HeadHardHat Reviews BlackStar Geocaching Application For BlackBerry Phones

HeadHardHat takes a look at BlackStar

I had recently watched an episode of  IceNRye's TrackFiles which is a very well done geocaching videozine. There he mentioned about a BlackBerry geocaching application known as Blackstar and if anyone had a video showing it in use. Now normally I usually get asked first to do a review but this is a FREE application and thought it would be perfect to test and let other geocachers know if it is worth using or not. So off I went into the Autumn woods of North Carolina and gave it a spin. Below is not only my review of it but a full blown GeoSnippits Video.

As you know I do not pull punches about a product I am reviewing. I calls them as I sees them so that you my ever trusted viewers get the facts. So before I get inundated with your emails of likes and dislikes let me say this straight out. When I first said I was doing a review of BlackStar I recieved a ton of twitter tweets from users who use BlackStar all the time. For that I am grateful, it is also the reason why I went and did a second round of testing just to be extra sure of my findings.

So go enjoy the GeoSnippits. I had a lot of fun making it and you will not only find my actual findings but a scorecard of how I felt BlackStar did... Enjoy.

-HHH



If the player above does not function, please click this link to go directly to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n4Wradn28E

My personal likes and dislikes of the BlackStar application. I like that it is free and gives a beginning geocacher the chance to go out with minimal cost and go geocaching.

What bugged me the absolute most about BlackStar is it's need for use of third party applications and the time it took to load the applications for everything you do while geocaching. Also if you are in an area that does not have fast internet access you are really going to feel the pain with all the uploads. I honestly can say that this would be a terrible application to use if you were on a numbers run due to the lag between programs yet on the other hand if you are just geocaching for the moment it can be handy. The best thing is to give it a shot for yourself.

You can download your free copy of BlackStar for your BlackBerry phone from this link here:
http://www.blackstarnavigation.com/


GeoCache: I'm NOT Obsessed... Right?
http://headhardhat-geocache.blogspot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------
Twitter me at
@headhardhat

Please don't forget to visit our GeoSnippits Geocaching Tutorial Videos Website at
http://www.geosnippits.com

Black Berry Phones Powering Down - My Findings

I have worked in computer support for a combined 15 years so I am putting in the disclaimer here. My situation may not be the exact same as yours so you will have to do a little research to see if this will indeed work for you. When in doubt check with your carrier for more details... yadda.. yadda... yadda...

So here's the situation. I own a BlackBerry 8310 also known as a Curve. It has worked fairly well for me for over two years now, until recently. The issue I was having would be the unit powering itself off regardless of what the visual indicater stated was left of battery life.

• Pressing the power button did nothing
• Using a power adapter or charger would restart the phone when connected
• The battery indicator would usually show a significant drain when the phone reinitialized.

What to do? It literally was at the point that if you pulled the battery and put it back in the phone would again power down a moment or two after booting yet the indicator still stated there was at least 1/4 of battery life left.

This was very frustrating. Nothing like being 100' from a geocache only to have the phone die and no way of getting it back up. That is also why I am mentioning this on my blog because it easily can be geocaching related. To The Internet!!!

The Internet gave many ways of potentially resolving the problem. Everything from reseating the battery to wiping your operating system and restoring. The problem is very common and you can find example after example all over the net. I had no problem doing a wipe of my phone but if there were any workable solutions before going through all of that I wanted to give a shot. So I did do the remove the battery for several minutes trick. It actually seemed to work for about 30 minutes before going back to bad habits. Then I read that you should replace your battery. Hmmmm, I thought. If I am going to spend the $50 for a new battery I better be able to return it if the phone insists on being uncooperative. So I made sure I kept the receipt before proceeding.

Needless to say I replaced the old battery with the new one and for the last week or so it has been working flawlessly. Well as much as a Black Berry can anyways. So if you are having troubles similar to mine I suggest you trade with a friend that has a new battery to see if it goes back to working correctly or go buy a new one like I did. For me it was the best solution and this time I did not have to reinstall all the software.

I hope this information proves useful to you.

-HHH

GeoCache: I'm NOT Obsessed... Right?
http://headhardhat-geocache.blogspot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------
Twitter me at @headhardhat

Please don't forget to visit our GeoSnippits Geocaching Tutorial Videos Website at http://www.geosnippits.com