A thousand pardons but we forgot a few honorable mentions on our last Staff and Contributors Update.
Jonathan Brandon
Jonathan works with Smoke Labs on his latest project The Public Post, a Canadian news blog. The site is a great destination for some in-depth commentary on local issues. Apart from being a politically savy individual, Jonathan is also a smartphone enthusiast. Take a look at some of his reviews.
Jude Sweeney
Jude wrote an excellent review of PictureDial for the BlackBerry Storm. His writing style is elegant and concise which makes for an easy read. A true BlackBerry Storm fan, expect more great reviews from him.
You too can be a part of the BlackBerry Cool Community.
Our membership program works like this:
New members can trade free software for reviews.
Second tier members get free accessories too.
Long standing members get access to free devices.
To become a member, email me at kyle {at} blackberrycool {dot} com.
Looking forward to meeting you!
Oh and I never wrote about myself (in the 3rd person no less).
Kyle McInnes
Kyle has worked on and off for Smoke Labs Media for the past 4 years. After graduating with an Honors degree in Commerce, Kyle went on to do web consulting for the Foreign Trade Administration in Israel. While living in Jerusalem, Kyle worked to bring the staff on board with a social media plan to connect departments across the globe. After leaving Israel, he moved to Korea to teach business English to LG employees in Daejeon. Kyle also manages a comedy site called Street Carnage.
The Speaker of the House, Ken Kowalski, scolded Alberta MLAs (member of the legislative assembly) for using their BlackBerrys too much and not paying attention.
“C’mon now,” said Kowalski. “We agreed on certain things, certain decorum, and I even noted prior to this time today that several members had BlackBerrys out. Please.”
As Kowalski pleaded with members to stop using their BlackBerrys, members laughed and Twittered it (just kidding).
One Tory MLA, Thomas Lukaszuk, admits it’s hard for him to stop using his BlackBerry in the chamber, but denies he’s addicted to it. Lukaszuk noted U.S. President Barack Obama is a big BlackBerry fan and is allowed to use his because it’s allegedly spy-proof.
“If Obama can keep his, I need to keep mine,” said Lukaszuk, adding that, ultimately, he’ll follow the warnings of the house Speaker.
Personally, I think members should be allowed to use their BlackBerrys. It is in fact a Canadian-made device so it’s a point of national pride. What they shouldn’t be doing is wasting our tax dollars at these boring meetings where clearly nothing is getting done.
It has always surprised me that RIM only has around 10% of the smartphone market share. Sometimes I think these numbers might be skewed for a few reasons:
1) How does the survey define a smartphone? I bet many of the models described as smartphones are not “smart” in the sense that BlackBerry users are used to.
2) It’s a global market share. I’m really only concerned with North America and Europe.
3) It’s a conspiracy and Bill Gates is at the center of it all.
During Q4 2008, Nokia’s overall market share fell from 50.9 percent to 40.8 percent and smartphone sales dipped a whopping 17 percent to 15.6 million units. During that same period, RIM doubled its market share, perhaps due to a void left by Nokia.
Where can RIM make big market share gains?
Consumer – If RIM keeps pumping out devices that will get the average user interested, they can make some serious market share gains. It’s about time that people put down their RAZR and pick up a device that is not only a status symbol, but a device that will change the way you feel about technology.
Enterprise – Just keep doing what you’re doing guys. A few more updates to BES, as well as a boost from the dev community, should really give RIM a device that every company will be required to use and abuse.
What would you like to see from RIM in the coming years?
This definitely isn’t the nicest looking theme I have seen but it’s free. If you’re a theme junkie with an 83XX series device then check it out. It hasn’t been through the necessary QA so don’t bet your life that it’ll work. Here are some notes from the developer:
When you do receive a message, there will be a red dot next to Messages caret.
The BlackBerry Storm gets a ton of mixed reviews but if you had a sweet model Formula1 car to control via Bluetooth you wouldn’t be saying anything bad about the device. Check out the above video to see Lewis Hamilton drive a model F1 car with a BlackBerry Storm. The first 2 minutes of the video is set up and it shows you how they got to get Hamilton in on the project. So skip to the half-way mark for the goods.
Yet another unofficial BlackBerry Storm 9530 OS is out. This time, it’s BlackBerry OS version 4.7.0.114. Personally, I wouldn’t download this. Especially if you are a new to relatively new BlackBerry user. If you’re a power user and are familiar with undoing OS upgrades, then give it a try.
Jonathan Brandon
Jude Sweeney
Kyle McInnes
