iPhone CDMA

Thats right, you didn’t read wrong. I said iPhone CDMA. It does almost everything the iPhone 3G does and it’s cheaper, has twice the space and I can send mass text messages.

This is me giving the finger to Rogers for their ridiculous iPhone plans. Lets backtrack to January 2008 for a minute.

Once upon a time, when iPhones were only available in the States, I pre-ordered an iPod Touch. It was a great piece of technology. I said ‘was’ because it disappeared a few months later. After mourning the loss of my beloved device I began searching for an imported iPhone. After giving up in light of the crazy-high prices on eBay I waited patiently for the iPhone to officially come to Canada.

The iPhone came to Canada, but not without a steep price. I weighed my options, fork over my hard earned cash for this sweet sweet phone or carry on with my Bell Mobility contract for a few more years and feel like a little part of me is missing.

Around this time is when it hit me, the iPod that I had once lost would have been able to function almost the same as the iPhone (minus all the phone and GPS goodness). The next day I headed over to my local Apple store and picked up an iPod Touch 32 GB. That night I had my fun downloading and rampaging the App store and damn was it ever worth it.

Now I carry with me my trusty Samsung SPH-A860 in one pocket and my iPod Touch in the other. It covers everything I need. Sure it would be nice to have access to the internet at all times on the iPod but seeing as I’m on a wireless network 90% of the time I think I’ll survive the other 10% without the access.

And that there is how I’m doing my part in not giving Rogers my $4,000 (give or take a bit) in iPhone and iPhone contracts. For the bit of inconvenience that the two devises will give me I think it’s worth it.

Dear Minus The Bear,

I’m really sorry I ignored your last full length “Planet Of Ice” when it was released. I’ve been a fan for years, ever since the epic “Highly Refined Pirates” was released. For some dumb reason I thought that I was over you as a band and that your sound had “had its day” with me.

Fortunately, I was wrong/(mentally) drunk/not thinking for the many months I sat on this album. Seeing you at Coachella, then listening to the album (repeatedly) on a long drive to Chicago and slowly working the album into my regular rotation made me realise the errors and grave stupidity of my ways.

For this, I am an idiot.

Please accept my apology,

James.

My Blackberry has become an indispensable tool I use on a daily basis. It lets me know if one of my servers is having uptime issues or, even worse, has crashed, enter new contacts when I’m out and about, find where I need to go through Google Maps, and even send and receive the “occasional” email.

However, I’ve stumble upon a couple of feature requests I’d love to see in the next revision of the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) software.

1. The ability to support two or more paired Blackberries on a single Exchange account

Yes, believe it or not, I ran into this problem last month. A client of mine has a general email account that three in office employees are using simultaneously through Outlook. The account was paired with a Blackberry 8700 in case one of the office employees has to leave the office to run errands.

After an employee left the company, my client realised they had an extra Blackberry 8700 laying around the office. After resetting the Blackberry, I told my client that it might be a good idea to pair the Blackberry with the general email account so that two employees could continue to monitor messages coming into the account while outside of the office.

I thought that it would be an easy process to pair this Blackberry to the general email account, seeing as adding Blackberries to Exchange accounts has become second nature to me. Unfortunately, as I found out, it’s impossible to pair multiple Blackberries to a single Exchange account due to BES software and security limitations.

Now, I can see why BES would only allow one Blackberry to be used with an Exchange account. Sure, there’s a big security issue with having multiple portable devices paired with an Exchange account. But at the same time, such a set up is no more insecure than an office where 3 or 4 work stations are using a common Exchange account. So, frazzled after a couple of hours of mucking around and a call or two to some technicians I gave up. As I was told on the phone, “What you’re looking to do is impossible.”

2. Allow Blackberry devices to open and use shared contacts from Exchange accounts

Again, we’re going back to the office of the same client. Their general Exchange account, “generalmail@company.com,” is also the shared contacts account that the rest of the company uses. Opening the shared contacts from the account “generalmail@company.com” works great for all users accessing their Exchange accounts through Outlook. Users can access the latest contacts and email, phone or fax with ease and also add to the contact list as needed. Unfortunately, on the Blackberry, easily accessing these shared contacts becomes an impossible task.

One obvious solution to accessing the shared contacts on a Blackberry device would be to start using the Global Address Book. A recent software update to BES allows users to access their Global Address Book from their Blackberry. The biggest issue with the Global Address Book is that it’s limited to 500 entered contacts. But since the company has about 1000 shared contacts in the general Exchange account, using the Global Address Book to access and manage contacts through their Blackberries isn’t an option.

In the mean time, the company’s president has to copy the contacts from the general account’s shared contacts to his personal contact list when he wants to add any new contacts to his Blackberry. It’s not an arduous task, but it’s 10 minutes of copying and pasting time that’s spent every week making sure that the latest contacts are available on his Blackberry. And over the course of the year, 10 minutes a week adds up to a lot of time.

So, Research In Motion, perhaps you’re already working on these enhancements. I don’t think these issues are ones that will prevent an organisation from deploying a fleet of Blackberries for their employees, but I think they are features that can definitely be taken advantage of by companies who have customised email environments. Off the top of my head, I can think of 2 organisations I deal with in addition to my own office that could benefit from the ability to pair multiple Blackberries with a common Exchange account and open shared contact lists on the Blackberry.

Perhaps other Internerds have some other suggestions that can stoke the code fires of the RIM Blackberry Enterprise Server development team?