How to Sync BlackBerry with Mac - Pocketmac

Do you need to be out of the office, but still accessible and in the loop? Do you want to be able to get in touch with your colleagues, family and friends while on the go? Do you use a Mac?

Now, Mac users can enjoy the connectivity and advanced functionality provided by the popular BlackBerry wireless solution. PocketMac for BlackBerry, from Information Appliance Associates, allows Macintosh users to synchronize their data between their BlackBerry wireless device and Entourage, their address book, iCal, Now Contact, Now Up-To-Date and Stickies.

To find out more about synchronizing your BlackBerry wireless device with your Mac, please visit PocketMac For BlackBerry.

www.pocketmac.com

How to Use your Pearl as a BT Modem under OS X?

n the long tradition of only writing software when it solves something that annoys me, I’ve written an OS X modem script for the BlackBerry 8100 (a.k.a. Pearl). If you have an 8100, you can now use it as a Bluetooth modem with your Mac. Here’s how you use it:

1. Download the script here. Please Right-Click and Choose ‘Save As’.
2. Copy the script into /Library/Modem Scripts.
3. If you’ve already paired your Pearl with your Mac, open Bluetooth Preferences, Select your Pearl from the list of devices and press ‘Configure…’. (If you haven’t, choose ‘Set up Bluetooth Device’ - the following dialogs will be shown after you’ve paired your phone with your Mac. Make sure your Pearl doesn’t require a password for your mac to connect to it - the ‘Trusted Connection’ option for the pairing should be set to ‘Yes’ on your phone, not ‘Ask’.)
4. Make sure ‘Access the Internet with your phone’s data connection’ is checked. Also, make sure ‘Use a direct, higher speed connection’ is selected. Click Continue.
5. In the Modem Script pulldown on the following screen, Select ‘BlackBerry 8100’. Use the following settings for the other fields, then click Continue:
   • Username, Password: leave blank
   • GPRS CID: *99***1#
6. Open the Internet Connect application. Select the Bluetooth icon at the top. Under Phone Number, put your APN (for T-Mobile and the BlackBerry Unlimited plan, I use wap.voicestream.com, for Cingular it’s “wap.cingular”). Type a username and password (I use guest/guest, for Cingular you’ll use “WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM” as the username and “CINGULAR1” as the password) in the appropriate fields.

That’s it! Let me know if it works for you. I don’t believe my settings are getting the most out of the device’s EDGE support, so I’ll be tweaking as I learn more. Credit to Ross Barkman and Tim Hatch for the original scripts I tweaked to make it work.

How to Add iSync Support for the Nokia E61i

There's no need to wait for Apple to release an updated version of iSync for your Nokia E61i. Navigate to Applications » iSync » (Control-click and choose Show Package Contents) » Contents » Plugins » ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice » Contents » Plugins » PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin » Contents » Resources.

Locate Metaclasses.plist in this folder, open it in your favorite editor, and add this section of code:

com.nokia.E61i-2

Identification

com.apple.cgmi+cgmm
Nokia+Nokia E61i-2
com.apple.gmi+gmm
Nokia+Nokia E61i-2

InheritsFrom

family.com.nokia.serie60v2.3

Services


ServiceName
com.apple.model
ServiceProperties

ModelIcon
NOKE61i.tiff
ModelName
E61i

You'll need to create a new icon and name it NOKE61i.tiff.

How to Improve the look of Parallels' Coherence Mode?

Here's an easy fix to a very minor problem. Parallels' Coherence mode seems to work, at least on a basic level, by making the Windows OS's background image and other items invisible, showing only the application windows which exist atop it.

This works very well in many circumstances, but when dragging windows around your Mac desktop, you may momentarily see a part of your Windows background image flicker on screen, trailing the window as you drag it. Here's a simple solution that works wonderfully, having entirely eliminated the issue for me: simply use the same background image for your Windows environment as you use for your Mac!

How to Capture laptop screenshots to remote devices

What you need:

• iSightCapture
• A custom-made Automator workflow
• A Blackberry with data services (I have a T-Mobile Pearl)
• A free program called midpSSH installed on your Blackberry

I won't cover these things in this hint: Installing midpSSH on your Blackberry, setting up a static address to connect to (search Google for no-IP for mac), beginner information on using Terminal and Automator. Read on for the solution...

First, download iSightCapture and put it in /usr/bin. Then start a new Automator workflow, and make it look like this:

1. Automator: Run Shell Script -- (240x260 is my Pearl's screen resolution). The script: isightcapture -h 240 -w 260 /Users/you/Documents/shots/snappit.jpg
2. Finder: Get Specified Finder Items [ignore results from previous action] -- add /Users/you/Documents/shots/snappit.jpg
3. Mail: New Mail Message -- enter your Blackberry's email address in the To: field, give it a subject and a message if you so desire, and select your account (note you must have already set up some email address using the program Mail)
4. Mail: Send Outgoing Messages
5. Automator: Run AppleScript [ignore results from previous action] -- This script hides Mail:

   tell application "System Events"
   tell application "Mail" to activate
   tell process "Mail"
   keystroke "h" using command down
   end tell
   end tell

6. Automator: Run Shell Script [ignore results from previous action]:

   cp /Users/you/Documents/shots/snappit.jpg
   /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Documents/shots/snappit`date +%y%m%d%H%M%S`.jpg

Save the workflow and place it somewhere (remember where you save it). The command to execute an Automator script in the shell is: automator /path/to/automator.workflow/, and it takes no attributes. Test your workflow using Terminal. Set up your laptop with no-ip or some other dynamic DNS helper (dyndns.org). Connect to your computer via midpSSH on your phone, login, and execute the workflow. Obviously, you'll want to enable remote login via ssh in the Sharing tab of System Preferences first.

I also then put in an Automator pause for 20 seconds, and then the shell script killall Mail, b

How To Disable Safe Sleep for faster sleep on lid close?

Newer portable Macs use safe sleep (hibernation) in combination with normal sleep (older computers can use this, too). What happens is that when you put your computer to sleep, the system writes the contents of RAM into the file /private var vm sleepimage, then goes into normal sleep mode. If your system loses power completely, it can recover the contents of RAM from this sleepimage file.

The problem with this is putting your computer to sleep can take a while (20 seconds to one minute or more), depending on how much data you currently have loaded in RAM. Also, this sleepimage file is the same size of your total RAM, wasting valuable hard drive space. I have 2GB of RAM, so my file is 2GB.

To disable safe sleep, run the two following commands in Terminal:

$ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

To state the obvious, with safe sleep disabled, a total power loss will
wipe out whatever was open on your machine. To enable safe sleep mode
again, repeat the above commands, but change hibernatemode 0 on the first line to hibernatemode 3, and =false to =true
on the second line. You'll then need to reboot again. Personally, I
prefer the safe sleep mode, even with the slower sleep time and hard
drive consumption -- even if for no other reason than it's great when changing a battery on a flight.
$ sudo nvram "use-nvramrc?"=false

When done, restart your computer. Now go delete the file /private var vm sleepimage" to free up some hard drive space. When you put your computer to sleep it, should happen in under five seconds; my MacBook now goes to sleep in two seconds.

How to Boot another OS while OS X is hibernating?

The Easy Way (PowerPC and Intel)

1. Power on your Mac and press Alt/Option
2. Choose the system to boot
3. If you choose Linux, when you'll shut it down and the turn your Mac on again, your computer will wake from deep sleep (just like nothing really happened).

The Geek Way (PowerPC only)

1. Write down the number of the Mac OS X and bootloader (like Yaboot) partitions. In my case, I have Yaboot on /dev/hda2 and Mac OS X on /dev/hda12.
2. Put your mac to Safe Sleep.
3. Power on you computer and immediately press Command-Option-O-F. Note that if you have security mode set to "full," this step is not needed, as it will happen automatically.
4. You will se a command prompt; just to be sure type printenv. If needed, insert your password. Now jot down the value of boot-device. In my case (Mac OS X is on the twelfth partition of my disk), it is /pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/disk@0:12,\:tbxi. Be careful! The value is not /pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/disk@0:12,\:tbxi \:tbxi; the line just says what the actual value is, plus the default value (\:tbxi).
5. You now have to change boot-device to the value of the bootloader partition (or directly to the number of the Linux partition you only have two OSes). In my case:

   setenv boot-device /pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/disk@0:12,\:tbxi

   Be careful -- there's only one backslash.
6. Type mac-boot and press Return.

That's it; you're done. When you're finishing using Linux, reboot and your Mac will wake from deep sleep just like nothing happened.

You may be wondering: why should I take the geek way? There are two reasons:

1. You may want to show that even on a Mac you can do complicated things :)
2. You have security mode set to "full," and the easy way doesn't work.

Please also notice that, with the geek way, you actually get feedback that your Mac is waking from Deep Sleep while, with the easy way, you won't. In the latter case, just be patient: your Mac has not frozen. Have fun and break every uptime record! By the way, I won the uptime race. Next round will be Leopard vs Vista.

[robg adds: Note that I tried this with my MacBook Pro and Windows XP in Boot Camp, and it did not work. When I first tried it, OS X was set to use Windows XP as the startup disk. When I pressed the power key from Deep Sleep mode (with or without the Option key held down), Windows would boot, seemingly leaving me stuck in Windows (since the Option key was being ignored). To get out of this loop, I set the startup disk (using the Apple-supplied Control Panel in Windows XP) to OS X and rebooted. When I did, OS X booted from a cold start, ignoring my deep sleep state.

Then I switched the startup disk in OS X to my OS X partition, and tried again. This time, when waking from deep sleep, the Mac simply woke from deep sleep, again ignoring the Option key. I tried various combinations, including restarting instead of shutting down in Windows XP, but all to no avail. So it seems, at least on my sample size of one unit, that this trick won't work on a MacBook Pro.]