holy cow I did it!

My flight was canceled tonight from NY to DC so I decided to take the train. It’s about a 3 hour ride with nothing to do but wish you had an internet connection. Yes, I’m an internet whore. Well, since work gave me a blackberry last week I was a step closer than usual. Browsing the web in the Opera Mini browser got old in about 20 minutes so I decided to take on the challenge of connecting my BlackBerry to my MacBook. To my surprise, it was very easy to do.

First, a little environment info:

• Mac OS X 10.4.10
• BlackBerry 8830
• Sprint service

Sprint service might be the one thing that makes my install a bit different than others, but outside of the modem set up it should be the same with any carrier.

So lets get the devices talking Via Bluetooth

1. On your BlackBerry screen select the “Set Up Bluetooth” icon. This will automatically start a search for other Bluetooth devices, on the train I found about 10 devices!
2. On your Mac go to System preferences and click the Bluetooth icon.
3. On the Setting tab I turned on “Discoverable” just so my phone could see, not sure if its necessary but if gave confirmation that the devices could see each other while I was trouble shooting.
4. Next click the Devices tab and click “Set Up New Device”. This will start the “Bluetooth Setup Assistant” that walks you through finding your BlackBerry. For device type select “Mobile Phone”.
5. It will now search all around you for mobile phones. Again, being on a train it found a bunch of them. My BlackBerry didn’t have a nice friendly name so it just showed up as a Mac Address like this “00:1C:CF:8C:C6:A1″ as did many others. To find your phones Bluetooth Mac address just click you phones menu button while you’re in the “Set Up Bluetooth” application. Select “Option”. The Bluetooth address is list as “Device Address”.
6. Now back on your Mac Laptop look for your Device Address in the list of found. Select your device address and click Continue.
7. Now the Setup Assistant will connect to your BlackBerry. Once there is a hand shake you can click continue and a Passkey will appear on the screen. Its an 8 digit string. if you look on you BlackBerry it is now asking you to enter this string.
8. Now you have connect you devices, next the Setup assistant will ask you what services you want to Setup. I only selected “Access the Internet with your phone’s data connection” since I have no need to share address books.
9. Now you will see a screen asking you to configure your internet connection. You can leave the Username and Password blank. For the Phone Number enter this string “*99**1#”. For the Modem script I’ve heard of custom ones for the 8830, but I just selected “Sprint PCS Vision”. Select both the Check boxes at the bottom, it’s just easier to deal with when you have the Bluetooth and Modem icon in your menu bar.
10. Click continue and ou will be given a congratulation screen indicating that eveythng is now setup up successfully.
11. Now click the little phone icon in your menu bar and the drop down should have the option to connect. Select connect and with any luck a little “time online” indicator will show up beside it and your online!

I hope this helps someone out setting up their BlackBerry.

This post was written on a train, I love you crackberry!

Popularity: 100%

Tags: BlackBerry, Bluetooth, Mac

Its been a busy year so far. I was promoted to a lead in January and already miss the easy life of the worker bee. My job has become more meetings than coding these days so I’m looking more than ever to this site to be my connection to my one true passion, alcohol, I mean programming!

I got home from the SxSW Interactive conference last week and feel wholly inspired to make a million dollars with this, my new favorite blog xD.. Yeah, SxSW may be slowly turning into blog head quarters for the technically challenged but it did still manage to inspire me. Not like other years where I couldn’t wait to get home and play with the google api’s or write a facebook widget. More just inspired to start learning again.. to spend time actually keeping up with the tech world that is flying by me. Which is why I’m here today.

I believe in group think. I believe that once one person has a thought it rapidly starts to travel the ether and others start having the same thought. This is why all of my good dot com ideas that I sit on for over a year end up being done by someone else.. the bastards (at least I still have the best domain for it :-P).

“Multiple simultaneous discovery is actually a surprisingly common phenomenon, perhaps largely explained by the idea that previous contributions (including the emergence of contradictions between existing theories, or unexpected empirical results) make a certain concept ready for discovery.” - Random quote to make me look smart

So this site will soon be filled with a collection of all the research I’m doing to satisfy my ADD . I feel its time to document my obsessive tangents not just for myself but for the others in my mentalsphere (trademarked). You probably found me through a google search, that proves we’re connected

Popularity: 53%

Tags: mentalsphere, simultaneous discovery

So this is the new location for all my coding adventures.. Holidays are killing me.. so it’ll be a bit before you see much here.

Popularity: 49%