Blackberry Trackball Woes? Navigate Old School

So (like me) you hosed your Blackberry trackball and there’s only a couple weeks left until you get your 3G iPhone. What do you do? What DO you do? Navigate old school Blackberry style. YES, you can. Here’s how:

Courtesy of J. Sanders, self-declared Crackberry genius, here’s how to disable home screen dialing and activate your old school Blackberry navigation super powers.

If you have Dial from homescreen turned off on your BB, you can use shortcuts.

This is complicated, but if you follow the instructions EXACTLY as posted below, you can do all this withOUT a trackball.

Get there by pressing the green dial key.

Press Menu, press O for Options, press the ENTER key, Press the ENTER key again to open General Options.

Now, you should see halfway down the screen “Dial from Homescreen”. Press ENTER until you get highlighted OVER the NO. Don’t Pass it. When highlighted over the YES, press ALT and the NO will appear, press the N to highlight NO and ENTER again.

Press the back escape key (right of trackball) and SAVE should be highlighted, if not press the S for Save, and let it save.

Now you are ready for Homescreen shortcuts, where from the Homescreen, you can press M for messages, L for calendar, etc.,

Now you need to learn how to navigate around your Blackberry like a circa ‘02 Wall St. stock broker. Learn the secrets on the Blackberry site.

Home Screen Shortcuts - BlackBerryFAQ.com

and

Tips and Tricks - BlackBerryFAQ.com

Have fun and try not to let anyone see you navigating via the Keypad.

High Speed Photo and Video: Casio EX-F1

I’ve been having a lot of fun with my new Casio EX-F1. This hybrid still/video camera has a lot of interesting features. It is not a pro studio camera, but I think it is about the finest link-bait camera out there right now. It give bloggers the capability of producing some really great web-ready content with a minimum of production cost.

The F1 does 60fps hi-speed 6MP jpeg images. This function is great for producing pro-looking image series, or for getting the exact shot you want in an action scenario.

The F1 also has a range of features that automate some of the trickier aspects of photography. It has a motion sensor so the hi-speed shutter fires when the camera detects motion in the frame. The F1 has programs that simulate motion blur and HDR, as well as bracketing on shutter speed, aperture and focus, which allows for focus stacking macro images or allowing subject and background to be in focus even when the lighting isn’t right for small aperture.

The F1 also does some pretty amazing hi-speed video at 300, 600 and 1200 frames per second. Here’s a sample of the pontoon spray from our float plane as we took off from Coal Harbour on Friday. Here are Casio’s sample videos. I think the possibilities for this function are limitless, and the results are very interesting to watch. Perfect for linkbait on your blog. I have not had a chance to do a lot, but practically everything I try turns out well. I have insects hovering, water undulating, matches lighting, etc. The featured video on the home page of this blog is a seagull taking off in slow motion.

The F1 is a pretty big camera, but it feels solid and performs well for normal shooting as well, although, at 6MP, you won’t be making posters with it, or cropping too hard.

There are extensive reviews available on the web, and discussions about its strong points and weaknesses as well. I am finding the camera to be a great deal of fun. It defintely brings out the “oohs and ahhhs” when you demonstrate the features. As I say above, it is great tool for adding some interesting content to your blog.

I’m a Flockstar!

I have officially switched to flock. I know many of you will saying, hey! What took you so long, dude? Others will be saying ….cheep, cheep, cheep…., and still other will be saying, what’s a flock?

Flickr video is here…

Big controvery, but I like it. here’s my first flickr video.

Manufacturing Life

We are getting very close on some very, very profound technologies. We are now constructing DNA from its constituent chemicals. Another great story here on Time.

On the basis of earlier experiments, the researchers believe the new, full-length loop would spontaneously “boot up” inside a cell, just as a downloaded operating system can awaken a computer — a potentially historic event that would amount to the creation of the first truly artificial life form.

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