After trying a few different methods (QuickTime Pro, iSquint) of encoding video for the Curve I’ve found a simple tool that works. Using Alec Peden’s Universal Build of mencoder and his Automator Workflow; converting a video  for the Curve was as simple as right clicking the file.

QuickTime Pro took too long and seemed to hang, while iSquint worked fine except for the audio was out of sync. Menucoder worked perfectly the first time and in a reasonable amount of time too. Took an 173M AVI file down to 57M, plugged the Curve and now that I have the 2GB microSD card in it mounts as an external drive leaving me just the task of copying it over.

Having never messed around with Automator before this I’m thinking that between it and PocketMac I might not need to try any other Blackberry to Mac syncing applications. If I can get Automator to recognize when a drive is mounted then I should be able to get it to copy audio, pictures or videos that I’ve recently re-encoded.

I picked up a new Blackberry Curve (8300) last week as my new phone. Besides using it for work, its great to have IM with me as Carol can ping me when she is up and able to chat while she is in China.

PocketMac was included on the CD, but it still lags behind the native Windows Blackberry application. There is no way to manage the music, video, pictures or ring tones like you can with the native application and so far I’ve not been able to transfer files over Bluetooth originating from either the Curve or MacBook. So when the makers of PocketMac say:

“14 months of hard work, engineering and testing PocketMac For BlackBerry means you’ll never need a Windows-based PC to sync your crucial data with your BlackBerry device and that synching is fast and rock-solid. “

That is not necessarily the case. This included installing Google Talk, while the other Google service can be installed over the air it requires IE to install it. But having a camera readily available again is nice (Carol took ours to China), maybe I can upload some action shoots from the next baseball game? I’m hoping when the microSD card comes in later today I’ll be able to mount the card through the terminal.

Tethering it as a Bluetooth modem was pretty simple; I used the script and instructions from here. Only thing I changed was updated the script to identify it as a 8300 instead of the 8800. It has worked fine except for this morning I’ve not been able to connect, but I made a change to the data plan yesterday (added the tethering option) and I think that has something to do with it.

Over a great phone and probably one of the better alternatives to the iPhone right now, it even includes a SDK.