[namonaki]

hi there!

this is my first berry but it's a long time coming. anyhow, i just picked up an 8310 but am having some problems with some of the features.

1. gps

i assumed you can just download the gps maps from the blackberry site, but every time i try to download it, i get an error saying it is unable to load file. fyi, i tried this with internet explorer on windows xp sp2. i'm also on the roger's network.

2. sync

right now i'm using pocketmac, but i'd like to upload some media (mp3, ringtones) but i cannot do that through osx. any ideas?

3. theme

this is probably the dumbest question, but how do i change the background image?

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thanks. hopefully i dont look too stupid any help would be greatly appreciated.

[onepoonis]

I don't have 8310 so I can't give you an answer for #1. But have you tried using Google maps??

For #2, the only way I know to transfer media from a mac to BB is by using the mass storage mode. it helps too if you have a memory card. When you plug in your BB to your Mac, BB will ask if you want to turn on mass storage mode (make sure it's on in options->media card), click yes and a drive icon will show up on your desktop. Open it and copy the files into the appropriate folders.

#3. Just view the picture you want to use and click menu then set as home screen image.

Hope this help. From a fellow frusturated with BB Mac user.

[namonaki]

perfect, works great. thanks!

[namonaki]

anyone have any ideas re: gps?

i actually tried going to download google maps but isn't there an internal gps program that i can use? i have it on my curve, but all i see are diagonal lines. i would use google maps but i dont have an unlimited data plan.. i'm in canada and it's ridiculously expensive here.

[Jay.]

I haven't used it yet for my Curve, but I've had great luck with Missing Sync on my mac with my WM5 device. I haven't used PocketMac, so I'm not sure how it compares to Missing Sync.

[namonaki]

i just switched to missing sync and it works great. i'm still not really sure how to download applications onto my berry yet...but i have a windows machine as well that should be able to do that.

my only complaint with missing sync is that it doesnt save playlist information from itunes. all my music is just dumped into one folder and best case scenario organized by album.

[onepoonis]

I haven't use it but there a one called Blackberry Maps. I think any GPS mapping on BB will use lot of data from your data plan. There's TeleNav where you pay monthly fee but I'm not sure if you have to pay for the data transfer as well.

[Jay.]

i just switched to missing sync and it works great. i'm still not really sure how to download applications onto my berry yet...but i have a windows machine as well that should be able to do that.

my only complaint with missing sync is that it doesnt save playlist information from itunes. all my music is just dumped into one folder and best case scenario organized by album.

I found the support forums to be pretty helpful on the MarkSpace website. Give them a shot about the playlist issue, they might be able to shed some light on it. I know the developers are active in the forums, which is a nice thing because you know you aren't just talking to some lackey who doesn't care about your issue.

[namonaki]

thanks jay. i actually did a few searches in terms of creating playlists:

[edit/] sorry, i cant post links yet..i need 10 posts first.

this helps for people using windows.

if anyone uses OSX, i have a solution as well.

just for future reference and if anyone searches, here's how to do it:

first sync up your berry with your itunes music
once all your itunes playlists are in your berry, the songs should all be organized under their respective playlists, but there's no way to list those playlists in your berry. so what you have to do is create m3u playlists. you can download itunes xml -> m3u converters, but you'll still have to make some changes to the file directories etc. the best way i found was to just open up the terminal and create them manually.
if you're unfamiliar with terminal it's under applications/utilities/
once you have that opened up:

cd /
cd volumes

you should then see a list of drives and your mounted blackberry microsd should be listed as wel

cd "name of microsd volume"
cd media
cd music

you should then be under /volumes/"name of microsd"/media/music/
what you then have to do is create each playlist manually. it may take a few minutes, but in the end its totally worth it!

ls

this will list allt he files in the directory (so basically this will list all the names of your itunes playlists)

what you now need to do is go into each playlist directory and list the files (ls) and output to an *.m3u file

lets say i have a playlist called "dance" this is what my next commands will look like:

cd dance
ls > "dance.m3u"
cd ..

basically you're just listing the files in the directory and outputting it into an m3u playlist.

there are scripts you can probably write to do this, but i had a few minutes to do this and this is what i got. next, you'll have to close terminal before you can unmount your berry. then, when you get into your media folder on your blackberry you're set! go under playlists and all the playlists you just created will be listed.

voila

[Soccernbiznass]

Blackberry just came out with blackberry media sync. works great to sync playlists. Only down side is... you have to uninstall it to use your other syncing programs such as missing sync. I use Missing syn and media sync. I just uninstall media sync after I have put music on my phone. And install it when I wanna add more since I use missing sync everyday.

Google blackberry media sync for the link to it.