By Robert X. Cringely
InfoWorld (US)
August 6, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - A day after RIM debuted its latest entry in the it’s-not-an-iPhone-but-an-amazing-facsimile contest, the BlackBerry Torch 9800, it got a kick in the keister from Saudi Arabia.

The kings of the Sahara just booted the BlackBerry off the dunes. The United Arab Emirates is taking a similar tack, and those two may soon be followed by Indonesia, India, and Kuwait.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Cringely says the mobile world is a scary place now that your iPhone may be spying on you. | Stay up to date on all Robert X. Cringely's observations with InfoWorld's Notes from the Underground newsletter. ]

Why? Because RIM’s private communications network is impenetrable by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in those countries. (Also, you can view naughty websites on your BlackBerry, though why you’d want to on that tiny screen is a mystery to me.)

In the United States and other Western nations, RIM doesn’t have this problem. Why? Because the feds and the spooks can eavesdrop on BlackBerrys as much as they’d like, given the proper authority. Think about that the next time you thumb a risque joke to a business colleague.

Usually wiretapping requests are handled by the big telecom carriers, leaving the handset manufacturers all in the same boat. If Uncle Sam wants to tap AT&T’s network (and, trust me, he does), it’s the same for any smartphone that runs on it, from the iPhone to the Backflip. But BlackBerry runs its own network using end-to-end encryption, so its devices are being singled out for “special” treatment. RIM is truly screwed in a way that Apple and Motorola are not.

Of course, law enforcement may have legitimate reasons for spying on your email — but only if a court has determined there’s enough probable cause to warrant naming you as a suspect in an investigation.

That’s why the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program (which is apparently still going on, as far as anyone can determine, though it no longer creates big headlines) was such a big deal.

When left without oversight, government agencies tend to run their own agendas, even if that leaves treadmarks on the U.S. Constitution. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got donkeys or elephants in the White House; it’s just the nature of the beast.

In the era of “you’re a terrorist if we say you’re a terrorist,” anyone can be a suspect at any time. Which means we’re all suspects. That also means you should assume your email is being read by people other than its recipients. In this case, a little paranoia goes a long way.

I suspect BlackBerry will reach a compromise with all of these governments, who would, after all, be hurting some of their own citizens as well. I’d wager a fair number of Saudi and UAE oil execs are carrying a BlackBerry on their belts at this moment. They can’t be very happy about these bans. But that compromise will ultimately mean less security for BlackBerry users. Because once you let the spooks in, other bad guys are sure to follow.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Adam Pash
PC World (US)
July 14, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Your life is busy, and you have got enough on your plate without needing to remember to move your car every week, pay oddly timed bills, or show up for one-time weekend appointments. Luckily, a finely tuned calendaring system can help.

Take a service like Google Calendar. With the right setup (which we’ll detail below), you can access it from any Web browser, plug it into your favorite desktop calendar, and manage it from your phone so you can quickly add any item to your schedule no matter where you are.

Of course, scheduling is just one half of the picture. Remembering your appointments is the other. And that’s the best part of this system: You’ll receive alerts reminding you of all your scheduled events, no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

THE SETUP

In this article, we detail a three-tiered approach to managing your schedule from the Web, from your desktop, and from your phone, so you’ll have a bulletproof system for keeping on top of your schedule. The glue that holds this system together is Google’s free calendaring application, Google Calendar. If you don’t already have a Google account, you’ll need to sign up for one before you can use Google Calendar.
First, let’s take a minute to get familiar with Google Calendar and some of its handier features.

USE QUICK ADD TO TRANSLATE YOUR TO-DO LIST

No matter how streamlined a calendar is, you won’t want to add events through the normal steps, which require you to give your event a title, hunt for the right date and time, and set up notifications to remind you of the event.

Rather than go through this time-consuming process every time, do yourself a favor and get comfortable using GCal’s Quick Add feature. Type any plain-language appointment-related text–such as “Pick up dry cleaning from A1 at 1pm next Tuesday”–into this box, and Google Calendar will translate that notation into an event on your calendar, with the proper date and time.

Next, to ensure that you don’t forget, you could manually edit the event and set a custom notification to remind you when the event is approaching. But suppose that you’re prone to forgetfulness–or just have too many things going on every day–and you want to have some type of default reminder set up for every event of your calendar.

Go to Google Calendar; click Settings, Calendar Settings, Calendars; find the calendar you want to adjust default notifications for; and click Notifications. Once there, you can set up one or more default reminders for any new event that you subsequently add to your calendar.

For most events on my calendar, I like to get a reminder a day ahead of time, just to make certain that an appointment is on my radar; then I like to receive another reminder an hour before the scheduled event time.

Likewise, you can set up your own defaults to suit your preferences. Bear in mind that you can override the defaults if you prefer a different sort of notification (you may want more advanced warning to make sure you move your car in time, for example) or if you decide that you don’t want any reminder at all.

USE CALENDAR IN YOUR OTHER GOOGLE APPS

If you’re an avid user of Gmail, Google’s e-mail program, Google Calendar can save you even more time. Gmail automatically recognizes when the text of an e-mail suggests an event or appointment and provides you with a Quick Add link that you can click to automatically populate a new Google Calendar event with may of the event’s details–the what, where, and when–already filled out.

Similarly, if you’re a fan of Google’s relatively new to-do list, Google Tasks, you’ll appreciateTasks recently added integration with Google Calendar. Now, when you set a due date on a to-do item in Tasks, it will automatically show up as an event in Google Calendar. (If you don’t see your Tasks in Gmail already, make sure that you’ve clicked the Tasks calendar under the My Calendars sidebar.)

REMEMBER RECURRING EVENTS

Whether it be a birthday, monthly rent payments, bimonthly bills, quarterly taxes, or even meet-ups on the third Tuesday of every month, Google Calendar can help you quickly and easily create recurring-event notifications so you’ll never forget another repeat appointment.

To set up a recurring event in GCal, either add a note

about the recurring activity to your quick-add text (e.g., “Move car every Tuesday at 8am”) or click the Create Event button in Google Calendar and set your recurring schedule in the Repeats section.

STAY SYNCED WITH OUTLOOK

Google Calendar by itself is fine and dandy if you’re comfortable living your life in your browser, but if you prefer to keep your data local and accessible when you’re offline, you can take advantage of most of the great things Google Calendar has to offer without giving up your desktop calendar.

If you use Microsoft Outlook, just download Google Calendar Sync. Enter your Google Calendar username and password, and it will take care of syncing your calendar data back and forth between Google Calendar and Outlook.

The nice thing about syncing your calendar between Google Calendar and Outlook is that you get the best of both worlds. If you’re away from your main PC, you can access your calendar from any Web browser, on any computer through Google Calendar; if you’re on your main computer, you can stick to scheduling with the Outlook you know and love, whether you have an active Internet connection or not.

CONNECT YOUR CALENDAR TO YOUR CELL PHONE

Since you’re not always sitting in front of a computer, being able to access your calendar only when you’re at a computer isn’t all that useful. Imagine that you parked your car in the morning, but you have to move it by 5 p.m. to make way for street cleaning or you’ll get a ticket. It’s easy to forget to add an item like “Move my car by 5pm” to your calendar if you have to wait until you get to a computer to add it. The solution to this problem: Hook your phone into your calendar.

There are several ways to do this, whether you own a cutting-edge smartphone or a bare-bones (but functional) “dumb” phone. Let’s start with the smartphones and work our way down.

SYNC WITH SMARTPHONES

If you use an Android phone, this is a no-brainer. Android works seamlessly with Google Calendar (both are Google products, after all); you merely log in to your Google account on your Android device, and it will automatically set up your phone’s calendar to sync with GCal. Any events you add from your phone will automatically sync with Google Calendar wirelessly.

If you have an iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia S60, or Windows Mobile phone, syncing your phone’s calendar with GCal is similarly easy when you use the free Google Mobile Sync tool for your particular phone. Head over to the Google Sync page and follow the setup instructions for your device.

CHECK YOUR CALENDAR AND ADD EVENTS VIA SMS

Don’t have a fancy smartphone? No problem. You can still receive event notifications, check your calendar, and even add events to your calendar from any phone that supports SMS messages.

First, head into your Google Calendar settings and associate your cellphone with Google Calendar. (To do so, select Settings, Calendar Settings, Mobile Setup, and follow Google’s instructions for validating your phone.) Once you’ve validated your phone number, Google Calendar can send you event notifications via e-mail or SMS.

You can even add an SMS reminder as one of your default notification methods, in which case you’ll always receive notifications for upcoming events, regardless of where you are, as long as you have your phone on hand.

Now for the really cool part: After you’ve associated your cell phone’s number with your Google Calendar account, you can check your itinerary and create new events by sending text messages to Google Calendar’s GVENT (48368) number. Want today’s schedule? Just text “day” to GVENT.

Even better: You can create new events by texting GVENT, and it supports the same plain-language input that GCal’s Quick Add button does. So if you text GVENT “Move my car at 4:30pm,” GCal will translate that into a new event on your calendar. For complete details on GVENT commands, check out this Google Calendar help page.

CONCLUSION

The system described above isn’t the only calendaring method possible under the silicon sun, but Google Calendar is the best free way to create a fast-syncing schedule minder that you can access from virtually anywhere. And with all your reminders correctly set up, you’ll never forget to move your car or pay a bill again.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Fix a Windows 7 System That Randomly Freezes
• Update Firmware On Your HDTV, Camera, Smartphone, PC
• Keep Your PC Awake, Install Apps Fast & More–Free
• Use Facebook Places
• My Keyboard isn’t Working

By Scot Finnie
Computerworld (US)
July 13, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - How is your company handling the rising tide of consumer smartphones, like the iPhone?

I’ve asked that question of a lot of IT professionals over the past couple of years. Here’s one response: “We’re fully behind the iPhone at my company. We’re replacing BlackBerries where and when we can. The iPhone user experience trumps [our IT] management concerns. We make it happen for the ones who want it.” But I’ve also heard the contrasting view, the one you might sum up as, “We have our users so locked down, we don’t worry about the iPhone or its ilk.”

IT pros who answer either way underestimate their users or the degree of trouble multiple types of half-secured consumer devices can get them into. You may be handling it now, but how about when your employees dump their desktops for their own iPads or similar devices? How about when the numbers really mount? Have you kept pace with the number of smartphones being released? And many users have two or three of these devices.

The consumerization of IT is becoming a landslide, big enough to have its own acronym — I nominate “CoIT.” But I’m not sure many enterprises are all that aware of it.

Computerworld recently ran a story about an Exchange ActiveSync issue that apparently causes Apple’s iPhone 4, or any device running Apple’s iOS 4 mobile operating system (the iPad will get it in September), to bang on the Exchange server if it can’t get synced right away. Server admins are not going to like that. And I don’t really need to lay out for you all of the more profound security and compliance issues.

So IT organizations need to think this through. Larger enterprises with thousands of employees are absolutely going to need help, whether it’s homegrown or an enterprise application such as Sybase’s iAnywhere or BoxTone’s Mobile Service Management. The time to think about this is now. Mobile devices have matured, and they offer significant advantages to their users. Have you even figured out what the potential dangers are for your company? Most IT organizations don’t have a lot of information about the usage of consumer devices in their midst.

CoIT is being driven by the arrival of increasingly useful mobile technologies and the persistence of the economic downturn, which has pushed people to work longer hours and merge their professional and personal lives. But CoIT isn’t just about mobile devices.

The rise of interest in Web 2.0-based social tools for business use (also known as Enterprise 2.0 ) is in many ways a sister trend. Business people are weary of complex, monolithic software. They want lightweight, Web-based tools that echo the feel, and even sometimes the purpose, of social media apps like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They want to blend personal and professional communications because it’s all about multitasking. They want slick devices that unify all aspects of their lives. And they want to be able to use that software on their devices for business and personal needs wherever they go. No limits.

Think the iPad has no business use? I expected that to be so, but I was wrong. I’m hearing that many enterprises have hundreds of iPads that they know about being used for business purposes. For example, the iPad is an excellent presentation tool: Hand it off to your prospective customer, and he’s in control.

CoIT is an accidental revolution, a change in the way people work and the IT-related tools they use. After 20 or so years of iteration, smartphones have stopped being the product of too much compromise. At the same time, more and more business is conducted by simple apps running in the cloud or on your smartphone (or both). All this is potentially a lot less under your organization’s control than most business activities used to be.

Like many end users, I have an iPad and an iPhone 4, and I’m not giving them up. There’s a lot for IT to figure out.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Jaikumar Vijayan
Computerworld (US)
July 9, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Research in Motion (RIM) Wednesday padded the latest version of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server software with new security features designed to accommodate the growing use BlackBerry devices in corporate settings.

The updates, part of the new Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) Version 5.0.2 released today, include a new tool dubbed the Individual-Liable Devices Policy that lets users separate personal use from corporate use of the device. The version also includes technology that allows corporate data stored on personal BlackBerry devises to be erased remotely.

Though the new version is a relatively minor point release of BES, the security tweaks address an important need, said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates.

Increasingly, companies that are unable or unwilling to buy such technologies permit employees to access enterprise applications and data from personal smartphones such as RIM’s BlackBerry device, Gold said.

Some companies address security risks by only allowing workers to use approved devices, he said.

Others allow the use of many devices, but have separate data access policies for each, he added. For instance, a company might have a policy that allows Android users to only access enterprise e-mail, while a user of a personal BlackBerry might have wider access to enterprise applications, he said.

RIM’s newest security enhancements appear designed to make it easier for security administrators to allow employees to use personal BlackBerry’s for corporate uses, Gold said.

The company’s support for remote removal of corporate data from employee-owned devices for instance, allows for more granular control over personal devices, he said.

“BES was always able to remotely remove data on your device. Your company could simply send a ‘kill-pill’ and your device would be trashed,” he said. “Now they wouldn’t need to do that. They could just delete the corporate part and leave your personal data alone,” he said.

Meanwhile, the new Individual-Liable Devices Policy will allow users of personally-owned BlackBerry’s to access their personal e-mail and calendar, and allow calls on personal voice plans, even while the device is locked out of corporate use. The policy can also prevent users from accessing organizer data such as tasks, contacts and calendar entries from within social networking applications, according to RIM.

The updated BES also includes new self-service options that allow users connected to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server to reset their device password, lock the device or remotely delete all data in case the BlackBerry is lost or stolen. Previously, such functions could only be carried out by an IT administrator, according to RIM.

Such features should, in theory at least, reduce the risk of “cross-contamination” that can result when personal devices are used for corporate purposes, Gold said. “Now as an IT administrator I can tell you to go out and buy your Blackberry and use it for your own personal use, because in theory at least I can separate your stuff from my business stuff,” he said.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Brad Reed
Network World (US)
June 29, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - It’s the end of June, which means that summer’s in full swing and the world’s top handset manufacturers are rolling out their hottest new smartphones.

IPHONE VS. DROID VS. BLACKBERRY

We’ve come to expect Apple to drop its annual iPhone bomb every June, but this month has also seen the sparkling debuts of both the HTC EVO 4G and the Motorola Droid X. And Research in Motion, which has long been the king of enterprise smartphones, will try to regain some of its market share by releasing a new model that’s rumored to be called the Torch 9800.

With so many choices for the savvy smartphone consumer out there, how are you to know which model is the best one for you? In this quick guide we’ll provide a brief profile of each hit summer device and examine their technical specifications, their enterprise features, the networks they connect to and more.

BLOCKBUSTER #1: THE IPHONE 4
MANUFACTURER: APPLE

CARRIER: AT&T

Although there’s no 4G in the iPhone 4, it still hits the market as the top mobile consumer device in the world. So what does Steve Jobs’ third iPhone sequel have to offer users that past models haven’t?

The big thing for many business users will be multitasking, as the iPhone OS 4 will for the first time allow iPhone users to run multiple applications at the same time. OS 4 also includes a bevy of new enterprise features such as capabilities that let IT departments host and distribute key applications, support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and support for SSL VPN clients from both Cisco and Juniper. As Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney told Computer World earlier this month, the new iPhone has taken big steps toward being an enterprise-grade device, although it’s still not on par with Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices.

Who should buy it: Apple fans of all stripes should be happy with this upgrade; anyone looking for a strong device that has good, although not ideal, enterprise capabilities; first-time smartphone buyers who want a device that’s easy to use.

BLOCKBUSTER #2: EVO 4G
MANUFACTURER: HTC

CARRIER: SPRINT

As we noted at the time of the EVO 4G’s release, this device is a hulking beast of a smartphone that includes a 4.3-inch display screen with a resolution of 800 x 400 pixels and a weight of 6 ounces. The EVO 4G also features the fastest network connectivity of any phone on the market, as it will be the first phone that’s able to access Sprint’s WiMAX network, which averages between 2Mbps to 4Mbps depending on how strong your signal happens to be. Sprint expects to have WiMAX services available to all major markets in the United States by the end of the year.

The EVO 4G runs on the Android operating system and features Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

Who should buy it: Anyone who wants access to the fastest wireless network in the United States; anyone who doesn’t mind carrying around big, heavy devices.

BLOCKBUSTER #3: THE DROID X
MANUFACTURER: MOTOROLA

CARRIER: VERIZON

Motorola’s original Droid, released last November, was the first phone based on Google’s Android mobile operating system to really get some attention in the market that comes anywhere close to match Apple’s iPhone juggernaut. For the sequel launched this week, Motorola decided to up its game by giving the new Droid X a screen and a processor that matched the EVO 4G. The new device features tethering for up to five different devices over Verizon’s EV-DO Rev. A 3G network, a multi-touch touchscreen display, and support for Adobe Flash. Unlike the original Droid, the Droid X does not feature a physical QWERTY keyboard and instead relies solely upon a touchscreen.

Who should buy it: Verizon users looking for a strong iPhone alternative; fans of the original Droid who want to upgrade to a larger screen and more processing power.

BLOCKBUSTER #4: THE BLACKBERRY TORCH
MANUFACTURER: RESEARCH IN MOTION

CARRIER: AT&T

This new BlackBerry device, rumored to be called the Torch, will have a slideout QWERTY keyboard and will apparently be the first device to run on RIM’s revamped BlackBerry 6 OS, as well as its revamped browser based on the open-source WebKit browser engine. Although we likely know more details on the Torch for the next few weeks, it will be a key release for RIM in its efforts to recapture some of the market share that it has lost to the Apple iPhone and popular Android-based devices.

Who should buy it: Anyone who still longs for a physical keyboard to use; anyone who wants the best and most complete set of enterprise features of all the major smartphones.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
June 17, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - With video from mobile devices expected to grow, a market for enterprise video applications such as training and instructional sales videos is emerging, analysts say.

Adding to the market’s momentum are mobile devices with better video shooting and video calling features, such as Apple’s new iPhone 4 and the latest Android devices , such as Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G .

Recognizing that growth in mobile video, one small company sees a future in allowing workers to use wireless devices to search through corporate video content stored in the cloud.

Altus Learning Systems today launched vSearch Mobile, a cloud-based service that allows users to search content such as Web conferences, audio and video presentations and telepresence meetings from devices including the iPad , iPhone , BlackBerry or Android handsets.

With the service, a company would create a portal into a cloud-based repository or content, which the company’s workers could search via specific search terms.

The service, available as of today, costs between $10 and $25 per user per month, depending on the type of content and amount.

Altus uses a transcription service to help transcribe all content into text, making the searches highly accurate, said Mark Pollard, chief marketing officer for Altus.

No application will be required to access the content, only a standard smartphone browser . Prior to the vSearch Mobile announcement, Altus had provided video search from desktop computers and laptops, and had only sent video to smartphones without the ability to search through the content.

With about 40 employees, Altus has been in operation for 10 years, and has about 200,000 individual customers in various companies.

Pollard said Altus is unique in allowing secure search of enterprise video from mobile devices.

“This means users are no longer tethered to a laptop to search video,” Pollard said. And demand should be good because “mobile computing is busting out.”

He said that a sales person, for example, could use the service to find a specific portion of a video-based presentation, or a technician could consult a video on how a product works to make a needed repair.

The advantage of being able to search is that it reduces the amount of time a worker needs to devote to reviewing video material.

Josh Bersin, an analyst at Bersin & Associates, said searchable mobile video content will be useful for sales and product training especially.

He called Altus’ new mobile service a “niche” of the overall training market but added it is a fast-growing market. “There’s video on every Web site now, and Altus makes it very manageable and easy to turn into searchable content, so they are in a pretty cool space,” Bersin said.

Overall, Bersin estimated that video counts for between 2% and 3% of the total e-learning market. In the U.S., about $60 billion a year is spent on corporate training, of which about $17 billion is done online.

That would make video content at least $350 million of the e-learning market, according to Bersin’s analysis.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
June 16, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - IBM will unveil its enterprise mobile software strategy to industry analysts on Wednesday as part of a grand opening of a new software development laboratory in Littleton, Mass.

The strategy will involve IBM services and IBM software, a company spokeswoman said, without explaining further. Some new initiatives will involve middleware software used to support mobile users, but the crux of the event will be about collaboration and “using mobile devices to manage your business,” she said.

Several analysts said they welcomed IBM’s input, given some concerns about IBM’s direction in the mobile space, especially when compared with the company’s historic role in many prominent software products, such as Websphere for application integration that first appeared in 1998, and Lotus software products including Notes for e-mail that started with desktop computers in the 1980s.

Today, with the emergence of multiple smartphone operating systems such as the iPhone OS and Android, and their tens of thousands of smartphone apps, the timing would seem right for IBM to play a bigger role than it has, several analysts told Computerworld.

“IBM, except for its professional services side, has lost its way in mobile,” said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates.

He said the implementations of WebSphere inside enterprises has been costly, and a partnership with Research in Motion to extend Notes e-mail and instant messaging to BlackBerry users through Lotus Notes Traveler and Sametime, had only achieved limited success.

“IBM does not have a strong presence in mobility on a standardized product basis and must modernize to support multiple [mobile] platforms to gain share,” Gold said. “It has to be seen as offering a compelling solution to the market at a reasonable cost, but has a lot of work to do.”

Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, said that given IBM’s pivotal role in creating landmark software for decades, it “should be doing much better than they are in mobility.”

He said IBM has been late with mobile products and has made promises it hasn’t kept, but he didn’t elaborate.

Neither of the analysts have been briefed so far about IBM’s expected announcement, but said it could involve Websphere application integration for mobile devices or extension of Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime or Lotus Connections.

Gold said that one highly speculative guess is that IBM could be entering the business of outsourcing the hosting of mobile apps.

Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group, said that he expects IBM to announce more tools and apps for the IBM Lotus series, along with more mobile development tools for its Eclipse software.

Howe was more generous in judging IBM, noting the company doesn’t make smartphones or provide an OS for them. “Their mobility strategy is entirely about software and services for mobility, which is higher up the value stack” than an OS.

“If Apple , Google and RIM are in the mobile horse race, then IBM is running the stables that keeps the horse fed and watered. They get paid no matter which horse wins,” Howe said.

To some extent, IBM competes with Hewlett-Packard in the mobile software space, as well as Sybase, which SAP is in the process of acquiring . But IBM’s Lotus products offer direct functions that users deploy, something more than tools used by IT for managing mobile devices, or building and managing mobile applications.

“IBM makes basic meat and potatoes software and it’s not glitzy like iPhone apps and mobile moviemaking,” Howe said. “But IBM has a multi-billion dollar business in meat and potatoes software. It’s not glamorous, but it does pay the bills.”

IBM appears to be prepared to address mobile computing more directly, but noted it already has a central role with more than 1 billion phone subscribers using IBM software daily, and that 80% of smartphone software was developed with IBM technology.

As many analysts have noted, IBM recognizes that more users will reach the Internet via mobile devices than desktop computers within five years, although some industry observers say they believe that mark will be reached in only two years.

The IBM spokeswoman said Wednesday’s announcement follows the company’s efforts in mobile software for many years and would “reassure any attendees of IBM’s continuing interest in the mobile software space.”

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
June 10, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised deeper enterprise support with its iPhone 4 and its iOS 4 software, noting that it will offer better data protection, wireless application distribution and support for multiple Exchange e-mail accounts, as well as SSL VPN security.

But all of that still might not be enough for some industry analysts to give IT shops a green light for full iPhone deployments, at least when the iPhone is compared with BlackBerry devices, which are backed by the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and used by many large companies.

All of the new iPhoneenterprise -ready features were promised in April , when Jobs unveiled the new operating system, and little seems to have changed with the iPhone 4 announcement on Monday.

Back in April, the initial analyst reactions to the mobile operating system were positive. Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said Apple was “on a positive track for enterprise support” more than with any of its prior releases. Dulaney and Gartner had been major critics of using the iPhone in the enterprise before April, so his comments were significant.

But after the iPhone 4 launch, Dulaney said Gartner would need more time to test the device in business settings to make a full judgment.

Dulaney also referred to a research note that he and another Gartner analyst, John Girard, prepared on May 20 that stated, “Apple continues to make incremental improvements for enterprise support [with iOS 4] and will widen its appeal to third parties and end users.”

But those optimistic remarks were followed by this comment: “The iPhone is still not at the level of the BlackBerry at its highest levels of security, or at the level of Microsoft when third-party products complement Windows Mobile. However, Apple’s iPhone OS 4 enhancements are a step in the right direction.”

Dulaney said in an interview that Gartner would hold that May 20 conclusion, pending further testing once the iPhone 4 ships. The device is scheduled to ship June 24 .

According to Gartner, for the iPhone 4 to be enterprise-ready, its operating system, iOS 4, needs to have FIPS 140-2-certified encryption, a standard that government agencies require. Apple also needs a social collaboration client in iOS 4 and more background processing modules for security and device management, Gartner said.

While other analysts have praised improvements in iOS 4, one deficiency noted by Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler and Jack Gold of J.Gold Associates is that IT shops are unable to automatically push policy and software updates to iPhone users, meaning users would have to click a button to receive an update, leaving the IT shop to trust users to do so. Gold has called that deficiency a “barrier to iOS adoption” for banks and regulated companies.

The new iOS 4 software will ship on iPhone 4 units available June 24 but can also be added for free to the iPhone 3GS and 3G on June 21, Jobs said, expanding potential enterprise benefits to more users with older iPhones. The 3G phones will not be able to use the iOS 4’s multitasking functionality because of hardware constraints, Jobs added.

Multitasking is a big enterprise plus, according to Gartner. Apple told Gartner analysts that multitasking will enable background processing functions such as playing audio while surfing the Web or playing a game. But background processing also means users can get a voice-over-IP call and have a conversation while using another application. IOS 4 also provides a battery-efficient way to monitor locations when users move between cell towers that Apple has called a “great way for social networking apps to keep track of users and their friends’ locations.”

Other background functions that could matter to enterprises include push notifications (to receive alerts from remote servers even when an app isn’t running); local notifications (an app can now alert users of scheduled events and alarms in the background without any servers); task finishing (if an app is in midtask when the user leaves it, it can now keep running to finish the task); and fast app switching (a developer can build in functions to allow users to leave an app and come right back to where they left off, without a need to reload the app).

Apple in April listed many iOS 4 enterprise improvements, and several analysts ranked wireless distribution of in-house applications at the very top. That means IT shops can host and distribute these apps to employees via Wi-Fi and 3G networks without the need to connect to a PC and route through iTunes.

Improved e-mail also got high praise from analysts, noting that iOS 4 will support Exchange Server 2010 and multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts with a unified in-box. Gartner noted that the e-mail upgrade, while an improvement, only raises Apple’s device to where its competitors have been for a while.

Gartner also wants Apple to use cloud services to bring together internal and external collaboration functions into a single application, which can only be accomplished on the iPhone through third-party applications.

While Apple’s device lacks FIPS-certified encryption, it has won praise for application and e-mail data protection, with the device passcode used as an encryption key. (Gartner, however, said users resort to creating short passcodes that can be broken easily.) Apple has said its data protection APIs can be used for custom-built apps to protect business information if a device is hacked or stolen.

Apple is also providing SSL VPN support in iOS 4 with upcoming apps from Juniper Networks and Cisco . It’s a security improvement that analysts have said Apple needed to do.

In general, however, Gartner continued to be critical of Apple in its May 20 note, especially regarding data protection. With iOS 4, “security of the product should rise … but not sufficient for those who benchmark products such as the BlackBerry as the gold standard for native device security.”

Until Gartner does more research with real iPhone 4 devices, that is Gartner’s last word.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
May 31, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Apple ’s iPhone came out on top in terms of customer satisfaction compared with other smartphones, according to a survey of 1,009 consumers who bought smartphones in the last six months.

But Motorola phones running the Android operating system, including the Motorola Droid, came in a close second in the survey conducted by ChangeWave Research.

ChangeWave found 77% of iPhone customers said they were very satisfied with their purchase, ahead of owners of Motorola smartphones, with 64%. Motorola’s second place finish puts it well above the industry average for recent purchasers, ChangeWave said Wednesday.

In terms of mobile operating systems, the iPhone also finished on top with 71% saying they were very satisfied customers, while the Android coming in with a close second, with 67% very satisfied. The Palm Web OS came in third with 57% of Palm users saying they were very satisfied. The RIM OS finished “well behind the three industry leaders” with 37%, but ahead of Windows Mobile with 24%, ChangeWave wrote.

Owners of HTC devices finished third in customer satisfaction with 51% very satisfied, while Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices finished fourth, with 46%. Palm devices were fifth with 45%, followed by LG at 40% and Samsung at 35%.

Motorola’s Droid is driving the high satisfaction levels for Motorola, with 69% of Droid buyers saying they were very satisfied with the new Droid running on Android compared with 50% for all other Motorola models, ChangeWave said.

For HTC models, 68% of HTC Hero customers surveyed said they were very satisfied, ahead of the HTC Droid Eris with 50% and HTC Touch with 38%.

The ChangeWave survey, conducted April 21 through May 2, did not include results for the HTC Droid Incredible, which hit stores April 29. The Tour got the highest very satisfied rating of BlackBerry phones with 56%, beating out the Bold with 48% and the Storm with 45%.

ChangeWave also found that the biggest dislike on the minds of iPhone owners was AT&T as its service provider, by 22%, ahead of their dislike of the battery life (19%) and lack of multitasking (11%). For Motorola, the biggest dislike was battery life, with 14%.

ChangeWave also saw a surge of interest in Android devices in a survey of 4,000 potential smartphone buyers it conducted in December.

ChangeWave also has studied AT&T’s role as the exclusive wireless carrier of the iPhone in the U.S., noting in early May that more than half of Verizon Wireless subscribers surveyed said they would buy an iPhone if it were available with Verizon .

In the latest survey, 32% of smartphone owners said they would have purchased the iPhone if it was available from their carrier instead of the phone they did purchased. Palm smartphone buyers showed the strongest interest in buying the iPhone, followed by Motorola buyers.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Ian Paul
PC World (US)
May 14, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Are you using your smartphone to its fullest? Probably not–smartphone owners typically push their devices up to only about half their potential. Here are 14 smartphone apps to help your Android handset, BlackBerry, or iPhone become all that it can be.

For more ways to enhance your phone, see “13 Sites and Services to Supercharge Any Phone” and “13 Tips to Supercharge Your ‘Dumb’ Phone.”

Get Free Turn-by-Turn GPS on an iPhone

When Google brought free turn-by-turn GPS functionality to Android, many iPhone users were envious. In March, however, iPhone users gained their own free GPS app with turn-by-turn capabilities, courtesy of MapQuest.

Recently MapQuest added voice-guided directions to its free iPhone app, called MapQuest 4 Mobile. Reviews of MapQuest 4 Mobile for iPhone are mixed, however, with some critics pointing out that the app is not as full-featured as TomTom U.S.A. ($60). The big gripe concerns MapQuest’s rerouting feature, which is not automatic (as TomTom’s is) and requires you to restart your navigation manually if you stray from MapQuest’s planned route. Nevertheless, if you want to try a free voice-guided navigation app for the iPhone, MapQuest 4 Mobile is worth a look.

Turn Apps Into a Social Activity

App-obsessed Android users will love AppBrain. Want to show off all your apps to your friends? Interested in how other Android users rate the apps they have downloaded? AppBrain is the service for you.

AppBrain also creates a personal app catalog that you can share with other AppBrain users. You can peruse the apps of your AppBrain friends and other users, as well. Wondering what Lifehacker founding editor Gina Trapani has on her Android phone, for instance? You can check it out on AppBrain.

Never fear, Apple lovers: Similar services exist for the iPhone, too. Download AppsFire or Appfinder from the iTunes App Store to start sharing your favorite apps.

Communicate With Everyone via Fring

A unifying social networking platform for your mobile phone, Fring allows you to use one app to communicate across multiple social networking platforms, including AIM, GoogleTalk, ICQ, Skype, Twitter, and Yahoo Messenger. Fring eliminates the need to download specialized apps for each social network or communication tool–now you only have to worry about which friends you want to reach. Fring is available for iPhone, Android, and Nokia devices.

Make Your Android Phone Location-Aware

The smartphone app Locale for Android lets you set automatic preferences for your phone based on your location. If, say, you tend to forget to turn your ringer off when you reach the office, just customize your phone using Locale to switch your ringer to vibrate whenever you get to work. Or have it go to silent mode whenever you’re at the neighborhood movie theater. It’s simple, but clever.

Get Around Town

Hopstop is one of the best ways to plan bus and subway routes in cities with massive (and often confusing) transit systems. Hopstop is available in 16 U.S. cities, including Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

The Hopstop service is available as a mobile Web application compatible with any smartphone that has a browser. For Apple handset users, the Hopstop iPhone app includes phone numbers for taxi services. An SMS version is available for directions, as well.

New Yorkers might want to check out the CabSense app (for Android and iPhone), which helps you find the best location to get a taxi based on the time of day, location, and day of the week.

Find Wi-Fi in Your Area

Apple may have cut Wi-Fi stumblers out of the App Store, but you can still turn to Wi-Fi directories such as JiWire’s Wi-Fi Finder to discover over 280,000 hotspots in 140 countries worldwide. JiWire also has an app for Android.

A similar service, WeFi, can also help you find a nearby Wi-Fi hotspot; in fact, Fring recently released a WeFi add-on.

Master Automated Menus

Dial Zero is a service that promises to deliver the best phone number or strategy for getting a human being on the phone when you’re calling a company’s toll-free number. Just as Fonolo.com allows you to skip automated menu services for big companies, so does Dial Zero. The major difference is that Fonolo.com automates the process, limiting the number of companies it works with. Dial Zero, in contrast, offers instructions and tricks on how you can reach a real person. You can also read user comments (sometimes vulgar) about specific frustrations, as well as tales of success in dealing with phone menus.
Dial Zero is a free application for Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone.

Next: Compare Prices With ShopSavvy

Compare Prices With ShopSavvy

You can find many applications out there that turn your smartphone into a bar-code reader, but the best one I’ve found is ShopSavvy. This app quickly scans any product bar code to do price-comparison shopping online and at local stores. You can also create wish lists or set up price alerts based on your scanned items. ShopSavvy is available for Android, iPhone, and Nokia devices.

Browse Android Apps Easily

If you’re thinking of switching to an Android device but you need more information about the Android Market catalog than you can find on Google’s official site, head to DoubleTwist’s Android app site. It will help you find virtually any Android application available in the Market.

Use Your iPhone as a Mouse

For iPhone users, Logitech offers a handy free app called TouchMouse that turns your iPhone into a wireless mouse by way of your Wi-Fi network. This could be great if you wanted to sit back on the couch and control a laptop hooked up to a TV, for instance. All you need is the iPhone app and the desktop software for Windows or Mac.

Tip: If you find TouchMouse difficult to control, adjust the ‘Scrolling Speed’ option under Settings on the iPhone app.

Slip Away With Fake-A-Call

Sometimes the only way out of an awkward in-person encounter is to get a well-timed phone call. Now you don’t have to pray for a phone call to come in–just make it happen with the help of Fake-A-Call. This free application for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry devices lets you schedule an interruption or create a phony phone call on the fly. Grab this tool to save yourself from any sticky situation you end up in.

Control a Jailbroken iPhone With a PC or Mac

Veency allows you to view and control a jailbroken iPhone via a Mac or PC using a Wi-Fi connection. The tool is an interesting application to try out if you want to control your iPhone’s iTunes interface while it’s connected to a set of speakers across the room, for example. Or how about typing notes into your device through the Notes app from a full keyboard? Not bad at all.

iPhoneHacks.com has a nice tutorial on how to install the software and run it for both Macs and PCs. You can find a number of VNC clients, such as TightVNC and UltraVNC for PCs and Chicken of the VNC for Macs.
Get a Personal Trainer

The huge range of smartphone fitness apps has made it easier than ever to track your exercise habits. I use RunKeeper on my iPhone to track my weekly jogs, including my speed, distance, and routes; I can even share my workouts via Facebook or Twitter. I also use Lose It to track my daily calorie intake, and for fun I use the GymFu apps to guide my push-ups, crunches, and pull-ups. Check out your smartphone’s app catalog to see what’s available for your device.

Don’t Pay for Ringtones

Android users can use Ringdroid to create their own ringtones, but iPhone users can easily create their own ringtones simply by using iTunes. For more, check out PCWorld’s step-by-step instructions on how to turn any MP3 into an iPhone ringtone.

Tip: This method also works for non-DRM-protected iTunes downloads in AAC format.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Fix a Windows 7 System That Randomly Freezes
• Update Firmware On Your HDTV, Camera, Smartphone, PC
• Keep Your PC Awake, Install Apps Fast & More–Free
• Use Facebook Places
• My Keyboard isn’t Working

By Al Sacco
CIO.com
April 27, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Corporate BlackBerry users who spend a good portion of their workweeks on conference calls and participating in online meetings have a cause for celebration today: Cisco has released the free WebEx Meeting Center for BlackBerry application, which lets users quickly and easily join WebEx meetings by clicking on invite URLs in e-mail or BlackBerry calendar entries.

Cisco WebEx Meeting Center for BlackBerry also lets users view shared meeting documents and participant desktops. And menu options within the app provide speedy access to WebEx features and shortcuts for more efficient navigation via smartphone, all using the company’s “Cisco WebEx Collaboration Cloud.”

I haven’t had time to put the app through the paces quite yet, but this sounds like a good one. It should be easy to use; Cisco says you just click on a WebEx meeting URL using your BlackBerry, and the WebEx audio conferencing system should call your device shortly thereafter. When you answer the call, the “data-portion,” or the visual component of your meeting, should launch immediately via BlackBerry.

WebEx meeting hosts can begin previously-scheduled meetings via BlackBerry, and they can also pass on presenter control to other participants using PCs–presumably that means presenters cannot “control” meetings using just a BlackBerry and no computer. And you can use the app to view shared presentations, applications and participant desktops, all with live annotations, Cisco says.

The WebEx BlackBerry app isn’t the first of its kind; Fuze Meeting for BlackBerry offers similar functionality. But it’s designed by Cisco specifically for WebEx, so it will presumably offer a better overall experience–at least for Cisco online meetings.

It’s unclear what BlackBerry devices and/or carriers are supported at this point, but I was able to download and install the app on my T-Mobile BlackBerry Bold 9700 without any issue.

Cisco WebEx Meeting Center for BlackBerry should be available via BlackBerry App World soon, but as of 12 noon EST today, it’s still not listed. For now, you can download the app by simply clicking on a WebEx meeting URL within a BlackBerry e-mail or calendar entry. If your device is supported, you should be prompted to download the app. Or you can download it directly from Cisco via BlackBerry browser at WebEx.com.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Wireless Desktop Adapter
• Genius Wireless Keyboards
• Connect in Style with Buffalo’s New Hubs
• ‘World’s Smallest’ Android smartphones
• Windows 7 Compatible Router

By Stephen Lawson
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
April 6, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - This will be the big year for mobile applications, according to ABI Research, which expects downloads from app stores to more than double from 2009 and then grow more slowly through 2013.

Consumers are downloading more apps partly because they are buying more smartphones, according to ABI, which measured a 20 percent rise in sales of the high-end devices last year. But application strategies by rivals to Apple’s dominant iPhone, including Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian, also should start to take hold this year, said ABI analyst Mark Beccue. Apple won’t be standing still, as it unveils the next version of the iPhone OS this week.

Mobile application downloads will rise about 145 percent this year, to 5.9 billion from only 2.4 billion in 2009, ABI predicted on Monday. Though Apple will remain the biggest part of the market, with about 3.3 billion downloads, Android will grow fastest, ABI said. It expects users of Google’s mobile OS to download more than 800 million applications this year. ABI forecast only downloads from mobile application stores, but it doesn’t know of any other avenue that consumers use for a meaningful number of downloads today, Beccue said.

The rising tide of smartphone sales and consumer desire for mobile apps will benefit all four of Apple’s biggest rivals, Beccue said. But Apple will keep the majority of the market through 2015, while none of the other platforms will gain significant ground on the others, he said. Meanwhile, Palm won’t achieve a major chunk of the market in that period, ABI predicts.

After the meteoric growth this year, downloads for the whole mobile application market will grow less than 9 percent in 2011, and the increases will slow until 2013.

The golden age of mobile app downloads may be short lived, according to ABI. Revenue is likely to fall by 2012 as competition among developers and app stores drives prices down and leads to more free and advertising-supported applications, including alternatives to brand-name apps that consumers pay for now.

After 2013, even the number of downloads will decline, ABI forecasts, looking at the trend of phone makers bundling more applications with their handsets. Nokia, Samsung and Motorola are among the handset vendors integrating some social-networking functions into their devices. Slowing growth in smartphone sales, and consumers’ difficulty in finding applications in vast stores like the iPhone App Store, may also hurt downloads, Beccue said. There are already so many offerings on the big app stores that some small developers are frustrated, he said.

“As a paid model, it starts to become something like a lottery,” Beccue said. He predicts that free applications, used as marketing extensions by companies that sell other products, will become a growing part of the mobile mix.

Downloading applications to phones is especially popular in the U.S., while Europe is starting to catch on, but ABI doesn’t expect people in other parts of the world to embrace the trend in the same way, because of economics and a variety of other factors.

“In this case, the U.S. has become the leader in this next round of mobile innovation,” Beccue said. “We see that habit continuing. The appetite stays.”

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Al Sacco
CIO.com
February 25, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - It’s no surprise that BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) has up its sleeve a successor to the popular BlackBerry Tour 9630 smartphone; images and details on the as-of-yet unannounced device, codenamed “Essex,” hit the Web late last year.

This new BlackBerry, initially thought to be the “BlackBerry 9650″ or “Tour2,” is an upgraded version of the original Tour 9630, and it replaces the first device’s problematic trackball with RIM’s new optical trackpad. It also will reportedly sport Wi-Fi and a beefed-up processor.

And today is looks as though that new Tour just may be RIM’s next BlackBerry Bold 96xx/97xx smartphone…and I think that’s a much better idea than releasing another BlackBerry Tour. I’ll get to an explanation shortly, but first, some background.

I started hearing rumblings about the Tour2 being officially named “Bold” a number of weeks ago from BlackBerry-sources on Twitter. (There are currently two models of BlackBerry Bold: the BlackBerry Bold 9000 and the Bold 9700.) At first, I blew the rumors off like dust on my smartphone’s LCD. Why, I thought, would RIM want to further confuse BlackBerry users by introducing the Tour name and then doing away with it so quickly? (The original Tour was released in the United States last July.)

But sure enough, those same rumors kept popping up. I began to consider reasons why it might make sense for RIM to add this new device to its Bold lineup. And everything clicked into place.

I’ve written about RIM’s confusing device naming-conventions before–think: Curve 83xx, Curve 85xx and Curve 89xx. And I even blasted the title “Tour” as soon as it became known it would be the name of RIM’s 9630 device.

But despite RIM’s strange device-naming strategy, it’s actually quite simple to look at any of the company’s “new” handhelds and determine which model-line they belong to. That’s due to one single device characteristic: The BlackBerry keyboard.

All BlackBerry Curve devices have the exact same keyboard-style regardless of their model numbers; every BlackBerry Pearl handheld has the same style keyboard; RIM’s Storm and Storm2 devices both use on-screen “SurePress” keyboards; and RIM’s two Bold devices both have very similar, “fretted” keyboards.

And that’s not all, the Curve keyboard appears only on BlackBerry Curve devices; the Pearl’s SureType keyboard is currently available only on BlackBerry Pearls; and SurePress is exclusive to the BlackBerry Storm…for now.

But the BlackBerry Tour is the exception to this rule; the original BlackBerry Tour also uses a Bold keyboard…and for this reason it probably should have been called a BlackBerry Bold from the start.

Remember, rumors are just rumors at this point–it’s not official that this new device will be a Bold. I can still see some sense in keeping the Tour name. It could spare some initial confusion since the BlackBerry Tour and the new BlackBerry “9650″ are practically identical, minus the Wi-Fi and trackpad. But it in my opinion, it would be a wise move on RIM’s part to do away with the one inconsistency in its device lineup by restricting Bold-style keyboards to Bold devices.

Calling the new device the BlackBerry Bold 96xx/97xx could also assuage some of the inevitable complaints that are sure to come from BlackBerry Tour 9630 users who’ll be displeased a revamped Tour was released so shortly after the original. RIM and its carrier partners would likely market the product as completely new device instead of a mere Tour upgrade…even thought that’s really all it is.

It’s true that releasing a device that looks almost identical to the BlackBerry Tour 9630 would cause a bit of initial confusion, especially for gadget-geeks or folks like me who pay close attention to the BlackBerry world and all its minutiae. But in reality, most “average” people really couldn’t care less what the new BlackBerry is called. That’s why it would be smart for RIM to get all its ducks in a row now, before it builds any more awareness of the Bold brand.

Bottom line: The easiest way for “normal” people to identify RIM’s devices right now is by keyboard style. The device names are all consistent except for the Tour, which has the Bold keyboard. And RIM could clear up that minor inconsistency by scrapping the Tour name.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Wireless Desktop Adapter
• Genius Wireless Keyboards
• Connect in Style with Buffalo’s New Hubs
• ‘World’s Smallest’ Android smartphones
• Windows 7 Compatible Router

By Al Sacco
CIO (US)
February 17, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - It’s a big day for BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM); The Canadian-handset-maker today made a couple of significant announcements in Barcelona, Spain, at this year’s Mobile World Congress, including the introduction of a new version of its industry-lauded BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) software, BES Express.

BES Express is aimed at small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that want to take advantage of RIM’s wireless BlackBerry mail and calendar syncing services, as well as its basic security safeguards, but don’t want to–or can’t–pay for RIM’s full BES offering.

BES Express will be available “soon” for free, according to RIM. All that’s required to employ the service is a BlackBerry device with an Internet-enabled data plan. The full version of RIM’s BES starts at about $4000 for a 20-user license, plus the costs of enterprise data plans for all devices on the server.

The product will initially work only with Microsoft Exchange 2010, 2007 and 2003 and Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008 and 2003. In other words, organizations with IBM Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise or any other non-Microsoft platforms are out of luck for now.

Here’s a list of BES Express features, from RIM:

* Wirelessly synchronize their email, calendar, contacts, notes and tasks

* Manage email folders and search email on the mail server remotely

* Book meetings and appointments, check availability and forward calendar attachments

* Set an out-of-office reply

* Edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files using Documents To Go
* Access files stored on the company network

* Use mobile applications to access business systems behind the firewall

So what are the main differences between the full BES and BES Express, besides the cost and Microsoft-only support?

Well, BES Express is designed for organizations that don’t exactly need the highest level of security, so IT administrators have less control over specific users/devices and which IT policies affect them–BES Express has some 35 IT control policies compared to the full BES’s roughly 405 options.

BES Express also doesn’t offer the same “high-availability” features found in the full BES, i.e., organizations using BES Express won’t have access to the same tools for preventing and recovering from BlackBerry downtime. And Full BES users have access to additional utilities for monitoring and managing BlackBerry infrastructure. (For a detailed chart comparing RIM’s various BlackBerry enterprise services, visit BlackBerry.com.)

While the announcement seems to be aimed mostly at SMBs, larger organizations could also benefit, according to BES-monitoring-software-maker BoxTone.

“The average enterprise has some 10 percent to 20 percent penetration of mobile connected devices,” says Brian C. Reed, BoxTone’s chief marketing officer. “We believe this will swell to some 70 percent to 80 percent of employees will have mobile-connected devices in the next three to four years. And we all know that the user is pushing to connect their own devices while the company isn’t ready to buy devices for everyone. ”

Reed says companies will need a low-cost, secure and reliable way to connect employee-purchased, or employee-liable devices, and the free BES Express could provide significant help.

“RIM has just eliminated the ‘you’re more expensive’ claim that some have made, which removes another barrier to massive growth,” Reed says. “[N]ow the large enterprise can use premium [full] BES for key departments that require heavy duty functionality and for other departments and users that just need basic connectivity, they can roll out BES Express.”

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
February 17, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Early reaction to the refreshed Windows Phone 7 Series operating system boiled down mostly to: “Microsoft desperately needed to do something.”

And, analysts said, whether the update is a successful one for Microsoft depends on the answere to a variety of ‘what if’ questions.

The ‘what if’ questions cited by several analysts center around whether Microsoft can get its new mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7), noticed in an increasingly crowded market that includes powerhouse products like Nokia’s Symbian and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry along with highly regarded upcoming OS’s like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android.

“Microsoft had to take aggressive action as its Windows Mobile OS was dying a rapid death in the market,” noted Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates. “The changes it has made [with Windows Phone 7 Series] might get it some notice, although the field is much more crowded now that it once was and notice will be harder to get.”

The new operating system comes as Microsoft has suffered declines in the mobile operating system business.

WP7 OS features several user interface improvements, including the concept of “hubs” that groups functions such as “games” or “office.” The “games” hub will be synchronized with the Microsoft Xbox live online community, while the “music+video” hub syncs with the company’s desktop Zune jukebox and music store software.

Such “hub” features are a clear play for the consumer market, which has analysts worried that the strategy could leave Microsoft’s traditional core audience of enterprise users and developers in the dust.

“The change will not endear Microsoft to its existing base of corporate users who will have to redesign and redeploy their [mobile] apps if they are to utilize this new platform,” Gold wrote in a note. “We don’t think Microsoft can count on many enterprises making such a transition/upgrade. Most organizations will stay with older Windows Mobile versions, especially those with ruggedized devices.”

Then, Gold said, the suppliers of handhelds using older Microsoft software find a competing OS more attractive than WP7. Gold suggested that enterprise IT shops and users start looking at potential “end of life” strategies for existing Windows Mobile devices.

Gartner Inc. analyst Ken Dulaney called WP7 “a good start” for Microsoft, but raised ‘what if’s’ like “will they have great hardware?” and “Will they be able to hit the right price points?”

Dulaney raised similar questions, noting that Microsoft has not clearly delineated the future for its current mobile OS, Windows Mobile 6.5. “Will WM 6.5 eventually be subsumed into WP7, leaving 6.5 users out on a limb for a few years?” Dulaney asked.

Will Stofega, an analyst at IDC, said Microsoft might be able to wean users slowly off WM 6.5 and prior versions.

Success of the new WM7 will depend heavily on how manufacturers adopt and deploy WM7, Stofega said.

But Stofega’s big ‘what if’ question for WM7, as oblique as it sounds, is” “will it inspire confidence?” A lot of market confidence in WM7 will stem from how quickly Microsoft delivers the software, and how quickly it is deployed by manufacturers, he added.

“What they don’t want to do is piss off people,” which was apparently Stofega’s reference to how Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last fall told investors that Microsoft had “screwed up with Windows Mobile.”

One subject that left analysts scratching their heads is how WM7 fits with the reported Microsoft Project Pink Turtle Phone . That product, according to blog citations of documents at the Federal Communications Commission, will be a slider-designed phone with a physical Qwerty keyboard being built by Sharp for Verizon Wireless in the U.S. to be released sometime in the spring.

“They still have not reconciled Pink and WM 6.5 in this [announcement],” Dulaney said. “Where does Pink fit?”

Stofega said Pink is a code word for an “alleged Microsoft device” but added that it really could be at the moment a creation by “bloggers just trying to stir up things.”

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Tom Kaneshige
CIO.com
February 15, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Most iPhone owners really don’t care about security, according to a new survey by ESET, an anti-malware software vendor.

“We don’t see in-depth defense among smarphone users,” James Abrams, director of technical education at ESET, told CIO.com amidst a throng of iPhone owners milling around on the Macworld Expo showroom floor in San Francisco.

It’s likely these iPhone owners won’t take security seriously until the iPhone has a Toyota moment, when a simmering problem finally bubbles over and splatters them right in the public eye. “It wouldn’t surprise me if that moment is still a couple years off,” Abrams said.

ESET commissioned a survey of a more than 1,000 smartphone owners-35 percent iPhone, 32 percent Blackberry, and the rest a mix-and released its findings yesterday. The key finding: a majority of people don’t take security seriously.

Among iPhone and Blackberry users, 55 percent don’t lock their smartphone. Some 40 percent of all smartphone users said they’re concerned with malicious software infecting their device, while only one in four said they actually use antivirus software, including iPhone owners.

Can iPhone owners even run anti-virus software? “None of the iPhone users should have reported that they are using antivirus as Apple will not approve such software for the iPhone, even though Apple has had to pull spyware off of their App Store,” Abrams wrote in his blog. Such is the fallacy of surveys.

Nevertheless, Abrams worries that unsuspecting iPhone owners will have their day of reckoning perhaps in two years. Why so long? He figures hackers are lying in wait, ready to exploit the iPhone.

Hackers might be waiting for Apple to unlock the iPhone for different networks. Or they want iPhones to get into more people’s hands. Perhaps they’re waiting for a banking iPhone app that they can target. “Hackers don’t target for fun,” Abrams said, comparing them to the guy who created a worm for jailbroken iPhones as a joke.

Mobile online banking attracts hackers, Abrams said. The ESET survey found one in four users make purchases using their smartphones. Nearly one in three accesses banking websites or apps. “Combined with access to email and social networking accounts is what makes the devices attractive to hackers and other criminals,” Abrams wrote.

“It is the adoption of commerce that will create the irresistible opportunity for those with malicious intent,” he said.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Mikael Ricknäs
IDG News Service (Stockholm Bureau)
February 4, 2010

STOCKHOLM - Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has launched the Aspen, a smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen, running the latest version of Windows Mobile.

Its Sony Ericsson’s first Blackberry look-alike since 2007, filling a gap in the company’s portfolio that has been a problem for it in recent years, according to Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. QWERTY keyboards have proved popular among both younger people and business users, thanks to the increased popularity of social networking, instant messaging and e-mail on mobile phones, she said.

The phone has a 2.4-inch touchscreen, a 3.2-megapixel camera and support for A-GPS (Assisted-GPS). It surfs the Internet using Wi-Fi or HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access), and is part of the GreenHeart range, Sony Ericsson’s label for its more environmentally friendly products.

It is one of the first phones to use version 6.5.3 of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system. That version features improved web performance with faster web page load times, according to Peter Wissinger, business group leader for Windows Mobile in the Nordic countries.

Microsoft has also made the latest version of Windows Mobile more suited to touch-screen phones, enlarging the icons and adding support for capacitive touchscreens and recognition of multitouch gestures, Wissinger said.

However, Aspen buyers won’t be able to take advantage of all of those improvements, since the smartphone has a resistive touchscreen that Sony Ericsson has not enabled multitouch gestures, a company spokesman said.

Pricing hasn’t been announced, but the Aspen will start shipping during the second quarter.

Both Sony Ericsson and Microsoft are expected to launch more interesting products at Mobile World Congress. Cozza hopes to see Sony Ericsson unveil more phones running Android at the show, and to hear the company talk more about its future platform strategy, she said.

Microsoft is widely expected to demonstrate Windows Mobile 7, the next version of the operating system, at Mobile World Congress, but Wissinger declined to comment on the company’s plans for the show.

However, Gartner’s Cozza said Windows Mobile has been losing market share, and Microsoft will need to do something drastic to start attracting consumers.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Wireless Desktop Adapter
• Genius Wireless Keyboards
• Connect in Style with Buffalo’s New Hubs
• ‘World’s Smallest’ Android smartphones
• Windows 7 Compatible Router

By Stephen Lawson
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
October 20, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - AT&T on Monday made another grab for business mobile users, introducing two more hosted applications built on its Mobile Enterprise Applications Platform.

Like other mobile operators and vendors, the second-largest wireless carrier in the U.S. is targeting enterprises as a growth opportunity. Along with paving the way for machine-to-machine applications that could provide a steady stream of data usage for years to come, AT&T and others are trying to get businesses to integrate smartphones more deeply in their business operations. Last week, Samsung Electronics America introduced a cloud-based service that can adapt Oracle databases and other applications within enterprises for use on mobile phones.

AT&T introduced MEAP in September 2008 as a platform on which enterprises could develop, deploy and manage applications that extended back-end systems to mobile devices. It uses middleware from Antenna Software that lets enterprises configure an application once to work with BlackBerries, Windows Mobile devices and iPhones, minimizing the work involved in reaching all the devices, said Igor Glubochansky, a director in AT&T’s mobility product management organization. MEAP includes three basic types of capabilities — sales force and field force automation and IT support — as building blocks for other services. The back-end systems it can support include Oracle, SAP and custom in-house applications.

In addition to the applications created by individual enterprises, which can be run in-house or hosted by AT&T, the carrier has identified certain vertical-market uses for mobile that are fairly similar from one organization to the next, Glubochansky said. For these “repeatable” use cases, AT&T can build ready-made applications, he said. A MEAP pharmaceutical sales application has been available for several months already.

On Monday, the carrier introduced AT&T MEAP: Merchandising for the Consumer Goods Industry and AT&T MEAP: Maintenance and Repair for Hospitality. Both are hosted by AT&T and designed to run on Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices. The iPhone isn’t often used by workers in these fields, Glubochansky said.

The merchandising application is designed for workers who deliver products, especially foods and beverages, and monitor how those goods are selling and are displayed and promoted in each store. The mobile software lets them submit forms and reports instantly on a smartphone instead of filling out paper forms and turning them in at the end of the day, so supplies can be replenished and billed for more quickly, Glubochansky said.

The mobile application for hospitality is designed to help maintenance workers at large hotels and other facilities communicate quickly about their ongoing tasks and urgent situations that require a response. It allows them to access and update work orders and service requests in real time, automatically escalate incidents and receive alerts when staff members don’t respond. Although some of AT&T’s smartphones include push-to-talk capability, the application doesn’t make use of it, Glubochansky said.

The hosted applications are available now. Because it sells them to each business customer on a case-by-case basis, the carrier doesn’t have listed prices for the offerings. AT&T has identified other common applications for certain industries and is planning more of such prepared applications, according to Glubochansky. Manufacturing is one area with some potential, he said.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Mike Elgan
Computerworld (US)
October 12, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - JD Power has announced that the Apple’s iPhone ranked No. 1 in customer satisfaction for “smartphones in business,” beating out LG and BlackBerry.

But wait, everybody knows the iPhone is a consumer device, and not ready for business. It’s insecure! It has no keyboard! It has no back-end support! How can this be?

The JD Power results should force us to recognize a new reality: There’s no such thing as a business phone anymore.

The business-employee divide

In every office, factory or other workplace, every piece of equipment exists somewhere on a scale, with a device that “benefits only company” at one extreme and “benefits only employee” at the other.

Company servers, PCs, and landline phones are clearly business equipment, as they’re selected, provisioned, installed, and serviced by the company or service contractor for business purposes only. The user has no claims on these devices.

Eyeglasses, clothing, jewelry, wristwatches, heart pace-makers, hearing aids, wallets and other personal devices are the personal property of each employee. The company has no rights over or claims to any of them.

Where does a cell phone fit?

In ancient times (the 1980s and 1990s), cell phones were rare and expensive. If a company wanted executives or sales people to have cell phones, they had to be provisioned. As phones gained more capabilities and began resembling PCs, IT departments treated them as such. Like PCs, phones were (and still are) purchases based on company criteria, and for company purposes of security, data and application access and serviceability.

The industry has responded with all kinds of back-end solutions to facilitate corporate objectives. Companies like Palm, RIM and Microsoft and many others have developed phones, server software and other products designed to support the notion that a phone is a business tool to be provisioned and supported like a PC.

A study called “The Device Dilemma,” commissioned by Good Technology and published last month, found that more than one-quarter of enterprises have already experienced “security breaches due to employees bringing unauthorized devices.”

Nearly half of IT decision makers “would allow users to choose their own devices if they could be assured of security and configuration.” The survey found that nearly 80% of companies saw a rise in the number of staff wanting to “bring their own devices into the workplace,” the overwhelming majority of which specified iPhones.

The phrasing of and responses to these questions reveals a shockingly outdated view about the relationship between a company, an employee and the cell phone in every employee’s pocket.

Do companies have a mechanism for strip-searching employees as they come to work? Full-body scans? Thugs frisking staff in the lobby?

On what planet do employees carry personal cell phones to work only when the IT department “allows” it?

Meanwhile, back on Earth

While all this activity was going on inside IT departments and in the industry, powerful changes were simultaneously taking place in the culture at large: Cell phones have become part of us. They have become profoundly personal.

A survey released this week by Samsung Telecommunications America found that about 3 in 10 Americans would rather give up sex than cell phones for a year, if forced to make a choice. (Women said this more than men. Go figure.)

I’ve written previously about the extreme connection people now form with their cell phones. The point is that people view cell phones in the same category as their clothing or other personal items, not as company equipment that their employer’s IT department allows or doesn’t allow.

Phones like the iPhone are strengthening the phenomenon. The user-friendly interface and amazing App Store create enormously powerful emotional bonds between human and gadget. They also radically accelerate the speed with which cell phones themselves evolve new capabilities.

As a result of this new reality, IT departments would be well advised to abandoned antiquated notions about what a cell phone is, who owns it, who chooses it and how it will be used by employees while they’re sitting at their desks.

IT departments should immediately get on board with the new reality about cell phones. Specifically:

* Nearly every employee carries a personal cell phone, which is increasingly likely to support Wi-Fi Internet connectivity, applications and end-user data storage.
* There is no sure way to predict what the capabilities of phones 6 months from now will acquire.
* Purchasing phones for employees is often a losing strategy. Many employees won’t carry, charge, share the number for or use company cell phones.
* Supporting every major brand of user-purchased phones with backend encryption, security and data access capability is a needless cost and time-sink for many companies.
* Company data stored on phones is a risk no matter what. Phones are lost, stolen, synchronized and shared, and data residing on local storage is vulnerable.
* The psychological wall between work and personal time is gone. People work at home, and do personal tasks at work. You can create user policies and train until you’re blue in the face, but users will still use their cell phones to socialize, play, browse and shop from the office.
* Social networks cross all barriers. Employees have access all the time. Twitter requires only SMS. Facebook is accessible on phones.

It’s time to stop fighting against the cultural tidal wave of cell phone obsession, against the hockey-stick growth curve in cell phone capabilities and against the growing complexity of security, data, devices and the Internet.

It’s time to zero-base the entire problem.

Let’s all understand that cell phones are part of the employee’s body — inseparable and on the other side of the company-employee boundary. They have powerful capabilities now, and unpredictable capabilities in the future. They will evolve faster than your IT infrastructure.

Sure, vertical-use gadgets with cell phone capabilities are necessary and valuable. And some companies will still have very good reasons to do things the old fashioned way, provisioning phones and supporting them under a client-server model.

But for most companies, and nearly all employees, there is simply no such thing as a business cell phone.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Zack Stern
PC World (US)
October 7, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - You probably run Office and other software directly from a PC hard drive. But server-side tools can put any Windows application into the cloud, keeping virtual instances of your applications ready at any time. This nimble system lets you log into your software from any PC–and even smartphones–expanding the places you can work, allowing for quicker setup, and often saving money on software costs.

Citrix makes a few of these server- and client-side tools that to virtualize any Windows application. Medium- and large-sized businesses likely have the infrastructure and IT staff to support this process, letting companies install XenApp, the cornerstone of Citrix’s virtual application process.

Citrix says that the software will essentially support any Windows application, although companies might be limited by licensing issues, since you typically buy software for each desktop system. Microsoft sells monthly licenses for its applications, but you should check with other mission-critical companies if you’re pondering this process.

On the PC client side, you’ll download Citrix Receiver, with main versions available for Windows and Mac operating systems. Citrix offers a Linux version, but the company says that it lags behind the other editions, since there’s less demand for that tool. After several minutes of download and installation–especially the first time you go through the process on a client PC–you’ll be able to run remotely hosted applications.

An iPhone version adds another way to work, with editions also being developed for BlackBerry, Android, and other devices. The free iPhone client software formats applications for the iPhone screen and encrypts the session just like the PC clients. Both kinds of clients also keep data stored on the server side, adding an additional security measure in case you lose your laptop or smartphone.

You’ll likely need a dedicated IT staff to support these tools in-house. And by managing applications on their end, they’ll save work in deploying software to all of your client systems. But even with your own server costs, you might save money–especially in the short-term–by leasing application licenses instead of paying a lot up-front

Several third-party hosts use these Citrix tools, giving the same flexibility and mobility to smaller companies. Depending on your needs, prices roughly run about $70/month per user for a suite of applications. Check out ClubDrive and Nasstar for a couple options.

By running virtual applications, businesses can scale costs up and down, even letting workers tap into software from a menagerie of devices. Not counting the extra value in this remote access, your total costs could be higher in the long-term, although you’ll skip high up-front fees per each client. But depending on your situation, the initial savings and a manageable, monthly cost could make virtual applications worthwhile.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Fix a Windows 7 System That Randomly Freezes
• Update Firmware On Your HDTV, Camera, Smartphone, PC
• Keep Your PC Awake, Install Apps Fast & More–Free
• Use Facebook Places
• My Keyboard isn’t Working

By Dan Moren
Macworld.com
October 5, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - It’s been a long time coming, but after promises, previews, and unexpected leaks, BlackBerry officially released the desktop Mac client for its popular smartphone platform on Friday.
Prior to this application, Mac BlackBerry owners had to rely on third-party software such as Mark/Space’s The Missing Sync for BlackBerry, or PocketMac for BlackBerry, which RIM had included along with its handsets.

BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac allows users to sync their contacts, calendar, notes, and to-do data between their Macs and BlackBerrys as well as installing and managing applications for the phone. On the Mac side, data can sync with iCal, Address Book, Mail, or any other applications that use Mac OS X’s SyncServices, such as Microsoft Entourage.

In addition, BlackBerry owners can also make encrypted backups of their devices and update the BlackBerry system software when new versions are available. And if you live in a household that has as many BlackBerrys as I have iPods, then no worries: BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac allows you to sync multiple devices with the same Mac.

Among the most interesting features of BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac is that it lets you sync your music and playlists from iTunes. Your mind might immediately conjure images of Palm and its cat-and-mouse games with Apple. How did RIM succeed where Palm failed?

The key here seems to be that RIM doesn’t try to inject support for the BlackBerry into iTunes or have its devices pretend to be something they’re not. Rather, BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac just references the iTunes library stored on your hard disk and shows you your list of playlists in its own application–something Palm could no doubt have done as well, had it been willing to spend the time. In fact, RIM released BlackBerry Media Sync, allowing Mac and PC users to sync with iTunes and other media software, in December of last year.
BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac is a free download and requires Mac OS X 10.5.5 or later, a BlackBerry running version 4.2 software or higher, and at least iTunes 7.2.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Galen Gruman
InfoWorld (US)
October 5, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Gone are the days that smartphones — the BlackBerry, for all intents and purposes — were a mark of the user being an executive or business traveler.

Today, smartphones are now bought mainly by individual consumers and used for mostly personal needs, according to a new survey of more than 1,000 users by the consultancy CFI Group. Given that the smartphone audience is now consumers using it mainly for personal use, CFI’s survey not surprisingly showed that the Apple iPhone has the best level of customer satisfaction, at 83 percent. Google’s Android platform and the Palm Pre tied for second place at 77 percent, followed by the Research in Motion BlackBerry at 73 percent, the defunct Palm Treo at 70 percent, and devices using Nokia’s Symbian OS and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile coming in last at 66 percent.

The survey also showed that, in addition to being the best in satisfaction, the iPhone has the most loyalty and word-of-mouth recommendations: 92 percent of current iPhone respondents said they have their ideal phone, 90 percent have recommended the phone, and 35 percent said they purchased their phone because of a recommendation. Also, the iPhone is the most popular alternative to any other smartphone.

The study found that Android and the Pre scored well because they share several traits with the iPhone: the ability to deliver consumer-oriented activities like apps, an easy Web-browsing experience, and multimedia playback. Business-oriented smartphones, like Treo and early generation BlackBerrys, are falling behind, whereas “generic” smartphones that run Symbian and Windows Mobile are not even on the radar, according to CFI Group.

Ironically, the U.S. national carrier with the fewest smartphone options, T-Mobile, has the top satisfaction score among carriers, at 79 percent. Verizon tied for the top satisfaction spot with a 79 percent score as well. Sprint, the exclusive provider of the Pre, came in second at 74 percent, while AT&T — which boasts an exclusive deal to carry the iPhone — came in at 73 percent among non-iPhone users and at just 66 percent among iPhone users.

CFI Group noted this lack of correlation between the popularity of the device and the popularity of the carrier service. Furthermore, CFI noted that the carrier with the largest number of sophisticated smartphones (such as the iPhone and BlackBerry Bold) — AT&T — had the worst customer satisfaction levels. And customers who switched to AT&T (mainly to get the iPhone) were much less satisfied than existing AT&T customers. Conversely, although Verizon tied for top customer satisfaction as a carrier, its users rated it least satisfactory for its smartphone options, at 38 percent.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Check Point clears the path to Web 2.0 application control
• Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe
• Microsoft still mum on programs prone to DLL hijacking attacks
• Mobile data traffic set to soar
• More IT managers plan to spend less, Oracle struggles with users, survey finds

By Al Sacco
CIO.com
July 31, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Experiencing problems with that new BlackBerry Tour? Is your tried-and-true Curve 8300 acting up on ya? Have no fear; you don’t necessarily have a “lemon” on your hands. BlackBerry devices, and smartphones in general, can be a “finicky” bunch of gadgets. But thankfully, there are some quick fixes for common problems, many of which I’ve covered on CIO.com before in my BlackBerry Bible.

However, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) was kind enough to post its own set of 10 BlackBerry smartphone troubleshooting tips and tricks earlier this month. While there’s nothing groundbreaking–like I said, I’ve covered most of the material before–any and all CrackBerry addicts will benefit from a quick refresher of the basics

What follows is RIM’s recent list of BlackBerry troubleshooting tips, along with comments of my own, where necessary or relevant.

1) Check Wireless Signal Strength RIM suggested checking on your wireless signal strength if you’re experiencing issues, to ensure you’re in a coverage area. Obviously, if you don’t see any coverage bars on your BlackBerry home screen or there’s an out of service (SOS) icon, you dont have wireless coverage. And that’s problem.

Another quick way to check your wireless signal strength is via a BlackBerry keyboard shortcut. Just hold down your BlackBerry’s ALT key and type the letters N, M, L, L. Your home screen will then show your wireless signal strength in Dbms. If your signal strength isn’t within the -40 to -100 Dbms range, you’re not in an adequate wireless coverage area. (Note: This shortcut only works on BlackBerry smartphones with full QWERTY keyboards.)

2) Pull Your Battery or “Hard Reset” RIM’s second troubleshooting tip is to simply remove and replace your BlackBerry’s battery. Doing so is as simple as removing the device’s battery cover and popping out the power pack, with the edge of a credit card or other prying tool. This is referred to as a BlackBerry “hard reset.” For more on the difference between hard and soft BlackBerry resets, read “Hard v. Soft Resets, and When to Perform Each.”

3) Check Wireless Network Settings BlackBerry users experiencing wireless coverage or data transfer issues should ensure that their network settings are correct, RIM says. To do open up the Manage Connections menu via your BlackBerry home screen. The Mobile Network option should have checked box next to it to signify connectivity. Next, scroll down to Mobile Network Options and make sure Data Services are enabled and the Mobile Network and Network Mode are set to the appropriate carrier and network options.

4) Register Your BlackBerry the Wireless Network RIM also suggests registering your BlackBerry with your wireless network if problems arise. Registering a BlackBerry device running RIM’s handheld software v4.1 or higher is simple. Just open your BlackBerry Options menu via your home screen, click Advanced Options and then Host Routing Table. On the following screen, tap your BlackBerry Menu key and choose Register Now. You’ll then receive a network notification message to let you know your device has been registered.

5) Check your BlackBerry’s Connection to a Computer If you’re having issues working with RIM’s BlackBerry Desktop Manager software, you should ensure that your device connects properly to your machine, according to RIM. To determine whether or not your device is connected to BlackBerry Desktop Manager, open up the program’s Options menu and hit Connection Settings. You should see your device’s unique BlackBerry PIN number in the on-screen connection field. If not, click the Detect button. If your device is successfully connected, the program will tell you your device has been located. Still experiencing Desktop Manager issues? Visit RIM’s site for more troubleshooting suggestions.

6) Confirm BlackBerry Can Receive E-Mail One way to see whether or not you’re experiencing BlackBerry mail delivery latency or other problems is to simply send yourself a test message from an e-mail account that’s not associated with your device, RIM says. If you send the message and it appears on your BlackBerry, you can receive e-mail. If the message arrives, but it’s delayed, you’re very likely experiencing some sort of latency. Solutions for e-mail reception problems vary greatly depending on a number of user-specific factors, including whether or not the BlackBerry is on corporate BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) or a consumer-oriented BlackBerry Internet Service account. If you cannot receive e-mail, try registering your handheld with the network (see step four) and resending your service books (refer to step eight.) If you’re on a BES, you may have to contact your BlackBerry administrator for further assistance.

7) Confirm BlackBerry Can Send E-Mail, PIN Messages (BlackBerry Messenger) RIM also suggests checking your outgoing mail delivery if you’re having BlackBerry issues. Do so by first sending an e-mail message from your BlackBerry device to a mail account associated with your BlackBerry. (It’s okay to use the same account to send and receive the message.) If you receive the message, you can send e-mail. Secondly, you should confirm that you can send and receive BlackBerry Messenger and PIN messages. To do so, send a PIN message from your BlackBerry to yourself by opening up your Messages folder, hitting Menu and choosing Compose PIN. Type in your BlackBerry PIN and hit send. If you receive the message, you can send PIN messages. Solutions for e-mail problems vary greatly depending on a number of user-specific factors, including whether or not the BlackBerry is on corporate BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) or a consumer-oriented BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) account. If you’re on a BES, you may have to contact your BlackBerry administrator for further assistance.

Resend BlackBerry Service Books If you’re having mail or messaging issues, or any other BlackBerry performance problems, you should resend your device’s service books, RIM says. Service books communicate with your network’s BlackBerry infrastructure, specifying which services should be available and how they should function. There are three ways to resend your BlackBerry service books:
1) You can send the service books directly from your handheld;
2) you can log into your carrier’s (BIS) page and send them from there; and finally,
3) you can call on your carrier’s customer service reps to do the job for you. For instructions on each option, visit RIM’s website.

9) Launch the BlackBerry “Help” App Each and every new BlackBerry ships with a “Help” application and associated home screen icon, and RIM says this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to solve basic BlackBerry issues. To utilize the option, click the Help icon on your BlackBerry’s home screen and click Troubleshooting on the following page. You can also access the BlackBerry Help menu from within certain native BlackBerry apps, by hitting your Menu while an app’s open and choosing Help.

10) Visit BlackBerry Technical Solutions Center RIM posts bundles of information, in the form of “knowledge base” articles, to its BlackBerry Technical Solutions Center. The online destination is one of, if not the, best places on the Web to find solutions to advanced BlackBerry problems. It’s also a great resource for learning more about your handheld. RIM suggests visiting the BlackBerry Technical Solutions Center whenever you encounter a BlackBerry-related issue you can’t easily solve–and I do, too.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Fix a Windows 7 System That Randomly Freezes
• Update Firmware On Your HDTV, Camera, Smartphone, PC
• Keep Your PC Awake, Install Apps Fast & More–Free
• Use Facebook Places
• My Keyboard isn’t Working

By Tom Noda
Computerworld Philippines

Research In Motion (RIM) recently released in the Philippines the BlackBerry Storm, the first touch-screen BlackBerry smartphone. Unlike other smartphones, Storm bears a corporate and landscape style. Its unique SurePress touch-screen depresses ever so slightly when the screen is pressed, enhancing the touch interface for both typing and navigation. Although it has no Wi-Fi element, Storm is HSPA compatible. RIM described Storm as an ideal choice for both consumers and business customers who are looking for a versatile and fashionable smartphone. With its satellite navigation capabilities, Storm has easy access to social networking, email and messaging capabilities. It has a 3.25-inch “clickable” touch-screen with 480 x 360 resolution at 184 pixels per inch. Storm also comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera that has auto flash and auto focus image with 2x digital zoom, as well as a microSD/SDHC expandable memory card slot that supports up to 16 GB of additional storage per card while an 8GB microSDHC card comes preinstalled. The BlackBerry Storm is expected to be available from Globe Telecom and Smart Communications, Inc in May.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Wireless Desktop Adapter
• Genius Wireless Keyboards
• Connect in Style with Buffalo’s New Hubs
• ‘World’s Smallest’ Android smartphones
• Windows 7 Compatible Router