It's that time of week again CrackBerry Nation. There have been a few queries come in, so let's crack open the mailbag and clear up your BlackBerry woes. This week we have a question from confused and slightly frustrated PlayBook owner who asks:
How do I change the alert settings on my Blackberry playbook? It has the little beep everytime I get an email and I have no idea how to turn it off??
Thanks,
- Shereen
At first glance this seemed like a pretty simple solution -- go to Sounds & Notifications and slide the Audio notifications all the way to the left. But then Shereen replies with:
The actual settings tab " Sounds & Notifications" tab is not even visible on my playbook. I want to turn off the email sound alerts but have no way of doing so? How do I get this setting back on my playbook??
- Shereen
This of course was mystifying. Follow me after the break to find out the solution I recommend for Shereen.
Dear Shereen,
The only viable option here would be to perform a security wipe on your PlayBook. This process will delete all data and personal settings, as well as reinstall the OS back to factory conditions, so it will mean that you may be prompted to update to the latest OS once the PlayBook boots up. I recommend that you perform a backup of your PlayBook, before you do this, using the BlackBerry Desktop Manager, which you can download here if you haven't already.
You can go one step further and perform a "Debrick" on your PlayBook which would completely wipe your PlayBook and performs a fresh install the latest PlayBook OS. We have a lot of information in our forums that guide you through the debricking process if you choose to go down this route.
- Berry
That's it for this week folks. Do you have futher suggestions for Shereen? If so, sound off in the comments. If you have any BlackBerry woes, BlackBerry etiquette questions that need answering, send them my way at [email protected] or tweet my @DearBerryCB.

Google will pay you a measly $1.50 a week to track EVERYTHING on your phone
Google already tracks a lot of your data, whether you want them to or not. But for a mere pittance they'll track even more of it! Why? All so they can better sell ads to put in front of your face. Cooooooool.

ChatGPT's totally predictable disruption of education
The moment ChatGPT was unveiled the outcome for education was obvious: students were absolutely going to use it. But does it count as cheating?

Big Oil is coming for EVs (in a good way?)
Some of the biggest oil companies in the world have acknowledged that the future of surface transportation will largely be electric, and they don't want to miss out on that rapidly expanding pie.