Introduction to Blackberry Technology by Larry Lippke

A Blackberry is a handheld wireless personal communications device developed, distributed, and serviced by Research in Motion (RIM). BlackBerry provides e-mail, text messaging and web browsing as well as telephone service. Certain models also provide global positioning service. Standard features on a Blackberry include calendar, tasks, notes, alarm clock, calculator, and some games, and third party applications are readily available for download. Most Blackberrys are Bluetooth capable, allowing for the use of wireless Bluetooth headsets to handle telephone calls. And the Blackberry can be set up and operated without ever being physically connected to a computer.

RIM provides a native email system for the Blackberry. Partnerships with Microsoft, IBM, and Novell also allow full two-way email integration with Outlook, Notes, and GroupWise.

Because the Blackberry relies on the cellular telephone network, it is only available through cell phone carriers. And, like cell phones, each carrier has its own unique models. The cost of a Blackberry is in the $200-$300 range, depending on rebates and contracts available and the particular model selected.

In order for the Blackberry to handle email and web browsing, a cellular data plan must be purchased. The current rate for this data service is generally $50 per month, but state contracts provide about a 10% discount. In addition, to use the Blackberry as a cell phone, a voice plan must be purchased separately, or an existing voice plan moved to the Blackberry.

Contact Extension Information Technology in order to set a Blackberry up to synchronize with GroupWise. EIT will set up an account on our Blackberry Enterprise Server, and provide an ID and password to ”provision” the Blackberry. Once configured, the Blackberry will connect with GroupWise and download the past 7 days email. After that, email and calendar items will synchronize automatically as they happen. With ‘push’ technology, email is automatically sent from the GroupWise inbox to the BlackBerry device, with no prompting, and no downloading.

is a popular device that it can perform a larger number of functions than the BlackBerry, as it runs the Palm operating system and is capable of running Palm applications. But it costs more, and isn’t quite as easy to synchronize with GroupWise. In addition, other handheld wireless personal communications devices are available from T-Mobile, PalmOne, HP, Audio-vox and other vendors.

For more information visit http://www.blackberry.com or http://www.palm.com/us/

 

 

Events & Updates

Element K online training available For more information on what’s available contact Jennifer Jahedkar at 979.845.2290 or Susanna Coppernoll at 979.845.2250.

Centra Central

Enroll or browse upcoming events or learn more about Centra by clicking the Centra Symposium link from the EIT webpage or going directly to http://eit.tamu.edu/centra.html. Playback any of the 100+ recorded sessions from the Public Recordings link at http://centra.tamu.edu/main/tce.

Play it Back– by Jennifer Jahedkar

If you enroll in a Centra Symposium event and then cannot attend you can easily play it back at a later date, provided that it was recorded. Just log in, and click on My Schedule in the upper left corner. Upcoming events will be displayed on your screen, But note that there are other tabs, including Ongoing and Past. If you click the Past tab you’ll see past events you enrolled in, and any that were recorded will have a Playback link.

To playback an event you hadn’t enrolled in simply click the Public Recordings link in the upper left corner. Note that there are multiple pages of events, so page forward or change the Show Per Page number to 150 or so to see them all. Find an event that sounds interesting, then click the Playback link.

 

 

Possible URLs to link from your Websites this Month

Dreamweaver Templates....a Love/Hate game- by Diann Mitchell

Have you ever used Dreamweaver to make changes to a page created with a template, selected Modify, Templates, Update Templates and nothing happened?

There are a number of reasons why a page created from a template would fail to update, but the most common problem stems from a misunderstanding of the function of templates. Remember, we talked about creating web sites to be designed like grocery stores! Well, think of a template as the building that houses the store. There may be different items available at different times of the year, depending on what’s in season etc. But the store itself doesn't change.

Dreamweaver templates define the container for the content in much the same way, by marking some areas of the page as non- editable (the store), while allowing you to modify the editable regions (seasonal items) with your content. To change a portion of the template, open the template file itself (the file with the .dwt extension in the Templates folder) and make changes there. Remember that only changes made to the container (the non-editable regions) will propagate to all the pages created from the template! Changes made to defined editable regions will be ignored. Once you've modified the container, save the file, and when prompted, allow Dreamweaver to modify all the pages created from that template. Remember to upload the pages to the server!

Take advantage of the power of templates with a better understanding of their function. To learn more visit the Macromedia web site at http://www.macromedia.com/support/dreamweaver/getting_started.html. Texas Cooperative Extension EIT 2005

 

Tip of the Month: How to auto-archive GroupWise messages Prepared by Jim Segers

GroupWise stores your e-mail and calendar items on a server. This allows you to read your e-mail and check your calendar from any Internet-enabled computer, anywhere in the world.

To help manage space and keep the GroupWise systems running efficiently, messages are “expired” at regular intervals. In most cases this is 90 days. In other words messages and their attachments older than 90 days are deleted from the servers and lost unless you do something to save them.

Fortunately, GroupWise includes a cool feature called "Archiving", which allows you to keep your e-mail and calendar items somewhere other than the GroupWise servers. Archived GroupWise messages are only available on the computer where you archived them and are not available from Web Access.

You can manually archive, but GroupWise can also automatically archive e-mail and/or calendar items based on message age. This is a two step process, telling GroupWise where to store your archive and setting the dates to do so.

STEP 1. Define the Archive location. From the GroupWise Main Window, click Tools and choose Options. Double click Environment., then Click on the File Location tab to open the window shown in Figure 1.

In the Archive directory area, enter the path you wish. HINT: Click on the folder icon to the right to “browse” to the location you want. We recommend you store them in in folder under My Documents. This way you will back it up with your other documents – you do backup My Documents don’t you?

Click OK to save your choice.

Under Mail and Phone, click the Auto-archive after radio button, shown in figure 2. Enter the number of days old a message should be before GroupWise will automatically archive it. (For example 80 days to safely move them before the expire date)

If you wish, under Appointment, Task and Reminder Note, click the radio button labeled Auto-archive after: and type in the number of days old a calendar item should be before GroupWise will automatically archive it. (At this time we are not expiring Calendar items, but may at some date)

Warning: Be sure to click Auto-archive after, not Auto-delete after. Click OK, then Close.

Tip of the Month: Reveal Formatting in Word By Jennifer Jahedkar

To make the word ‘hello’ bold in WordPerfect, bold tags are inserted around the word ‘hello’, as shown in figure 3.

Word treats text and formatting completely independent of each other. Word tracks the paragraph and character formatting applied to every character in the document, without _{using any starting or ending codes.} Figure 3: Making a word bold in WordPerfect

To make the word ‘hello’ bold in Word, the word ‘hello’ is simply given the property of Bold.

In Word, paragraph marks contain the codes that determine how the paragraph looks. As you type and move from paragraph to paragraph, the next paragraph inherits the format from the previous paragraph. Formatting that is stored inside the paragraph mark include alignment, indents, spacing, tab settings, automatic numbering and borders and shading.

Although Word doesn’t have codes to reveal, the Reveal Formatting task pane in Word 2002 and 2003 can show information, such as font, paragraph and line spacing, styles, and language. To open the task pane in Word 2003, go to View and Task Pane. Then click the drop down arrow in the upper right corner to choose which task pane to open. In Word 2002 press shift F1 for the mouse pointer to change to an arrow with a question mark beside it. Then point to the character or paragraph you’d like to see the formatting of and click.

The formatting that appears in the task pane is that of the area in which your cursor is located in the open document, or that of the selected text. Note that different sections, including Font, Paragraph, and Section can be expanded by clicking the plus sign or contracted by clicking the minus sign, as in Figure 4.

With the Reveal Formatting task pane you can see the formatting that’s applied to different sections of a document and quickly change the formatting by clicking the underlined text to open the appropriate dialog box.

 

Don’t miss Friday Online! 9:30am in Centra Check dates and topics at: http://centra.tamu.edu/main/tce

Last month over 15,000 phishing email messages were reported to the Anti-Phishing Working Group. Learn more about phishing and how to keep your computer secure at http://eit.tamu.edu/security.html

 

Texas Cooperative Extension EIT 2005