A stormy fall?

Once again, the Boy Genius Report website is first with big news regarding the iPhone-esq offering from BlackBerry code named Thunder. They are reporting that there will be a HUGE marketing push in September followed by a mid-October release on Verizon. Hopefully that timetable holds and hopefully they fix some of the problems that had been earlier reported with the device. Only time will tell! Stay tuned!

And if you haven't checked out BGR, it's worth adding it to your RSS feeds.

BGR gives Thunder a FAIL

The "Boy Genius Report" site today came out with some new information regarding BlackBerry Thunder. You can read all about it here, but from what it sounds like, it doesn't look good for the device any time soon.

I really hope BlackBerry is able to pull it together quickly. I'm beginning to think that RIM is putting out devices too fast as of late without fully testing them like they had done on the earlier, more reliable models. As we have been rolling out more and more BlackBerry's at work, I'm seeing more and more having problems almost similar to what I had seen in the later days of Palm Treo's we used to have. For a while, we saw ALL kinds of quality problems with them.

Lotus on BlackBerry slide from WES.

Lotus on BlackBerry.JPG
Originally uploaded by BlackBerry Cool

I was browsing through BlackBerry Cool's Flickr and tripped across this from the WES OGS. I wonder what they had to say about it!

Lotus Connections also got a mention as well. Full WES OGS details here

BlackBerry 9000 first look!

The gang over at Crackberry.com posted a YouTube video showing off a BlackBerry 9000 and the 4.6 OS. The rumor mill was hot a couple of weeks ago with the 9000 for sale on eBay, was it real and all that. From the looks of it, it is. Check out the video. Looks pretty cool so far, but I'm sure the final production will be much better!

Emails disappearing from a BlackBerry?

I've had this one happen to me a couple of times recently and wanted to share what to do about it. As I posted a couple of days ago, I installed Guitar Hero III for the BlackBerry. It's a pretty neat little application even with the half of a song they give you on the trial. But I noticed something Friday night....I lost all of my email from the week on the BlackBerry! The server copy was intact, just the local ones on the BlackBerry.
Well, the easy answer is....uninstall stuff from your BlackBerry to free up memory. Sure, all those Google apps and Yahoo! to Go are cool, but they eat memory on the handheld and when the memory pool is low, email is the first thing to go. Not sure how much memory you have left on your BlackBerry? Simple.

• Options
• Status
• and then note File Free. That's the amount in bytes left on your BlackBerry.

After uninstalling a couple of Google apps and Monopoly, mail started saving again. It would be nice if you could install applications to run off of the memory card I installed in the device. Hopefully thats on the road map for the future.

GUITAR HERO III....on a BlackBerry?

When I saw this the other day, the date was April 1st so I thought that it was just a joke.
Nope. It's for real. I downloaded the trial version today and I have to admit that it is kinda cool for a BlackBerry game. The trial version included my favorite GH3 song Santana's Black Magic Women, (which I normally rock out with at least a 95% hit rate on the Wii. Easy mode of course). Not sure if I'm going to spend the full $15 bucks for the game or not, but it is something cool to play with on a rainy Friday.
Visit Bplay for more info and to download your free trial too.

Curve on Verizon

Verizon announced today that the 8330 Curve will be released on their network in the near future.
I, of course, have one question. Will it have the WiFi feature enabled or will that be another one of the Verizon "we'll charge you to use a built in feature" deals. Only time will tell. I have one on order with our sales rep.

BlackBerry outage on Saturday?

As I'm tip-toeing through my RSS feeds this morning, I'm seeing a couple of reports that RIM is having a scheduled outage Saturday morning between 2AM - 6AM EDT for both BES and BIS. While I haven't yet found anything from the company themselves, it is posted on several sites I visit often. Check it out here.

The fun of BlackBerry and other stuff

I've been working with the BlackBerry ECL, (Emergency Contact List), application that is available from RIM for free for a while now and haven't had a lot of luck with. The browser push would work, but after a while the cache would become corrupt and the data could not be displayed. So, I kicked it up a notch and decided to push the ECL application down to the handhelds so the information would be stored locally instead of only being cached. Sounds like a good idea, right? Well, I had to learn the hard way that when you set up a new software configuration in the BlackBerry Manager and you assign that config to a user, it can take up to 4 hours for the application to be installed on the device. I, of course, had expected it to happen instantaneously and when it didn't I called support. They are good people there. After about 2 hours, the new configs started showing up on the BlackBerry's and all was right with the kingdom.

So with being the hero of the day, I decided to use the opportunity to ask for permission to go to Notes/Domino 8 upgrade seminar that is a part of Admin2008 in Boston...and it was approved! Had to remind the boss folks that the ND6 seminar cd's that we purchased from The View a couple of years ago REALLY prepared me for that upgrade. So, I now that that to look forward to.
Just hope that I don't get food poisoning at this event.

This just in: "Critical" outage on BlackBerry!

Something seemed odd shortly after 3 today when the BlackBerry's stopped working. Became even odder when I tried to contact BlackBerry support and couldn't get through. That's to Reuters, I was able to finally find out why.

TORONTO (Reuters) - E-mail service of Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones experienced a "critical severity outage" on Monday, the company told clients in an e-mail.

"This is an emergency notification regarding the current BlackBerry Infrastructure outage," stated an e-mail from RIM support account manager Bryan Simpson. The e-mail said the outage affected enterprise clients and "users of the Americas network."

RIM was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Wojtek Dabrowski; editing by Rob Wilson)

I think it's going to be a long night.

Update: It appears around 6:50 PM EST, mail was flowing to my hand held properly. Stay tuned to Andy's House O' Blog for continuing team coverage.