Let Blackberry Bold freedom ring

The whole appeal of the BlackBerry Bold phenomenon is the idea that this little electronic device can make your life easier. One of the ways it accomplishes this is by acting as your personal reminder service — letting you know when an appointment is coming up, a phone call is coming in, an e-mail has arrived, and so on. Basically, your BlackBerry Bold is set to bark at you if it knows something it thinks you should know, too. Figure 3-6 lists the kinds of things your BlackBerry Bold considers bark-worthy, ranging from browser alerts to tasks deadlines.

Different people react differently to different sounds. Some BlackBerry Bold barks would be greatly appreciated by certain segments of the population, whereas other segments might react to the same sound by pitching their BlackBerry Bold under the nearest bus. The folks at Research In Motion are well aware of this and have devised a great way for you to customize how you want your BlackBerry Bold to bark at you — they call it your profile.

You can jump right into things by using a predefined profile, or you can create your own profile. The upcoming sections take a look at both approaches. Whether you create your own profile or customize a predefined profile, each profile is divided into several categories that represent the application for which you can define alerts.

In BlackBerry OS 4.6, the application to set your profiles is named Profiles and includes the following categorizations:


✓ BlackBerry Messenger Alert: Alerts you when BlackBerry Messenger has something to notify you regarding new contact notification.
✓ BlackBerry Messenger New Message: Alerts you when BlackBerry Messenger has a new message from a BlackBerry Messenger contact.
✓ Browser: Alerts you when you receive a new channel push, which is just a Web page sent to your BlackBerry Bold.
✓ Calendar: Alerts you when you have upcoming appointments.
✓ Level 1 (urgent e-mail messages): Alerts you with a special tone when you have an urgent e-mail: urgent, as defined by your sender. Also, a BlackBerry PIN-to-PIN message can be considered urgent. For more on PIN-to-PIN, see Chapter 9.
✓ Messages [Email]: Alerts you when a new e-mail message is in your inbox.
✓ Phone: Alerts you if you have an incoming call or a new voice mail.
✓ SMS Text: Alerts you when you have an SMS message.
✓ Tasks: Alerts you of an upcoming to-do deadline.

In BlackBerry OS 5.0, profiles can be found in the Sounds application, and Sound items are organized into the following categories:


✓ Phone: Alerts you if you have an incoming call or voice mail.
✓ Messages: Alerts you if you have an incoming e-mail, SMS, MMS, or BlackBerry PIN messages. Also, you can set different alerts for each individual e-mail account.
✓ Instant Messages: Alerts you if you have any BlackBerry Messenger Alerts; if you have third-party instant message installed (such as Google Talk), you can set the alerts here as well.
✓ Reminders: Alerts you if you have set up calendar reminders, tasks reminders, or e-mail Follow Up Flags.
✓ Other: Alerts you when there is a new browser channel message or other third-party applications.

You can personalize all the listed applications according to how you want to be alerted. Because how you customize them is similar, we use one application, Messages, as an example in the text that follows.