Business Tools Blog

By Trevor Dobrygoski
Trevord209@gmail.com

Google, like many other companies, has came out with a way to access your Google web applications on your Blackberry. The application is called the Google Mobile Application. Their application allows access to commonly used web applications such as: Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Maps and News to name a few. The apps like Gmail, Maps and Reader offer almost full functionality, while some of the other apps offer less access from your Blackberry. With the mobile versions there is likely to be some things that you may want to do, but due to the constraints of the mobile environment or popularity, these functions may not be possible right now. The following sections are a brief run through of the applications that can be accessed through the Google Mobile Application.

Sync
One of the mobile apps that I have really found useful is the Sync application. This application will sync your Blackberry calendar with your Google Calendar wirelessly or over the air (OTA). Google Sync also allows your Blackberry address book and your Gmail contacts to be merged at the same time. These two features are HUGE. By having the ability to sync those things, that takes care of a lot of worry if you lose your Blackberry. Your contacts and calendar will will not be lost. The OTA sync feature allows for regular automatic or manual syncing. Being able to sync while out of the office allows for a certain luxury that only reserved for companies with exchange or enterprise servers. What I mean is, you may have a small company and share a common calendar with your sales and your project manager. The sales person can add an appointment or new project start date to the calendar. Either on the next sync or on the site itself, the project manager will see all the notes, alerts and times that the sales person added to the new event.

Search
This feature is almost a must in today’s world. Google Search is one of the most used web apps. The mobile application works very similar to the web version. The big difference is that all of the links that are clicked are formatted for the Blackberry WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) browser. Formatting it this way is very handy because Google takes out all of the flash animation and a lot of the other stuff that would bog down your Blackberry. It uses a much more simplified version of the site instead of the full HTML version.

Maps
Google Maps is amazing. The mobile version offers all of the commonly used features that the well known web version has. The mobile version of Google Maps is packed with features such as: street, hybrid or satellite views and turn by turn driving, walking and transit directions. You can also search local businesses in the area. The search will show several choices and give the address, phone number with an option to call, customer ratings and can be added to your favorite places.

Reader
Google Reader is one of my most used Google Mobile Application. For those of you who frequent the same websites or blogs, this mobile RSS reader will be a massive time saver. It allows all of the new articles from the sites or blogs of your choice to show up in one location. You can quickly glance through the list of new articles and choose what you want to read. If you don’t like what you see, you can mark them all as read and they are removed from the list. The  Google Reader mobile application allows you to star or share articles. The sharing feature is nice if you have people that like to see what you are reading. Adding a star to an article is a simple grouping or tag that makes it easy to search for later. While the Google Reader Mobile Application does not currently allow tagging other than adding a star, you can tag and group your feeds on the web version and they will carry over to the mobile version.

News
The news icon is exactly as you would think it would be. It is a direct link to the mobile version of Google news. It gives you the ability to search all the news articles, look at specific topics or tags such as the U.S., sports, world news and business to name a few. Another handy feature is being able to create your own custom category. It lets you type in keywords and will pull up all the articles with those keywords in them. Very helpful if you are following a certain story.

Gmail
The mail option is a really useful Google Mobile Application. It gives you the majority of the functionality of the web based Gmail. A few of the features are that it allows for searching your mail, archiving, adding stars, reporting spam and seeing all of your contacts. There are a couple draw backs that I have noticed. Attachments cannot be saved to the phone using the Gmail application. Also certain files will not open when using the Gmail application either. In most cases this hasn’t been a major issue from anyone I know that uses it.

Some of the other applications that you have access to are: Notebook, Docs and Calendar. All three of these offer limited functionality and offer slightly more than a read only version of these mobile applications.