Click to View

Most BlackBerry users thrive on one thing: information. When I pick up RIM's 7100g, I want to see the most data possible without having to go crazy with my thumbs and track wheel. PocketDay by Cross River Systems, appears to solve that problem.

I've used other information aggregators before. From that standpoint, PocketDay did not surprise me. What surprised me though was how well it integrated with the default BlackBerry applications and how intuitive it was to use.

PocketDay's main Today Screen is highly configurable. Not only can you choose what content to display, but what order to display it in. Data in the primary PIM applications can be entered, deleted, marked read or completed, and so forth from the main screen itself as well.

Appointments can be viewed in a list, week, or month view. Besides the standard To Do, Calendar, Messages, and Missed Calls sections, Weather, RSS news, Stocks, and optionally Sports are also available. The professional version of PocketDay ( $34.95) also adds an up-to-the-minute currency converter, the perfect tool for the world traveler. The standard edition sells for $19.95.

Setup of the application was simple, with an entire PDF file available for that purpose from the developer's Web site. Besides setup of the screens and different views, there are some very powerful BlackBerry-wide utility options too.

These options not only allow PocketDay to automatically start and come up after a pre-determined amount of inactivity, but also allow users of BlackBerrys with full QWERY thumb-keyboards to assign speed-dialing to all of the letter keys on their keyboard. While I am disappointed that the SureType keyboard of the 7100g does not facilitate this, I applaud the developers for not limiting their software to the least common denominator.

After trying a free alternative to PocketDay, I was left with one impression. You get what you pay for. Unlike the feeware software, the Weather section of the screen in PocketDay actually worked on my unit and support questions were readily answered.

I had only one suggestion for PocketDay and found that it was already on the list of revisions for a future version. The main Today Screen can often, depending on what you have displayed, exceed what can be viewed on a single screen. Currently, you have to scroll up and down using the track wheel. The only thing I would add to PocketDay is the ability to page up and down.

The bottom line is that my day is much more organized since PocketDay. I can honestly say that it is my most-used third party application on my BlackBerry. As a fairly new BlackBerry user, I have anxiously downloaded and installed numerous applications only to find that they don't quite measure up to my expectations. PocketDay exceeded them. That alone sets this application apart in my book.