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Being new to the world of Blackberries, I decided to pickup this book for some technical knowledge of the device. After the first couple of chapters I skimmed through and decided that maybe 1/3 of the book was relevant to what I was expecting. Unfortunately, in the world of technology, 3 years is a long time and much seemed not applicable to my Bold (9000). Many of the shortcuts were in the manual and some of them were not usable on the Bold. If you have an older Blackberry, perhaps you may find it useful but like other technical documents, 3 years old is just too old to keep up with the rush of new technology and new devices that pops up daily. *You may note that reviewers that gave the book high marks had reviewed the book close to its publication date.
BlackBerry Hacks: Tips & Tools for Your Mobile OfficeFor every BLACKBERRY OWNER, this is the book for you. Don't 'Blackberry' without it.
It doesn't address the newer Blackberry models (Pearl, Curve, Bold, etc) as it was published in 2006 and has not been revised in the interim.I would not recommend this book unless you have an older Blackberry model. I bought this hoping for a set of tips more tightly focused on the operation of the Blackberry OS and built-in applications. It turns out to be more of a compendium of 3rd party apps that you can access with your (older) Blackberry. Hacks 94 to 100 do appear to be helpful introductory material if you want to develop your own Blackberry apps, though they aren't worth the cover price of this book. Look for a used copy if you must have it.
Although I could see how some of those BES scripts would be usefulI would say this is a good book when it first came out now, but is almost useless at this point with technology where it is now. (Which I would hope anyone who accesses the BES would already know this).
The problem is, the book only really talks about tricks you can do with third party applications. When I got this book, I was really expecting to get more information from it regarding tricks on the BlackBerry.
This seriously needs an update.The BES administration piece, just teaches you how to do a bunch of right clicks. It does touch on a few nifty tricks, but nothing that I would say is not of value.Some of the great parts of this book though has to be the entire section dedicated to maximizing your memory or hack 12.
Also keep in mind, that the market changes so fast that device lifetime is about 6 months to a year. Also deals with a much older version of the BES version 3.
Could really use an update.
In just a few pages a programmer can start with the sample, build an app, and prepare it for both OTA and desktop installation. But as the book progresses it gets deeper into the BB's relationship with the servers, but not in an overly-complex way. A lot of the first hacks of the book might seem old-hat to a Blackberry 101 graduate. It is at about the same level as the first K&R C chapter where we were taught how to write "hello world", compile and link, and run our first program. It seems designed toward folks who have already read the manual and want a little bit more, but aren't quite ready to become systems engineers. Toward the end it describes, again in simple language, how to download the development environment from RIM, and actually start building simple applications, starting with a simple stock quote Java program, with source, that can then be used as a beginning example for further development. I always do best when they give me and example rather than trying to explain in english how to do it. And Mabes makes that really simple.If you want to do more than just use the Blackberry, and want some tips on little known tricks, and want to actually write code for the blackberries, without having to read all of "Professional Blackberry" and ALL of the RIM literature, this is a good place to start.Mike Jalkut, Embedded Systems Compiler Developer
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