When the realisation dawns on you that all your contacts, pictures and emails are gone, it can be devastating. Admit it, our phones are an integral part of our lives. Personally, I can't even remember what life was like before the BlackBerry phone. But it is not the phone that is so important, it's the information contained within that is truly part of the fabric of our lives.
Yet, we treat our phone with such scant regard. We leave them at the bank, the restaurant and our friends' house. We keep them out in the open and thieves steal them. We simply forget where they are. Fortunately for us, technology can find our phones for us.
If you are prone to losing your Blackberry, RIM has found a solution for you; of course, iPhone found it first.
Later this year, you will be able to install Blackberry Protect and app which will help you “wipe, lock or locate” a lost device with the help of your PC (sorry Mac users). To make it work, you’ll be required to download and install the Blackberry protect app to your handset and your PC.
You can use the programme to help you locate a lost phone in a couple of ways. First, you can view the location of the phone on a map or your can activate the “loud ring” feature which will override any prior audio setting which might have been on the phone. If someone else has found the phone, you can send them a message – a custom message you compose can appear on the phone’s screen, even if the phone is locked.
Speaking of locked, if you forgot to lock you phone before losing it, use Blackberry Protect to lock it remotely or, for an extra level of protection, wipe all the data on the phone. Wiping all your data on the phone itself does not mean that you have lost all your data. Blackberry Connect allows you to back up you contacts, calendar, tasks, browser bookmarks and text messages over WiFi or 3G to the cloud, making the information instantly accessible if you wish to migrate the data to a new device.
These features are all similar to Find My iPhone successfully introduced by Apple earlier this year. Though the Find My iPhone app is free from the iTunes store, it only works with a US$99 Mobile Me subscription. Regardless of platform, these “wipe, lock and locate” features only work if the phone is on AND connected via WiFi or 3G. BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) users, iPhone users and adventurous third-party software adopter already have access to these features, but the introduction of Blackberry Protector in the fourth quarter will provide a sense of security for the causal BB user – that is, if they don’t mind all their data being stored in the cloud.
The steady pace of the store register beep, beep, beep can't compare to your heart rate. Hmm. Do I have enough money on my bank card to pay for this or will I be embarrassed when the card is declined? Whoops. How do I get off the bus, turn back and pay the light bill before it gets cut off?
These situations are all too familiar for me, and perhaps you as well. Try as we might, it's not always easy to keep track of our bank account or remember to pay all our bills. Thanks to online banking, our excuses are limited. Lots of local banks offer powerful online and tele-banking tools that reduce - even eliminate - our need to travel long distances and stand in longer lines at banks for service.
Convenient as online banking is, not all of us have computers or computer access. And, even if we do, sometimes we don't have access at critical times when we need it. Put that thinking in a box and pack it away. Today's Internet banking is mobile and accessible!
