How to Get Emails Instantaneously On Your BlackBerry

I’ve been using a BlackBerry for many years now.  It has always annoyed me that it takes 15 minutes for emails to arrive when using a pop3 email account.  Today I figured out a way to get all emails on my BB instantaneously, even when using a pop3 account and not using a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. And it was so simple.

All T-Mobile BlackBerrys come with one dedicated BB email address (username@tmo.blackberry.net).  Emails sent to this address arrive immediately on the phone.  I assume other carriers have a similar email account.

Instead of having my BlackBerry retrieve emails from my pop3 accounts, I now have my pop3 accounts send a copy of every email to my tmo.blackberry.net account. As far as I can tell, everything functions exactly the same as before…except now the emails arrive instantaneously.

Although I believe there are more sophisticated ways of doing this (e.g., using IMAP instead of pop3), I found this to be a very simple solution.

I thought I kicked the CrackBerry addiction, but I guess some habits are hard to break.

If you have other BlackBerry tips, please share them.

Arthur Miller Quote

“One can’t stand forever on the shore. At some point, filled with indecision, skepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or concede that life is forever elsewhere” – Arthur Miller

The First Open Innovation?

Today is “Flag Day” in the United States. Since 1960, we have had 50 stars arranged as they appear in the image left.

The first flag back in 1777 had 13 stars – one for each of the original states.  Since then, according to USA Today, the number of stars has changed 27 times.

According to the article…

“Congress did not mention how the stars should be arranged. Flag makers across the country came up with their own imaginative designs; some officially adopted by the federal government, and unofficial banners used for a variety of purposes.”

This feels like an early example of Open Innovation.  A challenge was presented to the public (in this case, how to best arrange the stars) and then anyone could “submit” creative solutions.  The government then chose the best ones and adopted them.

If you want to see the many creative ways in which the stars were arranged over the years, be sure to watch the animation on the USA Today website.  Imagine the number of variations that would have existed had 99designs.com been around back in the 1800’s.

Listen to my CODcast

I was recently interviewed for a podcast by Jeff Brainard of “Catch Your Limit Consulting.”  His company uses a fish metaphor, hence the “CODcast” name.  Clever.

In this interview, I discuss the challenges associated with innovation – and tips for success. Enjoy.

Listen to the CODcast

LG Electronics Uses Open Innovation

According to a press release I received, “LG Mobile Phones (the fastest growing mobile phone brand in North America) is partnering with crowdSPRING (an online marketplace for creative services) and Autodesk (a leader in 2D and 3D design and engineering software) to hold a new competition to define the future of personal mobile communication.”

They were looking for people to “design their vision of the next revolutionary LG mobile phone and compete for more than $80,000 in awards.”  The top prize was $20K.

The competition ended last week, so don’t get your hopes up about winning that money.

But what this shows is that Open Innovation is taking hold in many interesting ways.

Prize-Based Open Innovation, which got its roots in “tangible” challenges (e.g., creating a new chemical compound) has morphed nicely into “softer” (and more subjective) areas like design.

Although, the cost of running this competition is probably far greater than the $80,000 in prizes, I suspect the overall cost dwarfs what would have been spent on in-house designers or consultants.  Regardless, the real value is in the breadth of ideas. Instead of hiring a few designers, they got potentially thousands of designers fighting for the prize money…and the glory of being the winner.  Quite often, the so-called “experts” do not have the best ideas.

Case in point…When I was at (the then) Andersen Consulting, a modified form of Open Innovation was used to develop a new name.  A highly paid advertising/branding company developed a list of 25 potential names.  Other names were submitted by Andersen Consulting employees.  The winning name, Accenture (means “Accent on the Future”) was submitted by an employee – not the branding experts.

In previous blog entries, I wrote about how I used Open Innovation to create my new logo and on the challenges I faced in using Open Innovation.  Open Innovation can be used for anything these days.

As an aside, what I thought was interesting about the LG competition was Autodesk’s participation.  According to the press release, “Autodesk will supply participating designers with a free 15-day trial of SketchBook Pro. Autodesk SketchBook Pro software is a digital sketchpad.” This is a nice way to get designers hooked on their product. Everyone wins in this deal.

I am eager to see the winning designs.

And I am more eager to hear when lessons LG learned by doing the competition. Fortunately, LG has agreed to answer any questions I have (ok, maybe not ANY question).

Therefore, in the name of Open Innovation…

If you have questions you would like me to ask LG, please submit them as a comment on this blog entry.  I will write a future blog entry on the LG competition and lessons learned.

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