TamsBlackBerry – the BlackBerry blog

I have never been to happy with the way traditional print magazines cover mobile and IT-related topics: the Austrian daily magazine Kurier just shot the ball right out of their court with a three-page story looking at the “various dangers of computer gaming”. As usual, all of it was bullsh*t – read on for the best parts:

Safer texts – or – on copy and paste
In Austria, journalists usually receive training which allows them to disguise PR gags from real events. However, the padded lamp post story (which has been forgotten for a few months) has just received a revival from the boys in red:

I have no idea why they didn’t stumble across messages like these:

Charity organisation Living Streets said that, if the trial is successful, streets including Charing Cross Road, Old Bond Street and Oxford Street will be fitted with the lampposts.
Advertisement

The padding is sponsored by directory enquiries service 118118, which commissioned a study into injuries suffered while texting.

Demanding them to ask themselves why the original Yahoo story was pulled is – um – superfluous…

Wii: movement causes pain
After having proven their intellectual prowess with the story above, idiocies continue on the next page:

The picture shows a gamer playing Wii Fit, while the tag line claims that “all kinds of bodily injuries are caused by the Wii, as it demands bodily activity”. I ask myself what they would write about sports like Tennis or Jogging…but am pretty sure that it would be a lot less aggressive.

In the end, I personally feel offended by their sloppy and misleading editorial work. If this wouldn’t be my wife’s subscription, I would cancel it immediately…and urge any Austrian computer gamers to give them the same treatment. Not getting enough ad purchases from game manufacturers can be painful – but IMHO does not allow for insane moves like the one above…

A sucker is literally born every minute – the latest a$$hole to waddle past me takes the form of a spammer offering an advance fee/directory scam. The whole story starts out with them sending an email similar to the one below:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

In order to have your company inserted in the registry of World Businesses
for 2009/2010 edition, please print, complete and submit the enclosed form (PDF file)
to the following address:

WORLD BUSINESS GUIDE
P.O. Box 2021
3500 GA Utrecht
The Netherlands

email: register@worldbusinessguidenow.biz
FAX: +31 20 524 8107

Updating is free of charge!

If you are not the intended recipient, please submit an email to
unsubscribe@worldbusinessguidenow.biz
Your request shall be dealt with accordingly.

The attached form points out its “freeness” multiple times, but contradicts itself in the fine print at the very bottom. While this alone IMHO disqualifies them under Austrian law (misleading contracts are prohibited), the legalities of spamming potential customers IMHO doesn’t need to be discussed under the latest Austrian ECG act.

Their actual web site is pictured below: please do note that the date there is still displayed as the 24th of November:

P.S. I have googled the web looking for other “victims” of the World Business Guide scam, and found none who were actually prosecuted: it looks like the best thing is to formally dispute their charges and ignore both them and their (nonexistent) debt collection agency…

P.S.2. Thanks to Peter Burgstaller’s Lawfirm Linz and the FH Hagenberg, I am well aware that their action is not legal (thanks, Peter, for the great course). I have thus decided to go Ed Fagan on them – here is my response:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
thank you so much for your letter, which constitutes punishable spam under Austrian legal code (§107 TKG)! I have passed this on to my attorney and will seek legal action against your company.

However, I am willing to settle with your company for the payment of the costs I incurred in processing your email, which make up for a total of 35 Euros, which constitutes half an hour of work! I am more than willing to provide you with an invoice and a contract freeing you of all further claims from me if you so desire!

All the best from Vienna
Mos. Tam Hanna

P.S. I have taken the liberty to publish this to my well-read web site network:
….

The video below hits us via BerryReporter – it shows a BlackBerry Storm using a pretty weird form of text selection:

According to them, OS version 4.7.0.112 will bring this feature to the mass market – let’s see how this all turns out on the long run…

RIM apparently had huge problems keeping its beta firmware in-house – RIMarkable has just received another new firmware for the BlackBerry Storm.

Their post is extremely short, as they seem to have it every day:

You guys know the drill. BlackBerry OS 4.7.0.109 has leaked for BlackBerry Storm 9530.

Anyways: hit the link above for the file…and good luck if you choose to deploy it!

RIM’s booth at the MWC was very large, and even hosted a few software developers who exhibited their BlackBerry-powered solutions. The boys furthermore showed a few RIM-branded accessories which struck my interest – the full scoop is below:

Skins
I have absolutely no idea what RIM’s BlackBerry skins should be – but they nevertheless were displayed prominently:

Charging pods
Palm originally made the desktop cradle famous, and eventually figured out that it doesn’t make too much sense for most users. RIM seems to be hell-bent on going the other way:

Battery doors
Finally, it looks like colored case backs will become popular again soon:

The boys at the FH Hagenberg’s have started their NFC Congress, which is more than well-visited…in fact, it is so well-visited that the event site’s capacities are pushed to the very limit:

Nevertheless, all works lovely so far – the program of the IEEE workshop which lies ahead of us is below:

With that, I sign off for now – all further coverage is at our sister site TamsS60…

A recent issue of the Financial times contained an article on the partnership between Microsoft and LG. This is nothing new (Microsoft has an excellent PR department and buys many ads) – but the image assignment is funny as hell:

In case you don’t follow TamsS60: the picture shows Samsung’s Omnia HD fractal:

And to make things worse: the Omnia HD runs S60. Yikes!

Determining handset market share has always been an issue which involved loads of squabbling and squeaking…as the one who pays the piper gets to set the tune, industry analysts are not always 100 reliable. A good assessment is possible by analyzing data from multiple sources…which is why I am more than happy to present the data from AdMob below.

In case anyone of you is new to the topic: AdMob is an operator of an advertising network which can be used to monetize mobile web sites and iPhone programs. They collect data on all requests, ans create a monthly report which can be downloaded here…

Global handset usage
As usual, lets start out with the global OS market share for January:

One extremely interesting thing stands out: even though WM has a decent market share, it does not have a single device in the top 25:

US handset usage
The USA traditionally is very important for providers of mobile software – many consider it the largest market for third-party apps. Nokia’s push to the US has not shown any effect so far:

Windows Mobile is much stronger here than it is globally, but still doesn’t manage to propel a single device into the top-25.

European handset usage
In Western Europe, Windows Mobile is particularly weak:

However, the Samsung Omnia makes it into the top-list:

I haven’t posted all I saw at the MWC yet, but am happy to inform you of the next event covered on the Tamoggemon Content Network: look forward to the FH Hagenberg’s NFC Congress.

While most university-hosted tradeshows are pathetic, the FH Hagenberg has managed to attract key players of the industry – which means that almost everybody who has something to say in the European NFC world will be there.

In case you are new to the technology: NFC, short for Near Field Communications, is a technology which powers transmitters embedded into everyday objects like business cards. These can then be used for purchasing things, granting access to locations in an iButtonesque fashion, to buy stuff and much more. For example, the MWC tickets were NFC-based…which meant that they contained a chip with visitor information which could be scanned wirelessly by booth attendants wanting to find out more or stay in touch.

Further information is upcoming shortly – stay tuned…

RIM’s BlackBerry Application Suite has created quite a ruckus in the mobile computing scene – after all, their daring plan was to port the entire RIM OS (third-party applications and all) to other operating systems. RIM’s booth contained a lonesome HTC Touch Pro, which was running the latest version of Application Suite. I found it by chance – here is what I saw…

First of all: the program integrates into Windows Mobile 6.1 perfectly:

Starting it takes about a minute, with a Rogers splash screen popping up in the process:

It then starts up by showing a RIMesque home screen similar to the one found on a real BlackBerry:

Once up and running, keeping the device apart from a BlackBerry Storm is not too easy:

RIM literally ported everything over, and paid extreme attention to details. For example, the photo viewer is there even though WM is crawling with photo viewers:

The settings application was also ported over thoroughly – it even offers the fonts BlackBerry users know and love:

I asked an attendant about third-party applications and was told that the current build supports all applications compatible with OS 4.2.1. However, updated builds with support for the latest operating system are said to be on their way.

In the end, Application Suite is an incredibly impressive bit of technology. However, I have to openly admit that I struggle to see a mass market for it – why should people who want a BlackBerry not buy one? A few licenses will probably be sold to people who want to connect to a corporate network with their private device…but I don’t think it will be too much of a success overall. A Blackberry-capable email client would likely be the better idea…

Hey! You there!

In case you are on your way to the Mobile World Congress: be sure to be at the Symbian Foundation booth 10am sharp tomorrow!

Tamoggemon Software will unveil its first-ever S60 app there. Look forward to LocaNote, for it will revolutionize the world of note taking!

See you there!

Tam

P.S. Sorry for being a little slow with updating these sites recently…it will get better very soon!

I just had to pay 50 cents for a download SMS in order to get my hands onto the mobile event guide for the MWC 2009 – it is a little program which contains a map and an exhibitor list which can be installed onto a variety of mobile phones.

In order to save you the SMS fee, use the download link below:
http://mg.velti.com

Dear Readers,
please visit me at the Symbian Foundation booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – I will demonstrate a new application for the S60 touch platform called LocaNote on Monday at 10am local time.

I will speak for approximately 15 minutes, with a Q&A session afterwards.

At the moment, all I can tell you is that LocaNote will revolutionize the way you take notes: forget everything you have ever seen before. Location, media and note taking combined – it will rock your world!

Image: Wikimedia Commons / baikonur

In the smartphone business, selling one million devices is considered a major feat. The figures and quotes below are intended to put all of it into perspective…:

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that the cumulative worldwide sell-in units of PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) handheld entertainment system (PSP-1000, 2000 and 3000 series) reached a total of 50 million units(*1) as of January 2009.

* Total LTD shipments of Nintendo DS hardware were 96.22 million worldwide, along with more than 533 million games.
* Total LTD Wii shipments reached nearly 45 million worldwide, along with over 312 million games.

So much about smartphone growth by taking market share away from competitors. IMHO, the company which manages to break out of the traditional niche will be king – what do you think?