Recently I set up my (company-issued) BlackBerry to receive my personal email as well. Immediately I had two problems with using it:

• 10 minute delay in receiving emails.
• Combination of personal and work emails under the “Messages” icon.

Turns out the 10 minute delay with receiving emails is normal. That is a by-design setting with BlackBerry. The reason behind it is simple – you are using BlackBerry’s service to poll your personal emails domain for new messages. It’s unreasonable for another service to contact your personal email service in a real-time manner. The work-around is simple.

1. All BlackBerry’s come with one free your-choice@(your wireless provider).blackberry.net email address, which you create by starting here. BlackBerry email accounts check for mail in a real-time manner.
2. Log into your personal email, and have it forwarded to your new BlackBerry email address.
3. Set the reply-to address of your new BlackBerry address to be your personal email address. This is so that when you send email from your phone, from your personal email, the recipient sees the sender address (you) as being your personal email address, and not the new BlackBerry address you recently created.

That’s it! You’ll now enjoy receiving your personal email in a real-time manner on your phone.

Next up is the combination of work and personal email in the Messages section. Once you set up your personal email, there will be a new icon for just those emails. However, in the Messages icon, work and personal are there. So far, the only way to keep that from happening is to purchase Empower which separates personal and work emails.

At the least though, the real-time personal email receiving is a necessity, especially because it’s free! If you want to shell out an additional $19.95 for Empower, well you’ll then be that much more organized.

LogMeIn is superb for assisting others remotely with their computer problems. No matter where they are in the world, if they have an internet connection, you can get to their computer to help. Best part of it all… it’s free!!

Now, you can support most mobile phones including Windows Mobile, Symbian, and BlackBerry (for a fee, sorry!) right from your desktop. InfoWorld mentions some more about it.

Came across this book the other day and it looks interesting. It was written back in 1990 (good grief, that’s almost 20 years ago!) Basically it’s about a person who is investigating a 75-cent accounting error, which alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system who is working for the KGB! The part that intrigues me the most is when it was written, and that it’s a true story. Not much tech going on back in 1990!

Barnes & Noble is selling it for $26.95.

Just the other day I saw a brief comment on TV about how technology jobs are not recession-proof. I disagree. However, that doesn’t mean a company will keep you employed just because you can replace toner or help set a screen saver. If you are serious about your IT career, and you want to help make a name for yourself where you work and beyond, start brushing up on your skills. I don’t agree with everything that’s mentioned, but it’s a great start.

Read the article.