Well, RIMM / Blackberry broke the Google MAIL Messages Integration in their BIS service, but the GMAIL plug-in works as described (and that is GREAT). Here is what I found.

If you have a working GMAIL account on your Blackberry, think twice before proceeding.

Once you’ve re-add the GMAIL account using the default Blackberry method (fill in the e-mail address and password, then Blackberry figures out the rest). So this mode is what some service providers are calling “G-IMAP”. Also, this seems the only option if you are adding the accounts from the handset itself. Once you have “synced up” (activated) the account, your GMAIL INBOX messages can be found in the “email address” icon and the Blackberry Messages (which is what it should do). However, your GMAIL ARCHIVED messages (those that “skip the inbox” via a GMAIL filter automatically) will also show in your Blackberry Messages (all messages folder, the “M” button), which is NOT what it is suppose to do. That is a problem for me, as I have a lot of e-mail that I filter away from the INBOX and do not want to see on my Blackberry.

So, I decided to try setting up the account and force it to use the old IMAP setting. To do this you must be adding the e-mail account from the BIS web interface from your service provider; go to add another e-mail to the Blackberry, but this time, I leave the password field blank so that it would now ask me for the server settings. On the next screen, put in “imap.gmail.com” for you server settings. Again, Blackberry figures out the rest of the settings. Let us now call this “IMAP” setup, which it is (and it does NOT use the new Blackberry GMAIL plug-in). However, Blackberry decides that for this particular IMAP server (imap.gmail.com), it should check “All Mail” and not the “INBOX” folder. Once again, we face the same situation with GMAIL ARCHIVED messages showing up in the “Messages” folder on the Blackberry.

Now, for a work around. For the “IMAP” setting configuration we just did, we can go and change the IMAP server name to “gmail-imap.l.google.com” (which is a CNAME for “imap.gmail.com”). Save your settings. Your GMAIL account is now back to the way it should work (before Blackberry decided to make its non-standard changes and break the GMAIL integration). NOTE: this does not use the Blackberry GMAIL plug-in, so in order to “mark as spam” or “change labels” you need to install the Google GMail App.

I’ve spent over 4 hours on the phone today explaining first to T-Mobile, then to a RIMM Blackberry customer service, then a Blackberry tech at RIMM, and then finally another RIMM Blackberry tech who had “access to a RIMM Blackberry Analysis:”. They kept saying it was my Blackberry configuration that was wrong, like my BIS Filters were set incorrectly (which were set correctly) and that my “Service Book IDs” were incorrect causing the problem. To top it off, they say that because I kept deleting the account and recreating it, my “Service Book IDs” will keep changing and resulting in blah blah blah.

Finally, I got him (Don) to agree to try it out on a handset himself. So Don was adventurous and said he had no problems with his GMAIL working on his Blackberry. He went ahead and deleted his GMAIL account from his Blackberry and recreated it. Then he want to his GMAIL account and created a filter (for all messages with Subject:archive, “skip the inbox” and “marked as read”). Now I had him send a test message with the subject “archive” from another account to his GMAIL account. He now saw that archived message showed up in his Blackberry Messages “as opened”, which should not have happened. He said “Ah, I see what you are talking about now” and went to talk to an Analyst.

So now Don tells me, it seems to be an isolated case with my account and that he would look into it further. Gave me a case number and said that I should call back in a few days for status updates. What!?!?! I told him that he should “Google” it and see how many other cases of this problem there are. He said he would keep the ticket open for the next 5 days. Oh my goodness, Research In Motion really wants some more bad press?

Damn, must we provide them the code too? All they have to do is fix their “special code” (probably one conditional statement) which pertains to “imap.gmail.com” and no other servers. Most likely they have something that says if the IMAP server is “imap.gmail.com” then check “All Mail” folder instead of letting it check the standard “INBOX” folder like all other IMAP servers it checks.

If you have experienced this issue with your Blackberry, please add a comment below and/or a URL to your forum posts.

Then goto http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions and add the following lists (at the bottom of the list):

• EasyPrivacy+EasyList
• Malware Domains
• MySpace Junk Filters

Well some simple editing of the plugins’ code can make it look like this:

First … we modify the CSS stylesheet for the Sociable plugin. Change the first line in …/wp-content/plugins/sociable/sociable.css

Next … we modify the code of the AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget plugin and the ShareThis plugin; changing DIV and P tags to a corresponding SPAN tag.

To make it easier for you here are their respective Unix patch files:
addthis_social_widget.php.patch and sharethis.php.patch.

NOTE: whenever you update these plugins, you must modify the code again (unless the authors alter their code).

Enjoy!