Joe and Jamie's Blog

I finally sat down and figured out how to make Joe and Jamie’s Blog look better for mobile readers. Well it turns out there are simple plugins out there that take all of two seconds to install and voila, mobile-fied.

So why did I put it towards the bottom of the list for a rainy day? Not sure, guess I thought it would take hours of work.

I decided to to add mobile capabilities because sadly I am on my BlackBerry as much as my computer, if not more. So now you all have even less of an excuse to read this blog, you can do so anywhere you get a signal.

Just go to the blog on your cell phone as you would normally, but this time it will detect you’re on a mobile browser and arrange the blog into a readable format that’s easy on the eyes and easy to navigate. Nothing fancy needs to be done. Try it out, maybe you’ll find it more convenient and stop by more often.

If you have a WordPress blog and are interested in this plugin, you can check it out here. I chose to use WordPress Mobile Edition. You can’t customize the theme too much and there isn’t many options, but it works really well with pictures and links. Another one is WordPress Mobile Pack, which you can customize the crap out of it (colors, sidebars, etc), but it didn’t display links correctly so I scrapped that one.

When we purchased our BlackBerry Storms earlier in the month we were both worried about scratching the screens. I was used to the Treo screen which wasn’t as sensitive as these full touch screens. I hate those peel away plastic pieces that you can replace, they just never look good and get dirty and messy quickly. Plus they cost about $10 just for three of them, what a rip off.

Invisible Shield by Zagg Inc for BlackBerry Storm

I ordered the Invisible Shield by Zagg Inc. to protect our screens. The Invisible Shield is a military grade film that is pre-cut to fit the device. Once applied and dried, it is 100% scratch proof for life. Don’t believe me? Check out the video. I have had this on for a week now and it is 100% invisible. The only reason I know its there is because I put it on. Truly a quality product.

Now I would never try that on my phone, but I believe it. So far any mark I thought I had on the phone I was able to just wipe off the Invisible Shield. It was really tough to get fingerprints off the screen before the shield, but now I just gently rub it with a towel or cloth and it comes off.

If you have a Storm and are interested in this product, it can be viewed/purchased here. Don’t have a Storm but want to protect your phone/iPod/laptop/etc? They have thousands of applications to fit almost everything. Check it out at Zagg’s website. This is not just a screen protector, it can also come with full body pieces to protect the entire phone/device. I chose just to get the screen protector because I can live with the back of the phone having a scratch.

When I picked up my new BlackBerry last weekend I decided to go for the Visual Voice Mail that Verizon offers. Why? Well I hate checking voicemail and this makes it simple as pressing a button.

I didn’t know that this was available on other model phones, probably would have gotten it when it came out in August 2008. I did know the iPhone worked like this though.

Here’s a picture of what it looks like and how easy it is to use. Voicemails come in, you just open the Visual Voice Mail app on the phone and press the play button next to the one you want to hear. It’s that simple! I absolutely love it, can’t you tell?

Jamie chose not to get this, she doesn’t know what she’s missing…

Visual Voice Mail

This weekend our phones me their New Every Two date, which is a program through Verizon where they give you a discount on phones every two years. It’s an incentive to get you to upgrade your phone.

Jamie has had the LG enV for the past two years. She wanted to upgrade to either a BlackBerry or a similar PDA/Windows Mobile phone so she had a reliable way to get her email and surf the internet. Since Verizon still has its buy-one-get-one on BlackBerry’s, I figured I would upgrade mine as well. I didn’t really have any issues with my Treo besides the casing near the antenna starting to break, but a brand new touch screen BlackBerry beats the Treo 700wx any day.

After an unsuccessful attempt to get the phone Saturday, we went this afternoon and picked them up. Unfortunately Saturday the Verizon store’s system went down while we were there and they couldn’t check us out. With our discount and the bogo on the phones, we were able to get $400 worth of new technology for $100. Now that is what I call a deal. We even decided to family share the plans together to save a bit of money too. Hey, anyway helps at this point I guess.

So far I am very impressed with this phone. It has a gazillion features built into it. So many that I haven’t put the phone down since noon when I got it. I have always wanted an iPhone, but around here the AT&T service really sucks, so I haven’t switched. Now that BlackBerry introduced their App Store, I think the iPhone finally has true competition. The App Store was the only thing the iPhone had over the Storm. I will wait a few days of fiddling with this phone before I bother to start with the thousands of apps that are available now.

I signed up for the new Visual Voice Mail plan. This negates me hating voicemail. My past post was about how much I hated dialing in and wish they could just email me the voicemails. Well Visual Voice Mail gives me a list of all my voicemails and allows me to choose the one I want to hear. I then just hit the play button and it starts to play. No dialing in and listening to all those messages in a row. By tomorrow I should have some voicemails so I can take a picture of it and post it here.

Pair of Verizon BlackBerry Storm 9530 smartphones