The Berry411 app enables mobile web pages on the Blackberry to do several things previos otherwise possible only from native apps, including directly adding entries to the Blackberry address book.

Below is a brief sketch of how this works for single address entries; I will document in another post how to add multiple entries if there is demand.

(1) Look in the HTTP-ACCEPTS header and see if you see the string “text/xml-berry411”.   If you find it, this means the user has Berry411 installed.

(2) Construct a link like the following, replacing the bold values with the appropriate URL encoded values.

http://thebogles.com/berry/yp/add_contact?f=business_name&p=phone &a=street&c=city&s=state

The Rails Way is a new blog from Rails gurus Jamis Buck and Michael Koziarski. They accept submissions of real world web applications and suggest ways to improve the code through the right MVC factorings. 

Interesting reading. (Also check out some of Jamis’s past posts, such as Skinny Controller, Fat Model.)

With all the attention Rails has received in the last year, there has been an enormous influx of people wanting to learn how to write web applications with it. Rails itself attempts to shepherd programmers along well-trod paths, to help them build well-designed applications “by default”. Alas, Rails’ conventions are not always enough.

This blog is our attempt to back up Rails’ opinions on what things should be done, with our own opinions on how things should be done.

Here’s how we’ll do it: if you have an application or a piece of code which you think could be done better, but you aren’t quite sure how, send it in. We’ll review all submissions, then publish an article or two showing the changes we’d make, and explain why we’d make them.

Readers get the chance to learn tips and tricks for enhancing your design, submitters get their application refactored for free, and we get some free-inspiration for our blog posts. Nobody loses!

Berry411 version 3.6 is now available for download.   This version features a Local Info page with links to Weather, Sports, and Yelp guides for your city. 

Yelp and Urbanspoon reviews are also linked to directly from hits in yellow page search results, allow you to find the most highly rated businesses when you’re on the go.  (Most large cities are covered by Yelp.)

Version 3.6 also fixes two bugs affecting certain phones: an exception on powerup on some 7100 phones and multiple listings for the Berry411 menu item in the address book.