Mobile Phones, Technology, Internet, Music, PC, Softwares Tips

Airtel Nigeria Now Offers The Cheapest and Most Cost Effective Mobile Data Plan

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Sat, 26 May 2012 15:40:00 +0000

Everyone who owns a feature phone with internet access in Nigeria now knows that the cheapest data plan you can get goes for N1,000 with a minimum data cap of 200MB depending on the network. Same applies to those who own non-blackberry smartphones.

For those of us with BlackBerry phones, N1,400 can fetch us unlimited pinging, emails, browsing and downloads all month long without data restrictions if you’re on the Etisalat Nigeria network (Globacom has a data cap of 3GB per month while MTN has one of 200MB which they haven’t really enforced)

Airtel Nigeria recently deployed 3G across all states of the nation and after a few positive reviews from colleagues of mine, I was quick to sign up for the night browsing plan which I really enjoyed.

With Etisalat Nigeria and Globacom Nigeria experiencing BlackBerry internet connectivity issues for weeks here in Sokoto, I decided to give Airtel a try only to discover that they only offered what I felt then was a measly 1GB per month with the option of PC tethering which isn’t available on blackberry data plans offered by other networks in the country unless you use some form of hack.

I must admit that at first I was very pissed ’cause I use up to 3GB of data a month since I tend to download movies and softwares on my blackberry but then after we launched MTN HyNet Wi-Fi internet access at my place of work, I began to see the beauty of Airtel’s BlackBerry Data Plan.

I moved all my downloads unto the wi-fi network and noticed that on average I used up only 20mb of data a day on my blackberry smartphone.

In a month, I’m used to spending N2,500 a month on internet access but with the advent of Wi-Fi at my place of work, I now spend just N1,400.

NOTE: this article is only beneficial to those who don’t own blackberry phones or don’t use their blackberry for heavy downloads

FOR THE REGULAR PHONE/PC USER

Simply load N1,400 and text BCM to 440, and you automatically get 1GB of data for the month unlike the 200MB you get for N1,000 with other networks.

FOR BLACKBERRY SMARTPHONE USERS

If all you do on your blackberry phone is Email, BBM, Twitter, Facebook and Whatspp with browsing via Opera Mini, you’d be spending roughly 20MB a day which translates to about 600MB a month with 400MB left for you to browse on your PC instead of forking out N1,000 for a different data plan for your PC which by the way will only offer you 200MB.

How To Subscribe To Airtel Nigeria 1GB Data Plan for BlackBerry, Other Phones and PC

Simply load N1,400 worth of airtime and then text BCM to 440 for BlackBerry Complete

To check your data balance simply dial *141*11*0# and to check your BlackBerry validity period, simply text status to 440.

For more info, do please check out the official Airtel Nigeria Blackberry Internet Plans page.

For those of you who have been using Airtel Nigeria’s Blackberry Complete plan on PC and Android phones, what has your experience being like? Feel free to share with us by leaving a comment below

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My Horrid Experience Buying Apps With MTN’s BlackBerry Appworld Recharge Card

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:28:49 +0000

While the present Governor of Central Bank Of Nigeria continues to plug his Cashless Nigeria policy, we the netizens are still having a rough time using our Naira MasterCards online. These MasterCard branded debit cards issued by the banks work on some sites and don’t work on others and it’s pretty frustrating.

We BlackBerry users are facing the same issue with BlackBerry’s Appworld and thus one can imagine the joy I felt when a colleague shared the news that MTN Nigeria was planning on launching some sort of recharge card for BlackBerry Appworld.

This card pictured to the left, was supposed to enable users acquire paid apps without the stress of worrying about owning a Visa or MasterCard.

I was pretty quick to secure two of the promotional cards my colleague had been given, in hope of downloading some precious apps I had been eyeing for a very long time.

On accessing the MTN BlackBerry Apps site, I noticed that without the serial number and download code of the recharge card, one was denied access to the content of the site. A little bit of poking around their terms and condition revealed that they were linked to Mobiroo.

There and then I made the *fatal mistake* of checking out Mobiroo only to be wowed by an awesome display of apps that totally clouded my judgment and before I knew it, cash exchanged hands and I became the *proud but later angry* owner of one of the first MTN BlackBerry Appworld recharge cards.

Within 1 minute of logging into the download section, I knew I had been scammed again by MTN Nigeria! Warra hell was all I could mutter.

Instead of the plethora of apps Mobiroo were offering for both the Android and BlackBerry mobile operating systems, I was welcomed by a measly 19 apps including

A+ Chat for Facebook
Aces Jewel Hunt
Awesome! Bubble Breaker
Blink
Bubble Defense
deBattGym
Fat Face
Fonts Ultimate
Football Calendar – England 2011-2012
Hidden Files
iBlocker Pro (Call Blocker) – Call Block and Send Custom SMS
iLock – The KING in Lock King Apps
Light Bulbs
Memory Booster – RAM Optimizer
Photo Editor Ultimate
Pinball Deluxe
Screen Muncher
Slide Lock – Slide to Unlock
Wallpapers PRO

To even make matters worse, some of the apps were over priced with markups of up to $2 above the official BlackBerry Appworld sales price.

To the management of MTN Nigeria, I hope for your sake the MTN Apps site is still under construction ‘cause if you plan on launching this card with the site looking the way it is and poorly stocked for that matter, NCC will come down heavily on thieving a** as this is just plain deceitful. Why not show the customer what he’s paying for upfront before he makes a decision to dine with your sorry a**? It’s stuff like this that make peeps rejoice whenever they hear the NCC has fined you.

Giving that the damage had been done, I quickly asked for a refund on the second card which I got and I used the one I had scratched already to download Pinball Deluxe, Photo Editor Ultimate and deBattGym. I’m only enjoying Pinball Deluxe right now. Photo Editor seems to be increasing the size of edited images instead of reducing them and deBattGym was creating issues for me thus I dumped it as well.

If anyone offers you these cards and the apps you want to buy are missing in action on the list above, RUN oh!

Finally do please take note that Mobiroo and MTN Apps are in no way affiliated with BlackBerry Appworld. They just offer a service that makes BlackBerry apps available to users who don’t have a PayPal account or debit/credit card.

Top 5 Features I’d Love To See In BlackBerry 10

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Sat, 05 May 2012 23:46:40 +0000

With the Samsung Galaxy SIII set to hit to market before this month runs out, I’m dying to hear a release date for the new BlackBerry 10 devices. At the moment, RIM seems to be wooing developers to create apps for the new operating system and I really hope they come up with pretty interesting stuff.

Meanwhile, I’ve had quite a good run with the BlackBerry Curve 3G and I’m now using a Bold Touch 9900 but still I must say there are quite a number of features a part of me wishes the folks at RIM would just pay attention to immediately.

To the guys at RIM, if you’re reading this, here are the top 5 features I wish the new BlackBerry 10 phones would come with.

Fully Functional Download Manager: till date the BlackBerry default browser lacks pause and resume downloads functions and that’s pretty annoying. Most times, the network has bailed on me in the middle of a large file download and I’d had to start all over again from the beginning wasting my precious data allowance for the month’s BIS subscription.

Opera Mini As Default Browser: for those living in areas with excellent network reception and 3.5G internet access, surfing the web with the default browser is a breeze but for those of us on unstable networks with access to only EDGE, it’s pretty frustrating waiting for pages to load and Opera Mini always comes to the rescue saving us our sanity as it’s pretty faster than the default browser. We just wish RIM would give us the ability to configure all links to open with Opera Mini by default. (Tall request right? I know)

Hard Reset Without Battery Removal: removing and replacing batteries frequently can be quite a frustrating experience and I wish you guys would just give us a button on the device for that already.

Backup Internet Access: in this part of the world, internet services tend to go down at will especially when you need them most. What’s more frustrating is that sometimes the internet is up but BIS just crashes leaving one stranded. It would really be nice if the new blackberry devices had like a backup connection using TCP/IP. For now TCP only works when there’s an active BIS connection and the reverse would be a welcome development

Skype Communication: since you guys are planning to target regular consumers with the new BlackBerry devices now is the time to throw in Skype even if it will only work via Wi-Fi.

Well these are just the few features that I wish you guys would implement as they would boost my blackberry experience tremendously.

To my readers who own blackberry phones, what features do you wish your devices possessed?

Speak your mind in the comment section

My Top 10 Must Have BlackBerry Apps

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:02:00 +0000

BlackBerry Appworld unlike every other mobile application market out there today is poorly stocked with just over 60,000 applications to date but for folks like me, 99% of the apps we need are readily available there or via developer websites.

I’m always on the look out for new apps that could help boost productivity or enhance the features of my Bold 9900. Some have found their way into my heart while others have fallen by the way side after a few days or weeks of use.

Of all the apps on my BlackBerry phone, here are the top 10 without which my blackberry experience would be so DULL!

Socialscope For BlackBerry: still in private beta phase thus only accessible by invitation, this social networking app supports Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare. In my opinion, it’s like Ubersocial on steroids and now replaces two apps on my phone (Twitter and Facebook for BlackBerry)

Whatsapp: one of the features the blackberry phone is most popular for is the BlackBerry Messenger which allows for messaging, exchange of files, pictures, music and what have you with other blackberry mobile users over a secure connection. Whatsapp steps in sealing the communication gap so you can stay in touch with those friends of yours who don’t have a BlackBerry. You can do pretty much the same things the BlackBerry Messenger allows you to do using your iPhone, Android, Nokia Symbian S60 & S40 and Windows Phone.

NOTE: I wouldn’t transmit confidential info via whatsapp if I were you ’cause I don’t think it as secure as the BlackBerry Messenger.

Opera Mini and UC Browser For BlackBerry: with the launch of BlackBerry OS 6, the default browser has undergone a tremendous change in a bid to make it faster and more user reliable. Unfortunately the page load speed still sucks for many of us probably due to the poor speed of our internet connections. Also the download manager just doesn’t cut it either and it’s yet to be revamped in OS 7.1. On my phone, I make use of Opera Mini for all my browsing needs as it still remains the fastest mobile browser out there in the market. Given that it’s download manager also sucks as well, I make use of UC Browser for all my blackberry downloads.

BlackBerry News: I keep abreast of the daily news around the world via my Firefox browser addon, Newsfox. Unfortunately I don’t access the internet on my laptop frequently thus I sometimes miss out on important news updates and what have you. With my discovery of BlackBerry News app, I’m always up to date even on what’s going on my fave *gossip* blog, Linda Ikeji. Lol

WordPress for Blackberry: I run two wordpress blogs and sometimes don’t have the time to turn on my laptop to do simple things such as approve and reply to comments. Well, this official wordpress app for blackberry comes in handy for that and what’s more, I’ve started writing the articles for this blog on my Bold 9900 instead of my laptop and it’s so much fun

Capture Nux: when it comes to creating screenshots of my blackberry, nothing gets the job done like Capture Nux. It integrates flawlessly into the menu of the BlackBerry OS allowing me to take pictures of practically every screen on my phone. These screenshots help in the writing of most of the articles here and in diagnosing problems with my BB friends online. My only problem with it is the lack of an image resize function which hopefully will be included in future releases.

BBSSH: sometimes I do need to download files whose links are set to expire either to due to frequent file updates, server bandwidth issues or what have you. Using BBSSH, I’m able to create copies of these downloads on my own server so that in my leisure time and when my internet connection is strong enough, I can download them at ease.

Instant Reboot: by default when you have problems with your blackberry, removing the battery and inserting it back again always solves such issues. Now the problem is that after a while it gets pretty exhausting having to open the battery compartment from time to time. Enter Instant Reboot app. Instant reboot is a tiny app which blends into the blackberry menu offering you a one click solution to reboot your blackberry device without removing your battery at all. So many apps found in BlackBerry Appworld claim to have this function but so far so good Instant Reboot seems to be the only that actually works without buts

Fancy Tran: last but not the least is Fancy Tran my trusted dictionary and translator. Sometimes I do forget the spelling of certain words or I need to corroborate the meaning of word in either English or Spanish and dear ol’ Fancy Tran never fails at all It does come with ads which really don’t bug me anyway. With my top 10 blackberry apps out of the way, here’s the list of other apps, I do use from time to time depending on which situation I find myself in.

Battery Saver Pro by MMMOOO: helps to keep my battery running for a longer time.
BlackBerry Podcasts and Podtrapper for BlackBerry: for queuing downloads
FlashLight: 2 FOR 1 Free: when the power goes out as has become a custom here in Nigeria, this app quickly provides the much needed light to make my way around the house.
mChat – Facebook Chat app: for those times when I’m bored and free to chat away on facebook.
Rock File Manager: unzipping files and installing COD application files has never been easy.
Silent Camera: for those occasions when I want to take pictures discreetly without those around me or the subject being aware. It mutes that sound the camera makes when taking a shot.
Traffic Monitor: not all telecom companies offer unlimited data on Blackberry plans like Etisalat Nigeria does. This app helps to keep tag of your monthly data consumption so I don’t end up having to renew my BIS plan before the month is up.
XE Currency: quick current foreign exchange rates at the tip of my finger

Well, folks that’s just about all the apps on my BlackBerry Bold 9900. What indispensable apps do you use on your BlackBerry device?

Do please share with us.

How to Hide / Reveal Display Panel on BlackBerry Touchscreens

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Wed, 02 May 2012 07:33:02 +0000

For quite sometime now, my blackberry’s home screen has playing tricks on me. Sometimes the home screen display panel disappears or rather just goes blank like in the picture above and ignorant of how to fix this, I keep resetting the damn thing sacrificing my customization and what have you.

As far as I know, on my blackBerry Curve 3, this is easily fixed through the Home Screen Grid Layout section of the Options area but unfortunately, it ain’t so on the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900.

Well I just discovered that this option was turned off for blackberry phones with touchscreen as by merely dragging the panel up and down, you can change the number of icons that appear on your home screen.

You see that little arrow where the icons are meant to appear? Simply press it and pull up or down to reveal or hide as many icons as you want.

Enjoy.

NOTE: this only affects the horizontal layout of icons on the home screen. You can have a maximum of 3 horizontal line of icons on your screen.

Top Three Facts You Ought To Know Before Purchasing A BlackBerry Phone

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:14:41 +0000

With each passing day, more and more folks here in Nigeria are being drawn into the BlackBerry circle which in my opinion is a good thing ’cause I’m on #TeamBlackBerry all the way and would love to see RIM rise above its recents financial losses.

Despite being a fan, I do have to admit that Research In Motion’s BlackBerry smartphone has its’ shortcomings just like the mighty Apple iPhone does. If the BlackBerry is going to be your first smartphone, you can go ahead and purchase one without much hesitation but if you’ve been a proud owner of one of those hi-end smartphones like the Nokia N8, N900 and E7, there are a few things you must take into consideration before doling out cash for a BlackBerry device.

BLACKBERRY DATA SUBSCRIPTION IS COMPULSORY

Without a BlackBerry Internet Plan or Wi-Fi access, your blackberry device is just a texting and voice call device with mediocre camera. Internet traffic on BlackBerry phones is routed through RIMs servers in different strategic locations across the globe. Access to these servers is limited to those with an active BIS plan. I think Nigeria uses the servers in the UK. Your regular smartphone data plan will not work on the BlackBerry Platform. Even the Wi-Fi itself requires an active blackberry data plan.

There’s nothing as annoying as having BIS connection go awol while regular internet is still working just fine especially when you have important stuff to do online. It makes you want to slam the device across the nearest wall.

LACK OF PLETHORA OF APPS

Mobile application guzzlers and those of you who have experienced the richness of the Android Marketplace and Nokia Ovi store, will have a hard time adapting to BlackBerry’s Appworld as it practically has
just a little over a mere 60, 000 applications only.

You can imagine something as simple as an effective download manager is still missing from the BlackBerry Appworld.

CAMERA SUCKS

If you’re addicted to taking clean hi-resolution pictures with your Nokia N8 or Samsung Galaxy S II, I strongly advice you not to make the BlackBerry device your primary carry-everywhere-you-go device as you’ll be disappointed. In my experience the quality of pics on the BlackBerry Bold 9900′s 5MP camera is almost the same as those obtainable from the 2MP camera on the budget feature phone, Nokia Asha 200.

Let’s just say quality cellphone cameras are not one of the BlackBerry’s strengths.

If you can overlook these setbacks of the BlackBerry phone, then I say go for it.

In my opinion, I’ve been able to adapt to the BlackBerry’s shortcomings quite well as 99% of the apps I truly need are available via BlackBerry Appworld for free and I’m never keen on taking pictures with my Bold’s camera.

The compulsory BIS thing still pisses me off though and I wish RIM Canada would just offer some form of alternative in the BlackBerry Operating System that allows us use of the internet when the BlackBerry Internet Service temporarily goes down.

As always feel free to ask any question and I’d be glad to help out. Don’t forget to share on twitter and facebook.

Dropbox Adds File and Folder Link Sharing Functionality

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:45:02 +0000

My first foray into the world of cloud storage was with DropBox. That was over 1 year ago but for the past 2 months now, I’ve switched allegiance to its new competitor SugarSync.

Using the Send to Dropbox app, my use of DropBox was tailored towards aggregating all my email attachments in one secure location for mass downloading later on. Unfortunately this email to dropbox application developed issues and stopped working and also downloading my files with the DropBox desktop software became kind of a chore ’cause of the somewhat slow internet speeds.

With SugarSync I was able to send my email attachments to my account using a sugarsync generated email address and I was also able to download my attachments in one zip file and share the download link with my friends as well.

Well looks like Dropbox has decided to do something about the competition as they’ve now added the ability to share a link to your files or folders with friends and family.

Unfortunately using these public links, you can’t download the files directly. You can only view them online via a nifty public interface. The integrity of your documents are in no way affected as public users can’t edit them.

This new Dropbox feature should work for some of you but for me, it still doesn’t change anything and I’m sticking with my SugarSync account which offers close to 6GB of online storage space.

Maybe when they add email to account storage and direct download link functionality, I’ll go back to them (Dropbox)

Motorola XT390 Dual SIM Android Heads For China

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:37:27 +0000

Somewhere along the line I think I missed the memo that said Africa was no longer a hotspot for dual SIM mobile phones ’cause I sincerely can’t understand the moves of the likes of Motorola launching their flagship dual-sim handsets in far away Brazil and now China.

With the price pegged at $160 = N25,000, this 3.5″ HVGA all-touchscreen display phone will run on Android Gingerbread OS with an 800MHz processor and 512MB RAM.

Other features include a 3.2MP camera, internet connectivity via GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA/Wi-Fi, GPS and of course MicroSD support of up to 32GB.

In the past Motorola has been quite active in the Nigerian mobile market but over the years, other brands have taken over leaving them behind. If reports are anything to go by, RIM’s BlackBerry seems poised to be the most successful smartphone in the market and they haven’t even started running *aggresive* adverts yet!

If this device ever hits our shores, we’d be sure to let you know ASAP!

How To Fix WordPress For BlackBerry XML-RPC Endpoint Not Found Error

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:05:39 +0000

Over the weekend, I upgraded my stellar BlackBerry Curve 3 to the *cheap* version of the BlackBerry Porsche, that is the uber sexy BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900. Moving my data from one device to the other was a breeze using the BlackBerry Desktop Manager’s switch devices function but as it has always been in the past with things such as BlackBerry OS upgrades, I lost the settings of my wordpress for BlackBerry app and so I had to re-enter my blog details from scratch.

I was able to configure the first blog without issues but the second blog (precisely this patchworkoftips.com) kept giving me problems with the error:

“We could not find the xmlrpc end point of your blog. Please insert the complete URL below”

A quick search of the BlackBerry forums yielded no results but I did learn one thing. The xmlrpc.php file of my wordpress installation probably got corrupted during the last wordpress upgrade. I uploaded a fresh xml-rpc file to the server but still faced the damn error then someone’s comment on the site caught my eye.

By default when you access the xmlrpc.php file via your browser (http://www.yoursite.com/xmlrpc.php), you are supposed to get this message:

XML-RPC server accepts POST requests only

Unfortunately mine was showing this

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 30720 bytes) in /home/xxxxxxx/public_html/xxxxxxxxxxx.com/wp-includes/class-wp-xmlrpc-server.php on line 659

It was pretty clear that my wordpress installation had breached its memory limit so I increased it by downloading my wp-config.php file and adding this line define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’); as shown in the screenshot below

That pretty much solved the XML-RPC end point error I was experiencing and I hope it does for you too. Now I’m back to managing my wordpress sites on the go via my BlackBerry phone.

Do have a great week ahead guys

P.S: I shall be publishing my very own review of the BlackBerry Bold 9900 soon. Do stay tuned!

Mark ZuckerBerg Wants President Goodluck Jonathan To Get Off Facebook STAT!

Dr. Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:40:07 +0000

Just got this animated parody video via BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

In the video President Goodluck Jonathan is amassing quite a number of curses on his Facebook profile and now Mark ZuckerBerg wants him off Facebook ‘cause the curses seem to be melting FB servers already.

The funniest part is when Mark ZuckerBerg switches to the Yoruba dialect to pass his message across clearly. lol

Video was brought to you by OurOwnArea.

Click here to download it in mp4 version to your mobile phone.