[dhgeyer]

I have a blackberry 8300 series with Verizon Wireless. I have not activated it, and don't know for certain if I will or not. It depends on whether or not it will do certain things. I am starting from scratch, and know virtually nothing about this hardware.

One thing I would like to be able to do is maintain my websites. This would require these applications and capabilities.

1. An FTP client that can log into my FTP account at my web hosting service, and upload files, as well as delete/rename and generally manage them remotely. That's the big one. I looked at blackberry.com's appworld, and the only FTP client I could find was only capable of downloading, not uploading.

2. Apart from that, it would be nice if I could get hardware/software that would allow me to get files onto the Blackberry from Windows formatted USB drives, like thumb drives for example, or a camera's card reader. Is this possible? It would have to be direct: if a computer is required to do this, that will not be useful. If I have my computer with me, I don't need the Blackberry.

Am I dreaming? Is any of this even remotely (no pun intended) possible?

[ifonline]

Not sure the BlackBerry is what you want. But, to try and answer your questions:

1. See here for one FTP client I found on AppWorld: BlackBerry App World - PaderSyncFM. I have no idea if this is the one you already looked at, but it seems to be able to upload and download files.

2. Not sure how you would connect a thumb drive to the BlackBerry, so I don't think this will work.

[dhgeyer]

Thanks, Ian, for the quick response. When I searched Appworld for "FTP", I didn't get that one. It sounds like it might be what I need. Not totally sure from the description/reviews, but sounds promising.

I'm not sure the Blackberry is what I want either, but it's what I was given, free of charge, so I have to decide whether I want to use it or try to get rid of it. I do a lot of motorcycle touring, and being able to maintain my websites from the road would be one good reason to keep the thing and use it. Being able to check my (web based) email would be good, too, as well as weather reports, motels, end so on. I'm not sure that in itself warrants an extra $30.00 a month, though, and my cell phone works much better as a cell phone. Just trying to decide what to do before I jump in with both feet.

[F0nage]

PaderSyncFM is a good product and so is their SSH client. I run both on my Nokia and when my 8900 arrives they're going to be among the first apps I install. PaderSyncFM is a true FTP/SFTP/Samba client that works in either direction. If you buy a license, you get an auto sync feature where you can bookmark locations and do a one-way sync automatically.

Flying through the filesystems on my NIX boxes with sftp is hilarious, a get a kick out of doing stuff on my phone more than I do on a keyboard in front of a big LCD sometimes.

For geting stuff from USB drives you should be able to use the BB desktop to copy things across, I would think. If not, run an FTP server on a Windows box and use it to access the USB drive over the air using PaderSync.

[dhgeyer]

Thanks F0nage! Sounds like PaderSyncFM is the answer I was looking for.

The copying from a USB device is as much a hardware issue as software. The USB cable that comes with the Blackberry has a connector at the other end for a computer, same as does the USB drive. So I either need a different cable, or some kind of adapter. The Verizon store had no idea how to solve that one. Neither do I.

[F0nage]

What I meant to suggest is if you have your device and the USB drive plugged into the same Windows box at the same time, theoretically you should be able to simply drag and drop the files across. If that doesn't work, I would think BB desktop has some provision for doing it.

If that isn't what you wanted to do, then you should be able to set up an FTP server on any Windows box (I like eftp but there are tons), plug in your usb drive, and then do everything over the air using PaderSyncFM. I It doesn't have to be Windows, I can do what I just described on my NIX boxes after mounting the USB drive.

You could also do this if Samba can mount a USB drive as a share, I don't know because I don't use Samba. But if it works, it's yet another choice.

If Thorsten is reading this thread (he's a good guy and watches some forums) then an NFS client built into PaderSyncFM would be the cat's meow!

[dhgeyer]

Thanks F0nage. I appreciate your effort. Thing is, if I have a computer with me, or access to one, then I wouldn't be trying to do what I'm trying to do on the Blackberry. I'd just do it on the computer. It's easier. The object of this game is to be able to add stuff to my website while on the road on my motorcycle, on which I do not pack my laptop. That would save me enough money to justify activating the Blackberry, because I could then stay in cheaper motels that don't have computers in the lobby.

I'd like to be able to add photos I take with my Nikon D300. I can edit the photos in the, camera, then, if I can get them onto the BB, FTP them to my website along with appropriate HTML documents, which I assume can be easily created or modified with a text editor on the Blackberry, or so I am told.

Before someone says it, I know that what I really want is a netbook, but nobody gave me one of those. I got this brandy new Blackberry for nothing.

[Motorcycle Mama]

The BlackBerry USB port is not currently capable serving as a host controller for devices connected to it.

[dhgeyer]

Thanks MM. I guess that means that if I want to add photos to a website with the BB, on the road, I have to take them with the BB.

[Motorcycle Mama]

Yep. Pretty much.

[F0nage]

Originally Posted by dhgeyer

Thanks F0nage. I appreciate your effort. Thing is, if I have a computer with me, or access to one, then I wouldn't be trying to do what I'm trying to do on the Blackberry. I'd just do it on the computer. It's easier. The object of this game is to be able to add stuff to my website while on the road on my motorcycle, on which I do not pack my laptop. That would save me enough money to justify activating the Blackberry, because I could then stay in cheaper motels that don't have computers in the lobby.

If your camera uses a micro SDHC or even a regular SD card (you can get an adapter to use a micro card as a regular SD card) then you can still do all this.

If not then I don't know any way short of buying a small netbook and taking it along.

[dhgeyer]

Fonage, I think you might be onto something there. The Nikon D300 uses compact flash cards, but I also have a D80 that uses SD cards. If I got one of those adapters you mention (we may even have one kicking around somewhere), I'd be in business. Only glitch is, I'm not sure the D80 can resize images in the camera, and of course 10 megapixels is not appropriate for the web.

I did a search on Appworld for photo editors, and didn't find anything that looked able to do any real editing. But then, I didn't find PaderSyncFM either, so my ability to search that database must leave something to be desired.

Anyway, thanks for thinking of this approach. You may have saved this idea for me.

[dhgeyer]

It works! We do indeed already have one of those adapters, and I just went through the process with both my D80 and my wife's little point and shoot, which also has the ability to resize an image down to 640 by 480. I took pictures with both cameras, and loaded them onto the BB, and am able to view them. So, assuming that there are no gatchas with the FTP app, I should be good to go.

Can anyone suggest the best text editor to use? I need to be able to find/create files with the .htm extension (or rename them before and/or after editing), and edit the contents as simple ASCII text.

I really appreciate everyone's help with this.

[F0nage]

Excellent! To answer the previous question, just go direct to the author's website and OTA the product from there: PaderSync Home.

Text editor, I'm not sure what runs on Blackberry yet. I guess my approach is more than most people would be up for, but since I use UNIX and Linux I would just get a shell account somewhere and use SSH to log into it and Emacs or Vi or your editor of choice to do the editing there, then you could ftp back to your phone and up to your website.

[dhgeyer]

Well, I activated the beast, got a Paypal account, downloaded App World, got PaderSync trial version, did the old trial and error version of getting it working. Then after App World would (finally!) recognized my Paypal account as valid, I bought the (newer) full version, and struggled through the differences, not all of which I think are improvements. I got it registered OK. Anyway, I can now take pictures with either of 2 cameras plus the BB and upload them to my websites. Both of the cameras allow resizing to an appropriate size for the web, and the D80 supports some in camera photo editing functions (D-Lighting, color correction, cropping, red eye elimination).

Somewhere (Google?) I found out about BBnotepad (freeware BB text editor), and got it from somewhere (it's all a blur). Then, since it's not installed in the normal way, I went out and found out how to do that. It's a pretty good text editor for the BB as far as I can tell so far. It's had no problem with anything I've tried to do with it, and seems pretty intuitive and straightforward. It can find files with any extension anywhere on the BB, and save them with any extension anywhere on the BB.

So, I've gone through the exercise of downloading a page or two from my website, made a couple of changes, and uploaded them again, and they work fine and do show the changes.

Mission totally accomplished in less than 24 hours, folks, and all help much appreciated. Couldn't have done it without you.

I've also been learning and exploring/using some of the other features of the BB, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep it and use it.

[F0nage]

Great news. Keep us updated on your travel pics!

[dhgeyer]

Originally Posted by F0nage

Great news. Keep us updated on your travel pics!

What I'm thinking is kind of a motorcycle travel blog, with photos, posted as it's happening. It will be of interest to a couple of groups to which I belong, and to various others.

It's January here in New Hampshire (USA), so this is a project for a few months from now. Since we poor riders can do little riding this time of year, we spend our time planning trips and projects like this. If you are interested, I'll post here with a URL before I leave.

[ifonline]

Originally Posted by dhgeyer

What I'm thinking is kind of a motorcycle travel blog, with photos, posted as it's happening.

Since we poor riders can do little riding this time of year, we spend our time planning trips and projects like this.

Interesting. I do this too, except I update my blog (Ride Reports) after the trip. That way I can cull through my images and prep them for upload.

I know how you feel about not riding as much as you would like. I was just saying this evening that I can't wait for it to warm up just a bit. I'm looking forward to riding down to St. Simon's again. I love long weekend rides.

[F0nage]

Originally Posted by dhgeyer

What I'm thinking is kind of a motorcycle travel blog, with photos, posted as it's happening. It will be of interest to a couple of groups to which I belong, and to various others.

It's January here in New Hampshire (USA), so this is a project for a few months from now. Since we poor riders can do little riding this time of year, we spend our time planning trips and projects like this. If you are interested, I'll post here with a URL before I leave.

Sounds great. I used to ride but can't anymore. Would love to see your trips.

[F0nage]

Thanks ifonline for the site link!