Ok, so maybe its a little misleading to say I’m branching out. Its not like I’m venturing in to uncharted territories of WindFarming or talking about the quality of Seiko watches. No, I’m staying close to home with the new site BlackBerry Hack

My goal here is to help you make the most of your Blackberry and get it to work for you not against. I’ll be drawing on many resources from around the net, my contacts at AT&T Wireless, plus my experience administering both Blackberries and the iPhone. I won’t bore you with a lot of the same “look whats coming” type posts of some of the other mainstream Blackberry sites, but more with this is what I’m doing with my blackberry and here’s how you can do it too.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, check it out!

While the misses and I were out Christmas shopping Friday night, we bought some stuff for ourselves as well (Toys R Us was having some good deals and we had a ton of coupons!). We picked up the fourth wiimote as well as three nunchucks for the wii so that we can make best use of our console. Now two of us can box at the same time. We also picked up a new game, wii Music. You’ve seen the commercials (at least you have if you watch tv for any amount of time) and after a bit of research Amy and I were both excited about the game (you can play both the hand bells and banjo, no not at the same time). Plus, its a game we can play with the girls (Emma and Grace are good at waiving the wiimotes around), family and friends.

I’ve looked at RockBand for the wii, but everything I’ve read says that the wii version does not come anywhere close to that of the xbox 360 one, plus, now that Guitar Hero World Tour is out, I may have to reevaluate. Anyways, back to wii Music.

We picked this game up as a “christmas” present for ourselves and as such we haven’t played it yet (it wouldn’t be right to play it before christmas!) but I’ve done some more research and I’ve come across a bunch of unflattering reviews of the software. It theory and from the commercials, it seems like a really cool game that makes excellent use of the motes, but according to the reviews, its not all that. I guess we’ll have to see for ourselves. Has anyone had the chance to play it yet?

Also, I have marioKart and I’m always looking for more people to race against, if you have Mario Kart as well for the wii, let me know and we can trade “license numbers” so we can race!

Gone are the days of writing down your mileage and gas stops in a paper book. With Blackberries and iPhones and other smartphones reproducing daily, it only makes sense to do it the web 2.0 way, online. Right? Thats where the cool tool of MyMileMarker comes in to play. The site offers free accounts and two ways to update your mileage and fill ups. Online through a traditional web browser, or via your web enabled smartphone and their mobile (mymilemarker.com/m) site.

Granted, the mobile site is little more than a form you can fill in, but you can list multiple vehicles and specify which one you’re gassing up at the time. Its a pretty handy little thing. BlipSocial offers something similar in its blackberry app, but there isn’t any outcome of it from what I can tell while MMM actually helps forecast your future usage as well. Its kind of cool to be able to see the trend in gas prices (especially over the last couple of weeks) and locations, as well as mileage. One of the things it lacks is a way to differentiate between city and highway miles (which can vary greatly).

I had signed up for this a while ago, but I haven’t had a chance to use it as I completely forgot about it until I was going through the list of people I’m following on twitter. You can bet, I have already bookmarked the mobile site on the Bold and will be trying it shortly. I do wish there was a native Blackberry app that made it a little nicer to use (but then I’m a little picky). Who knows, maybe this will help me save money on gas by keeping a better eye on my fillups leaving some extra money in the account so that my golf clubs can actually get used sometime this decade (no, I wouldn’t call what I do playing…).

Does anyone else out there track your mileage? If so, how do YOU do it?

M3 is in beta

So I’ve had the Bold less than a week and I have already tricked it out with a pretty cool theme and some much needed software (such as Rove Mobile’s Mobile Admin). I’ve been a fan of the iBerry themes from bPlay for a while (I had the iBerry Today Plus theme on my curve) and I came across the
iBerry Neo Today Plus theme and I have to say, apart from the background I like it a good bit. The fact that you get the messages, calendar and the call log on the main screen as well as your top Apps rocks. Even cooler is the fact that the app menu on the home screen stays hidden until you roll over it is a big plus (that way you don’t loose any real estate on the main screen). The icons it comes with are pretty cool too.

One of the other things I was delighted to see the Bold come with was Sudoku. I started playing this game a while ago online and I wanted to find a good version of it for the Curve. I found Sudoku by Magmic at bPlay as well and I have to say its a good, challenging game. I finished all the easy level games and have been slowly working on the medium level games. They’re a good bit harder, but if you’re a wiz at the Sudoku, then they shouldn’t be a problem at all. You can find the game for about $4.99 and its worth every penny.

What games do you like on your BlackBerry??

There was a fair tax Rally in the ATL yesterday, and apparently it went over rather well. From my limited knowledge of the Fair Tax (yes, I’ve read the book) I think it would be an excellent way to help the economy get back on track. Not only that, but *EVERYONE* rich, poor, legal, illegal would pay taxes. You can’t beat that with a sharp stick.

Since the election, the stock market has done nothing but continue its wild roller coaster ride. More stores are closing and more people are putting their small business for sale. Its a sad state of affairs these days, but it still remains to be seen if the new administration is going to be able to take care of the problems. So far it doesn’t seem like it.

An interesting thing to note from the Rally this weekend is that the state insurance commissioner, John Oxendine is starting a movement to get a Fair Tax Constitutional Convention (which is needed to repeal the 16th amendment). Maybe something will happen after all.