Transfer Contacts from Blackberry Torch to iPhone

I hate to say this, but nowadays more people are ditching their blackberries for the iPhone or Android devices.

I recently had a request from a user who had been happily using a Blackberry Torch. He had just bought an iPhone 4S and wanted to know how he could move all his contacts to his new phone. I took this to be an easy task to do, but as I found a few minutes later, this was going to be quite a challenge. I found that I could not bulk copy the contacts onto the sim and move the sim across to the iPhone. The Blackberry Torch did not have any option to bulk copy contacts!! With at least 200 contacts, I did not want to waste a few days just moving contacts around, so I decided to find a better solution.

And here it is.
1. Create a gmail account (unless you already have one)
2. Download Google Sync onto your Blackberry Torch.
3. Sign in to your Google Sync using your Gmail Credentials from step 1. above
4. You will then be asked to sync your contacts to Gmail. Change the frequency to Manual.
5. Do a sync of the contacts so that all contacts are uploaded to Gmail.
6. Once this is complete, login to your Gmail account
7. Go into Contacts. Under More, you will see the Export option. Click this.
8. Choose the following settings for Exporting Contacts

    - All Contacts
    - vCard format (for importing into Apple Address Book or another application)

9. Once you have done this, you will get a file with all your contacts in it.

Now we will import this into your iPhone. To do this, we will login to your iCloud account.
Please note that to get an iCloud account, you will need to be running at least iOS 5.0 on your iPhone. If you have not already done so, please create an iCloud account.

10. Login to your iCloud account using your browser by going to http://www.icloud.com
11. From the dashboard, click on Contacts (you might be asked to install the iCloud Web App Plugin) Click Install  for this.
12. Once you are in your iCloud contacts section, at the bottom you will see a spiked wheel icon. This is your settings icon. Click on it and choose Import vCard
13. You will then get a popup asking you for the location of the vCard file. Point it to the file that you exported from Gmail (Step 9)
14. Once the import is finished, Viola! Your contacts would have been uploaded to iCloud.
15. Ensure your iPhone has been setup to Sync its contacts with iCloud. If it has then all your imported Gmail Contacts will now show on your iPhone.

Yay!! How easy was that?

Week 27 Article 03 - MobiPocket - RSS Feeds on your Blackberry, the cheap way

I bet many of you by now are aware what RSS feeds are. For those that still dont know, here is a wikipedia link on RSS

RSS feeds are quite handy when trying to see updates on a website. And even more useful when you have time to look at them, for instance during commuting, sitting in a waiting room, or just enjoying a cup of coffee out in the park. The most convienient device to have during these times is a smartphone. But as I have found, it can be quite expensive browsing the net over your carriers internet connection. Just a few megabytes can take you away from tens of dollars! During these times, every cent saved is welcomed. And with RSS feeds accessing data over the internet, this small excursion on the information highway can make your pocket very light.

But wait. Help is at hand. Have a look at MobiPocket Reader This fantastic software will download the RSS feeds onto your desktop or laptop, including the first page of every RSS article and then when docked, sync your smartphone over the cable! All you need to do is download the free Reader and install it. It supports Blackberry and most of the smartphones out there. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think and do tell me of any other software that do similar tasks. Have a great weekend.