Speaking of RIM … on Tuesday they are going to venture forth with another touch-screen Blackberry. The development and impeding launch of the new handset has seen a bare fraction of the hype and hullabaloo that preceded the Storm, and I think this might be a good thing. After the disappointment of the Storm – a fabulous piece of hardware that was fatally crippled by RIM’s aging and user-hostile generic OS – coming in with zero expectations and no preconceptions is a good thing. If the 9800 is just another Storm, well, no harm no foul. But if the whispers are right, and the mandarins up in Waterloo have finally opened their eyes and grokked onto the idea that the user experience is actually important, then we may just have a sleeper hit.

So – fingers crossed, and here’s hoping that sleeper hit is indeed where this is going. RIM is full of smart people with smart ideas who somehow end up turning out the same product over and over because the people at the very top of the company either can’t or won’t open their eyes and see what increasingly-sophisticated customers want in a mobile computer. The smart people need to start winning out over the top people, and soon, or the Blackberry platform is going to go from being “dated” to “irrelevant” in a very short time. And that – for everyone – would be a shame.

If you point your browser to “blackpad.com” you get … nada. Blank page. But if you look up the whois record, you will find that the domain is being held by CSC on behalf of some outfit called “Research in Motion” in Waterloo. Which gives some serious credence to a story that just moved on the Bloomberg wire, RIM will release their first pad computer in November, and not surprisingly it will be called the “Blackpad”. I don’t have a link to this yet, since Bloomberg has a short embargo time between items hitting the wire and those items showing up on their web archive. When I do get a link, I will slap it in here.

I can’t decide if they name is “yea” or “nay” yet. Still mulling on that one. But it sure beats the hell out of “Slate”.

UPDATE: Link to the updated Bloomberg story.

The much-anticipated Blackberry Storm hits Canadian stores next week, and with a month of so of official use under the belt south of the border it’s probably time to take a look at how the actual production devices are faring.

I was going to do a round up of the various reviews, but McCracken has saved me the time – you can get a pretty broad snapshot in one handy location right here. Note to Blackberry fans: Steel yourself before clicking on the link. While none of the reviews are quite as scathing as Pogue’s write-up over at the Times, the general consensus is not very flattering.

The general consensus is also extremely unfair. What pretty much all of these reviewers have done – either overtly or in a roundabout kind of way – is compare the Storm to the iPhone. What they should be doing is comparing it to other Blackberries. It’s as if General Motors took a huge leap of faith, adopted some new technologies that were long overdue, made what was far and away the best General Motors car ever … and then the reviewers to a man (or woman) did nothing but side-by-side comparisons to the new BMW M3. It wouldn’t be pretty. And it wouldn’t be fair.

Same thing here. This is by far the best Blackberry ever. Period. And as an attempt to shake off a lot of layers of moribund ideas and technology, it is a very very good first step. Hopefully the first of many. And for the people who didn’t like the touchscreen keypad – get a grip. It is beyond excellent.

That said, there are a few things that I take umbrage with – two of them quibbles, and two of them showstoppers:

Quibble: Using the SureType keyboard in portrait mode. Things like SureType have a purpose – they are a necessary compromise when you have to cram a keyboard into a very small physical space. Fine. But the space here isn’t small, and there is absolutely no reason not to have a full QWERTY keypad on the touchscreen in both orientations. This is pretty obviously a case of “someone at RIM is so in love with SureType that they feel they have to cram it into every possible product, regardless of the actual utility”. Luckily, the easy workaround is to never ever type in portrait mode. Flip the thing on its side and … problem solved. I would have liked to see a way to turn this off, though.

Quibble: A complete lack of situational and dynamic keys on the touchscreen keypad. The whole idea of using a touchscreen keypad is twofold: One, you get more real estate on the screen. And two, you have the ability to get around the limitations of hardwired keys. For reasons unknown, the Storm pretty much completely eschews number two. There are no URL-based keys when you are in the web browser, no easy way to get accented characters, no easy way to use non-standard braces and quotes. I just don’t get it – it’s like they got this shiny new hardware and nobody realized that they could update the firmware to match.

Showstopper: The UI. Anyone who has used a Blackberry for any period of time (and who doesn’t actually work for RIM) will tell you that it is the best mobile email device in the entire world … and that using any other application or function on the thing pretty much sucks. There is just no coherence, pattern, or basic rhyme and reason to the UI. It’s like the people who do the various pieces sit in sealed boxes and never ever talk to each other – and some of them never even use their own applictions. There is no excuse at all for the “rest of the Blackberry” not being as good as the email app. None. Someone at RIM who is in a position high enough to do something about it needs to (1) look up the acronym “HIG”, and (2) spend the appropriate amount of time getting one in place.

Showstopper: No WiFi. Really. You might think I am joking, but I am not. There are no WiFi capabilities at all, which is both completely unacceptable and totally flabbergasting. I am going to take the high road and assume that RIM was bullied into this by their “partners” in the wireless industry (and I use the term “partners” very lightly, since the wireless providers in North America are conscienceless pirates who fuck the hardware makers over every bit as badly as they fuck over their paying subscribers). The wireless industry hates and fears WiFi, and would do just about anything to make sure it never saw the light of day in any mainstream device. That said, I don’t understand why RIM would cave in on this. They are not some bit player here … they still are the number one name in the game. If Apple had the leverage to tell both AT&T and Rogers where to get off on this one, then RIM should have been able to do it too. What gives?

So yeah. I wouldn’t buy one yet – but I like it enough that I would put my money on the counter if they get their heads around a usable UI and correct the WiFi issue. It’s that good. Ready for prime time? No, not yet. But bad press aside, you owe it to yourself to at least take a look.

If you have an iPhone you may have noticed that making your own ringtones from audio files you already own is a complete and total pain. While ringtones you purchase and download from the iTunes store are super easy, your own tunes and sounds are a complete and utter exercise in frustration. There are two reasons for this:

One: There is a different set of copyrights involved between a song you download for listening to versus a song you are downloading as a ringtone, and this leads to a digital divide between the two, and

Two: Ringtone sales a a massive cash cow for both Apple and the record labels that own the rights to the songs, and they are not going to give that up by making it easy for you to brew your own.

This is not just an iPhone/ Apple phenomenon, either. Most cellular carriers and handset manufacturers are are also in on this … if they do not outright deny you any way to get homebrew ringtones on a device, they manage to put up enough roadblocks that most people give up and hand over their coin for the “official” method.

Well, enough.

Welcome to “I Want Free Ringtones“, a website that acts as a filter, processor, and host for converting your own audio files into delicious and free (as in free beer) ringtones. It is dead simple, too: You upload your file, use the site’s tools to crop it for time (if you didn’t or couldn’t do that at your end beforehand) and adjust the volume, preview the thing with the on-line audio player, and then either save the result back to your hard drive or leave it hosted on the site so you can surf to it later. It’s fast, super easy, and works exactly as advertised. You can save the files as QCP (lo-fi tones, for the Motorola crowd), M4A or MP3 (hi-fi tones for the rest of the world), or M4R (the special Apple hi-fi format that the iPhone is looking for).

The hosting function, by the way, is perfect for Blackberry users – one of the slickest parts of the BB package is that you can use the web browser to surf to an MP3 file you create with this tool and use a single click to convert the target file into a ringtone that you install over the air. Better, you can share your creations with your friends just by passing around the URL.

The whole thing is a total hoot no matter what phone you carry. But – for Blackberry users who want to stretch their legs and for iPhone users tired of trying to navigate the gordian knot of M4R files – this is the greatest thing since sliced pizza.

Enjoy.

A few months ago I mentioned the fact that – despite the loud and rather public dismissal of touchscreens by Mike Lazaridis – the folks up at RIM were indeed working on an iPhone inspired and touchscreen-based device that they privately referred to as the “Apple Killer” or “AK” if you were one of the cool kids in the RIM development labs.

That device is now pretty much ready to hit the street. Units are in the hands of the folks at Verizon for pre-release testing and just to confuse the issue they are going to sell it as the “Storm” in the USA (or at least with Verizon), the “Thunder” in Canada (and probably the rest of the world), and – because they still love their numbers up in Waterloo – the marketing drones at RIM will still call it the 9530.

Aside – regardless you were either wanting 3G speed, or not caring because most of the 3G networks in North America suck ass, the “30″ at the end of the model number means that the Storm / Thunder / whatever is packing CDMA instead of 3G, so that is one less thing to worry yourself about. Whether that holds true in Canada will have to wait until we see the number that gets attached to the Thunder when it hits the Rogers inventory lists on this side of the border.

However – all of that is window dressing. What is important here is that I got to spend some quality time with the Thunder recently, sequestered in the back corner of a high-security top-secret facility known as a Second Cup. There is a lot to like about where RIM is going with this model, but also a lot of really silly and downright puzzling things that may serve to drag down and make ordinary what could be a seriously awesome device … one that has the potential to be a killer step forward for the rather moribund products currently being sold under the Blackberry name.

First and foremost, and something long overdue, is a touchscreen and electronic keyboard. This is an absolute must for offering a satisfying and usable mobile web experience, something that has passed both email and phone as the most important thing people want from their smartphone / palmtop / whatever they are calling mobiles this week. It also gives you the ability to serve markets that use other alphabets and languages without having to product double handfuls of different hardware, you just select a different language and off you go. And I have to say that this is the most incredible touchscreen I have ever typed on – it has a tactile “give” when you press it and it “clicks” under your fingers in much the same way the Wii remote does when you use the onscreen keyboard and it is totally awesome. I don’t know how they did it, but they did. Absolutely amazing, except for one thing that puts the brakes on the whole thing. When the device is in the standard upright portrait mode, the keyboard comes up as a SureType pad:

WTF?

There is more than enough room to put a full QWERTY keyboard on the screen, why in the hell would they go to the horror of SureType? I can only guess that they were worried that their core users would not be able to give up “edging” their keys when they type and make the leap of faith that you need to type on an iPhone-style keyboard, where you plant your finger right on the key and cover it up entirely. These keys are huge and were obviously designed to let users hit the edges of the things and still see the letter underneath. It’s too bad, because this would have been a champ to type on all day long with a proper layout of keys.

Oh -if you are wondering about the seriously bad pictures, I apologise profusely for the poorly framed and kind of blurry results. I took them surreptitiously while hovering my iPhone over the unit to “compare sizes” and I was lucky to get these at all. So shush.

The problem with the keyboard layout disappears when you turn the unit on its side, however, and it copies the iPhone’s functionality by swapping the screen into landscape mode and giving you a wider keyboard:

This is more like it! It would be just about perfect except for – once again – the size of the damn keys! They have kept the gigantic keys here, and they eat so much real estate that you are left with a teeny ribbon of screen space to actually see what you are typing. It’s a huge disappointment and glaring flaw in the UI that seems to reinforce the fact that there is a lot of inertia up at RIM and the old guard still has the ability to put the brakes on real changes.

This is reinforced by the fact that the address book and calendar are the same weak efforts that we have seen before, and the whole UI at the “ribbon” (yeah, I still call it that) is the same thing as on current models. The only real difference is that scrolling around the ribbon is damn near impossible, and switching back and forth from the touch screen to the hard keys at the bottom and back is really, really, really awkward.

But – and this is a great but – since everything is in firmware, they can work the bugs out as they go. And regardless of the limitations at this point, this a giant leap forward for both RIM and the culture up in Waterloo. Changes are definitely afoot at RIM, and for the better. I just hope it isn’t too late.

As far as other “two thumbs up” items go, it does use WebKit for the browser engine which immediately puts it head and shoulders above anything coming out on the Android platform, and the long-standing memory crunch that RIM products have been crippled by has been solved by the simple – and completely sensible – method of putting a microSD slot in the thing. Expandable and manageable memory has look been a staple in regular computers, why not in handhelds? Great call there. The Verizon model will ship with an 8GB card in the slot, and they are supposedly offering a super-cheap upgrade at the point of sale. You can expect that Rogers will cheap out and give you 2GB or an empty slot for the same price. But a quick trip to Costco solves that right quick.

The “Storm” should hit the shelves in the U.S. in very early November. The original plan was mid-October, but sales and setup training for the Verizon employees is running right up until the first day of November. And look for Rogers to start pumping this out in early January, with a very outside chance at getting it on the shelves before Christmas.

Stay tuned.

On the off chance you haven’t heard the news, seen the papers, etc. etc. etc … there is a pretty total failure of the Blackberry infrastructure in North America. This is the downside of the monolithic nature of RIM’s setup, and the outage is the price that you pay for “push” technology – the gratification of instant email to your handheld instead of having your device check for mail every few minutes.

The outage is affecting email and web browsing from Blackberry handhelds, but some people have reported that they can still browse the web if they use their service provider’s browser on the ‘berry instead of the one that comes from RIM. Your mileage may vary.

Oh – and when the system does come back up, expect another disaster when the RIM infrastructure collapses under the load of all the stalled messages. Yikes.

I was at a Second Cup (for those of you south of the border, that is a chain of coffee shops here in Canada, sort of like Starbucks except with actual coffee instead of the piss-weak brown water at Staryucks) the other day and there was a mope trying to send an email from his Blackberry and he poked at the keys for a few minutes and then flipped the ‘berry onto the table in disgust and turned to his friend and uttered a concise and timeless phrase:

“This Blackberry sucks.”

The funny thing here is that there was nothing wrong with his Blackberry at all. It was working just fine, keys responding, screen updating, memory … er, memorying. What was wrong is that his wireless provider’s half-backed digital network had crapped out on him. He had the dreaded “data connection refused” result, and that led to his phone also not being able to make calls and eventually he had to pull the battery and SIM care out of the Blackberry to do a full hard-core reset. The whole time he muttered about how bad his Blackberry was and as he walked out the door he glanced at the trash receptacle and told his friend that he “should toss the fucking thing in the garbage.”

He blamed the device, not the carrier. Which brings us to the whole point of this post: Apple really made a mistake when they went with Rogers as their “exclusive” iPhone wireless partner in Canada. The Rogers wireless network sucks gigantic amounts of hairy balls, with an absolute endless parade of dropped calls, data rejections, and network failures on their “Edge” digital network.

The Edge. That’s a laugh. The Crap would be more apropos.

But the service provider is usually teflon in these situations. Geeks and gear-heads know where to put the blame when the network lets them down, but the average suit-and-tie kind of mope is clueless about this, so they think that their device is at fault. Which means, regardless of how good it actually is, there will be a brigade of young executives down at ye olde coffee shop saying “This iPhone thing sucks.”

It’s a shame, really.

If you carry a BlackBerry and you were thinking about upgrading your OS to any version is numbered 4.1.0.3xx … then you probably want to think again. No idea what they are playing at up in Waterloo, but upgrading your BB to the newest OS version will result in a more-or-less crippled Bluetooth interface. We found this out the hard way, and when we went googling searching for info we found that this isn’t something that we fucked up – it seems to be a problem for all current models on all carriers.

Full and annoying details are right here.

There are rampant rumours about what is going down – the best bet would be that some sort of pressure from wireless networks is the reason, although the “RIM is doing it so you buy a Pearl instead” is really gaining traction in some quarters. For what it’s worth, this is not an accident – the speeds recorded are far below the default for the Bluetooth chips in these models, and the only way to get that molasses-like performance is to purposely choke the things back.

A quick look at a pair of baubles for your web ‘n’ java enabled mobile device:

Google Maps Mobile: This is the latest iteration of the Google Map / Google Local framework for mobile phones. Like the previous iteration (Google Local Mobile) this offers searchable maps and locations from the big database, but now includes some additional niceties like real-time traffic reports. You would be well advised to remember that every time you move the map you are loading data across your wireless connection, and for the average mope that means you are paying your service provider for pretty much every one of those bytes. It isn’t that hard to run up a $1000 cellular bill in just a few days. Hopefully you won’t even have to ask if it’s a beta.

MidpSSH: Midp is an exceptionally slick little SSH client for your handheld. It handles SSH1, SSH2, and telnet sessions with aplomb, saves your session profiles automatically, and (best of all) has macro definition for commonly-typed commands. Everything you need to manage your server anyplace that you can get a cell signal. It’s rock solid and it’s free – just about the best thing since sliced pizza.

There has been much blathering in the mainstream media over the past couple of days regarding “iLane”, the shiny new service that lets you hear your email read to you in a “natural human voice” while you are driving. All you need is a bluetooth-enabled handheld or portable device and a subscription to the iLane service, and suddenly you are navigating your email with “easy to use” voice commands and staying in touch with the office or loved ones in a completely hands-free and eyes-on-the-road environment.

What the talking heads and typists in the mainstream media have completely failed to mention, however, is that the service runs under a “scanning and summarizing” system, which means your emails are first read by the iLane service, and then translated into an audio summary. The mopes at iLane aren’t overly forthcoming as to whether the “pre-read” is done by a human or a machine, but the choice between the two options doesn’t seem like much of a choice at all.

Thumbs down for this one.

Now this is interesting and a very cool idea. The Chargebox is popping up all over the U.K. – it is a small stand-alone kiosk with 6 small “lockers” that are just big enough to hold a cell phone or PDA or digital music player. It costs a pound (about 2 bucks Canadian as of today) to stash your device in the locker for 40 minutes.

Why would you do this instead of keeping the thing in your pocket for absolutely free? Easy – each locker has power connections inside that will charge up pretty much any phone or PDA on the market. When you are traveling or on the go, a couple of bucks to get your phone or tunes back up and running is a deal. And while they don’t mention it, since one of the connectors is obviously a mini-USB jack (for charging newer Blackberries) you could also juice up a fair number of digital cameras and GPS handhelds.

I fully expect that we will be seeing these on this side of the pond sooner rather than later. And while some of the potential locations are obvious (airports and the like), there are almost unlimited possibilities for deploying this thing. Golf courses (charge your PDA while you play) and fast food joints are two that immediately pop to mind. I am sure you can think of a million more.

Best idea I have seen in a long time.

I wasn’t going to post a link to this. Really. I was going to let it slide, figuring these mopes had embarrassed themselves enough. Two, three, four … eventually, seven people sent me this link yesterday. And still, I resisted. Took the high road, as it were.

That all changed an hour ago when the exact same thing showed up on my Blackberry as unsolicited mail. Fucking spam. I do not recall anywhere in my EULA there being a clause that allowed the vendor to pollute my inbox with a Statement of Martyrdom and Divine Redemption. Just to be sure I went back and checked the agreement again. No dice.

So, here it is, in all it’s hand-wringing glory. I especially like the bits about the problems with the patent system – as if offering legal protection for an inventor’s work was somehow wrong, but using political influence to have technically valid patents overturned was a rousing victory for Truth, Justice, and the Blackberry way. I’m sure that Jim “The Groper” Balsillie is out getting the stars and stripes tattooed on his ass even as we speak.

NOTE: Be warned that you should not read the contents of the link above if you are either (a) drinking milk, or (b) have recently eaten. In the former case, your milk may all shoot out of your nose. In the latter, well, you might very well puke.

In what comes as a giant surprise to no one, the judge in the RIM/NTP case didn’t hand either side a win. He refused to order an injunction or set a value on damages, but also said he would do both if they didn’t come to a settlement soon. This gives some of the lost leverage back to NTP … based on this, let’s bump the settlement estimate to $800 million. Look for it to happen within a month now.

The war of words continues unabated …

A couple of people dropped me notes to point out that “smoke and mirrors” is at least better than the “cone of silence” and RIM should get some props for at least saying something yesterday, even if the press release and the attendant “overview” docs were mutually contradictory.

Point taken – at least they appeared to make an effort.

On the other hand, the reasons behind the release are probably more mercenary than you think. There are two driving forces behind yesterday’s “disclosure” … one obvious, one not so much.

First and foremost, this was an obvious attempt to head off a sudden rash of defections to competing platforms. I had a chance to talk with my wireless rep yesterday (more on this in a bit) and he candidly said that a “startling” number of current BlackBerry users are eating the hardware replacement penalties to move to alternative devices. Mostly Treos, with a smattering of PocketPCs here and there. Yesterday’s announcement, which got repeated verbatim and without analysis in a lot of mainstream media outlets, would probably do a lot to stem that particular tide.

The less-obvious second and – from RIM’s standpoint – more important reason behind yesterday’s announcement was to give themselves some positive negotiating pressure when they do eventually settle with NTP. Don’t be fooled by the announcements that this patent or that patent is being seen as invalid by the USPTO – even if all of the patents do get tossed aside under pressure from the U.S. government, there are still appeals processes both within the patent office (via technical review and litigation boards) and in the courts (starting with the Circuit Court of Appeals and working from there). The only way this will go away quickly enough to suit RIM’s needs is by settlement. Last week I would have estimated a billion dollars (U.S.) will be the final amount. After taking a full night to mull over and assess this latest volley, however, I would be willing to bet that they settle for as little as $750 million dollars. Well played, RIM, well played indeed.

Technical note: My wireless rep chatted for a bit about their testing of the MME workaround. Virtually every big wireless provider is testing the new mode even as we speak, and the results so far are intriguing. Right now your email tends to hit the BlackBerry server (be in an Enterprise box or the web client) and the handheld at the same time, and then dribble into your “traditional” email server and associated client a few moments after that. WIth the MME workaround in place, the mail hits the BlackBerry server, then finds your traditional email server and client either at the same time as or before the message gets to your handheld. This means that there is definitely a noticeable delay – enough that I would guess that RIM will have to mention it at some point, probably couched in terms like “a few seconds longer than you may be used to”. That said, you can bet that RIM will start to shave this down and try and dance right on the legal edge of the patent, balancing delay with visible compliance to whatever deal they strike.

More obfuscation from RIM this morning. The “feel-good” press release tells anxious users that there will be no change in the way that they use their BlackBerry, but the rather vague details in the Multi-Mode “overview” document appear to immediately contradict this.

Whatever. They gotta do what they think they gotta do … good luck to them. The real gem here is the link at the bottom of the Multi-Mode index page entitled “Read Jim Balsillie’s Op-Ed article titled ‘Patent Abuse’“. Take a few minutes to read it if you need some giggles … this thing is pure comedy gold.

Rounds of golf are getting longer and longer … more and more mopes out on the course means that the delay has gotten out of hand, and golfing on weekends is now a fool’s errand.

The alternative of golfing on weekdays has all sorts of appeal – lower green fees and quicker rounds go a long way in the “enjoyment” department – but there is that little caveat about taking time off work. Luckily a remote email device like a Treo or a Blackberry can smooth over this little pothole, giving the busy geek some freedom to hit the links. The downside, however, is that a dead battery can ruin your whole day … there is nowhere to recharge out on the course.

Until now. Check out this new golf bag with integrated solar panels and a built in 12 volt USB charging connector. Yeah, now that is called innovation. Bring it on!

The main focus of this article (vaguely odious L.A. Times registration required, sorry) may or may not be moot at this point, as RIM is getting ready to trumpet about getting 5 of the 7 NTP patents overturned in Washington today. There are still 2 pieces of paper to overturn, but there is no reason to think that the patent office will have any hesitation to do so – today’s action shows that they have no qualms at all about tossing aside technically valid intellectual properly. The moral: Woe be to the hapless soul whose creative rights might cause some email inconvenience senators and assorted government fart catchers.

The piece at the TImes – and big ups to Sockmonkey for the tip – is still an interesting read for two reasons, though. One, it shows that there are complete fucking Blackberry morons in the world, addicts who make the fact that I may or may not type while driving once in a while look positively amateur in comparison. The guy with two ‘berries so that he can still check mail if he loses the signal on one is really pathetic/

Two, and this is more interesting from a geek point of view, is that this is the first story to break the ice on a fact that everyone kind of realizes in their heart of hearts, but no one really talks about: The Blackberry was pretty cool at the time but it is painfully primitive now. The PIM functions of RIM’s baby are still worse than useless, it can’t thread wireless tasks which is wildly annoying if you get a lot of mail, it bites for actually working with attachments, and as a web browser, well, the less said the better. RIM has taken the basic platform as far as it can really go, with welcome (and very nice) upgrades to the form factor, the screen, and the OS … but the basic platform has probably seen it’s day. RIM may be where Apple was in 1993, clinging too long to a basic architecture that has gotten far too long in the tooth. The only salvation may be to do what Apple did back then – license the technology and the OS to some third parties and let them innovate while you retool for the next generation.

Whether the gang in Waterloo – and their legion of addicts – realizes it yet or not, this is a watershed point in time. Move forward or die – at E3 this year at least two companies will show wireless email solutions that are going to open a lot of eyes. RIM needs to be ready to bring those eyes back … and the current crop of ‘berries aren’t going to do it.

For reasons that are still not clear, the IP addresses of the blackberry.net mail servers have been added to the SpamCop blacklist. Most ISP mail from Blackberries is now being flagged as spam – people who use enterprise servers are still okay. RIM is working on the problem now, but the gang at SpamCop aren’t the quickest movers in the world … which is not the least of their public perception problems.

Coming hard on top of all the other news, this is just weird.

It has been mentioned in passing that the U.S. Patent Office is under severe pressure from well-placed Crackberry addicts in both the White House and Capitol Hill to just up and throw away the NTP patents that are at the core of the current shitstorm of legal woe. These power-brokers don’t really give a rat’s ass about intellectual property concerns here, they just don’t want their Blackberries to stop working.

This, of course, is a wildly dangerous precedent. There are other corporations – with far more political and financial clout than RIM – would love to see this particular doorway to darkness opened just a wee crack. Just enough to get their slime-covered toes into the gap and start pushing. Case in point: Our friends at Microsoft, who aren’t just fighting one case of patent misappropriation … they have an outright slew of the damn things on the go. When it comes to stealing someone else’s work, the trolls in Redmond have a long and storied tradition that makes RIM look like a bunch of pikers. The latest round of this sort of litigation is especially worrisome for them because they didn’t just have to fork over cash – which they have gobs and gobs of – but also need to issue a patch, something that doesn’t sit well with Bill G and his assorted minions because the problem becomes annoyingly public.

Over at the Globe they were kind enough to make this mostly well-considered piece available to all instead of just to Globe content subscribers, as has been their wont as of late. I want to give this one the “senate” treatment – a sober second thought – before I pass judgement on it one way or the other, but it’s nice to see some work that actually delves into the timeline … big kudos for mentioning the Glenayre suit, something that RIM is mostly trying to avoid mentioning whenever they possibly can.

And, really, anything that makes Jim Balsillie look like a buffoon is good journalism in my books.

UPDATE: The Globe’s web servers just got hammered hard by Slashdotters – as of 10 minutes ago they were apparently dead in the water. If you haven’t read the story yet, here is a cached link … praise be to Google.

The Great Blackberry Patent Saga continues to creak along, with at least another month now before any decision will be made on NTP’s proposed injunction – February 24th is next date available for the U.S. District Court to hear the motions, countermotions, and general blathering. Some people think that it will never get that far, though, because the gang at RIM have pulled out a hammer of their own – panicmongering among Crackberry addicts in the U.S Senate and House. While the NTP patents are pretty clearly valid and should probably be upheld, there is a movement afoot among congressmen to pressure the U.S Patent Office just to toss the things out and pretend that they never existed. The old watchword of “money talks” has apparently been replaced with “don’t fuck with vote-wielding email freaks as they try and seduce interns while they are supposed to be working”.

People are now firmly divided into two camps on the RIM/NTP patent thing: Those with strong and often wildly-divergent opinions as to what it all means, and those who are completely confused. It should be pointed out, of course, that these two groups have pretty much the exact same amount of concrete information – it’s only how they choose to deal with it that is different.

And – speaking of choosing and dealing … the way that RIM chose to deal with this is the root cause of a huge chunk of their current problems. For reasons that probably make sense to them – and only them – they have elected to lower the Cone Of Silence in an attempt to turn Waterloo into some sort of latter-day Fortress Of Solitude. Instead of being forthright and open about all of this from the word go, they have positioned themselves as a wanna-be Microsoft with Jim Balsillie playing the role of a ghetto Bill Gates. The upshot? As you pick through the flood of speculation-charged “news” today, you can’t help but notice that RIM comes off as the bad guys, a shadowy-yet-evil empire trying to crush the plucky little inventor who is gallantly defending his patents … not particularly the image you want to project in a war that will be fought on the treacherous battleground of public opinion.

Is that really the case? No, of course not – both sides have some valid points, both sides have some dodgy stances. RIM, however, needed to take the high road early. Any sort of cursory examination of the patents in question or the history of NTP leads to the fairly obvious realization that Thomas Campana’s patents are valid, they were filed long before RIM came onto the scene, and that NTP has every right to them – this is not a case of patenting a widespread technology after the fact. RIM’s position was tenuous from the word go, and they needed to be the white knights in this endeavour, transparent to the media and making a big fucking noise about gallantly fighting for their beloved user base. Sadly, this is not the course that RIM has elected to follow, and the public and media perception that they have created by this tactic is definitely not working in their favour.

Now – nobody wants the Blackberry service gone or halted. The potential injunction that NTP keeps waving around is their “nuclear bomb” … a threat, but one that they hope they never have to use. NTP wants to get their share of the sweet Blackberry pie, not to toss the whole damn thing out the window. The latest development here is the offer of a 30-day “grace period” … something that makes NTP seem (once again) like the good guys, with user needs in mind, but is really an extra-heavy tactic … it lets them pull the trigger and prove that they are not bluffing, but puts the onus back on RIM to find a way to dodge the bullet. Very clever, and very manipulative.

RIM, of course, is still championing the “software workaround” that they claim will save the day. However, their above-discussed refusal to actually talk about any of this – including the details of the workaround – gives everyone the idea that whatever it is, it will suck large. Rumours are rampant (mostly due to people who participated in focus groups stateside) that it will involve manually having to “check” your mail the way you do on any other handheld or desktop device. Is this true? Maybe, maybe not, but who the hell knows? If it is true, though, it is a nine-inch nail in the RIM coffin, since the only reason to carry a Blackberry is the instant mail synchronization. As a PIM, the Blackberry sucks ninety-seven kinds of wang (and still has wang lined up around the corner waiting for a turn) and for those functions you would be further ahead to carry a Treo or PocketPC or (when you get right down to it) a pad of fucking paper. Not coincidentally, some of the news feeds today are starting to mention the alternatives – something that they did not do in the early going here – and supposedly factual reporting of the goings-on is starting to be tainted by outright recommendations to get a Treo.

Is this the start of the avalanche? Maybe. Is it too late? No, of course not – RIM could stem the sudden surge of user and public resentment simply but opening up and honestly talking about what is going on. Will they? Don’t hold your breath … there seem to be some delusions of tech royalty up Waterloo way, and lowering themselves to chat with the peasants doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the agenda.

The gang in Waterloo was quick to get out a press release regarding this morning’s U.S. Supreme Court decision … carefully trying to spin the result so as not to completely panic their shareholders and (as apparently an afterthough) placate their user base. Big thanks to the most awesome Sockmonkey for the tip.

You really have to pack some grains of salt when you try and parse this bit of PR legerdemain, though, and carefully read between the lines. There is a fair amount of deliberate confounding going on there … but to be fair I can guarantee you that NTP’s inevitable press release will be every bit as biased and possibly loaded with even more blatant misdirection.

So what is really going on? Confusion, mostly. It would help if RIM were a little more transparent and forthcoming – the brick wall they have built around themselves since the start of this whole mess is more than a tad off-putting – but for now, this is about the best analysis of of the situation that I have found at this particular point in time.

The U.S. Supreme Court just rejected RIM’s request to review the lower court ruling that puts the Blackberry service at risk due to patent infringements. That would be RIM’s last avenue of legal resolution. More to come.

In case anyone missed it (the announcements of this were less than intrusive) there is now a version of Google Maps / Google Local available for a large number of Java-enable cell phones, including the Blackberry. There are some limitations with the package to be sure – most of the “Google Local” data is only for locations in the states, and the distances are in bogus Imperial units with, oddly, no way for the user to select otherwise. I mean, come on, even General Motors products have this feature, which is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

However, it does give you a searchable map and driving directions in a portable format. It is slow, and will never replace a GPS, but in a pinch it looks like it is really handy. Visit the Google Local for Mobile page to download this directly to your handheld … which is another little bonus on it’s own. No jerking around with an external installer that some manufacturers like to torment you with. Enjoy.