I’ve been looking for an application for the BlackBerry Curve that can change the active profile based on the time of day, location or both for a few months now.  I’ve found a couple of profile managers that change the profile based on time, including one that can use calendar entries to determine what profile is to be used, but none that are location driven.  Similar programs exist for Symbian-based phones, such as Handy Profiles for the Nokia N71, so this shouldn’t be rocket science.

The ideal application would allow a BlackBerry Curve to automatically change the active profile based any of the following…

1. the last-known location as determined from the GPS using proximity to a waypoint (eg: “when I am within 200m of this location, use the Quiet profile”).
2. GSM cell ID (eg: “when I am ‘here’, use the Loud profile”).
3. time of day/day of week ranges (eg: weekdays between 0900 and 1700, use the Normal profile).

Multiple conditions should be supported (eg: more than one location condition).  It should revert to the profile that was active before a condition was met.

Other BlackBerry users would probably be interested in this, too, so maybe a bounty will provide a little encouragement to the BlackBerry authors out there.

I’ll put $50 in the pot to get things started.  If you’d like to sweeten the pot, PayPal some cash to paypal AT dewis DOT ca with “BlackBerry bounty” in the comments.

Terms:

• The working solution must run on a BlackBerry Curve 8310 on Rogers.
• If the solution is not made available for free (i.e. is packaged as a commercial product, which includes “crippleware”), anyone who contributed to the Bounty must be given a free license.
• The solution must be found by 23:59 UT on October 28, 2008.
• If no solution is found by that time, I will refund the Bounty contributions (via PayPal).

A tip o’ the hat to Alex King who blogged about offering a bounty for tethering a BlackBerry 8700 to a Mac.

While poking around the CBC’s Olympics website, I noticed they had a BlackBerry icon for over-the-air download.  Unfortunately, the URL is long and ugly and not terribly conducive to being typed into one’s mobile browser, even with a full keyboard.

Fortunately, TinyURL let me turn http://www.cbc.ca/partner/researchinmotion/4-2/CBCOlympicsPageLauncher.jad into http://tinyurl.com/cbcBBolympics, which is much more mobile browser friendly.

Happy downloading!

I’ve had a BlackBerry Curve since last November and like many BlackBerry users, I linked it to my Google Mail accounts.  But this didn’t give me a way to sync up my calendar with something online.

In fact, I did explore some third-party options that would let me sync a Google Calendar to an MS Office calendar and then sync the BlackBerry calendar to the MS Office calendar.  But, that was a very cumbersome way to be able to sync my BB calendar with my Google Calendar and required me to connect my BB to my computer at home, with via the USB cable or Bluetooth, not to mention I would have had to buy the thing that connected Google and MS Office.  I could have installed the BlackBerry Desktop Software to help keep to calendars synchronized from afar, but that was fraught with its own issues.

While poking around the various mobile services offered by Google a couple of days ago I came across something called Google Sync.  According to the website, Google Sync allows you to "[s]ynchronize your BlackBerry®’s built in calendar with your online Google Calendar".  Sweet!

Installation was a painless over-the-air download and configuration was fairly painless.  I had some duplicate events caused by the fact that I had the same events in both my Google Calendar and my BB calendar, but that wasn’t caused by Google Sync.  It allows you to sync multiple calendars with your BB and events created in one are synchronized with the other with minimal delay.  You can sync events up to 24 weeks in advance and specify who "wins" on a conflict (server or BB).  Synchronization can take place automatically or manually, and there’s even a counter to help you track the data volume used.

Thanks, Google! 🙂