Section 62. Access a 411 Phone Directory

62. Access a 411 Phone Directory

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

11 Install a New Application to Your Device

50 Install a New Application Over-the-Air

55 About the BlackBerry Phone

SEE ALSO

47 About BlackBerry Web Browsing

55 Make and Receive Phone Calls

It's hard to argue the usefulness of a phone book when you don't know or can't remember a phone number. The popular 411 information feature serves as a quick way to obtain a phone number when you don't have access to a physical paper phone book. You might find it even more useful to use a third-party BlackBerry application that takes the 411 concept to another level. I'm referring to Berry 411, an application developed by Phillip Bogle that carries out searches to help you retrieve commonly sought information such as the phone numbers of individuals and businesses, as well as movie times, shopping information, and Google search results. The idea is that you enter a small amount of information into Berry 411 and it dispatches you to a browser search that finds and displays the information you're looking for. Although many websites can find all the same information, Berry 411 pulls it together into a clean user interface that allows you to quickly retrieve information.

62. Access a 411 Phone Directory

1.	Download and Install the Berry 411 Application The Berry 411 application is available free directly from Phillip Bogle's website at http://www.thebogles.com/Berry411.htm. To obtain Berry 411, you download a file to your desktop PC and then install the application to your BlackBerry device. After installing Berry 411 to your device, an icon is added to the Applications screen, from which you can launch the application. For more information about downloading and installing an application using the Desktop Manager, see 11 Install a New Application to Your Device . You can also install the application over-the-air (OTA) directly from the Berry 411 website; refer to 50 Install a New Application Over-the-Air for more information about OTA application installation. NOTE Even though the Berry 411 application is free for downloading, Mr. Bogle requests that you make a charitable donation if you find the application useful. See the Berry 411 website for more details: http://www.thebogles.com/Berry411.htm.
2.	Open the Applications Screen Scroll to the Applications icon on the Home screen and click the trackwheel. The Applications screen appears, displaying a list of applications you can launch.
3.	Launch the Berry 411 Application Scroll to the Berry 411 icon and click the trackwheel. The Berry 411 application launches and appears.
4.	Enter Your Address Information The Berry 411 application begins by requesting that you enter some information about your location. More specifically , the application prompts you to enter your work and home addresses, as well as a third address if you have one. Because most of the information obtained by Berry 411 is locale-dependent, the application needs to know your address to better serve you. Type your work address in the WORK section of the screen and your home address in the HOME section. When you're finished entering addresses, scroll the trackwheel to select Save and click. TIP If you have a contact entry for yourself in the address book, you can click Address Book on the Berry 411 addresses screen and automatically pull in your address from your contact information.
5.	Perform a Search After entering your addresses, the Berry 411 application displays the main application screen, which consists of a search field and the address to use for the search. Enter the text you want to search for in the Search field, and then scroll to select the appropriate location in the Location field. At this point, it's worth taking a moment to look more closely at the various kinds of searches you can perform in Berry 411. Berry 411 supports the following search types: yellow pages (business phone numbers), white pages (residential phone numbers), Google, movies, and shopping. These searches are accessed from the menu that displays when you click the trackwheel after entering search text. For example, if I wanted to search for the phone number of the restaurant P.F. Chang's, I would enter pf changs in the search field, click the trackwheel, scroll to select White Pages on the menu, and click again. The search begins in the BlackBerry browser, and the results are shown after a few moments. TIP If you want to search based on a temporary location, as opposed to from one of your specified addressessuch as when you're travelinginclude the ZIP Code or city and state along with the search text. For example, a temporary P.F. Chang's sample search for Scottsdale, Arizona, would be formatted like this: pf changs 85251 . Each of the search types expects slightly different search text. For Yellow Pages searches, specify the business name or category to obtain a list of matches. For White Pages searches, provide the name of the person. Google searches can include any search text you want. In fact, Google has an additional search option called I'm feeling lucky that carries out a Google search and immediately links you to the top search result. A Movies search requires you to enter the name of the movie you want to find. And finally, a Shopping search consists of the item you're shopping for; the Google shopping search engine, Froogle, is used to carry out shopping searches. TIP Berry 411 allows you to carry out searches in the popular communal online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. To do so, simply precede the search text with the letters wk and then perform a Google search. To search Wikipedia for the legendary investor Warren Buffet, enter wk warren buffet and do a Google search. After performing a search, press the Escape button to close the browser and return to the 411 application, where you can carry out another search. Alternatively, press Alt + Escape to return to the 411 application without closing the browser.
6.	Exit the Application Press the Escape button to exit the application. You return to the Applications screen. Press the Escape button again to navigate back to the Home screen, or just press the End key once.