FlipSide works on BlackBerry Smartphones with trackballs - namely the 81xx series (Pearl), 83xx series (Curve) and the 88xx series, and all Windows Mobile devices running WM5.0 or 6.0.

FlipSide finds and plays music which is stored on the phone's memory card. Music can be in MP3 and WMA format (on Win Mo) or MP3, AAC or M4A formats on BlackBerry. DRM-protected content from the iTunes store and other stores won't play. FlipSide will also play non-DRM protected WMA files on recent BlackBerry devices.

To fast forward or rewind a track on BlackBerry hold down the [ALT] or [SHIFT] key and use the trackball. On Windows Mobile, simply drag the time bar with your finger or stylus.

To toggle between pause and play press the [SPACE] key.

To skip to the next track hold down the [SPACE] key.

FlipSide reads and shows album art which is stored in your MP3 files. Programs like iTunes can automatically find and put the art into the MP3 files for you. You can also put the art into a file called folder.jpg, in the same directory as the music on your memory card. For the best performance, we recommend you use art that is 200x200 pixels.

The free FlipSide trial gives you access to all the features in FlipSide, for a 3 day period. It is not limited in any way, so everything you can do in the full version is available in the trial. After 3 days the trial copy of FlipSide will stop playing music, and you will need to buy an unlock code to use it again.

To help FlipSide show your music in the best possible way, we recommend you tag each track before you transfer it to FlipSide. These are the recommended tags:

1. Album name
2. Artist name
3. Track name
4. Track number

Most of the CD rippers like iTunes, Windows Media Player, and RealPlayer will download the information from the internet and tag everything for you. If you already have a collection of MP3s without tags or incomplete tags you can use a program like MP3Tag to edit the tags. Remember to copy the files to your storage card once you have edited the tags. If your music has no tags then FlipSide will attempt to guess the artist name and album name from the folder structure, for example, files in "/SDCard/Music/Bauhaus/Mask" without tags will be give the artist name "Bauhaus" and the album name "Mask". Finally, if several tracks appear in a directory with the same album name but different artist names then they will be grouped together into a single album. The reason for this is to allow compilations and soundtracks to appear as a single album as opposed to a bunch of albums with one track each.

If you see "Disk Mode" it means that your storage card is mounted under Windows. No application can read from the storage card when it is in this mode. There are two fixes: unplug the USB cable, or change the BlackBerry options to ask before mounting the storage card.

To make your BlackBerry ask before mounting the storage card do the following:

1. Launch the BlackBerry "Options "application
2. Scroll to and click "Media Card"
3. Change "Auto Enable Mass Storage Mode When Connected" to "Prompt"