Ricky Says

I'm heading to London tomorrow for a week long business trip and will need to have access to phone, email, and internet on my Blackberry Curve (I'm the Education Manager for Jive Software and will be delivering 4 days worth of training on Clearspace, our collaboration application).

Phone calls are crazy expensive internationally, with rates of $1.29 per minute in the UK.

Fortunately I spend a lot more time on email and the web then I do on the phone, and AT&T has an international data plan that's $64.99 a month for unlimited email and internet. I'll be able to check email, browse the web (tweet on Twitter, etc), and text home occasionally.

When you sign up for the international data plan, it drops your phone calls down to 99 cents a minute. Still not cheap, but if I have to make a business call then Jive will reimburse me.

I'll switch back to the regular Blackberry data plan when I return home, which is only $30 a month.

I also have an Aircard for broadband internet tethering on my laptop, but the data plan for that was something like $130 - too much in my opinion, and the training facility will have high speed internet, as will my hotel.

Question: How can I transfer my itunes songs and videos into my Blackberry 8330 curve?

Answer: Blackberry curves let you play mp3 music just like an iPod, and you can transfer songs and videos from iTunes to your Blackberry using an SD Micro memory card and a USB card reader.

Here's the general approach for transferring music files from your computer to a Blackberry:

1. Plug an SD Micro memory card into your computer using a USB card reader.

2. Copy music from your computer onto the SD Micro card.

3. Plug the SD Micro card into your Blackberry (behind the battery) and it will automatically recognized the music files.

Blackberry Curves come with 64 megs of built-in memory, which is barely enough for even a single music album. Fortunately, the Curve also has a memory expansion slot that allows up to 4 gigabytes of SD flash memory - the same amount of storage as an iPod nano.

You can get a 2 GB 3-in-1 microSD/miniSD/SD Kit from Wireless Emporium (shown below), which is enough for about 1,000 songs.

Combine it with a USB card reader (also available for a few bucks at Wireless Emporium), and you'll be able to plug it directly into your computer or laptop and transfer songs or videos to it from iTunes.

The memory expansion slot is located behind the battery, so you'll need to turn off your Blackberry and remove the battery to get to it. The memory expansion slot takes SD Micro flash disks, which are about 1 cm in size.

Looking for a way to listen to music on your Blackberry without the restrictions of a wired headphone connection?

The new Blackberry Curve 8310 comes with a standard 3.5-inch headphone jack and a set of hands-free headphones that let you listen to music and take calls when they come in. You can browse the web or check email, all while listening to your favorite mp3 tunes using the Curve's built-in mp3 player.

Here's a step-by-step guide that will show you how to free yourself of wires and listen to music from your Blackberry Curve using a pair of wireless Bluetooth headphones (Jabra BT620s in this case):

1. Enable Bluetooth on your Blackberry

Trying to decide between a Blackberry Curve and an Apple iPhone?

I recently compared the features of a Blackberry Curve with an Apple iPhone and ended up buying the new Blackberry Curve 8310 Titanium model. It has a nice balance between size and features: a full Qwerty keyboard, a bright display, 2.0 MP camera with built-in flash, expandable memory up to 4GB, and even GPS so I can use Google Mobile Maps to find where I'm at for free.

The iPhone also has some great features that have made it a very popular device, such as the built-in accelerometer that detects when you rotate iPhone from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display. This lets you immediately see the entire width of a web page or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio.