blackberry

Article updated 2/28/08 with new information about Facebook's mobile settings.

The old adage, " 'tis better to give than to receive" should never apply to mobile software, much less to cell phone versions of social networks.

I initially thought BlackBerry's maker, RIM, was the culprit of a unilateral experience using Facebook for BlackBerry that let me push data to friends' Facebook accounts without receiving notice of any messages in return. It's since been pointed out to me that the product isn't so stingy to most, who can and do receive notice of … Read more

What do you do if you're billed as a business professional's Facebook, and a substantial portion of your more than 19 million members are jet-setting business types with fancy mobile phones and jobs that lend themselves to schmoozing? You build a mobile Web site so they can invite contacts as they meet them or identify in real life those they already have.

That was the impetus behind LinkedIn's mobile beta. (That and the fact that all the other social networks have mobile Web sites, too.) It's a good move for the social network, whose CEO, Dan … Read more

Smartphone customers keep flocking to the BlackBerry, and there are signs that it's not just harried executives signing up for service.

Research In Motion announced Thursday that it expects to have added 15 percent to 20 percent more subscribers than it initially forecast for its fourth fiscal quarter, which ends next week. The company originally thought it would add a net total of 1.82 million subscribers during the period, but strong holiday sales and the absence of a usual seasonal drop-off are credited with the surge.

Long the smartphone of choice for the U.S. businessperson, the BlackBerry … Read more

Users of Research In Motion's BlackBerry service reported some kinks in the system Wednesday, although the problems did not appear as serious as those of a week ago.

This time around, only customers of RIM's BlackBerry Internet Service appeared to be affected. These are individuals who have their e-mailed forwarded to their BlackBerrys, as opposed to corporate customers using the BlackBerry Enterprise Server product. Last week, everyone was hosed when a server failed at RIM's network operations center, but this one wasn't quite so bad.

The company released a statement concerning the outage Wednesday afternoon. "… Read more

Now that they're back among the living (for now), CrackBerry addicts can get their fix in a new way with a "Bluetooth Music Gateway" that will stream tunes wirelessly to portable speakers or another system, according to Boy Genius Report. And it may actually be more useful than originally billed, as Engadget speculates that the new matchbook-sized dongle from RIM can be used with devices other than the BlackBerry as well. Regardless of how it works, anything that keeps the thumbs off the keys is probably a good thing.

BARCELONA--Research In Motion's co-chief executive officer, Jim Balsillie, doesn't seem too worried that the second major outage of the company's BlackBerry service in 10 months could hurt its reputation with corporate customers.

"It was an intermittent delay, a couple of hours," he said. "It's old news. It happened days ago."

Balsillie's comments were in response to a question about Monday's outage and how it might impact the company's relationship with corporate customers. Balsillie had just given a keynote speech and participated in a panel discussion at the Mobile World Congress … Read more

Update 2:15 p.m. PST: No sooner do I post this than RIM goes and issues an explanation for the outage. Read on for the details...

In the immortal words of Cinderella's Tom Kiefer, you don't know what you got, till it's gone.

Monday's widespread BlackBerry outage--the second major one in the past 12 months--left Research In Motion customers stranded and cut off from the rest of the world, sort of like what happened to the '80s glam metal band after Long Cold Winter. The Internet's equivalent of a snow day left reams of … Read more

Maybe it's just the fact that I was out sick last week, but man, I really enjoyed my Blackberry not barking messages at me for a few hours. I had a zen-like calm only achievable when completely disconnected.

Since the beginning of the year I have found myself less and less interested in living life online at all times. Anybody else feeling this way?