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Something fresh

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:34:46 -0800

Yesterday I decided to use another design for my blog. I think the old one was more that a year old

I hope you like it!

Google Apps Connector Gets Updated

Bla1ze — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:01:58 -0800

Touchscreen phones are phones missing a keyboard

Volker Weber — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:19:35 -0800

Installing BlackBerry Desktop Manager under Windows 7

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:40:09 -0800

Yesterday a friend of mine told me that he received an error message while trying to install the BlackBerry Desktop Manager 5.0.1 under Windows 7 64 Bit. I told him that the Desktop Manager installed and runs correctly on my system (which is the same) so we tried to find out what caused his problem. The error message said something like:

An error occurred while registering the module C:\Program Files (x86)\Research In Motion\BlackBerry\IS71 Connectors\OE Connector\OLKExpress5.dll. HRESULT -2147010895. Please contact support.

After looking into the Connectors folder I found out that it contains various dll for connecting to different applications to sync with. I always had Outlook 2007 installed on my systems which he had not. So it seems like the BlackBerry Desktop Manager tries to install the connector dll for Outlook Express – which does not exist on Windows 7 anymore – it is called Windows Mail now.

I will try to contact RIM to tell them that the Desktop Manager installer is not fully compatible with Windows 7.

Motorola DROID review

Boy Genius — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:27:12 -0800

We scooped it, we previewed it, and now we’re officially reviewing it. There’s a good chance that even if you’re not into tech all that much, you’ve heard of the Motorola DROID thanks to Verizon’s big marketing push, and that’s a good and bad thing. As you’ll see in our review, the DROID is a fantastic device, but does it have what it takes to compete outside the world of the die-hard Android fans and techies in the consumer arena? You’ll see soon enough!

Hardware / Design

Design is always going to be subjective, but in a world of curves and tapered edges, it’s downright thrilling to see a handset that’s angular, retro-looking and extremely masculine. Sorry, ladies. You’ll always have Droid Eris… We just love the styling of the DROID. It’s minimalistic in a lot of ways, not cluttered with useless buttons and switches, and overall is solid as a rock. The slide mechanism is not spring-assisted, but the click is reassuring enough to warrant a comforting feeling when opening or closing the handset. One thing physically we’re not thrilled with is the looseness of the volume up and down key. It slides up, down, front and back and generally feels like it’s just going to fall off over time. Both the unit we received from Verizon as well as our older unit exhibit the same behaviors.

Contrary to other reports, the Motorola DROID exterior is actually mostly metal. The bezel around the screen is metal as is the mid-plate of the case. The only part that’s plastic is the rear back-plate and as we understand it, the reason that little chin exists is because that was the only place Motorola could fit the wireless antennas. They face out towards the plastic back as opposed to being Faraday-caged by the metal front.

Touch-sensitive keys are a, uh, sensitive area but they’re honestly fine at the end of the day. We’ve been banging on a DROID for many weeks and haven’t once had a misfire or accidental key press even though the keys are 100% touch-based. We don’t think they’re a problem even though some people have been concerned. Plus, you can’t beat the Haptic feedback. There isn’t a single key on the left side of the unit, just a microUSB port, and on the top there’s a 3.5mm headset jack followed by the power / lock /unlock button. On the right side, we’ve got the shady bi-directional volume key and a two-stage camera shutter key donned in gold. Or as Motorola likes to call it, brown sugar. Mmm, brown sugar.

When you turn the phone over, you get a rather simple but concise “brown sugar” speaker grill, battery cover with Motorola and Verizon logos, and that 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash. Oh, and the “with Google” logo, too. No, the phone doesn’t look like a billboard to us, but hey, you’re entitled to your own opinion. Inside it is packing a 550MHz OMAP3 CPU, dedicated graphics processor, 512MB of ROM, 256 of RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, a digital compass, and accelerometer.

Screen

You want one word to describe the screen? Stunning. A 3.7″ WVGA 854×480 capacitive high-quality display? We’ll take three. Like we said in our preview, it’s the best screen we’ve ever seen on an Android device and possibly in general. Plus it’s responsiveness is second to only Apple’s capacitive displays, so we’re talking about a really, really solid screen here, people. The widescreen proportion might take a little getting used to for some, but all in all, it’s roomy and sports a rather nice resolution.

On the screen there is a proximity sensor and also an ambient light sensor. Both work magically to shut off the screen while you’re on a call, saving battery and preventing your face from triggering an on screen button, and also adjusting the brightness of the display to match the lighting in your current environment. Some people asked us if the screen on the DROID was dim as it appeared that way in a couple of our photos, and our quick answer would be: absolutely not. It’s viciously bright if you ask it to be, and the backlighting is a very assuring white as opposed to a tinted red, orange, pink or blue hue on some other phones we’ve used.

As we said, it’s second only to the iPhone as far as capacitive screens go, and coupled with the rest of the DROID, it’s a real winner.

Keyboard

After using the phone for almost a month, I can confidently say the keyboard is fine for most people. It’s not a BlackBerry and the actual spacing of the keys isn’t great, but it is really livable I think. Each key has a little bubbled-texture which makes it a bit easier to define one key from another, and the tactile feedback, while not perfect, is fine. The spacebar could use a little more tactility though as it’s probably the hardest key to press when you’re trying to type swiftly and accurately. There are two things that bother us about the keyboard and that’s the directional pad stage right, and the fact that two keys haven’t quite made it through metamorphosis. Can someone please point out another phone in the entire universe that shipped with two blank keys? Is this a joke? It’s not the end of the world but uh, how about a home key and a back key? How about a bigger spacebar? There ars a million things that could have been done to improve the keyboard layout even by two keys and it’s pretty hilarious that two keys are blank.

Backlighting on the keyboard is a nice white/teal-ish tint, definitely bright enough, and comes through just the letters and symbols.

The on screen keyboard that Android-lovers are used to for all intents and purposes has not changed. It’s the standard Android affair, there are settings to enable vibration-feedback on key press, an audible sound on key press, and the usual configurational options like auto-capitalization, word suggestions, auto-correct and completion. There’s virtually no improvement from other Google Experience handsets which is a bit depressing as the keyboard in Android has a bit of a ways to go to compete with that other popular touch-based phone. The landscape on screen keyboard is obviously very, very wide and a tad more forgiving with typing since the keys are obviously larger.

Oh, Android 2.0. It feels like such a huge step forward for Android and it is. It really brings the mobile Google OS into 2009 with support for Exchange, a unified inbox (for non-Gmail), more resolution support, 3D graphics, and a whole lot more. Would we classify it as mostly a face lift? Yes. But that’s okay because at the core Android wasn’t too bad and most of the open issues in our mind have been fixed in 2.0. Unfortunately, there’s no multi-touch support in here which is a major downer. There is multi-touch support in the European version of the DROID, the MILESTONE, though. You might have read in our preview that we said that in the Maps application you can two-finger tap to zoom in. Well, you can also one-finger tap to zoom in. The software was sensing one input, not both simultaneously. Our bad.

In the new version of Android it seems that we’ve been given some more fluidity and some nice shortcuts to simplify our lives and not make them more complex. You’ll notice you can tap on a thumbnail of a contact photo anywhere in the OS and have a quick-launch list of immediate correspondence options.

There is still a lot of things Android 2.0 doesn’t fix and it’s pretty annoying. For one, there’s no way to set a real password on the phone. Seriously, drawing lines, shapes and farm animals with your finger to unlock the phone was cute in Android 1.0, but in 2.0? Get it together. It’s also inexcusable that there isn’t a password timeout interval you can adjust so you’re not forced to play tic-tac-toe each time you want to unlock your phone and read your email. Also, there are still no configurable hardware keyboard settings for repeat delay and repeat speed. Openness is great for mostly everyone: consumers, developers, etc. It also, however, brings shoddy code (from some 3rd party developers), fragmentation, and other hurdles. There has been countless times that programs for whatever reason have froze and the standard Google “Wait or Force close” prompt didn’t pop up for sometimes over 15 seconds. We don’t have a program waiting, but if it does, give us a way to force close something without having to wait for you to tell us it’s borked.

Maps is greatly improved, not taking into account Google Navigation. Configurable layers are fantastic as you can overlay what you want (Traffic, Latitude, Wikipedia, Local Search, Satellite, Transit Lines, etc.) when you want to access it instead of having specific modes that only allow you to consume one group of information at a time.

Contacts have now been updated to include sorting and viewing options as you can finally combine multiple contact sources natively (Google, Exchange, Facebook). Visually it looks great and it’s functional, too.

Android’s biggest issue as a whole is the lack of decent applications in our view. Sure, there are 10,000 but do you really need 25 star gazing applications? Nothing is functional and nothing can be compared to the other mobile OS’ apps in terms of quality. It’s not a shot, it’s just fact. You can’t replicate the desktop-class applications on Android yet for one reason or another, and that is a big issue.

I have a major Exchange issue that basically prevents me from relying on the phone as far as my email is concerned. I get a pretty big number of emails a day (around 500) and it’s not that the DROID stutters or can’t handle the volume, it’s that when I configure the phone to fetch the last day, it fetches the last three days. I’ve tried to play with settings, delete and re-add the account — nothing.

I used another Exchange account on the same Exchange server and that works fine. But, even though the account works and messages come through on time, it still went back and synced the last three days of mail instead of one. There are other glitches and bugs with the Exchange implementation on the DROID, but since it is software and something rather important, we have our hopes that it will be resolved in an OTA update. For now though, mail isn’t completely useless, it’s just not something we can count on. Well okay, maybe it’s useless.

Voice:

The built in voice recognition is positively top notch. Since Google’s voice search OS-wide queries your speech with an online synthesis system, this means that first off, your results should be pretty darn good, and second, that it can always improve and “learn” from more and more users. The downside is that if you don’t have a data connection, voice searching and voice control won’t work at all.

The scope of what’s covered by the voice recognition is pretty amazing. We’re talking about getting directions, searching for something like a product online using Google search, locally searching on Google Maps for a store, restaurant or item, and looking up and calling contacts from your address book, all of which are beautifully integrated into the OS.

Music:

Sadly the music side of things in Android 2.0 didn’t get much of an update. Or really any update at all. Look, we get it, you can’t do everything and that’s fine. Google Navigation as you’ll see is fantastic, we’ve got social networks integrated, a better browser — all that good stuff. But it’s not like much had to be done with the music application. Skin it a little bit and we think people would be happy. That’s not to say it doesn’t work, but the layout is a little tired, playlists and navigation is a little cumbersome and we just think music deserves a little bit more attention then it is getting.

Google Navigation

Uh oh, Google just ate everyone’s lunch right? Well, kind of. Google Navigation is amazing at the conceptual level, and even as far as usability goes it’s great. It’s fast, clean, and hey, it’s in beta so don’t flip out. We love satellite view for navigating and we love that it’s truly an internet-connected navigation app that never needs updated. It caches your route so it’s not totally network-dependent, but there isn’t any offline maps or anything like that, so some might take issue with that.

We found Google Navigation to be a joy to use and while it lacks some of the features and functionality traditional mobile navigation applications have, we’re pretty sure that will come in due time. For a first go, it’s very usable and it’s probably something we’d buy the damn car mount just to use. Searching for places and locations along the route is great and so is the robotic-sounding lady that will actually read you the entire street name instead of just giving you basic voice readouts like, “make a left in .8 miles.” You can also add layers to the navigation program and overlay traffic, parking locations, gas stations, banks, restaurants and more for viewing on the map while you travel along your route.

Browser

It’s amazing how a simple double-tap gesture will dramatically change the usability of a touch-screen-based browser. Literally, it’s one thing (besides CPU speed, a great screen obviously, etc.) that makes a big difference. Again, there’s no multi-touch and to be honest, a simple pinch-zoom gesture is really missed. With that said, the browser has improved a lot as far as rendering, being HTML5 compliant, sometimes fast, and very, very stable. Visually, as Android 2.0 in general seems to do, there’s some spice added. Visual bookmarks are fun, the improved URL bar at the top complete with favicon is also a nice touch. In addition to being HTML5 compliant, there’s also support for offline caching for browser-based apps among other improvements. The widescreen resolution and pixel density of the screen really make the browser very friendly to use even without having to zoom.

When you look at speed, the browser is pretty good. Running over the same Wi-Fi network, the DROID performed pretty reasonably compared to our iPhone 3GS. The 3GS we’d say has about 20% on the DROID for straight page loading and rendering, though scrolling speeds are noticeably faster on the DROID. Well, loading is pretty fast. It’s an interesting thing because the browser will sometimes be incredible speedy, and other times just get bogged down on really rudimentary sites. Your mileage may vary, but the speed of the browser can easily go from fast to frustrating and we’re not 100% sure why. One thing that’s annoying about the browser is that there’s no shortcut to jump back to the top of the page when the keyboard is closed. Big deal? Nope, just little things that go a long way that Google continues to miss as far as usability and user experience is concerned. Flash support is not built in to Google Experience phones at this time, but is said to be coming in 2010.

Not having a dedicated search box by the URL bar seems to have its advantages as we love performing searches and seeing related results instantly below. It’s also great that there are little visual icons like a star, clock, and search icon so you can differentiate between your bookmarks, history and live search data.

Phone calling / speaker

It’s a little strange when you ask a group of people about Motorola’s phones and their experiences with them. The strange part is that there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the middle; it’s a love it or hate it affair when it comes to phone performance among other things. Thankfully the Motorola DROID is an amazing performer in the phone calling arena. It’s got “the network” sure, but the phone itself also has incredibly accurate audio reproduction when using either the earspeaker or loudspeaker on the handset. Now, there’s one weird thing about making calls on the DROID and if you hold it up to your ear and talk, you can sort of hear yourself a little bit more than you can on another phone. The DROID has noise-cancellation built in so we’re thinking it might have something to do with that and the audio routing, and it’s definitely not cause for concern, just something we’ve noticed after using it as a phone for a pretty long time.

The speakerphone isn’t the loudest speakerphone, but it’s delightfully crisp and projects sound very well. When bumpin’ some music, we didn’t notice a single distortion, crack — nothing, even at full volume. Speakerphone voice calls also exhibited from the same pleasurable and accurate audio reproduction. We love making calls on the DROID.

The phone interface has received a little upgrade as far as visuals are concerned, but it’s straight forward and damn fast. Dialing has no slow downs or hiccups, calls connect instantly, and there’s no fuss. We’re also really feeling the upgraded call screen with improved end key, dialpad button, speaker and mute button. These slightly changed icons and new arrangement make accessing the essential calling functions a lot easier and more efficient.

Camera

The camera, a 5 megapixel autofocus dual LED flash, is straight up disappointing. It doesn’t seem to be hardware-related as we’re almost positive it’s a software issue, but man… did Kodak just say peace out to Moto or? This thing couldn’t focus on any sort of scene, portrait, landscape, a close-up — nothing — to save its life. On top of pictures not coming out focused properly, the camera application is ridiculously slow, sometimes pausing up to 7 or 8 seconds after you’ve taken a picture before it will let you snap again. What’s worse is that with geo-tagging enabled, delays get even longer.

With Android 2.0 there’s a brand new camera interface which is much-needed and actually isn’t horrible. It’s just not that intuitive and adjusting settings on the fly is damn near impossible. This is a common theme with Android and that’s because most coders aren’t designers and aren’t GUI experts. It’s pretty simple. For instance, the camera will display the automatic flash indicator in the lower left of the viewfinder, yet you can’t click on it. Wait, what? Yeah exactly. The logical among us would expect to tap the indicator and be able to cycle through the options quickly. But you have to slide your finder left to right to bring out the settings drawer, flick down to the flash setting option, tap it to bring the flash setting to the forefront, tap the desired choice and then slide the options drawer back into hiding– all when Megan Fox slipped out from the club while you were fiddling with your camera settings.

There’s also no review settings, so it’s not like you can take a photo and it will show it on screen for a certain amount of time where you can see that you accidentally sneezed during the photograph and want to delete it quickly. You have to tap the recent photo thumbnail in the upper right of the application and only then are presented with the option to delete, share, or set as (wallpaper, contact icon). Like we said, the optics seem to be fine, the dual-LED flash is perfect, but if the camera doesn’t focus properly, takes a long time to launch/shoot, and doesn’t allow on-the-go adjustments quickly, it’s a pretty useless camera. And in the end, we’d take our 3.2 megapixel Bold 9700 camera with flash and even iPhone 3GS camera without flash any day of the week, month, or year over the DROID’s camera.

Battery:

The Drizzy packs a 1400mAh battery, the same one used in the Motorola CLIQ, and there couldn’t be a starker difference between the two. Our Motorola CLIQ would run out of battery if we looked at it funny. The DROID on the other hand surprisingly has some of the best battery life on a mobile device we’ve used in recent memory. It’s definitely up there with an iPhone 3GS and BlackBerry 9700 — really remarkable for such a fast-powered handset with huge display, and it’s a CDMA phone! Very impressive and like we said before, even though the battery is user-replaceable, we really doubt you’ll ever need to with normal daily use.

Conclusion

So, what’s the wrap up, you’re asking right? We absolutely love the Motorola DROID. It’s a perfect storm between awesome hardware, great software, and a great network. That’s not to say it’s for everyone. It isn’t the most consumer-friendly device off the bat and it’s going to take some time and a whole bunch of improvements before we think Android can totally compete in the consumer space like others can, but Android is getting there slowly and this device in general couldn’t be a better way to show it off. There’s obviously some compromises like a pretty flat QWERTY keyboard and a little heft from the inclusion of metal as a design element, but the pros easily outweigh any cons if you’re on Verizon. And even if you’re not, it’s the most compelling alternative to the iPhone we’ve ever used. What’s important is that this phone exists and can easily fill a big void. It bridges a big gap and will be Verizon’s star device for the rest of the fourth quarter. Probably.

The price of $199 is a great price point and we can see VZ moving truckloads of these. International roaming would have been something to put a lot of people over the edge, but besides that, (and the fact they couldn’t fit in another thing) luckily most of the shortcomings the DROID has are software-based and can be easily rectified in the near future. This isn’t the only Android phone coming to Verizon, but from what we’ve seen it’s the best so far and something you’re really going to want to try out in the store and get a feel for. It’s easily one of the fastest and smoothest phones we’ve ever used, easily the fastest Android device on the market (as of November 6th), and definitely the most impressive. Motorola’s CLIQ, as we confidently told you, is a bottom-feeding device. It’s cheap, pretty poorly made physically and software-wise, and the DROID effectively wipes any bad taste out of our mouths. The Motorola DROID is now Motorola’s most important device in recent memory, and they’ve hit it out of the park with this one. We’ve been told there won’t be a USA 3G DROID (GSM) coming anytime soon (or ever), so if you’re looking to scoop one up, your best bet is on November 6th from Big Red.

Can you improve the Bold? You bet.

Volker Weber — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:13:07 -0700

Windows 7 Ultimate backup failed

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:54:58 -0700

I was happy the first time I used the built in backup feature of Windows 7 RC1. It was a very easy tool that allowed me to backup my whole system (or just selected partitions) to another external disk or a network share.

Today I tried to backup my current Windows 7 installation before updating the firmware of my Intel Postville SSD – but I was not able to creat the backup. I always got the following error message:

There is not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy on storage location. Make sure that for all volume to be backup up, the minimum disk space required for shadow copy creation is available. This applies to both the backup storage destination and volume included in the backup. Minimum requirement for Volumes less than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 50 megabyte of free space. For volumes more than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 320 megabytes of free space. Recommended at least 1 gigabytes free of disk space on each volumes if volumes size is more than 1 gigabytes (0×80780119)

I figured out that the hidden volume created by the Windows 7 setup caused this error. It is only 100 megabytes of size and has only 37 megabytes free. I was not able to deselect it or to free space on it. So now I am giving Macrium Reflect – Free Edition a try – I hope this does the trick, so far it looks pretty nice.

Android development and the HTC Magic

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:39:31 -0700

Some weeks ago I tried to install the android client of our time tracking system timr on my HTC Magic using Eclipse. Normally the Android Debug Bridge (adb) recognizes connected Android phones and the dialog in Eclipse allows you to select on which device you want to install the application you are trying to debug.

In the case of the G1 this works very well but the HTC Magic did not appear in the dialog and I could not select it. Some research showed that the driver that was installed from Windows for the device was not correct. I head to use the great USBDeview tool to remove the installed driver. This allowed me to install the driver from usb_driver directory in the Android SDK. After that the device showed up in the Eclipse dialog and I was able to select it for installation.

BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 Now Available!

Kevin Michaluk — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:11:40 -0700

A week with the Palm Pre, GSM version

(author unknown) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:18:20 -0700

Shared by tOMPSON
very nice Palm Pre review! #fb

I have added a new phone to my favorites. So far I had three (plus one retired): iPhone, Android Dev Phone (a.k.a. G1), BlackBerry Bold and the Nokia E71 (retired). The new entry of course is the Palm Pre. Let me explain the other ones before I get to the Pre:

New BlackBerry Messenger to Launch October 7th?!!

Kevin Michaluk — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:49:38 -0700

Research In Motion And Adobe Announce Full Flash Support For BlackBerry

Robb Dunewood — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:21:01 -0700

RIM joins Open Screen Project

Companies collaborate to bring full Flash Player to BlackBerry Smartphones

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA–(Marketwire – Oct. 5, 2009) – At Adobe MAX, Adobe’s worldwide developer conference, Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM) today announced they are working together to bring Adobe^® Flash^® Player support to the BlackBerry^® platform. RIM is joining the Open Screen Project, a broad initiative dedicated to enabling standalone applications and richer Web browsing across mobile phones, televisions, desktops and other consumer electronic devices through the Adobe Flash Platform. The collaboration is expected to bring the full Flash Player browser runtime to BlackBerry smartphones.

“As an industry leader for innovative smartphones and wireless solutions, RIM delivers superior mobile user experiences to customers around the world,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president, Flash Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “It’s a natural fit for both companies to work together to bring Flash technology based video and web content to BlackBerry smartphone users.”

“As part of the Open Screen Project, RIM will be working with Adobe to deliver a great Flash technology experience on BlackBerry smartphones and to enable users to enjoy the exciting content and services that Flash technology developers and content creators are bringing to the Web,” said Alan Brenner, SVP at Research In Motion.

Led by Adobe, the Open Screen Project includes close to 50 industry leaders working together to provide a consistent runtime environment and user experience across mobile phones, desktops, and other consumer electronics devices. The initiative addresses the challenges of web browsing on a broad range of devices, and removes the barriers to publishing content and applications seamlessly across screens. For more information, visit www.openscreenproject.org.

About Adobe Flash Platform

The Adobe Flash Platform is the leading web design and development platform for creating expressive applications, content, and video that run consistently across operating systems and devices and reach over 98% of internet-enabled desktops. According to comScore Media Metrix, approximately 75 percent of online videos viewed worldwide are delivered using Adobe Flash technology, making it the number one format for video on the Web. For more information about the Adobe Flash Platform visit www.adobe.com/flashplatform.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications. RIM technology also enables a broad array of third party developers and manufacturers to enhance their products and services with wireless connectivity. RIM’s portfolio of award-winning products, services and embedded technologies are used by thousands of organizations around the world and include the BlackBerry wireless platform, the RIM Wireless Handheld^TM product line, software development tools, radio-modems and software/hardware licensing agreements. Founded in 1984 and based in Waterloo, Ontario, RIM operates offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. RIM is listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market (NASDAQ:RIMM) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX:RIM). For more information, visit www.rim.com or www.blackberry.com.

Adobe^® and Adobe Flash^®^TM are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Forward-looking statements in this news release are made pursuant to the “safe harbor” provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used herein, words such as “intend” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions made by and information available to Research In Motion Limited. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, possible product defects and product liability, risks related to international sales and potential foreign currency exchange fluctuations, the initiation or outcome of litigation, acts or potential acts of terrorism, international conflicts, significant fluctuations of quarterly operating results, changes in Canadian and foreign laws and regulations, continued acceptance of RIM’s products, increased levels of competition, technological changes and the successful development of new products, dependence on third-party networks to provide services, dependence on intellectual property rights, and other risks and factors detailed from time to time in RIM’s periodic reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and other regulatory authorities. RIM has no intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited. RIM, Research In Motion and BlackBerry are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be pending or registered in other countries. RIM assumes no obligations or liability and makes no representation, warranty, endorsement or guarantee in relation to any aspect of any third party products or services.

Research In Motion And Adobe Announce Full Flash Support For BlackBerry is a post from: RIMarkable

iTunes 9.0.1 and Windows 7

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:05:15 -0700

Today I noticed that the new iTunes version 9.0.1.8 shows three small media control buttons in the preview window of the Windows 7 task bar. That is a nice feature because I to not have to aim at the small icon in the notification area for pause/play/forward/previous:

Looks Like RIM Is About To Release BlackBerry Desktop Manager For Mac

Robb Dunewood — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:19:23 -0700

Inside BlackBerry calls it “A Closer Look at the Mac OS Version” of BlackBerry Desktop Manager. That, this is, however, I believe that this is also Research in Motion’s way of letting us know that the official release of BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac is imminent… Imminent like as in tomorrow…

I don’t have any proof to back BDM for Mac coming out tomorrow up and it is more, or less, just a feeling, however, this closer look is awfully detailed as for as official BlackBerry blogs go. As closely as RIM holds “official” details to the vest I cannot imagine that BlackBerry Desktop Manager is not all ready to go…

Looks Like RIM Is About To Release BlackBerry Desktop Manager For Mac is a post from: RIMarkable

BlackBerry 9700 Review: Part 1

Boy Genius — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:53:58 -0700

Oh you thought we fell off. Nope — we’ve just been tearing apart BlackBerry’s latest flagship over the past week or so and our review is finally perfectly crafted. The BlackBerry 9700 replaces the Bold as RIM’s newest flagship device. Even though it’s not released yet — look for it anywhere from mid-October to mid-November depending on what part of the globe you reside in — it’s BlackBerry’s most advanced QWERTY device to date and combines all of their next generation features together in a smaller and lighter package. We’ve already detailed our thoughts on RIM and how they are doing on the software side of things and this review will be mostly hardware focused. We will also follow up with a Part 2 review as we did with the BlackBerry Tour since this model is not a production unit.

Hardware / Design:

Gorgeous. How do you like that description? From the beveled edges to the powder-coated keyboard, this is one good looking BlackBerry. The much loved (and hated) fake leather textured battery cover makes a reappearance here as does a trackpad to handle the navigational duties.

The 9700 makes the Tour look like a bloated 8-month pregnant single mother. Shave about 24% of the surface area off the Tour, bevel the edges, round the corners, and you’ll have something close to the BlackBerry 9700. It’s the most gorgeous BlackBerry on the planet. And no, that’s not up for debate or discussion. Early units had the straight RIM color theme on the keyboards (white letters with red accents/symbols) but the unit we have which is most likely what AT&T will receive is all white. This looks great meshed with the titanium chrome finish on the bezel and the high gloss black finish on the front of the device.

This theme is always brought up in our reviews of BlackBerry devices — RIM really keeps innovating in hardware design and manufacturing. It seems as if each device they make has a brand new manufacturing process and technique, and while you might view this as a negative, we view it as a positive. Unlike a car maker, RIM can’t make a chassis, so to speak, that they use for all their models in a series. Since each device is unique, it’s great to see RIM experiment with different planning and assembly options to deliver the best product possible. Eliminating the number one failure point on a BlackBerry (the trackball) and replacing it with something that’s not just going to save money in the long run, but is actually a better solution is great. Making desktop chargers that use battery contact points to save wear and tear on the mini/microUSB port is smart. Speaking about the trackpad, we’re not sure what’s up because there’s a nice and day difference between this one and and the one on the BlackBerry 8520. It might be the exact same hardware revision, but something about it feels better to use and after a day of not using the traditional trackball, we can’t imagine not using the trackpad. It’s a worthy successor to the trackball.

What about something that’s often overlooked? Vibrate. We’d like to be the first ones to report that the vibrate function on the 9700 is straight up violent. It’s possibly the most downright disrespectfully loud and obnoxious vibrate mechanism we’ve heard in recent memory. And we love it. Switching gears to the physical buttons on the 9700, it will make a BlackBerry user feel right at home. Two-stage camera shutter /convenience key on the lower right side of the phone with volume up / down buttons towards the top of the right side. Left convenience key on the opposite side with lock and mute buttons on the top of the handset. There’s the now-default 3.5mm headset jack and microUSB port sitting above the left convenience key. Below those are a lanyard hole. Thrilling, we know.

The 9700 is very much like the 9520/9550 in terms of industrial design and gives us a glimpse at where RIM’s styling is headed for the next round of handsets. Things like soft-touch rubberized finish on the middle of the handsets with matching rubberized buttons (instead of chrome), darker chrome finishes, high gloss black — all these lead to more pronounced and edgier designs for a historically conservative corporation.

Screen:

RIM really moved in a brand new direction with the Bold’s display and ever since, they’ve been continuing the tradition of awesomeness. We’re really happy to report that the BlackBerry 9700 has the best screen to date of any BlackBerry handset. It’s that good. The resolution, which is the new RIM gold standard, is 480×360 and while you wouldn’t expect it to be any better than the Tour’s or Curve 8900’s screens, it is. Pictures appear as if they’re floating on top of the display, blacks are black and colors are crisp and vibrant. There’s a pretty decently-sized black border that goes around the entire display much like how the BlackBerry Tour’s screen looks, and while people have moaned about this ad nauseum, it doesn’t really phase us.

OS:

The latest versions of OS 5.0 (which have leaked for existing handsets like the 9530, 9630, Bold, 8900, etc.) show a slight UI refresh with more blues, more gradients, updated icons and buttons and even — *gasp* — kinetic scrolling on some devices. Here’s where it gets a little tricky, though. AT&T’s BlackBerry 9700 evaluation units shipped with OS 5.0.0.169. The unit we have originally came with that OS and worked magically. It, however, didn’t have the updated UI that later OS 5.0 builds contain. After upgrading our unit to OS 5.0.0.215 (internal builds for the 9700 are up beyond .249, we’re told) it’s now rocking out with the updates features and sexified UI elements. Why we’re going into this so deeply is because there’s a good chance that if AT&T’s 9700 passes technical acceptance without issue (we don’t anticipate the same issues that plagued the Bold’s release), the version that will ship with the 9700 will be 5.0.0.169 or something close to it. That means that you’ll be running an “old” 5.0 build and it’s interesting to see this play out. You’ll obviously be able to install different OS versions for yourself that have been released by other carriers, but we just wanted to give you guys a heads up that the release unit’s OS might be a little different.

Keyboard:

We don’t have to keep reinforcing it (well, we just did, we guess): we take those keyboards seriously. Throw the BlackBerry 8900 keyboard out of the window on this because it’s completely different. Imagine the BlackBerry 9700 keyboard as a mix of the Bold and the Tour keyboards. Tour-shaped (little better) with the bounce and feel of the Bold keyboard. It’s really fantastic. Definitely not as large as the original Bold’s mammoth boat-sized chiclet pad, but it’s great. We’d probably go as far as saying out of the current generation BlackBerry handsets, the BlackBerry 9700 is the best. You’ll see that theme appear time and time again in this review. Each little key has a nice carved design that allows for precision typing at its finest. Keys have a decent amount of space and even though the shift keys at the bottom look a little small (they are tiny), they’re completely usable and really don’t turn out to be a hindrance when it comes to getting your typing on.

After a couple hours of usage we have no doubts that you’ll absolutely fall in love with the keyboard. The feel of the keys coupled with the shape and proper layout that’s standard on all BlackBerrys offer a truly excellent typing experience on the BlackBerry 9700.

Phone:

The unit as a phone is fantastic. That will obviously depend on what network you sign your life away to, but even on AT&T, when the network worked, the 9700 made for a great phone. The actual ear speaker seems less recessed than previous BlackBerrys and we could hear callers loud and clear using the ear speaker. Speakerphone also worked well (as it should) with minimal distortion at maximum volume. Quite refreshingly, the device didn’t get too hot during long voice sessions and we really had no problems using the phone as a phone.

Browser:

While the browser in OS 5.0 comes with some improved Javascript support, it’s still no where near any of the top dogs like Apple’s mobile Safari, Android’s webKit browser, or Palm’s webKit browser. Using the browser with the trackpad as the cursor is definitely a great input method (remember when the trackball made use of the cursor back in the day for the first time?) and feels natural to navigate websites. The browser seems like one of the things that changes most as OS builds move further and further along so we’ll reserve our hatred for the browser in our final Part 2 review.

Speaker:

While the Bold offered three different audible speaker ports (one on each side and one at the top) for pretty accurate sound reproduction, the BlackBerry 9700 uses a single opening towards the top part of the back of the device. This works fairly well and sound, uh, sounds good. We did notice a volume decrease compared to the Bold, but not by much. Maybe around 15% lower? Nothing is going to beat that Storm 2 speaker, though…

Battery:

We’re not sure how they did it, but the BlackBerry 9700 has the best battery life of any 3G BlackBerry in recent years. It could probably even rival the BlackBerry 8900 — truly unbelievable. The BlackBerry Tour was the king of battery life, and that was odd seeing as how CDMA devices usually are a bit worse than their GSM brothers and sisters, but the 9700 has one-upped the Tour. For some rough statistics, the BlackBerry Bold with normal usage patterns lasted me around 7 hours of usage until the battery was dead. How long do you think the 9700 lasts using the exact same BlackBerry Bold battery? Try around 15 hours. We’re talking more than double with a faster CPU and using the same battery. Really remarkable and will help those on-the-go warriors.

It’s funny to see RIM use such a wide range of batteries in their devices. Then again, for a company that has 15,000 different models, 4,000 different screen resolutions, and 2,000 different form factors it doesn’t surprise us. What you’ll be happy to hear is that your existing BlackBerry Bold battery will work perfectly in the 9700 and will yield you better battery life than you’ve ever imagined.

Note: Battery life was based on OS 5.0.0.169. It’s dramatically worse in OS 5.0.0.215 which the unit is now running.

Conclusion:

It’s pretty hard to make a general recommendation nowadays with any device, let alone a BlackBerry. With four form-factors in the BlackBerry family, it complicates things.

The BlackBerry 9700 is a much-needed refresh to the aging BlackBerry Bold. To date, RIM has released only a single 3G GSM device in the United States and with competition heating up, the BlackBerry 9700 looks to be their answer. We absolutely gushed over the BlackBerry Tour in our review and until the 9700 came along, that was our daily driver. Is the BlackBerry Tour still the best BlackBerry on the market? We think so. But as good as the Tour is, the 9700 is better. There seems to be a drastic difference between CDMA and GSM hardware on BlackBerry devices (we’re guessing it’s the Qualcomm processors opposed to the Marvells) and it’s actually exhilarating to be back on a GSM device. The BlackBerry 9700 combines the most-loved features that have been sprinkled about on BlackBerry phones over the last year (3G, 3.2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, trackpad, QWERTY keyboard, smaller size, faster CPU) and combines them into a single sexy and compact package.

“So you’re saying the BlackBerry 9700 is the best BlackBerry ever?”

Yes. It’s the finest BlackBerry ever crafted and if you’re asking why it’s so much better than the Tour, it goes back to that CDMA vs. GSM argument as well as the fact that the 9700 is simply a year newer. We nailed the Tour all the way back almost two years ago, and sadly the internals seem to be a little outdated. There’s no official CPU specifications on the Tour, but if we had to guess we’d guess it’s running at around 500MHz give or take. Rumblings have pegged the BlackBerry 9700’s Marvell Tavor CPU running at close to 800MHz! It’s a lot faster in normal usage than the Bold (both running OS 5.0) so in addition to the RAM being doubled, we’re pretty sure there is a faster CPU dropped in there as well.

Every single thing about the BlackBerry 9700 screams high-end to us, and for a device that’s a part of the Bold-series (the Bold won’t go anywhere, we’ve been told), it should. It’s the best of the best to come out of Research In Motion to date and we can’t wait until everyone’s able to use one.

Check back for Part 2 when we follow up with a review on an AT&T release unit.

Image courtesy of TweetGenius.

Outlook und Explorer PDF Preview auf 64 Bit

(author unknown) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:58:45 -0700

Shared by tOMPSON
nice little fix

Dass der Adobe PDF Preview Handler unter 64 Bit Vista/Windows 7 nicht richtig funktioniert – und damit weder im Windows Explorer noch in Outlook das PDF Dokument vorab anzeigt -ist altbekannt und schon oft (auch auf WindowsBlog z.B. hier oder hier) diskutiert:

Die bisherige Lösung zumindest für Outlook hat geheißen: Foxit Preview Handler installieren. Doch nun hat mir MarkusR einen super Hinweis geschickt. Und einen ziemlich arg peinlichen für Adobe. Dass der Handler nicht funktioniert dürfte schlicht auf den Umstand zurückzuführen sein, dass Adobe einen Registry Key nicht richtig setzt?!

Der manuelle Weg:

Gehe zu HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}
Ändere den existierenden Wert AppID, der falsch auf {6d2b5079-2f0b-48dd-ab7f-97cec514d30b} gesetzt ist, in {534A1E02-D58F-44f0-B58B-36CBED287C7C}

Und schon geht’s (in meinem Fall mit Windows 7 64 Bit RTM und Office 2010 32 Bit Technical Preview):

Sensationell. Adobe ist das Problem seit fast 3 Jahren bekannt, ich kann mir eigentlich nicht vorstellen, dass da keine Absicht dahintersteht? Übrigens - eine Lästigkeit bleibt: nach einem Update des Adobe Readers kann sein, dass der Wert wieder falsch gesetzt ist,… Adobe wird hiermit verdonnert, 100x den Artikel auf MSDN abzuschreiben, wie man denn richtig einen Preview Handler installiert,…

Ein fertiges Reg File, die Quelle und noch mehr Information gibts unter:
http://www.pretentiousname.com/adobe_pdf_x64_fix/index.html

Danke an Markus für den Tipp!

Improving cygwin console (even more)

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:21:52 -0700

As I stated out in one of my last posts I am using cygwin a long time now and I am using it more and more within the last months. This is mainly caused by switching to git as my new favorite source code management tool and using maven for every Java project I am currently working on.

Today I fixed some small issues I had with cygwin that kept the true excellence of the bash command line, I was used to from my Linux systems, away from me.

One of these problems was that the Umlauts did not work in bash. I was able to fix this by adding the following lines to my ~/.inputrc

set meta-flag on set output-meta on set convert-meta off

The second thing was that navigating with the cursor keys did not work in vim. This was fixed by creating a vimrc file using the sample by issuing the following command

cp /usr/share/vim/vim72/vimrc_example.vim ~/.vimrc

Another benefit of the vimrc file was that syntax highlighting and colors were now enabled. I also had to make sure that the TERM environment variable was set to cygwin to get the cursor keys working. I did this by adding the following line to my ~/.profile file:

export TERM=cygwin

Now I am really happy with my console setup under Windows 7.

BitDefender failed me (again)

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:35:53 -0700

Today I had problems running my newly installed cygwin 1.7 beta and minTTY after updating BitDefender. It only took me some minutes to find out that BitDefender was the cause of the problem (much faster than the last time).

After fidling around with some settings and trying some workarounds from various web resources I decided to uninstall BitDefender. Now I am looking for a good replacement. Any recommendations for a Windows 7 antivirus program?

Improving cygwin console

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:54:11 -0700

I am using cygwin for a long time now. It is one of the first tools I install on the Windows systems I am working on.

The bad thing about cygwin is that it uses the Windows Command/Console to run the bash. Selecting text, copy and paste are really hard to do inside the Windows Console so I searched for a better solution.

I came across puttycyg which is basically a manipulated putty that allows to make a “connection” to the local cygwin installation. This is the perfect way for me to have a real bash functioniality under Windows. Working with maven, subversion and git got a lot better for me.

T-Mobile BlackBerry Bold 9700 details emerge including preloads

Kyle — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:27:37 -0700

Al Sacco of CIO.com got an email from T-Mobile USA’s PR firm that contained a marketing image of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as well as some previously unknown details. The image came before an embargo was signed so he decided to publish.

According to the PR firm:

“The BlackBerry ‘Onyx’ sports a premium experience and design with a high-gloss black finish and leather grain detail on the back. Boasting features such as high-speed 3G Web browsing, Wi-Fi calling, visual voicemail and support for corporate and personal e-mail options, the ‘Onyx’ will satisfy all your on-the-go needs. Also the phone comes preloaded with mobile applications from BlackBerry App World, including Amazon MP3 store for quick and easy music downloads and TeleNav GPS Navigator for turn-by-turn directions.”

It seems we’ll be getting an official announcement about this device early November. Rumor has it that the T-Mobile version of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 will come with slightly different specs. The T-Mobile version is rumored to have the same battery as the Curve 8900/Storm/Tour, while the AT&T version will come with the Bold 9000 battery. Also, the processor is rumored to be different as well.

It’s great to see App World coming preloaded with the device, and I’m hoping this will be standard on all future BlackBerry devices.

The Amazon MP3 store is interesting but I’m more interested in getting the 7Digital application. It was supposed to be available this summer but I’ve yet to see it available for download.

[Via]

I Have A BlackBerry Dream – An Open Letter to RIM

Ronen Halevy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

I have a BlackBerry dream that one day RIM will embrace their consumers and not compromise that relationship with carrier whims. This letter was a long time coming but I finally decided to write it when a few RIM employees mentioned that I have been a bit harsh and negative towards RIM recently. In my defense, this is similar to labeling my mother as negative since she has no mercy in pointing out when I am wrong or straying off what she considers the right path for my success. This is not a fault! It is simply a sign that she cares about my future just like I strongly care about the future of RIM and their ability to continue supplying me with a cutting edge mobile experience.

Dear RIM et al,

Over the past few years you (RIM) have been moving aggressively into the consumer market and have become quite successful in doing so. You had a solid base of push email and devices that “just worked.” Along with this consumer push came new features such as cameras, media players, streaming audio/video, instant messaging, and even Facebook. This slow feature creep has taken BlackBerrys from a simple pager that you have slowly evolved into an uber-PDA that many cannot live without.

When RIM first started there was a definite need for you to woo carriers into selling and supporting your devices. BlackBerrys required extra infrastructure from carriers such as BIS and support for devices that were different from what carriers regularly offered. To do this you did whatever each carriers asked in terms of modifying your devices and systems . You also focused on large businesses during that time and created the BES solution to provide users with mobile calendars and then notes, tasks, and contacts. Improved security was a must as BlackBerrys started being adopted by the government and other protective organizations. This created a niche of BlackBerry users who became dependent on this solution.

Now many years later you have a huge consumer user base that easily rivals your enterprise base and they are clamoring for a change in how RIM does business. Until now you have always put carriers before consumers. Put carrier revenue streams before customer features. Put enterprise customers before regular customers. This has to change. You are no longer a small upstart who needs to bend to every carriers whim. You work with hundreds of carriers around the world who are making TONS of money off your solutions. When carriers like Verizon ask you to disable GPS you HAVE to put consumers before carriers because at the end of the day consumers decide your future not carriers.

The second you started focusing on consumers instead of businesses you were stuck at a crossroads. Consumers are not as interested in security and solutions like BES that cost more than most are willing to pay. You were faced with conflict after conflict when it came to marrying consumer features to the core BlackBerry system. For example, When OS 4.0 came out many users were clamoring for direct TCP or WAP APN connections since carriers were either blocking them or charging per kilobyte for the pleasure of using this service even when they were on an unlimited data plan. BES customers were fine since MDS provided a TCP gateway but consumers were left out in the cold. It took years until carriers changed their tune and opened up TCP to users and it took you even longer to offer BIS-B connections to alleviate some of the need for direct TCP.

There are many more current and historic examples of where carriers, partner relationships, and enterprise customers were placed before consumers. Here are a few notable ones:

IM Clients: When you first released the amazing Google Talk, AIM, WLM, Yahoo Messenger, and ICQ clients they did not work on many carriers. Not because of technical reasons but rather because you gave carriers the option of which clients to support and provide. WHY? Any other third party developer could have released these clients without getting carrier approval so why didn’t you do the same? Instead of pushing out the service books yourself you gave carriers control over a feature that customers wanted for no reason other than putting carriers whims and revenue streams before consumers.

OS Upgrades: Every current BlackBerry OS release needs to be approved by each carrier individually before they release it. This requirement is nonsense. It could be that carriers need to approve the radio module but the rest of the OS has nothing to do with the carrier. It has become laughable that users have to resort to leaked OS version or even another carriers OS version since it takes months if not years for a carrier to release an update. I always wonder how Apple manages to update the OS of every iPhone worldwide in one day while RIM is forced to do it piecemeal. This would be like getting an ISP’s approval for every Windows Update package.

Wireless OS Upgrades: I was super excited when you released the ability to do a wireless upgrade but once again this was hobbled to only allow you to install a carriers approved OS on top of that same carriers previous approved OS. This is such a laughable restriction that I do not know one person who has actually bothered using it.

Outages: A large portion of your userbase are now consumers. They depend on your service 24 hours a day every day. Is there any reason they should be treated like second class citizens compared to enterprise customers? Why do we need to resort to mailing lists to get any confirmation on when there is an outage? Do consumers not deserve an SLA or at the very least an explanation and apology?

PIM Sync (calendar/contacts/memos/etc): BES has long been the leader when it comes to synching your calendar, contacts, and other PIM over the air. It does this beautifully but it costs a pretty penny for companies. This also puts it out of the reach of most consumers who would have to pay about $10 for a BES plan and then another $10-15 a month for an enterprise BlackBerry plan. That means that PIM sync would cost a consumer about $20-25 more a month.

Five years ago that was fine since most users were not expecting PIM sync. Now almost EVERY smartphone has ActiveSync support which allows users to sync their PIM FREE! It almost feels like you are holding out on this feature just to differentiate consumers from BES users. Google Contacts Sync in 2.8 might remediate this fault to some extent but still we are missing calendar, notes, and tasks sync at the very least along with any Exchange support.

App World: This one just amazes me. The whole purpose of the BlackBerry App World was to help users discover new applications ESPECIALLY new users. With that said I cannot believe that not one BlackBerry actually ships or plans to ship with App World installed. That means that new users will have no way to discover the application that will help them discover other BlackBerry applications. All the while carriers are pushing out 10-20 Spam homescreen icons trying to upsell everything from ringtones to mobile TV.

BlackBerry Internet Service: One thing has always bothered me about BIS. Why do you have to have a different account for every carrier? I have had BlackBerrys on all 4 big US carriers and have an account on all of them. Why? Is it really that hard to associate my device with the carrier network it is registered to? This presents a big problem for me when I move my device from one carrier to another since there is no way to disassociate my PIN and IMEI from one carrier to another without entering in a new one. I have had to spend over 10+ hours with customer service resetting this association in the past. This is all due to the lack of a simple feature. The ability to delete your account and the ability to reset a PIN and IMEI associated with that account. The only reason I can think of why this has not been implemented is because it makes it easier to switch carriers…

Security: Consumers do care about security but they usually care more about functionality. This paranoid security is brilliant for businesses but there are countless consumer features that are hobbled by such restrictions. For example, there is no way to record a call on your BlackBerry. My old Nokia 3650 had this feature years ago. It could be that you do not want to create such an application since it may be used to break the law but you have also stopped any developer from being able to create such an application. There is also a annoying restriction on being able to record sound while playing back sound at the same time. The BlackBerry is obviously capable of doing this in a phone call but you have not released any API’s to do this since it may lead to VOIP. Once again carriers before consumers. Other security features such as input injection being disabled while in a holster are also frustrating for consumers. This means that applications that change your profile or do anything similar cannot work while holstered or sometimes even locked. I understand how this may be necessary for some businesses but there is no way to turn it off!

With that all said this brings me back to the point of this article. There are countless cases that I can rattle off the top of my head detailing how you have let carriers dilute your relationship with consumers. It is time you realize that you are the one who has the upper hand in this carrier-manufacturer relationship. Take a page out of Apple’s book and use that clout to create the best possible user experience to which nobody else compares. You still have the lead in the smartphone race but the competition is starting to catch up and even surpass you in terms of consumer experience in certain areas. You need to re-assume the innovative role where the competition is copying you instead of vise-versa.

I beg of you to act now and become the consumer evangelist you must become to truly bring us the best mobile experience.

PS: It may help if you started listening to Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” lyrics as a inspirational mantra but I digress.

If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:

Posted by Ronen Halevy for ©BerryReview, September 4, 2009, 5:00 pm. | I Have A BlackBerry Dream – An Open Letter to RIM | 19 comments |

Scott Hanselman's 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Scott Hanselman — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:18:49 -0700

What to expect from RIM in 2009: The year of the upgrades

Kyle — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:08:32 -0700

So it seems as though 2009 will be the year of the upgrades. The following devices are rumored to hit shelves before 2010:

The BlackBerry Onyx aka Bold 9700
The BlackBerry Storm 2 9520
The BlackBerry Essex
The BlackBerry “Striker” 9100 (rumor probably has the codename wrong)

Lets take a quick look at each device, so you can see why 2009 should be dubbed “The Year of the Upgrades.” While these devices haven’t launched yet, and nothing is final, there are a variety of features that I would like to see ship with these devices, to truly add a great leap forward element for the device.

The BlackBerry Bold 9700

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is essentially the Bold 2. It’s a slightly improved version of the Bold spec wise, but also in form factor. The Bold 9000, while it is in my opinion the flagship device of RIM, is a little bulky for today’s standards. The Bold 9700 addresses this and packs everything into a smaller form factor with minor improvements. Like all the devices I’ll describe, they are really great additions to the RIM product line, but we’re not seeing anything too revolutionary. I would definitely recommend this device to a Bold owner, but I would also like to see RIM raise the bar just a little higher.

My recommendation: For each device, add a feature that appeals to the target market of that device. The Bold 9700 is clearly aimed at the enterprise market, and therefore I would love to see the device ship with a feature that would appeal to the CEO and VP level users. This feature should have been a front facing camera. A CEO should be able to have a video conference with employees or clients on the go and a front facing camera would enable this. In general, a CEO on a BlackBerry 9700 should feel ahead of the competition and have access to a mobile office.

The BlackBerry Storm 2 9520

The BlackBerry Storm 2 is a huge improvement on the BlackBerry Storm 1. The device is faster, more responsive and the new touch interface makes typing much easier. Also, the multi-touch functionality adds a lot of potential for developers. That being said, it isn’t a huge jump from the Storm 1. Users who purchased the Storm 1 when it first launched, should have been purchasing what will be the Storm 2.

What it should have shipped with? OpenGl support. The Storm 2 is the ultimate consumer device and consumer apps are going to get bigger and graphically more intense. With a OpenGL support, developers can create new and innovative applications as well as creative user interfaces.

The BlackBerry Essex

The BlackBerry Essex is the Tour 2. The updates to the Tour include WiFi as well as a Curve series style keyboard. Again, this device is a great addition to the product line, but it could have shipped with a feature designed to really drive sales.

The Tour is a World Phone and a consumer device. The target market for this device is therefore somebody who loves rich media on their device, but also travels a lot. The recommended feature for this device is therefore an internal compass. While a BlackBerry has the ability to calculate True North using GPS, you have to have certain inputs in order to do so. With direction, longitude and latitude, you can calculate True North, but this creates some barriers for developers. An internal compass would allow for augmented reality applications, which would come in handy for the traveling consumer.

The BlackBerry 9100 “Striker”

While nothing is really known about the 9100, we’re expecting updates shortly. We do know that this will be the updated BlackBerry Pearl and I can bet you that, like all these other devices, it will be slightly upgraded in terms of performance as well as form factor, but nothing to really brag about.

While I can’t be certain because again, this device hasn’t surfaced, I can guess that it won’t have a tremendously better camera. This is the recommended feature for a BlackBerry Pearl user. A Pearl user target market is a consumer who likes a small and compact form factor. This user would benefit tremendously from a really nice camera and video setup. A camera setup much like the N97 would be a welcomed feature. The Pearl 9100 would ideally come with a 5 MP, 2592×1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, LED flash, video light and VGA at 30fps.

So there you have it. All the devices we will see in 2009 are updates of previous versions without anything absolutely major included. The above are my recommendations for features that would really drive home the launch of each device and get the community excited. Again, while none of these devices have launched and things can and likely will change come launch date, I seriously doubt anything I’ve mentioned will be coming soon.

Upcoming v2.5 IM Clients – Coming September 12th…

Ronen Halevy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Wow talk about a day to come back to. One of our secret agents sent us the 3 main documents for the upcoming release of version 2.5 of RIM’s awesome IM clients. Personally I don’t see anything crazy new here but still it is worth mentioning. Kevin also seems to have gotten his hand on one of the 3 documents and kindly posted all the pages. Our agent also let us know that the release date is currently set for September 12th with that date subject to change according to RIM.

Features include:

Add dedicated icons to the Home Screen for one-click access to conversation boxes of specific contacts. The icon appears as the contact’s display picture or avatar
Add contacts and display pictures or avatars to the address book to easily send instant messages, email messages, SMS text messages, or place a call right from the address book or conversation box
Search through saved conversations
Add dedicated emoticon icons in the conversation box

Feature comparison:

If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:

Posted by Ronen Halevy for ©BerryReview, August 28, 2009, 7:00 am. | Upcoming v2.5 IM Clients – Coming September 12th… | One comment |

git under Windows 7

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:49:24 -0700

There are already some posts out there discussing this issue which git in cygwin has under Windows Vista. It will be no surprise if I tell you that the same problem still exists under Windows 7.

Microsofts UAC looks for executables with “install”, “update” or “setup” in their name and requires user account elevation to execute them. This does not work for git-update-index.exe under cygwin and so the command fails with “Permission denied”.

The workaround of creating manifest files for each of the “suspicious” files as described here worked for me.

Enhanced Google Mail Plugin For BlackBerry Smartphones

Robb Dunewood — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 08:53:13 -0700

There have been rumors floating around for some time that Google and RIM were working on a plugin for GMail that would bring additional features to BlackBerry users that have Gmail accounts such as:

Add and remove labels and stars on email messages
Report spam email messages
Perform local and remote searches
Archive email messages
View related email messages as a single conversation (threaded view)

With the Enhanced Google Mail Plugin for BlackBerry Smartphones, these rumors are now a reality.

The Enhanced Google Mail™ plug-in for BlackBerry® smartphones introduces an advanced level of email service integration for BlackBerry smartphones. It supports additional Google Mail™ features that provide BlackBerry® Internet Service subscribers with broader access to their Google Mail accounts while on the go. The Enhanced Google Mail plug-in is optional. Existing and new Google Mail integrations will continue to function without it.

The only downside to this plugin is that synchronization is one way, working only from the BlackBerry to the Gmail web interface. Changes made in the web interface will not be reflected on you your device.

Even still, the Enhanced Gmail Plugin for BlackBerry Smartphones is a huge step forward over standard BIS Gmail support and I recommend that BlackBerry users setting up a new Gmail account on their device use it.

To get the plugin, just point your device to http://blackberry.com/gmail.

Lightweight Frameworks

Oliver Widder — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:37:36 -0700

I love application frameworks. Especially those ones made in-house.

RIM planning on including full Flash and Silverlight support in browser

Boy Genius — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:07:03 -0700

We’ve been gathering details over the past month or so on this, and it’s pretty much confirmed: Research In Motion is planning on integrating full Flash and Microsoft Silverlight support into their BlackBerry web browser. Read that again boys and girls — full Flash support, not Flash lite.

You know when the word “planning” is used in the same sentence as RIM, however, that it probably means it’s a while away. And it is. We’ve been told this won’t happen until next summer or right before it as RIM needs their devices to be more beefed up as well as have access to higher data speeds for this to work effectively (HSPA and LTE). RIM has already achieved over 10Mbps downloads on next generation BlackBerrys in the test labs with test LTE equipment so it’s looking good, folks.

Oh yeah, before we forget. We’ve heard that we should see the BlackBerry 9700 hit AT&T right in time for a nice Black Friday launch if testing goes smoothly. Trackpad and all.

Perl problems under cygwin

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:44:02 -0700

Cygwin is one of the first things I install on my Windows systems and lately I added some more tools to my cygwin setup for the use of distributed SCM systems. Luckily both mercurial and git are included in the cygwin packages and I hope I find the time within the next days to write about my experiences with those systems.

One problem I ran into when using git svn under cygwin was the following error message:

[main] perl 5940 C:\cygwin\bin\perl.exe: *** fatal error - unable to remap C:\cygwin\lib\perl5\5.10\i686-cygwin\auto\File\Glob\Glob.dll to same address as parent(0x8C0000) != 0x950000 [main] perl 5328 fork: child 5940 - died waiting for dll loading, errno 11

After some research I found out that I had to run rebaseall to solve this problem. This tool seems to clean up the versions of the various installed components. But rebaseall can only be run when no other cygwin process is active. So I had to go to the bin directory of my cygwin installation and start the ash shell. Inside ash I was able to run rebaseall.

SpringSource Joins Forces with VMware

Adam Fitzgerald — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:12:22 -0700