Best BlackBerry Shortcuts: Aflac's Mobile Guru Shares Tips

Aflac's BlackBerry guru shares power tips and tricks for your RIM smartphone. Here's how to improve your typing, messaging, browsing, attachment handling and more.

By
Tue, January 22, 2008

CIO — Margaret Genet knows BlackBerrys. Though officially dubbed "operations analyst," she's the first Aflac employee to hold the unofficial title of "technology concierge." Genet's job number one: Teach executives how to be more efficient with mobile devices and applications.

"I guarantee if you talk to [Margaret] for 15 minutes, she will tell you 30 tricks you didn't know that will save you time," says Aflac CIO Gerald Shields.

In addition to providing BlackBerry training, Genet also works with the Fortune 500 insurance company's executives on laptops and tablet computers and Aflac's custom mobile applications. Genet's training typically comes in the form of in-person, one-on-one sessions in and around Aflac's Columbus, Ga., headquarters, but she also holds the occasional teleconference with executives in New York and sometimes teaches group sessions to business managers in Columbus. And she's constantly being summoned by those executives and others for repeat visits.

"Margaret's name has become very, very popular around here," says Aflac Vice President of IT Business Partnership Management, Bahija Noell, who helped create the tech concierge position along with Shields in the spring of 2007.

Many of the tips that Genet shares with Aflac executives can be found deep inside various user manuals or buried in BlackBerry websites, but who has time for digging? Here's a concise list of her most valuable advice. (Note: Some of the tricks may not work on all older BlackBerry devices.)

  On to Typing and Messaging Shortcuts >>

Continue Reading

Virtualization and cloud are driving new requirements for data center network performance, VM support, automation and simplified orchestration. This paper outlines Extreme Networks® open fabric approach to high speed, low latency networks for modern data centers.
The evolution of the network to provide the intelligence needed to address user, device and application mobility is underway. In this white paper, Extreme Networks® outlines the five phases required to bring mobility into the network.
Individuals and businesses alike are embracing the digital revolution. Social networks and digital devices are being used to engage government, businesses and civil society, as well as friends and family.
Whether you need to build a business case for a UC system, or are ready to select a new solution, this white paper offers a thorough, side-by-side comparison of ShoreTel and Avaya offerings to help you make informed decisions.
Compared with Cisco products, ShoreTel UC can offer numerous advantages, including streamlined deployment and management, easier scalability, and a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
This must-read publication features independent research from Gartner, providing a wealth of information around best in breed Unified Communication systems. 12 Unified Communications vendor ratings, along with their strengths and cautions, are provided.
Join us for this live web event where featured Forrester Research principal analyst, Art Schoeller and Interactive Intelligence senior vice president, Joe Staples will discuss these topics and help you be ready to take the best advantage of the upcoming year and the contribution your contact center can make to the success of your business.
Tune into this insightful webinar to see Riverbed Technology product marketing manager Joe Ghory present the facts on how you can ensure consistent performance wherever workers connect, get the most out of limited connectivity, and accomplish more by eliminating round trips and slow latency.
As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.
Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.
Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all Newsletters | Privacy Policy
Resource Center