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.

So the previously discussed “Do Not Call” registry actually went on-line as promised (which makes me think that this would be better as a Geekback, but I already typed the title up there so what the hell, let’s keep going) first thing this morning, and if you were clever you got your number onto the thing early because by 7:00 am the thing was choked out with a user overflow, tossing random errors. Which was much better than the situation at 9:00 am when the page wouldn’t even load, and all you could get was the dreaded IIS “sorry about your luck” page.

Take a bow, Bell Canada. Thanks for coming out.

However, to be completely fair, the “I Opt Out” page was also dead in the water by mid-morning, with the Joomla engine giving up and cowering in the corner.

The difference, of course, is that Geist is just running his page out of his pocket to make up for the oversights and weak spots in the legislation. Bell is running their page with taxpayer’s money, so there is no excuse. Fuckers.

So the House of Representatives had the balls to tell G.W. Bush and his cronies to take their “bailout” and shove it up their corporate asses.

Good.

There is a new Wario title out for the Wii, and it is loaded with seriously cool old-school 2D platforming goodness. For the most part it is 2 buttons and a D-pad, the way things were meant to be … but with a bit of a twist involved. Or in this case, a shake.

Nintendo has posted a promotional and game-play video to YouTube and in keeping with the general gestalt here, the video has a bit of a twist too. You will have to watch to see what I mean. Very clever indeed.

Two quick notes about Air Sharing:

1: The number of formats that you can view has been expanded in the newest version, available now at the iTunes App Store.

2: Air Sharing is no longer free, and now costs seven bucks.

Item one means you need to update if you are already an Air Sharing user, and if you aren’t a user then you need to get on the bandwagon, stat. Item two, on the other paw, means nothing. If you already have this package then the update is free, and if you don’t have this you really need it and it will be seven dollars well spent. Period.

You may have noticed a horrid rash of telemarketing calls to your home and your cell phone over the last two weeks – the usual plague of 1 or 2 calls a day has become a torrent of intrusive assholes, invading your privacy with endless pitches for free cruises and cheap long distance and duct cleaning. The reason for the sudden deluge of irritating crap is, or course, the upcoming launch of the long-overdue and probably-mismanaged Canadian “Do Not Call” list.

After four years of mindless discussion, the thing is finally getting off the ground. One of the constant jokes about the whole thing is that much of the delay has come from Bell Canada, who has been contracted by the government to run the thing. The problem? Bell is one of the country’s top purveyors of telemarketing nonsense, and had no real reason to try and get the thing up and running. The longer they continued to botch it, the longer they could continue to ruin your dinner by calling to offer Yet Another Long Distance Package.

That said, everything is finally in place and as of September 30th, you will be able to log in to the web site (which has a turd useless URL, because they didn’t have the brains to register a half-decent one you could actually remember) and put yourself down for some blessed peace.

Well, sort of. See, the current government of Canada is a bunch of do-nothing hacks and losers, and they kowtowed to the powers of darkness by giving all sorts of businesses and organizations a free pass around the list. Charities, business with “prior relationships with you”, political parties, survey companies, and newspapers are all allowed to continue to ruin your precious hometime, unless you specifically tell them not to.

This is where “I Opt Out” comes in, and is (finally, and about three paragraphs too late) the whole point of this post. Our pal Michael Geist, Canada’s selfless hero of privacy and on-line rights, has set up a one-stop and easy-as-toast portal for you to tell the rest of these mopes to leave you alone. Its quick, its free, and when you are done you get an email “receipt” of what you have done so when the assholes try and call you after October 1, you can tell them to fuck right off.

Also, keeping a Fox 40 whistle beside the phone works wonders.

Anyway. Log on, get yourself opted out, and be sure to read Geist’s other stuff while you are there. The man is a font of clarity in an increasingly muddled digital world.

If you like history, cool things, or photography in any way shape or form, then you need to take a look at Shorpy. It is an archive / photoblog of amazing prints from the last 100 years, mostly in full plate size and often with all of the groovy old technical details (”wet plate glass negative, half sheet” or the like) that were involved in getting the picture. Take a look – just make sure you have enough time to browse, because there is a lot worth seeing.

I have a serious love for really cool retro-tech stuff. If it is something a geek would have used 50 or 60 years ago, I am all over it. Which is why I have a hardcore jones on for the “Field Notes” brand of notebooks. They are amazingly well made and insanely handy little pocket-sized notebooks of a style and type that you would have expected to find in the pocket of every engineer and field scientist back in the day.

Now, you might wonder why I would want a notebook, and you have probably assumed that I would prefer to write (or type) everything down in my laptop or my iPhone regardless of where I am. You would be wrong, however, because sometimes you need a blatantly physical solution, and when you do nothing is more vexing than not having one at hand. Put the iPhone in one pocket, a compact writing pad in the other, and you are loaded for bear.

But I digress. The whole point of this post is that the gang at Field Notes sent out an email to all of their customers today offering a pre-order on their amazing wall calendar. It is clean and neat and insanely usefull and – like all of their products – incredibly well made. I am passing along the link as a favour to all of you – but I might point out that I was sure to buy my calendar before posting this, so I wouldn’t miss out. If you want one, get it now … there are only 1000 available. And while you are there, add a pack of notebooks to your order. Trust me, you won’t be sorry.

For those that asked, here are the questions that I will be sending to my local candidates once the rosters are locked in on Monday:

Reducing carbon emissions – and their attendant effect on the environment – is clearly the number one issue facing every single person on this planet. What concrete and workable ideas do you personally have to make a deep and permanent cut in carbon emissions and fossil fuel usage both in Canada and across the globe?

How can we permanently free the Afghani people from the threat and oppression of the Taliban and give them a workable and secure domestic government?

What is your position on net neutrality?

How do you propose that Canada maintains both political and environmental sovereignty in the Arctic?

Why are tax-paying and law-abiding homeowners forced to live in fear – and in some cases forced from their legally-deeded property – by people who seem to think they are above the law in Caledonia and Brantford?

I am especially interested in the answer to number 5 from my Conservative candidate – Stephen “Dead Eyes” Harper goes on and on about refusing to be soft on crime, but his party has been in power during this time and has done nothing to stop these violent thugs that blatantly operate outside the law. Should be interesting to watch the dance on this one.

Stay tuned.

There is an update available now for Wurdle, and it has a feature that is either really cool or really annoying, depending on how competitive and/or irritable you are. When you are done a game, you now have the option to see all the words you missed and should have found if you weren’t such a fenderhead. The feature is fun, but also rather humiliating. If you have Wurdle already, you need to grab this update – there are other goodies in it, including a more responsive “shake” – and if you don’t have Wurdle then you really need to spend the three dollars and get it now.

Wurdle rocks.

Here we go – the shoe has fallen and despite his promises to the contrary, Stephen Harper has called a general election. And, as in elections past, I am basing my vote almost entirely on the answers from my local candidates when I send them questions about the issues that are important to me.

The key term there, of course, is almost entirely. Unlike years past, I am adopting a more codified system of scoring the responses to my questions and the people that send them. I am going to send each of my candidates five questions, and then total up the ratings as follows:

The answer to each of the five questions will be scored out of 15

Each candidate’s party leader will be rated out of 10

The quality of the party’s web site will be rated out of 5

Any candidate who is not on Facebook gets 5 points

You may notice that the total adds up to 95 points. The last 5 points will be allocated based on vague and nebulous criteria like whether or not they have a direct email address instead of some generic campaign drop box, what their degree is in if they happen to have one, whether or not I care for their haircut, or anything else that comes to mind as I research my vote.

I have an idea of the questions I am going to ask, but haven’t fleshed them out yet. Certainly reducing carbon emissions will be top of the list. The rest I will have fleshed out when the 22nd comes along, and the roster of candidates in my riding is finalized. Stay tuned for all the carnage.

And remember – no matter where you are or who your candidates are … VOTE.

Air Sharing is a wickedly cool and totally slick application for the iPhone that lets you wirelessly mount your phone as a drive to any workstation you might have and drag and drop files between the two. Better, it includes built-in viewers for a plethora of file types, so once you drag your spreadsheets or PDFs or RTF or Word documents or whatever over to the phone, you can display them seamlessly and instantly.

The whole thing is so well thought out that it is almost witchcraft – everything is totally seamless and self-contained and even the most feeble user can make it work right away. Better, the list of file formats is growing, and the next update should double the number of things you can view and use. And best of all, it is free right now, for the first couple of weeks of release. It will probably be close to 10 bucks after the free period, and quite frankly even that is a deal.

If you have an iPhone, you need Air Sharing. Period. Free or not, it is the best piece of productivity software to come down the pipe since the iPhone hit the market. Five stars, and then some.

As promised, here is a complete 2.1 firmware file which will upgrade your unlocked iPhone to version 2.1 and contains the Installer and Cydia packages. Remember that you must put your phone in to DFU mode to restore from this file – complete instructions are on the iPhone unlocking page. Enjoy!

The verdict is in, via my rash experimentation with my own phone: If you have an unlocked or jailbroken iPhone and you upgrade to version 2.1, you are good to go. Your phone will remain free and happy – the only caveat is that you will lose your “Installer” and “Cydia” applications.

However, this is such a good update, that you should take it regardless.

If you really must have Installer et al, then wait until tomorrow – iIam going to build a 2.1 firmware file tonight with Installer and Cydia built in, so you can install that if you wait a handful of hours. You’re welcome.

One of the coolest things about the Application Store for the iPhone is that the distribution mechanism (ie; insanely easy, with no overhead at all for the developers or publishers) and the profit margin (way more money into the developers’ pockets than any traditional model) means that we are now seeing the advent of “impulse” software purchases. Since the developers can sell their product for 2 or 3 bucks and still make some serious coin, software is for the first time ever priced at a point where you can just buy something on a whim, and if you dont like it or you only use it once … big deal. It costs about as much as a cup of coffee.

Which is a very roundabout way of getting to the actual point: I bought Wurdle on a complete whim because it was a puzzle game (which I like), a word game (which I love), and only cost $2.99 (which meant that I said “what the hell” and gave it a click). The result? Wurdle is an insanely great game, totally addictive, perfect for any sort of “got a few minutes and need a break” play, and is way more interesting and well-thought-out than most of the game software you buy for 49.99 down at Ye Olde Best Buye.

If you have an iPhone or an iPod touch, get Wurdle. Period. Or else.

Grr.

I will download the new iTunes as soon as I get a better connection to the interwebs and take a peek-see on your behalf. It looks like the main show – the new “genius” feature – is just LastFM taken to its extremes of integration. And, not coincidentally, revenue potential. However, adding Magnetosphere to the built-in visualizers is very cool. Everyone loves Magentosphere!

As far as the new iPhone firmware, due to drop on Friday: If you have an untethered iPhone, do not update until you hear from a reliable source that the update will not put your phone back into the clutches of the evil bastards who run the cell companies. For now, just sit tight.

So the Apple “Event” was pretty much what everyone expected, and there weren’t any earth-shattering surprises. I will say, however, that the new pink Nano is going to be a monstrous seller this December. Mark my words.

One thing that didn’t get a lot of play at the event was Apple’s ongoing commitment to accessibility. Steve never got around to it on stage, but the event handout kit made mention of some interesting developments on this front. The new Nanos have the option to turn on voice-indicated menus, and that feature will make it into all new iPod models as we move forward. You can assume that after Macworld next spring it will be standard across the line. Also – and this is really cool – version 8 of iTunes has full support for screen readers, and those functions will move across the entire OSX interface when we see the release of 10.6 at the start of next year.

Full discussion here.

Interestingly enough, putting screen reader tags into the Windows version of iTunes violates a number of tenets of the new Microsoft developer agreements, but somehow I don’t think that Redmond is stupid enough to make any sort of fuss about this one.

As is normal for these sorts of events, the Apple Store has gone dark in the hours leading up to today’s Apple Event. This invariably means new products, and that they will be available for purchase immediately. The last minute scuttlebutt is that the Touch will not be given any increased storage, but will drop in price instead, and that the new Nano will have portrait and landscape modes (like the iPhone and the Touch) to add support for widescreen video.

I still vote for bigger Touch models, but we only have to wait a couple of hours now to see for sure. Tick, tock.

Before there was really a World War 2 there was a little “practice war” when Russia attempted to invade Finland as a precursor to the Soviets and the Germans divvying up Scandinavia and all of the resources there. Russia wanted the oil and the Atlantic ports, Germany wanted the Swedish iron ore, and both thought that the whole thing would be a piece of cake. Since the Russian-German alliance had just sliced up Poland without breaking a sweat, the Russians outnumbered the Finns about a grillion-to-one, and the Allies were ready to sell out the Nordic countries to buy some time for themselves it should have been a piece of cake.

Except, of course, that the Finns are miserable, stubborn, fearless, iron-willed bastards and managed to kick the Russians in the balls. Hard. And repeatedly.

White Death is a look at that rather nasty little conflict from the political side of things. The military action itself is skimmed, and the meat of the book is all of the negotiations and dealing between the Allies, the Russians, and the increasingly desperate Nordic folks who pretty much knew that they had been sold down the river but decided to give it a go anyway. It’s worth a read, especially if the only history you have every gotten from WW2 is the stuff in the western history books that have a decided “Allies Good, Everyone Else Bad” slant. As in most wars, there are villains on both sides, and Churchill was certainly a bit of an asshole when push came to shove here. A good read, but Edwards does have a bit of an odd writing style, so you had best not be intolerant of that sort of thing.

NOTE: If you are more of a military type, or just want more of the nitty-gritty battle stuff and don’t care so much for the politics of the whole mess, then look for Allen Chew’s definitive work on the action – which, mysteriously, is also entitled White Death. It traces the day-day-action of the entire conflict, but it is extremely dry, so consider yourself warned. Really, you should probably read both of these books to get the whole story, but if you decide to pass on Chew’s effort I wouldn’t exactly blame you.

As per usual, there is a fall “Apple Event” this week. And also as per usual, there is not much mystery about the fall event – this year, as in years past, they have issued the invitation in such a way that it is pretty obvious that this is an “iPod” event:

Yeah, not leaving much to the imagination there. So what will we see? There will be a revamp of the Nano for sure – probably a slightly bigger screen, better video, and more memory – and look for a big increase in the storage capacity of the Touch. In fact, there is a good chance that Tuesday’s event will signal the start of the very quiet death of the traditional iPod, with the whole full-sized lineup moving towards a touch-screen-based, application-running palmtop.

If there is any sort of surprise, it will be either something cool for AppleTV, or some sort of minor content bombshell for the iTunes store. Regardless, it is pretty certain that Apple will again make a gigantic shitload of money this Christmas season.

So, after a week of playing with Chrome, the entire thing boils down to pretty much two items:

1: Chrome uses WebKit to render the pages, so the thing looks fabulous.

2: Despite Google’s best comic book reassurances, the much-talked-about “secure” memory spaces are completely compromised by the fact that they used Mozilla instead of Gecko as the web framework. So all of the same old denial of service and pixel bomb attacks are still valid.

3: It is every bit as slow and as huccupy as any other Mozilla browser.

So when you get right down to it, it’s – for now, anyway – just a prettier Firefox. It’s probably not worth the effort, yet. Big emphasis on the “yet”. Stay tuned – there still might be a version driven by Gecko. Then we might have a keeper.