Within an hour or so after delivery I had just about all the apps I would need installed and talking to each other.  None of these apps cost anything and the sweetest thing is …  they add to what I was already doing with Google Apps by integrating very tightly with each other and the phone’s contacts, calendar, camera, etc.

Gmail – of course this is hooked into my Google Apps email (dean@gotwww.com).  Allows all my email (sent and received no matter where from) to be accessible everywhere … my phone, my desk, your desk, etc.  I can search “google fast” to find anything I have ever sent or received. (see 10 reasons I use google mail for more) [http://www.google.com/mobile/products/mail.html#p=blackberry]

Facebook … with a caveat.  I use Facebook to keep up with my friends and family, share photos, and we use it @MapleGrove as a communications tool with our “fans”.

I use the Facebook mobile app [http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2254487659] primarily to allow my Storm to sync with the contact information from facebook and upload photos with the ability to tag them while uploading.  Another nice feature is that when my phone rings from someone who is my friend on facebook I see their current profile photos attached to their caller ID.

I generally use the facebook mobile web page (m.facebook.com) to browse because it works better and allows more of the facebook features like “liking” someone’s status and seeing and reading “notifications”, and photos.  For some reason the app does not allow any of these things to be done from with-in the app, but the syncing doesn’t work without it.

Google sync – this app syncs my contacts with Google Apps email and Google Apps calendar with my phone’s contacts and calendar.  Add a new contact on the phone and it’s on my desk immediately.  (http://www.google.com/mobile/products/sync.html#p=blackberry).  It even alerts me of upcoming appointments with sound and vibration using BlackBerry’s native calendar.

YouVersion – my favorite bible website on my phone.  There isn’t a specific app for the storm yet, but with an easy workaround the Tour version will work for many of the features. http://blog.youversion.com/post/289/youversion-for-blackberry-storm-sorta ) I can read or search in any version and there’s a nice daily reading plan too.

Google maps – The blackberry maps are ok, but if you use Google maps on your computer you will probably like it better on your phone too.  It works well with the GPS on the storm and another interesting feature is Latitude; an option that allows you to share your current location and see the location of others selectively.  If you don’t want to do that, then don’t… but please don’t flame me about it. [http://www.google.com/mobile/products/maps.html#p=blackberry]

WeatherBug – finds my current location by GPS and automatically shows me the local information I need including live weather radar, detailed hourly forcasts and even “Always on” NWS weather alerts such as Tornado warnings even when the WeatherBug app is turned off. [http://weather.weatherbug.com/mobile/blackberrystorm.html]

YouTube – Allows me to find and play and upload YouTube videos. [http://www.google.com/mobile/products/youtube.html#p=blackberry]

Pandora - Free music (only music I love) anywhere I am …  [http://www.pandora.com/]

Let me know if you’ve found any other apps for the storm that you would like to share by commenting below.

Here’s a simple way I have found to do it;

Click the link on the right menu next to the message – “Print all”

When the window opens click [cancel] if you get a printer dialog box.

On the browser’s menu, click on [file], [save as] or [save page as]

You can change the file type, usually HTML will work fine.

You can also print the email to a pdf file which you can save to your hard drive. If you don’t have Acrobat you can download PDF995 – a free PDF authoring software compatible with Adobe Acrobat Readers.

More Gmail tips coming soon.

Spam filtering
The best spam filtering I have ever seen.  I had spam filtering before changing to Gmail, but I spent hours a week going through filtered messages because of over zealous “rules based” filters.  And I was still getting way more spam than I wanted.  Once Gmail learns your preferences you get almost no spam.  On a slow day I get well over 500 emails, and over 75% are spam messages I never have to see.  And if by some slim chance one of your important messages gets filtered, you can find it, un-spam it, and mark it so that it doesn’t happen again yourself.

Search
Everyone knows that Google is the best search engine in the world.  “Google it” is now a popular term for finding information.  Now you can search just as fast on your own email.  Try about one second on over 25,000 messages.

Archive vs. Delete
Most productivity experts tell you to delete messages you no longer “think” you need as soon as you are done with them.  To keep your inbox cleaned up.  But have you ever wanted to find a message you thought you wouldn’t need a few days or a month later?  Gmail’s archive function moves mail from your inbox but keeps it searchable for years.

Labeling vs. Folders
The old way to organize information was to drag it into a folder.  Great, if you can remember what “folder” you put it in.  Not so great if it applies to more than one????  With Gmail you can apply multiple labels to a conversation and even create filters to automatically assign these filters.  And, even through you have a label on a message it can still be in your inbox.

Threading
Ever had someone reply to your email as if they are the only person you ever talk to.  Something like “yes”, but they don’t include your email in their reply?  Now your conversations threat together and show you what you sent them, even when they don’t.  And when you archive, or label a message it applies to the entire thread too.  Twenty messages back and forth between you and five other people now appear in your inbox as one message.

Personalization and Integration
I now have one place for all my email accounts.  My multiple personalities (company names, organizations I work for, etc.) are all in one place, each with their one personalized domain and signature (I use some great add-ons that we’ll talk about some other time).

Storage Space
As of this writing you can store up to 7GB of emails, attachments (any files you want to) up to 20MB in size.  If you’ve ever used Outlook, you know that when you get over about 250MB performance starts to lag and the program eventually stops working completely.

Portability
You can access your email from any computer (Mac, PC, Linux) or your web enabled phone anywhere, anytime.

One of its features is to create a sideshow with an album. Example here.

Another way of displaying them would be to embed the slideshow into your website like this -

So, how’d I do that?  Easy…

Sign in to (or sign up for) your Google Account for Picasa Web Albums at http://picasaweb.google.com using your Google Account username and password.

Upload some images.

Click the My Photos link and select the album you’d like to make a slideshow.

Click Link to this album on the right panel.

A new Embed Slideshow option should appear. Clicking this option creates the code for a Flash slideshow from the album you’ve selected.  When you update this album, your slideshow is automatically updated to show the latest photos. You can select from five photo sizes for your slideshow (up to 800 pixels) and you can also edit the resulting code for more flexibility.

To embed the slideshow, copy and paste the HTML code that’s shown into your blog or webpage.

I had such as hard time finding the info to get the Google Apps version of Gmail working right again so I thought I would share what I learned with you.

1. The Centro needs an application called “Java Virtual Machine”. You can download this [here]

2. Reboot your phone.

3. In order for the Gmail for mobile application to properly function, the IBM JVM requires several configuration changes.

Go to “Preferences” on the Centro, scroll down to “IBM Java VM” and review these configuration settings.

Check “Use Double Buffering”

Check “Use high resolution coordinates”

Set “Memory maximum” to at least 4Mb.

Set “Maximum java thread stack size” to 4kb (this is the one that makes the alignment all messed up if you fail to change it.

4. Open the “IBM Java” from your launcher. Click on ‘install’ and enter this url: http://gotwww.com/gmail/1.jar (this is the google apps verion 1.5.0)

Accept all the warnings and you’re in.

Upon launching the application for the first time you can take a look at the options under ‘menu’, ‘go to’, ’settings’.

Update: 2009.09 … I recently ditched the Centro for a new Blackberry Storm.