Directive: Passengers must remain in seats beginning 1 hour prior to arrival at destination. How it will impact travel: If your flight is only 60 minutes, you won’t be able to get out of your seat at all.
Directive: Passenger access to carry-on baggage is prohibited beginning 1 hour prior to arrival at destination. How it will impact travel: One hour prior to landing, be sure to have taken anything from your carry-on that you might need for the rest of the flight.
Directive: Disable aircraft-integrated passenger communications systems and services (phone, internet access services, live television programming, global positioning systems) prior to boarding and during all phases of flight. How it will impact travel: During all phases of the flight? Are they saying we no longer have in-flight entertainment? If you have taken a flight since these measures were implemented, let us know.
Directive: While over U.S. airspace, flight crew may not make any announcement to passengers concerning flight path or position over cities or landmarks. How it will impact travel: I really doubt the terrorists are waiting for the Captain to say “and on your left is the Lincoln Memorial.”
Directive: Passengers may not have any blankets, pillows, or personal belongings on the lap beginning 1 hour prior to arrival at destination. How it will impact air travel: Is a laptop a personal belonging? Perhaps a BlackBerry doesn’t fall into this category.
Personally, I don’t see how they’re going to implement these measures for parents with children. You simply can’t tell a mother that she isn’t allowed to access her baggage during a flight. If her child needs it, too bad. It’s not like there are many terrorists boarding flights with their newborn babies. Click through for the full transcript of the new TSA directives
The Love What You Do campaign by RIM has been incredibly successful. Jim Balsillie, during the Q3 Conference Call for fiscal 2010, talked extensively about how the campaign has done wonders for attracting more non-enterprise subscribers.
If you have ever seen a Love What You Do ad on TV, you have definitely heard the BlackBerry version of “All You Need is Love” by John Lennon of The Beatles. I’m not sure who sings the cover, but it’s more rock than the Lennon version. RIM are offering this song as a free download so be sure to head over and get your free song.
InfoExecutive asked me about LBS technologies and how they are currently being used in the BlackBerry space, along with my thoughts about where they will be in 5 years. I’m by no means an expert on this sort of thing, but here at BlackBerry Cool, we’ve covered a wide variety of innovative companies in the space, and it’s definitely an exciting time for the technology.
Here are some quotes:
On where I think the technology is currently:
“Currently, location aware applications are most visible in the consumer market,” he said. “Location based services like Loopt add a new dimension to social networking, and services like Poynt make finding relevant local information easier to discover.” In enterprise, McInnes said, GPS-enabled BlackBerry devices make device management more cost effective, allowing IT administrators to find lost or stolen devices. “Many organizations have custom-built location solutions for scenarios such as tracking fleets or red-flagging points in infrastructure,” he added.
On where I think it’s going:
McInnes believes the near future holds some interesting prospects for both consumers and enterprise. “For consumers, the world around us will become increasingly small, with local content becoming more accessible. Everything from social networks to music services can benefit from serving local content,” he explained. “In the enterprise space, location-based services will help organizations manage their assets more effectively, allowing them to cut costs and learn more about their business. In tandem with technologies such as RFID, an organization can track products, employees and customers, allowing those with a BlackBerry to have a wealth of information at their fingertips.”
BuzzMe Pro lets you control how your phone rings and vibrates, letting you customize the LED color and more for SMS, email and phone calls. Use BuzzMe Pro to customize LED lights so you know the priority level of an incoming message immediately. For Storm owners, this app has Facedown Mode, which turns your phone on silent automatically; a great feature for meetings.
It was a little slow going for the holidays but the big news is centered around the recent outages. There have been far too many in too short a time period and RIM needs to address the issue. Perhaps it’s time RIM invests in more redundancies as it seems far too easy for the network to crash. Other than that, there are a ton of new apps to check out, many of them free. Click through for a full list of news, apps and features that you may have missed
Back at the BlackBerry Developer Conference, the guys at Concrete Software gave us a preview of their latest game PBA Bowling 2, which uses Open GL 3D graphics for a new visual experience in BlackBerry gaming.
With PBA Bowling 2, you can choose to play a single game, a tournament, or the spare challenge – progressing through the games unlock special bowling ball textures and patterns. The game features internationally recognized players and locations, such as Las Vegas, Tokyo, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Reno.
