacts, as well as save/store all phone text messages, voicemail, calls, etc both incoming and outgoing. As well as provide you with a way to send messages from the site, or place calls via help from Google Voice using your computer, use a search function on all your text/voicemail, and more. Anyway, I got signed up today with Skydeck.com as well, and am very impressed this first couple hours of playing around with it.

Tomorrow I need to contact someone at AustexPCS to check on pricing of data recovery from the old Pearl.  Their card (and site) show quite an extensive list of services, including data recovery from water damaged phone.  Being the digital packrat that I am… I guess I am most interested in getting the 1.5 years worth of saved text messages off the phone, and certainly my always important contact/address list.  It is an extra hassle to have to find, download, and reconfigure ALL those nice Blackberry apps I already had set up on the Pearl, but I’m pretty sure nothing can be done about transfering my app configs (which includes GPS locations etc), but I’ll ask.  Ultimately, this is another FINE example of my growing lifestyle where I do not want to store data on any particular device, which could get lost or damaged…. data should be able to be stored (and sync’d) to remote places, as automatically as possible for safe, off-site storage/retrieval in a none proprietary way.

It looks like Google has a new app (Latitude) which will share your GPS location on a Google map, AND show you the locations of all your friends who are showing their locations too! Yippie!  I’ve wanted this from Google for a couple years now, and I think more friend’s phones are capable of GPS tracking.  Should add a lot of FUN to social networking :)  You should be able to see my live tracking map right under my main picture on the far left column of this blog site.

It’s late. I’m off to bed, but will add more to this post as I get more Apps set back up on the new phone.

Of course, there’s also a LIVE TRACKING MAP right here on this site (rock808.com) also… just look in the lower left, under the Green Navigation column.

David

twittervision:
I have talked about the twittermap.com site before, but actually I think my page on twittervision.com is more cool.  (Yes, both sites are from Dave Troy).  Not only does it show where I am at on the google map, but also shows SEVERAL of my last posts, in case you missed one or two.  Id REALLY like to embed the twittervision map and log to my rock808.com front page some how.  I looked at the API page a little, and found a cool way to update just my location from the Linux command line, but nothing about embeding the map and log…. yet.

facebook:
I have also decided to do more on facebook rather than MySpace.  I think they are providing more interesting things for people to do, and do together, and the fact that facebook has a mobile app for my BlackBerry, as well as a tool for using twittervision has just really boosted my desire to make the switch.  Facebook also seems to have a way for directly accepting my uploaded images.  I’ll have to see if I even need my ITookThisOnMyPhone account any more….. I’m really not happy about having to use all these various external websites for mobile social networking.  I know we are REALLY headed in that direction fast, but I’m technologically impatient.

More on all this later.  I’m pretty worn out from a couple days of long hours, so heading to bed.
Be sure to check out the map to see where I’m at and what I’m doing !

David

In my research, I came up with a couple very cool zip code map web pages, though! And I’ll share them here:

http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm – Google Maps mashup with colored area for zip code. (same API: http://www.usnaviguide.com/zip.htm)
http://www.city-data.com/zips/78727.html – Tons of city / zip population data, statistics, sex offenders, home sale prices, census information, etc. Notice the zip code there at the end… just put in the one you want. The main website city-data.com might be fun to check out too.