eponymousX

Installing Google Talk on a Blackberry Pearl might be frustratingly difficult unless you know what settings must be in place before you attempt installation.

If you have a Blackberry Pearl 8100 (mine is from Cingular) and try to install Google Talk on the device using the browser that is built into the Pearl then you may have hit a small problem. If you visit the recommended page on the Blackberry site, http://www.blackberry.com/googletalk/, using the built-in browser you might see an error message like this:

Notice
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or above is required to download this Instant Messenger.

This web page uses ActiveX controls that work only in Microsoft Internet Explorer. To ensure that Google Talk for BlackBerry devices is correctly downloaded to your BlackBerry, this site is not designed to work with any other Internet browsers.

You also see this message if you use Firefox 2.x on a MacBook Pro. And of course since Microsoft no longer supports IE on the Mac, then you might think “ok I’ll try Safari” but unfortunately that does not work either. For weeks I thought I was simply SOL.

With the launch and increasing popularity of Twitter I was in dire need of a mobile IM solution, so I dug further into the issue. After all I had installed Gmail, Gmaps and Gsearch already…

The simple solution turned out to be located in the Pearl itself. If you have this problem, here’s my solution:
1) In the Pearl, go to: /Settings/Options/Advanced Options/Browser Options/
2) Change the “Default browser configuration” from “MEdia Net” to “Internet Browser”
3) Back out of the settings screen and choose “save” when prompted.

You should now be able to access the download page on the Blackberry site listed above.

That’s it. Yup, simple.