BlackBerry Planet Weblog

Rod McQueen Blackberry Book Panned

2010-03-05T08:28:00.000-08:00

Montreal Gazette Review by Roberto Rocha:

"BlackBerry could be easily mistaken for a long brochure for RIM investors, or a ghostwritten autobiography of the company’s iconic co-chiefs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. Despite the book’s impressive research and detailed accounts of key events in the BlackBerry ascent, McQueen sounds like the best man delivering a wedding speech, not someone providing a critical look at the little device that is revolutionizing business and human relations."......

"Yet the way he describes everything, it seems RIM and its bosses could do no wrong. Every decision they made is brilliant, their characters are beyond messianic. Bad moves are glossed over, given just a nominal mention."

"For a more critical look at the device, BlackBerry Planet by Alastair Sweeny is a far better work."

RIM Finally Gets a Decent BlackBerry Browser

2010-02-22T05:41:00.000-08:00

RIM unveiled its new BlackBerry browser at Barcelona this weekend. It runs on WebKit, the rendering engine behind Apple's Safari and Google's Android browsers.

Once derided as "a Pinto in an era of Priuses," the BlackBerry browser has been lagging behind competitors, but Research In Motion bought browser-design firm Torch Mobile to clean up the mess.

The BlackBerry browser now scores 100 percent in the Web-rendering Acid 3 test, and can handle AJAX, CSS and HTML5, which means less Flash and longer battery life.

Great BlackBerry Planet Review

2010-01-13T07:55:00.001-08:00

"Star Trek-inspired BlackBerry took the world by storm"

by Maclean Kay at Troy Media.

The Blessing of the BlackBerrys

2010-01-13T02:02:00.000-08:00

An Anglican church in London, England has done what e-mail addicts and workaholics have been doing for years - invoking God's blessing on their high-tech gadgets. Rev. David Parrott blessed laptops and smart phones on the altar of the 17th-century St. Lawrence Jewry church yesterday. Canon Parrott said the blessing ceremony was an update of a traditional back-to-work event known as Plow Monday, in which villagers gathered to bless a symbolic farm implement dragged to the church's door. He said that ceremony didn't have much relevance for his church, which is "nowhere near a field in the middle of London."

SOURCE: Globe and Mail

CBC Archives My BlackBerry Planet Interview

2009-12-23T17:25:00.000-08:00

Lang & O'Leary Exchange HERE.

BlackBerry Planet Interview in Lang & O'Leary Archives

2009-12-23T06:55:00.000-08:00

If you miss my BlackBerry Planet discussion on Lang & O'Leary Exchange, you can catch it on the CBC video archives.

On Lang & O'Leary Exchange Today

2009-12-23T05:22:00.000-08:00

I'm talking about BlackBerry Planet on the Lang & O'Leary Exchange (LOX) today at 4:30 Eastern.

Business News Network (BNN) Interview

2009-12-18T01:26:00.000-08:00

I'm talking about BlackBerry Planet on Squeezeplay, with Kim Pardee and Rudyard Griffiths

The Rise of the TeleBrain

2009-12-14T13:35:00.000-08:00

Isn't it cool how James T. Kirk's Star Trek Communicator looks suspiciously like the BlackBerry Bold?

Chapter 6 of BlackBerry Planet is called The Rise of the TeleBrain. Click HERE for images related to the chapter.

Footnotes in the book are hotlinked from HERE.

BlackBerry Planet Book Well Reviewed

2009-12-02T07:40:00.000-08:00

Here's a great review by Gary Woodill, a pioneering BlackBerry user

BlackBerry Planet Interview with Elizabeth Woyke of Forbes

2009-08-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

A Brief History Of The BlackBerry

BlackBerry Planet Book Cover

2009-05-25T11:06:00.001-07:00

Here's how to order.

BlackBerry Apps For Sale

2009-04-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

BlackBerry App World is now open for business. You need a PayPal account to buy, but many apps are free.

No April Fool Jokes at BlackBerry App World

2009-03-27T02:04:00.000-07:00

RIM is launching BlackBerry App World on April 1 at the CTIA Wireless 2009 trade show in Las Vegas. Mike Lazaridis and Al Gore are giving the keynote addresses.

Starting price for BlackBerry apps (not including freebies) will be $2.99, vs. Apple’s 99¢. Apparently RIM feels the higher price will limit frivolous apps like fart buttons and beer glasses.

BlackBerry Planet Publication Date

2009-03-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

Publication date for my BlackBerry Planet book is scheduled for August 4, 2009. See Amazon.com or Amazon.ca or Chapters Indigo Canada) for pre-ordering information.

BlackBerry App World

2009-03-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

CNET's Bonnie Cha reports that RIM's upcoming application storefront will officially be called BlackBerry App World. If you are interested in knowing when the site goes live, you will soon be able to sign up for alerts HERE.

Web-Based BES 5.0 "Argon" Out in April

2009-02-13T02:01:00.000-08:00

RIM's first BlackBerry Enterprise Server software came out in 1999 as a desktop redirector, where it routed encrypted e-mails from the desktop to mobile devices.

The tenth anniversary BES solution features a Web-based Administration Service that lets IT managers download and wirelessly push software updates automatically over the air on workers' handsets rather than servicing the devices in person. Meaning no more physical upgrade appointments with individual users. They can do maintenance or updates during weekends or off-hours.

Administrators will have far more control over admin and user roles and permissions, and specific IT policies can be applied to individuals or groups, to restrict access to specific resources such as GPS.

BES 5.0 features a multi-server architecture that can scale up to 100,000 smartphones, and users can wirelessly download files from the corporate network directly to their BlackBerry handsets.

Details:

*A new administration user interface, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Administration Service, provides a centralized framework that increases productivity by allowing IT to remotely manage and troubleshoot the system and components through a web user interface

*Enhanced job management, throttling and scheduling upgrades and maintenance of applications for users’ devices – this improves any task an IT Manager may do in relation to end users

*Enhanced monitoring capabilities through the BlackBerry Administration Server helps identify and prevent potential downtime and outages

*Improved reporting, alerting and troubleshooting through the BlackBerry Administration Server help minimize potential issues

*Built-in high availability enables fast recovery from failure and unplanned downtime, supporting mission critical business operations by seamlessly failing over key components of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server

*BlackBerry User Migration Tool enables user accounts to be easily moved from one BlackBerry domain to another with minimal risk and impact or action required by the end user

*IT administrators can leverage the high availability architecture to conduct maintenance upgrades without impacting the service

*Improved remote desktop capabilities

*Device-side folder management, such as adding, deleting, moving and modifying folders from the device

*Enhanced calendar functionality

*Synchronization of public and private contacts

BlackBerry on Ice

2009-02-09T02:57:00.001-08:00

Here's the BlackBerry Ice Sculpture Sponsored by Rogers for Ottawa's Winterlude Festival, which started this weekend. No cold calls please.

A BlackBerry for Babies

2009-02-03T02:38:00.000-08:00

Leapfrog has come out with a new toy called the Text & Learn, which is being hailed as the "Baby BlackBerry".

The Text & Learn was unveiled at the U.K. Toy Fair last week and will be available this summer in the US at a price of $25. It's a bit bigger than your Curve and comes with a "pretend" browser mode, letter matching, shape identification, and QWERTY.

This will keep their sticky little fingers off your Precious Device.

No word on whether it has WiFi or a service plan.

BlackBerry Application StoreFront Now Accepting Submissions

2009-01-20T02:06:00.000-08:00

Clich HERE for information, and HERE for the Vendor Portal.

BlackBerry Nation Now BlackBerry Planet

2009-01-16T15:29:00.000-08:00

The publishers (John Wiley) and I have agreed to change the name of my book. One section will be renamed BlackBerry Nation.

RIM Q3 Results

2008-12-17T12:02:00.000-08:00

RIM will be holding a Webcast on the Third Quarter Results on Dec. 18 at 5pm.

You can listen in HERE.

Stephen Hawking Lured to Waterloo's Perimeter Institute

2008-11-27T13:29:00.000-08:00

Reuters reports that famed Cambridge University mathematician Stephen Hawking has been appointed as the first distinguished research chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, starting in the summer of 2009. Perimeter is a quantum theory and cosmology institute founded by RIM founder Mike Lazaridis in 1999.

“The institute’s twin focus, on quantum theory and gravity, is very close to my heart and central to explaining the origin of the universe,” Hawking said in a statement today. The author of the bestseller “A Brief History of Time”, Prof Hawking will make regular visits to the institute in the next few years and build links with Cambridge.

The image shows Hawking and daughter Lucy floating around aboard Zero Gravity Corporation’s June 9, 2007 Father’s Day flight. Hawking should feel right at home in the Institute's Black Hole Cafe.

BlackBerry Storm Videos

2008-11-23T10:38:00.001-08:00

I have posted a collection of Storm videos and ads from fans, Verizon and Vodaphone. Have a look HERE.

BlackBerry Storm Teardown

2008-11-23T10:33:00.001-08:00

PhoneWreck features a great Storm teardown with fabulous photos of the interior. Check out the screen's "big button":

Bold Beats the Pack in Transfer Times

2008-11-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

Gregory Quirk of EE Times has done download tests on the major smartphones, and concludes that Bold is best, largely because RIM's use of the Cypress Semiconductor West Bridge peripheral controller, found in the previous BlackBerry 8120 Pearl, provides "a direct connection of peripherals and creating fast transfer tunnels without loading the main processor. Instead of routing files from the computer through the phone processor to the storage device, it sets up a tunnel directly from the computer to the storage device."

Bold blew away the competition in downloading media files, loading movies twice as quickly as the iPhone 3G.

Telus Storm Rocks Tour

2008-11-12T14:13:00.000-08:00

The Telus Storm Rocks Tour will take place in four locations across Canada:

* Toronto - Dec 2nd, at the Guvernment Nightclub @ 6pm-9pm
* Montreal - Dec 4th, at Club 1234 6pm-8pm
* Vancouver - Dec 9th at Caprice Nightclub 6pm-8pm
* Calgary - Dec 11th at Scratch Rock & Roll Lounge 6pm-8pm

Storm Live Demo

2008-11-10T16:52:00.000-08:00

RIM has released a live BlackBerry Storm demo HERE. Enjoy.

Download the BlackBerry Storm 9530 Manual

2008-11-02T18:01:00.000-08:00

You can download the 249 page 9530 Storm Manual Here.

Here's Verizon's Storm Website.

I have collected new Storm review and ad videos HERE.

Also, check out the Bold 9000 Users Guide in Flash.

Presidential Candidates and Their BlackBerrys

2008-10-27T11:36:00.001-07:00

I've posted some images of the candidates toting BlackBerrys HERE.

Bold 9000 to go on Sale November 4

2008-10-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

AT&T will start selling RIM's Bold 9000 in the US Nov. 4. This new flagship BlackBerry model was initially expected in the summer, but as RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis suggested in San Francisco, the Bold was still being tested by AT&T, and the carrier was being extra careful with network problems after widely publicized problems with Apple Inc.'s latest iPhone 3G. Apparently, if too many 3G users got on the network at once, it slowed considerably. Also 3G signals do not appear to penetrate buildings as well as 2G.

The Bold 9000 did launch in Canada and some overseas markets, but not in the the US, and the apparent delay has been partly blamed for the recent decline in RIM shares.

The Bold features a HVGA (480 x 320 pixels) resolution display, 1 GB of internal memory into, a microSD card slot for up to 16 GB of extra memory, tri-band HSDPA and quad-band EDGE, 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth and GPS. Other features include a 2 megapixel camera with 5x digital zoom, improved QWERTY keyboard with thin metal strips between each row and a 3.5mm headphone jack. All this running on a 624MHz StrongARM processor with full MMX, the fastest CPU that can be found on a handset.

Why Microsoft Won't Buy RIM

2008-10-23T14:08:00.001-07:00

A number of analysts and RIM followers have speculated that the free-fall in the value of RIM's shares, from $148.13 in June to about fifty bucks in late October, might lead to a takeover bid from Microsoft.

Analysts give several reasons:

* Deepening rivalry with Apple (AAPL) and an economic slowdown that threatens to curb demand for BlackBerrys.

* Concerns that heavy spending in the face of competition will eat into profit margins. On Oct. 20, Bindu Benjamin, an analyst at broker First Global, downgraded RIM to "market perform with an under-perform bias," and Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt cut his 2009 revenue growth forecast to 84% from 92%, saying RIM faces a tougher economic environment.

* Slowing sales. James Faucette of Pacific Crest Securities said sales of the Pearl Flip have been "tepid at best," and sales of the Curve have been bumpy in Canada and Britain.

* MS needs RIM. Peter Misek, an analyst at Canaccord Adams, thinks that RIM would be a better fit for MS than Yahoo. "If RIM's management would be willing to entertain the discussion, and if [RIM executives] are willing to partner up, I think Microsoft would take their call.... Microsoft has already lost the war over search as currently defined. It's now at risk for losing the next search war, in the mobile world." [BusinessWeek.com, 8/1/08].

* Microsoft's MS Mobile platform is dying a slow death.

Then again, most analysts say it won't happen.

As Faucette of Pacific Crest notes, founders Balsillie and Lazaridis together control more than 12% of RIM shares. "These guys are not sellers and have never really sold any of their shares." The Toronto Dominion Bank (TD) and Royal Bank of Canada (RY) control another 18% of RIM's equity. "You'd be hard-pressed to find shareholders willing to sell a company at $50 that was trading at almost $150 only three months ago," says Faucette.

Richard Windsor of Nomura Securities (NMR) in London says MS would probably have to pay a 20% premium, "which would make it $36 billion, and even massively depressed, that's massively expensive." Microsoft has plenty of cash, but on Sept. 22 the company committed to buying back as much as $40 billion of its stock.

Finnish wireless giant Nokia (NOK) is not in the picture, even though it yearns to penetrate the North American market. With only $17 billion in cash, "Nokia couldn't swallow RIM," says Windsor.

[Source: Arik Hesseldahl, Sci-Tech Todya.com and others]

RIM to Launch App Store

2008-10-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

Developers can start signing up now for the BlackBerry storefront opening in March 2009, said Mike Lazaridis, in a speech to the RIM developer conference in Santa Clara.

"The new BlackBerry application storefront and BlackBerry application centers will further support the growing BlackBerry ecosystem and help bridge consumers with developers and carriers as more and more innovative and interesting applications arrive," he said. "This platform has been developed, evolved and perfected in the most demanding markets around the world," Lazaridis said to a large group of developers. "The consumer wireless data market is taking off, and that's a great opportunity for all of you."

RIM is working with PayPal for transactions, and content creators will be able to keep 80% of the revenue generated from their application, compared to 70% from Apple and 0% from Google's forthcoming Android Market.

Lazaridis said organizations that have deployed BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry Professional Software will control what applications can be downloaded to BlackBerrys within their corporate deployments.

BlackBerry Nation Web Support Site Now Open

2008-10-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

I welcome your comments, and let me know if you want to make any contributions to the site.

The Street Reviews the Storm

2008-10-20T02:06:00.000-07:00

Senior Technology Correspondent Gary Krakow gets a look at the first BlackBerry touchscreen smartphone -- called the Storm -- coming from Verizon.

Curve Most Popular Handset in Stores

2008-10-20T01:48:00.000-07:00

Avian Research polls 100 service reps at retail stores of the four major US wireless providers.

This September the BlackBerry Curve continued holding down the top spot, helped by a promotion at Sprint Nextel stores that priced the smartphone at $100. Apple's iPhone outperformed the BlackBerry and all other smartphones in the US during the summer.

Five of the top 10 devices are smartphones and four are equipped with a touchscreen.

RIM Blackberry Curve 26.1%
Apple iPhone 9.2%
LG Dare 7.9%
RIM Blackberry Pearl 6.6%
LG Voyager 6.5%
Samsung Instinct 5.8%
LG Rumor 5%
LG Shine 3.5%
Palm Centro 2.9%
Nokia 5310 2.5%

Overall, Motorola Inc.’s Razr V3 remains the top-selling handset in the US, according to recent data from NPD Group.

Smartphones hold three of the top five slots, with Apple Inc.’s iPhone 3G at No. 2 and Research In Motion Ltd.’s Blackberry Curve at No. 3 and Pearl at No. 5. LG Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Chocolate rounds out the top-five list at No. 4.

How the Storm Was Named

2008-10-19T02:45:00.000-07:00

David George-Cosh reports in the Financial Post on "The Story Behind the BlackBerry Storm's Name".

Rogers 2009 Offerings

2008-10-19T02:32:00.000-07:00

The Boy Genius reports the following BB lineup for 2009 from Canadian provider Rogers:
* Q1 - The BlackBerry Curve 8900
* Q2 - A BlackBerry Storm variant
* Q3 - The BlackBerry 9220 "Magnum" (Curve 8900 with 3G)
* Q4 - The BlackBerry 9900 "Pluto" (Bold with a touch screen)

Telus Storm Page Launched

2008-10-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

HERE.

CrackBerry.com has a new Vodaphone demo video HERE.

BlackBerry Storm Videos

2008-10-13T18:35:00.000-07:00

I've posted a collection HERE. Here's the Storm Commercial - Press and Be Impressed

RIM Vulnerable to Takeover?

2008-10-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

This possibility was first broached by Mark McQueen of Wellington Financial in Toronto. He notes that "Without a doubt, RIM is and will continue to be a profitable company with plenty of cash, no debt and a bunch of new products (Bold, Storm and Pearl Flip) are rolling out at this very moment around the world. But, that sadly doesn’t mean that it will be able to resist an oppotunistic takeover offer from the likes of Microsoft, et al."

RIM's market cap has shrunk from US$83 billion in June 2008 to US$31 billion today.

According to Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, “RIM is a massive strategic fit” for Microsoft. “I’m fairly certain they have a standing offer to buy them at $50 (a share).”

I don't buy it. Microsoft has dropped as well, and most tech companies are now sporting much more healthy P/E ratios.

Also, a lot of RIMM shares are owned by management and friendly funds. And the upside of BlackBerry is better than the upside of MS.

I have no doubt that RIM, Apple and Google will continue to be the tech darlings of NASDAQ.