A little blog that could…

RIM shows it means business

In the past few days 2 interesting bits of information were released by RIM and Google.

• Google released the Google Apps connector for Blackberry Enterprise Server
• RIM released the Gmail enhanced plugin for Blackberry Internet Service

Now this would normally be cool but well nothing special. But in the past weeks many have wondered whether RIM is capable of keeping up with the competition, especially the iPhone. For me these releases are signs that RIM acknowledges the shortcomings of it’s current platform and is not hiding it’s head in the sand. The fact that Google has released it’s connector for the Blackberry Enterprise Server means that there are enough installations of BES on top of Google Apps already that this combo needs to be taken seriously. The company I work for does in fact run on Google Apps so I am very happy about both of these releases.

One big advantage that RIM has in the fight vs the iPhone and other competitors is it’s push infrastructure. Not only is it quite unique even today but also it’s infrastructure is spread well and built up for the future. The most important thing now for RIM is to consider this not as a locked up proprietary service but to open it up to developers to build great apps on. Although the Blackberry SDK is already out there for some time many argue it is yet to be powerful enough to build serious apps on. The success or failure of the Blackberry platform depends on this as in regards to hardware – the berries themselves were always great devices.

And this brings me to my last point. RIM started a developer blog recently (11/08/2009) which is again an indication of where they are heading. Since it’s start it had 10 post in 10 days each rich with detailed information for developers. These guys mean business.

The most current post is about the new Blackberry 5.0 SDK beta that is now available to developers. If you read through the feature list the key from my perspective is

Push API

(net.rim.blackberry.api.push.*)

Makes using Push APIs even easier and more powerful for developers.

This is exactly what I meant earlier. The best move for RIM now is to empower it’s developer community with the access to the unique features of it’s platform. Apple only recently released it’s push functionality and compared to RIM it has still a long way to go.

In the past weeks I have been considering getting an iPhone 3GS to supplement my Blackberry Bold because I felt the Blackberry platform stagnating. Not anymore. I have high hopes for the Blackberry and I also wish the rumors about the browser upgrades are true. Full Flash/Silverlight capabilities on the Blackberry? iPhone beware!

Testing the new Wordpress for Blackberry app

I am writting this post on my Blackberry Bold via the Wordpress app for Blackberry (latest beta build). It’s easy to use, very fast and gets the job done. Not sure how the formatting will work and I got no spell-check but anyway…

…Clicking the publish button…

Got the new MacBook Pro

I couldn’t resist and upgraded to the new MacBook Pro (2,66 Ghz, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA 9600GT, built in battery) from my early 2008 MacBook Pro (not unibody). Not that I needed to but after changing jobs and having some tough times in the new one I figured I deserved a present for myself. Anyway the machine is unbelievable – powerful, long lasting battery and a beautiful screen – I like glossy. I know some people hate glossy and actually Apple in yesterday started again to offer the matte screen (50$) but I really like the vibrant feeling the glossy display delivers. Also I installed the Windows 7 RC build on a 50 GB partition and was testing it. Only issue I ran into was that I couldn’t use my headset mic in games. In the Windows desktop it works fine but once I enter the game the mic just doesn’t hear me… Anyway to anyone wondering whether the new MacBook Pros are worth the money – as far as I am concerned – no doubt about it.

Firefox vs Safari

I am a very big fan of Mozilla’s open source browser Firefox. As I mentioned in previous posts and as I maintain on the about page Firefox has been my constant companion and main browser like forever. It has served me well with it’s great addons, speed and great inline search. With it’s latest iteration (3.0) Mozilla introduced some great features – the Awesome Bar, smart bookmarks and the amazing speed enhancements that solved most of the issues I had with version 2. As I am rather new to the Mac (4 Month) I didn’t think I would ever touch Safari – I obviously didn’t use it on Windows although I had it installed. It does not have the extensibility of Firefox and you need to hold down the command key to open a link in a new tab and not in a new browser window (!!). So when I heard Leo Laporte talk about using it himself on the Mac as his main browser I wondered what in the world would make anyone use it? In fact Leo uses the open source browser Webkit that is the core of Apples Safari and it’s single most important feature was supposedly performance. This brought me to consider Safari/Webkit again as I do occasionally experience performance problems with Firefox 3 – it still does sometime eat a lot of memory, slows down or die on me. So recently I started regularly downloading the Webkit nightly builds and using them on my MacBook Pro in tandem with Firefox and I installed the Windows version of Safari on my Thinkpad at work.

On the Mac

With the MacBook Pro the difference in performance is noticeable but not to a degree that would make me completely abandon Firefox. The thing is – Firefox usability features save a lot of time and the addons add functionality that is not available in Webkit/Safari. So although Webkit is generally faster when rendering Javascript heavy applications like Gmail, Firefox compensates by it’s features. I will use both for the foreseeable future on my Mac and I can recommend Safari as a decent main browser to anyone in need of a simple browser.

On the PC

At work I found one massive advantage to Safari as a second browser. Similarly to the Mac experience it is indeed faster then Firefox and I make heavy use of that on the Thinkpad. The thing is that I use a lot of corporate javascript based apps at work and their performance in Safari is astounding. No waiting, just click, click, click and go. I hate waiting for forms to validate or content loading CMS systems and with Safari my pain has been eased. I still use Firefox as the main browser but Safari on Windows has become a part of my daily work computing.

Thoughts

1. Yes I know – we got Google Chrome now – also based on Webkit, lightning fast and also PC only and unstable. Until it’s reliability is on the level of Webkits nightly builds – no thanks.
2. Firefox also has an early 3.1 b1(and 2 actually) build that Mozilla calls Minefield. It has a greatly improved really fast javascript engine so it’s performance exceeds that of Webkit according to benchmarks. Unfortunately it isn’t reliable yet for everyday use and therefore it’s a no-no for me in the same way as Chrome

If you are on a Mac and for some reason want to skip Firefox – Safari is a great browser. Do not fear using it – I don’t.

My iPhone setup

I have my iPhone for a week now and am starting to actually like it. Not only that it’s a great mobile media device but also the connectivity and productive applications that make your life easier. The one great disadvantage to it is obviously battery life but I have learned how to manage it’s usage when on the road and am so far capable to get around a day and a bit out of it. My Blackberry Pearl 8120 could last 2-4 days with push email so I will need to adjust to this new reality.

Initially I wasn’t sure what my setup (PIM) would be like on this device. I know that you can use the iPhone to it’s full potential using Mobile Me and although I do have an account there my main mail, calendaring, contacts stuff is Google. Switching from one to the other makes currently no sense to me – I am not using a personaliized domain and Mobile Me does not even support this. With that I decided I would setup both the Google stuff and Mobile Me and just see how it goes.

Gmail

Setting up Gmail is easy – you can either do it using the prepared interface or do it manually (selecting other and filling in the IMAP server information). I don’t see any difference in the result of both of these approaches so I would currently go with the prepared interface. Gmail works like a charm in the iPhone email client (much better then in Mail.app on the Mac – no dual unread message alerts…) and I use that mainly for my email needs. One small thing – as you can’t currently use the iPhone mail client in landscape mode I experimented with the Gmails web interface using Safari and bookmarking it to my homescreen. This works great and typing is amazing in this way with the only downside being it’s slower and you don’t get new message alerts. I will be testing both the mail client and the web approach and post about it a bit later.

Google Calendar

I am a heavy user of Google Calendar. I share calendars with my familly, subscribe to public calendars (holidays, Twit.tv,…) and intergrate with Remember The Milk (more about that later). Therefore having the iPhone calendar synced correctly to my Google Calendar is of great importance to me. For this I use a new experimental service called Nuevasync.com. What I presume they do is they setup an Exchange server, you create an account and they access your Google Calendar and sync it to your Nuevasync account. Then you can access this through the Exchange features of the iPhone.The syncing works well but currently I didn’t find anyway to sync my other calendar subscriptions. Again Google has a mobile version of the Google Calendar webapp which is nice but offers only a list view which isn’t exactly the best option. Nevertheless it’s still a viable option to view your calendar in the most current state.

Google Contacts

Similar to Google Calendar contacts can be synced via Nuevasync.com. This has one major disadvantage – you get all of the junk contacts. On the other hand you get it all and hey – there is a nice search feature in the Contacts app on the iPhone so it’s ok. And additionally it give you incentive to sort out your contacts and to put some effort into maintaining them.

Task Management

In my general effort to be a bit more productive I maintain to-do lists and try to get the hang out of GTD. It’s not like I worship this uber personal productivity movement but I see some things that really help me. With this in mind I have a cool setup of Task Management on RememberTheMilk.com. There is a great write-up about this somewhere on the web – look it up, worth the time. So anyway they have a great iPhone webapp and so I use this setup via a shortcut on my homescreen.

Mobile Me

Mobile Me was obviously an easy thing to setup and works nice. The best thing about it is obivously the seemless integration and push capabilities. My problem – I don’t use it. If I were to switch to Mobile Me – I would lose the calendar sharing capabilities and would have to change my email address. Although I consider Mobile Me to be a compelling product – to be as good as the competition won’t make anyone switch.

Yahoo

I also have a Yahoo email account and use that on the iPhone aswell. I haven’t tested it much yet but it seems to be working fine.

Final thoughts

So in general the iPhone is a great mobile media and PIM device. If you got the patience to set everything up the way you like it then you should be fine. Although I still miss my push email from my Blackberry – I hope this functionality will be added by Apple as Steve said at WWDC 2008 by opening the push API to developers. Also yes the keyboard sucks compared to almost anything – not a showstopper but well…