The woes of Type and Go on BB10 10.1

For anyone with a BB10 device running 10.1 software, you will of course know about Type and Go. Universal search on steroids as I call it. The ability to type a few letters from any home screen and start carrying out an action from that point. For example 'tw hello' will generate a result screen offering to post a tweet saying hello. (as pictured) 'em' will offer composing an email and so on.

Now this is fantastic, and rather than opening the twitter app, pressing compose new, and then starting to type, you can just start to type. Saves a few swipes, which will be great news to those who moan about all the swiping they have to do on this new OS.

However, if you dare to venture to things like 'em dav' or 'ca dav' the results are not quite so silky smooth. Calling Dave or emailing him should be a simple command, but using Dave as an example, most will have more that one of them in their phonebook. So instead of a simple result list of the 3 Daves in your phone book, it will list them all by every email address they have combined in there. If you have the contact linked to Facebook and other contact populating apps, you could find yourself presented with 10 email addresses, over kill maybe?

The solution here would be to have to results display the actual contact, as a singular name, from which you could then decide to pick the home, work, or private email of the person, rather than listing them all at once.

It's the same with the results for calls.

The solution is really quite a simple one, and I shall explain but not before saying this.

For years now, the act of sending an email has required a few presses here and there before we are ready to compose it, that's nothing new. So it really frustrates the hell out of me when an idea is put forwards to save a few milliseconds of your day, and sadly it doesn't work as well as was hoped. STOP being so bloody lazy and just do it the old way, it's really not a big deal.

For example, to start this email, from the home screen I typed 'em', compose email popped up, selecting that the compose screen appeared with the cursor in the address field, it typed 'bl' and it auto completed blog, and I got typing. Is that really a big deal? Seriously? Still seems pretty darn convenient to me.

Once again, I am aware that the address field of the compose email screen also digs through ALL your contact lists to offer you the email addresses of your contacts. And agree this is something that needs to be allowed to be filtered from a search setting. But that said, to others it's perfect. After all BlackBerry gave BB10 Balance which if being used would not be mixing in your private Facebook contacts with you business contacts list.

Something does indeed need to be done to allow the user some control over what appears where, but for now I offer a simple work around solution.

The contacts toggle screen pictured below allows you to sort out what shows in your main contacts list, so Facebook can be filtered out for example. The only real solution I can think of at this point, a quick fix, is to filter out the rubbish from your main contacts feed. Then when calling someone it may be easier to type 'co' select contacts from the results then start typing their name from the contacts screen. Slightly longer winded but effective all the same. Sadly these filters will NOT change what appears on the main type and go screen. 

Regards

Michael

Sent from my BlackBerry Q10

Taming the Blackberry 10 Hub

Since the launch of the Blackberry Z10, there has been so much talk about The Hub. We saw it in the previews, and heard so much about how it was going to revolutionise the way we work with our mobile devices. Peek and Flow, gestures, unified inbox on steroids, we heard all of the comments, and in the demo's it sure did seem the best thing since sliced bread. Being able to peek into your inbox regardless of what you were in the middle of seemed ideal.

For some, the transition over to the hub has been pretty smooth. All the social accounts you use, all in one place, filter them by type if you so wish, or whack them all in together in The Hub itself. In general, I am one of those who is quite happy with the way it performs, and it does what it says on the box. It simplifies the way you communicate across multiple social platforms, all from one single place.

BUT... of course there is a but, this is me!
There are a few things, that possibly for the sake of sanity, or maybe just for functionality reasons that are not as I would like them certainly, so I shall go into a few now before I go on.

The first thing I noticed was a Twitter feed thing. On OS7.1 and before, periodically I would get a notification from twitter into my unified inbox that would say there were new tweets to view. Alas this does not happen with the hub. Now the reason for it is quite simple, only things directed at YOU will appear in the hub. Messages which may require you to respond are the only things of interest to the hub. Naturally it didn't take long to get used to this 'short falling' if you can call it that.
But while talking about Twitter, there is another thing. Mentions. When composing a new tweet and mentioning a contact in it, the long winded approach to adding their @ to the message is quite simply horrible. I don't want a drop down of all my contacts to appear, so I can then enter their name in the search field. What was wrong with the old way, or indeed the way Blaq manages them. Type an @ then start to type the name, and as you type the options appear to select from.
This plus the rather basic and lethargic layout of the whole native Twitter app are the reason I bit the bullet and got Blaq instead. Multiple accounts, real time feed, nice interface, and simple mentions.

After the Twitter thing was overcome, the next thing to understand was how the other apps integrated into the hub. Facebook for example, for a while I thought that I would be able to update my status from the hub also, but this again is not the case. You can compose direct messages on the hub for Facebook only. The same I should say is the case with Twitter.

In short, for those not quite au fait with the hub situation. The hub is ONLY used for direct communication with people, be it SMS, BBM, email, or via social networking apps.

Once you understand what it can do, the next thing to do is get it doing the things you want it do do for YOU, customise it.

This is where the confusion around the hub really starts, and if you were keeping up with what I have been rattling on about so far, hold tight, its about to get a little crazy around here.
Notifications in the hub are for all the native apps to the Blackberry 10 devices, and a little more, as shown below.

As you can see, quite a list there indeed. So can you cope with updates and history from all these feeds showing up in the one single inbox? Well apparently most cant, and it gets a little heated and hectic. The problem is, or is perceived to be, that if you turn them off in the hub management, you then lose the ability to use the feed. But this is not the case, allow me to explain a little. First up you need to get into the hub settings, the following sequence shows where you go to do this.

Firstly, go into the hub, and select the overflow menu, 3 dots, bottom right of the screen. Select settings.

Next up, from settings you want hub Management.

Once you have entered the hub management, you will be presented with the following screen. I'm pretty sure 90% have already seen all this, but just to be sure.

Right, now you are ready to decide what shows in your hub feed and what doesn't. There are important things to know here, so read carefully.

First up, emails, the hub is the only place on your Blackberry 10 device you can access these, so it is important to have your main accounts switched on. If you have other accounts that receive a lot of junk, but periodically get used for something more productive, I would say turn them off. I will explain why in a bit.
Next up are other forms of messages, BBM, SMS. This is where the options start. The BB10 devices come with BBM and texts available from stand alone icons. BBM from the actual app, and texts from its own icon to open JUST text messaging if you so choose. These applications do NOT have to be left open and running in an active pane to receive messages if you turn them off in the hub.

Same applies to your social networks, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquares and so on.

Now to explain how to go about this.

By turning notifications OFF in the hub for any of these applications does not mean you wont receive messages through them, you will, and the hub will still take care of this for you. You just have to understand the slightly complex way in which it works. By turning them off in the hub, it simply means that the notifications will not automatically populate the hub. So when you turn twitter off for example, the device will still receive and acknowledge direct messages, and it will still tell you that you have them. It just wont display it.

An example for you to make it a little clearer. I have Twitter turned OFF in my hub, purely because I don't like the native app as I have explained before. Instead I use Blaq which I will usually leave running in an active pane, as I tent to use Twitter quite a lot. The Blaq app shows within the active pane if I have any mentions or direct messages, as well as new tweets to read. But what if I close the app, then how will I know if I get a message or mention.
While it is turned off in the hub, I wont see the message, but I will get a notification still. I will get an LED flash if set up for that application, I will get an icon on the lock screen, and I will also get a spark on the hub menu button (as pictured below)

Soon also I am hoping that we will see BeBuzz for the Q10 arrive, which will also allow you to have the addition of a specific colour flash on your LED.
So now you have your notification, its up to you to decide how you deal with it.
You can go to the hub and choose the particular inbox for that application, and view it there, or you can open it in the stand alone app. A BBM can be opened in the hub or on the app for example. One thing to note here is that third party apps wont update the hub. So if you get a mention on Twitter and open it in Blaq, the notification spark will remain in the hub until you acknowledge it.

So I guess what I am trying to say here is The Hub is actually a very clever and versatile notifications centre, which is highly customisable, but it is for the end user to make the effort to spend a few minutes going through it properly, setting up what you want to simply be notified of, and what you want to actually see populating your hub.

I hope this hasn't confused you more than it has helped.

So here goes...

With the ultimate test of this blackberry z10, can I manage a decent and meaningful email or on without losing the will to live with the touchscreen? 

Well let's see.

I have been meaning to do this since I got the Z10 but wanted to wait until I was comfortable with it so it got a fair chance, and today is that day.

So far so good, I'm sitting on a train for my usual commute, and doing what I usually would do, passing the time by writing my thoughts down. First impressions its not doing too bad. My typing accuracy is a little off to say the least but the keyboard is being very forgiving and correcting a lot of my mistakes which suits me fine. Is it slower, that's the main question for me, and the answer is simple, yes it's slower. 

For someone like me that spends a lot of time blogging or emailing I have to admit it is a little frustrating, but I have got a lot further into this blog than I ever have before with any other touchscreen. 

If I'm honest I would love to be viewed clicking away on my trusty qwerty right now, there is no doubt. As I go on using the delete and backspace is getting a little annoying, but there are whole paragraphs that go without fault, so maybe this is still just down to me and my fat thumbs. To be fair let's go with that for now.

All in all, very impressive to say the least. And flick words are nice for the larger longer words. The word prediction is pretty good too, but I  find at the moment the tense of the suggests words are wrong. Seems to be improving though. 

So I will leave it there for now, here ends my test, and im pleased to say BlackBerry Z10 you have passed. 

Regards
Michael Snasdell

Blackberry service update

Well we have waited long enough for some more information, and it would appear because the problem has hit the shores of Canada now, that suddenly RIM are doing everything in their power to get it resolved asap. Surprisingly they have also upped their game in communicating their issues too. Previously when searching the Blackberry site, service updates were impossible to find. However Blackberry UK have just tweeted a very handy link to their current service status...

So for those of you NOT on Twitter, here is the illusive link to their info page
RIM SERVICE STATUS

Suddenly the penny drops, and with the issue spreading and not shrinking, it becomes apparent that this is something really quite serious. Is it more than a core switch, is there something Blackberry are not telling us here. Could this reach Playstation preportions? Who knows eh, and we are unlikely to either, but with no info all we can do is speculate. With speculation comes panic, and with panic comes abandon ship.... How many customers will have jumped ship by the end of this outage I wonder.

Fingers crossed the next 24 hours will see a return to normal status..... I can hope anyway.