BlackBerry Emergency Kit: Just in case we get an outage..
by The PocketBerry Team
So yesterday’s outage was a quite interesting lesson and experience. I realized how much reliance was on BlackBerry yesterday as I’m sure many of you did as well. Some stuff I was disabled from doing was finding out if the Sonic Drive-In a few miles down the road was still open or not, and using Garmin GPS Navigation on the way back to Jersey from far down south Pennsylvania. With all that said, it becomes necessary to have a “Plan B” or emergency strategy. We decided to put together this BlackBerry Emergency Kit just in case we encounter another outage. This way we’ll be able to cope around a bit. The kit is pretty much based on Google Mobile texting, which a lot of you took for granted and thought you’d never need it since you could just download the application.
To use Google via text message “466453″ which spells out “Google” on most phones but not BlackBerry. These following operations can be done by texting Google:
- Local: To get local business listings, enter what you want to find followed by a city and province, or postal code (ex: pizza laval qc, cafe m2n 5s3).
- Directions: To get driving directions, enter DIRECTIONS then your start address then TO and finally your destination address (ex: DIRECTIONS winnipeg TO r3h 0h4)
- Weather: To get weather information, enter WEATHER followed by a city and province, or postal code (ex: WEATHER laval qc, WEATHER R3H 0H4).
- Glossary: To find definitions on the Web, enter ‘define’ (or ‘d’) followed by the word or phrase (ex: define ubiquitous, d network).
- Currency Conversions: Use calculator to solve math problems, units of measure or currency conversions (ex: 5+2*2, half cup in teaspoon, 70F in C, 1 dollar in pound, 3 USD in GBP).
- Calculator: Use calculator to solve math problems, units of measure or currency conversions (ex: 5+2*2, half cup in teaspoon, 70F in C, 1 dollar in pound, 3 USD in GBP).
Head over to the Google SMS page to check out more commands you can do.
Another service you should consider is GOOG411 which is a free automated service from Google as well. I know, Google has it all. Pretty soon we’ll have alternatives to Google in the event that they shut down too along with BlackBerry services. In best hopes, we won’t see that happening. But any way, the phone number is toll free by dialing 1-800-GOOG-411. Simple. Easy. You’ll remember it.
What else can you do? I know many were deprived of tweeting last night on Twitter. Luckily SMS tweeting is available. Based on the country that you’re in, use the shortcode appropriate for you below to send the commands and messages to in order to communicate with Twitter. We have all the major shortcodes below along with commands you can use within Twitter SMS services.
US: 40404
Canada: 21212
UK: 86444 (Vodafone, Orange, 3 and O2 customers)
India: 53000 (Bharti Airtel customers)
Indonesia: 89887 (AXIS and 3 customers)
Ireland: 51210 (O2 customers)
New Zealand: 8987 (Vodafone and Telecom NZ customers)
Australia: 0198089488 (Telstra customers)
ON-turns ALL SMS notifications on
OFF-turns ALL SMS notifications off.
STOP or QUIT- stops all SMS messages immediately. CAUTION: when I used this command recently it disconnected the pairing between my cell phone and twitter account. I couldn’t reconnect until I went back to the website. This seems to be a very powerful twitter SMS command.
ON username- turns on SMS notifications for a specific person. For example, ON dizzySEO
OFF username- turns off SMS notifications for a specific person. Using on/off username from SMS only stops notifications to the place the command comes from; you’ll still collect a person’s updates on the web. You don’t have to use ON/OFF username from your phone, you can also set individual notifications from a person’s profile page, or check your following page and manage all phone notification settings there. For example, OFF NC_SEO
FOLLOW username- this command allows you to start receiving notifications for a specific person by SMS. Following someone from a phone for the first time will also cause you to follow them on the web. Example: follow dizzySEO
LEAVE username- this command allows you to stop receiving notifications for a specific person by SMS. Using follow/leave username by SMS is the same as using on/off username. There is no way to stop following a person on the web without visiting their profile and removing them. The off, leave, stop, and quit commands will only disable updates for the device(s) from which they were sent. Example: leave davidkyle
@ username + message- directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their “replies” tab. Example: @dizzySEO your Twitter SMS command post was really helpful http://is.gd/q7NO
D username + message- sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive. Example: d dizzySEO your Twitter SMS program ROCKS!
WHOIS username- retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter. Example: whois dizzySEO
GET username- retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person. Example: get dizzySEO
NUDGE username- reminds a friend to update by asking what they’re doing on your behalf. Example: nudge dizzySEO
FAV username- marks a person’s last twitter as a favorite. (hint: reply to any update with FAV to mark it as a favorite if you’re receiving it in real time) Example: fav dizzySEO
STATS- this command returns your number of followers, how many people you’re following
That’s pretty much everything we put together so far. If you have any other suggestions or know of any text messaging services, give us a holler and we’ll be sure to add it to the list.
-by Mac Jadalhack
