Stex Toys

Just a quick update to say I took the plunge and purchased PodTrapper which at $9.99 is one of the most functional items of software for price you can find. I highly recommend any BlackBerry owner to check the software out, you get a 30 day trial to be sure it works for you. But if you listen to podcasts it’s well worth a look. I’ll probably post some links to some recommended ‘casts soon.

I’ve been meaning to get to listening to some PodCasts for some time. In fact I’ve tried several times to setup some automated process of downloading them, copying them to the BlackBerry (Pearl as was and Bold as is) and listening to them in the car on the daily jaunt to and from work. And even though WinAmp had a way for me to do this remembering where I was up to on the BlackBerry and actually listening to them was never a smooth process.

Things became far more likely to happen with the move to the Bold as it sports a full 3.5mm headphone jack rather than the limiting 2.5mm of the old Pearl. This meant I wasn’t restricted to the hands-free kit that came with the phone and could invest in a decent set of travel friendly earphones. However I still had the slightly finicky method of getting the ‘casts onto the Bold in the first place.

Enter the rather splendid product PodTrapper which not only provides a great playback method which remembers how much you’ve listened to each PodCast but also takes care of the downloading of the files in the first place. You can choose to download over the air (OTA) via either your phone network or WiFi or via a desktop application that you can download from the same site. An added nice touch is the ability to set it to only download when being recharged, so as not to waste battery life.

The latest edition, which at time of writing is 1.6.7 will also create a playlist for you based on several items of criteria, which I use in the main to order all my part/unlistened to ‘casts in chronological order, as i have a habit of favouring certain items if left to my own devices leaving others unlistened

With just days left on my free 30-day trial I’m reading the credit card for a purchase, as this is one product I have actually used on a daily basis since I installed it. Nice work VersitileMonkey guys!

I started talking about my life with a Blackberry back when I first got my Pearl in 2007. However as yet I haven’t updated the Blog since moving to the Bold last month. Time to change all that and in fact this post, typos and all, is coming from this very device. I’m happy to report that the blog works fine on the Bolds higher def screen and even my fat thumbs are finding the keys better than usual, but more on that at a later date. For now I just wanted to get the ball rolling at the same time as testing my access to the blog from the phone, as I never found an indirect blogging tool I liked, and prefer to come to the actual site