I bought a new BlackBerry 8310 mobile device in May 2nd in the city Digital Mall when Linda came and visited me during the holiday. She planned to buy a nice netbook, and came to look for me for suggestions. At the 2nd floor, I saw all kinds of mobile phones, and, I found some BlackBerry phones were sold there, this was for the first time that I knew they sell BlackBerry mobiles.

I am currently using an old BlackBerry 7100V, too old not to meet my requirements. Compared with 7100V, 8310 has much more features that I live and need, for example, EDGE network, it’s faster than GPRS, and, GPS, 8310 has a GPS receiver, so I won’t get lost wherever I am. What’s more, it has a media player which I can play musics in my spare time.

One of the most important feature that I think a mobile device must have is Camera, with a camera, I can take pictures whenever I want, although it has only 200 mega pixels. With a BlackBerry 8310, I don’t need to take my DSC-T500, it’s so big and heavy, don’t you think?

When I got this new 8310, I tested all of its features, it works just fine. It costed me only a little, but its quality is just good. Oh, I wanted and planed to buy a Nokia E71, but I think this BlackBerry 8310 can do all its job, but price is very lower than that.

These pictures were taken by my 8310, pictures quality is just good.

Linda in the Digital Mall

Linda lying on the bed in a hotel

Boiled Fish with Pickled Cabbage and Chili / On Sunday, before Linda went back to her school, I took her to a Sichuan Restaurant, this is what we eat.

A good mobile phone helps a lot if you don’t have a computer at hand. Last time, when we went to a small city nearby to prepare customers goods, the list I printed was not clear enough, but I didn’t have a computer at that time, I called my customer, and told that to send me picture to my mailbox, I logged in my mailbox with BlackBerry’s default browser, and I downloaded the picture in seconds. If I don’t have a mobile, or the mobile doesn’t have this kind of feature, I don’t know what I can do, really.

Barry is an Open Source application that will provide synchronization, backup, restore and program management for BlackBerry ™ devices. Barry is primarily developed on Linux, but is intended as a cross platform library and application set, targeting Linux, BSD, 32/64bit, and big/little endian systems.

The Barry project began in October 2005 and has steadily added features and polish to Blackberry usage on Linux ever since. We were the first to reverse engineer the battery charging handshake via USB.

Today, it is possible to:

• charge your Blackberry’s battery from your USB port
• retrieve Address Book, Email, Calendar, Service Book, Memos, Tasks, PIN Messages, Saved Email, and Folders
• export Address Book contacts in text or LDAP LDIF format
• make full data backups and restores of your device using a GUI
• synchronize contacts and calendar items using the OpenSync framework
• use the Blackberry as a modem

• Latest release: 0.14
• Download source and binary packages from Sourceforge or the OpenSUSE Build Service
• General Sourceforge project page
• Barry git repo
• Known Issues:
  • Restoring backups for some databases on newer Blackberries doesn’t work (for example, on the 8120, 8700g)
  • Syncing is not supported on Fedora Core 9, since they packaged the OpenSync 0.3x devel tree
  • Password support when using Blackberry as modem is experimental
  • Accessing the database (such as during a backup) while copying files using the usb_storage kernel module may cause some Blackberries to spontaneously reboot
  • The opensync plugin does not handle international characters well.

How do I…

• Install Barry from binary packages
• Compile Barry from tarball, CVS, or git
• Make backups of my Blackberry data
• Sync my Blackberry with Evolution
• Use my Blackberry as a modem to surf the net
• Find troubleshooting help
• Report a bug
• Submit a patch
• Contact the developers

Some helpful pages:

• System requirements
• Software dependencies
• Barry’s Doxygen documentation

If you are a C++ programmer, grab the source from CVS and take a look at the TODO file. Post a message to the mailing list when you start working on any of the listed features, so you can connect with other developers, and avoid duplicating effort.

If you are a Python programmer, contact the mailing list, since we would like to create and test a Python interface to the Barry library.

If you are not a programmer, but have a Blackberry, we can always use help in testing. Install Barry on your system, and report any bugs you find.

If you prefer writing documentation, grab the source from CVS and look under the doc/www directory. Documentation is currently in html form, as well as doxygen-generated API documentation found in the comments of the source code itself. Patches updating either set of documentation are welcome.

There are dozens of databases that need to be documented and supported in the library. If you have a BlackBerry ™ device and are interested in helping decipher data, we have a Barry hacking document that will help you.

If you are interested in helping out or just interested in how it works, check out our design notes .

We have put together a document that describes where we are and where we want to take Barry. Check out our roadmap to see what’s happening.

Barry users and others have contributed documentation and have put these howto’s on the web. Below is a list of some of these pages. These sites are not associated with NetDirect, and some of the information may be out of date, but they may still be helpful to new users.

• Synchronizing a Blackberry In Linux, by Chip Bennett
• Syncing your Blackberry on Linux, by Joe Barr
• The RIM Blackberry Serial Protocol, by Phil Schwan, Mike Shaver, and Ian Goldberg, of the Cassis project
• HOWTO: Blackberry as Modem for Laptop, by Mark Rejhon, (not Linux specific)

Please visit Barry official website for more information on http://www.netdirect.ca/software/packages/barry/

Information Appliance Associates, the creator of the original Mac-to-BlackBerry sync solution (also known as PocketMac for BlackBerry), announced on Tuesday a beta release of the first tool to sync Linux user data to the BlackBerry. The tool is dubbed “PocketMac for BlackBerry Linux Edition.”

This beta version is the result of more than 18 months of development and testing; it’s now open to the public for more input before a final version is created. The beta period starts Tuesday and is limited to a set number of users; if you’re interested, you’d better sign up now.

It’s worth noting that the beta version of PocketMac for BlackBerry Linux Edition is currently only being tested on the Xandros Linux distribution, and syncs against the KDE PIM application. However, in the near future, it will be made available to and functional with other distributions of the OS as well.

This is significant news for BlackBerry users, considering the proliferation of Linux-based PCs, especially with the introduction of ultratransportable computers, such as the Asus EeePC, that take advantage of Linux’s low hardware requirement.

Like the previous sync tool for Macs, this Linux Edition likely will be made available for free once the beta test is over.

This report is originally posted on CNET NEWS on http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10060142-1.html , I am so happy to hear this news as my Blackberry 7100V mobile can be synced on my Fedora 9 linux laptop in the future.

For the 7100V, it only has some basic mobile fuctions, so I want to buy a new BlackBerry Curve 8330 device sometime later this year, and then at that time, the Linux-to-BlackBerry sync tool will go final release, I will be able to backup my SMS messages and contacts, or transfer file to the phone on my Fedora 9 laptop very easily.