In my search to find a program to archive my SMS text messages, I found many references to ABC Amber Blackberry Converter. This program costs $20, and the free version only lets you convert 10 items at a time – very annoying.

The solution: a simple, free Windows program called MagicBerry.

The MagicBerry interface is very simple. To access the data of an IPD file you simply open it (File > Open) and all the information from that IPD appears in the right-hand column. You can then inspect each piece of data, or Export All to a CSV or text file.

This is the perfect solution for someone who wants to back up your SMS messages or other data from your blackberry and save it in a readable format. Thank you Ashraf Awwad for creating this simple, useful software!

The 3-2-1 Rule

The guys over at DPBestFlow have succinctly defined some best practices for keeping your data and photos safe. It’s called the 3-2-1 Rule:

• Have 3 copies of any important file (a primary and two backups)
• Have the backups on at least 2 different media types (hard drive and optical media, for example)
• 1 copy should be stored off-site

Some Ideas

So how do you set up a system of backing up your files to comply with the 3-2-1 system? Here are some services and methods that I

• Jungle Disk (and other online backup services) – Provides automated, off-site backup. It does daily backups of all the files I decide to backup, plus it mounts an additional Windows drive that I can save files to “the cloud” directly. For this service, you pay per MB stored and per MB transferred. Other options are Carbonite (unlimited size backup for a one-time fee) and Mozy.
• External Hard Drive – Every month I take a snapshot of my entire computer on my external hard drive. Use an encryption program like TrueCrypt to make sure your data is safe even if the external hard drive device is stolen.
• Media Server – I have a custom-built desktop computer that automatically keeps my data mirrored on two hard drives, which protects against hard drive failure. You can do this in RAID, but I find it easier to use a tool that runs as a service in Windows – SyncBack.
• Backupify – Although all the new cloud services are nice, we as consumers have no recourse if our accounts become inaccessible for some reason. This free service will automatically backup your data on Google (Mail, Contacts, Calendar), Twitter, Facebook (Facebook photos is a big one), Flicker, and much more.

Good luck backing up!

That’s a video from a “theory” computer science course – a type of course that all computer science students have to go through (at the University of Illinois, they are the _73 courses – 173, 373, and 473). There are some lucky students who find these courses fun and interesting, but most students find them extremely challenging. The topics that are covered in these classes are, however, the basis of computer science (or computational science, which is separate but similar), as this video is explains really well.

To get to the BIS interface for your carrier, just search “[carrier] BIS” in Google. For example, search “Verizon BIS” to get to https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw

If you set up your email on your device, however, you probably get this message:

Your account is not accessible via HTML browser. Please use your device to access BlackBerry Internet Service.

I struggled with this error for a bit, until I found these two resources. The second one shows how to enable your account to use the BIS. Note, however, that the “Create User Name” option is now in the Menu (click the menu button once you’re in the Email Settings) on the Blackberry Tour. Once you set this up you should be good to go for your BIS account.

Your account is not accessible via HTML browser. Please use your device to access BlackBerry Internet Service.

How to change the login mode for a BlackBerry Internet Service 2.4 account

For example, the NCHS of the CDC website can be accessed at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/Default.htm or at the much better looking URL http://www.cdc.gov/nchs.

Just some helpful advice. Please take these annoying little parts off of web addresses so that it looks cleaner. Thank you.

Anyway, a biproduct of the new web interface is that my Firefox extension NetID Lookup was broken for about 7 days. It is now fixed, and you can go to http://addons.mozilla.org to get the latest version (1.3). Thanks, and please provide feedback if you use and enjoy this simple extension.

The key is do not forget to install the dictionary. Both the Windows installer and the pre-compiled dictionaries for Windows are available on the Aspell Windows website. Don’t go to the main Aspll page – they only have the links to the UNIX dictionaries.

After you install Aspell and the English dictionary, you should be able to go to Plugins > Spell Checker, define where the DLL is located, and then you’re ready to start spell checking!

So, I did a quick search and found this nice little registry edit:

1. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

2. Create a new 32-bit DWORD value on the right-hand side with the following values:

• Name: NoInternetOpenWith
• Value: 1

This causes Windows to never open that useless prompt ever again. Thanks, HowToGeek.com.

There’s a lot of documentation out there on the Twitter API, but it was hard for me to find a small quick script to do this seemingly simple query, so I’m providing the one that I wrote.

Let me know if/how you like it. Code is here: twitter_script

I have previously written a UIUC Firefox Search Engine Plugin that searches the Phonebook, but it just was not working for me because I always had to change the drop-down selection from Google to the PH and back again. There must be a better way.

So, I developed what I’m calling the NetID Lookup Extension. This is a simple Firefox extension that adds an item to your right-click toolbar. When text is selected, you can right-click on that text, click “Search NetID,” and a new Firefox tab will open with that text entered into the PH.

Right now it’s on the Mozilla Addons site, but is still classified as “experimental” – which means you have to log in (and set up a free account if you haven’t already) before installing it. If you install the extension and like what it does, please give it some feedback on the Mozilla page so that it can become a full-fledged extension. You can also find some more information on a page I created here (listed in the top tabs of this site).