RIM Insider: "We Know Things Aren't Perfect, But We're All In For The Long Haul"

Image: AP

RIMM  Stock  Jun 13 2011, 05:20 PM EDT

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While Research In Motion’s market position has slowly eroded, morale inside the company remains strong, at least according to one rank and file employee who reached out to us.

The employees aren’t delusional. They know the company’s current lineup of smartphone is weak compared to the rest of the field, but they think the company has a shot at producing some great products in the years to come.

Here are the lightly edited bullet points of an email we received. (Keep in mind, this is just one employees take, we’d love to hear more: jyarow@businessinsider.com):

• The rank and file level know the hardware we have on deck doesn’t really compare to what’s in the market currently, but we have no say.

• Morale isn’t broken, but there is a lot of legal bureaucratic processes that slow us down. You’d think we have more lawyers on hand will all the patent lawsuits in mobile. Anyway, tme to execute or time to market is paramount for us, and we need to keep improving it. That’s what Balsillie was talking about on the recent earnings call when he said he wants things earlier.

• We know we got caught resting on our laurels from a product perspective across the board. All we can do is hope that the current managers handling products in the pipeline can make things better. We’re hoping for the best.

• We get frustrated when Balsillie talks tech on earnings calls, and when Mike L gets side-swiped in interviews about security that are attacking our image. Mike is tech and Jim is sales/marketing/image. Period. They should do all interviews, and anything public as a team because they are co-CEO’s. Having one without the other makes about as much sense as you blogging on cooking, and Martha Stewart come blogging about tech on SAI. They really need to address this ASAP.

• We do have good ideas, have made good acquisitions, and can innovate, but getting those ideas, innovations, and acquisitions into products and out to market is going to be what defines whether or not we sink or swim. We just need to avoid the legal mes, and get products out the door faster.

• We are looking forward to what the new QNX operating system will give us in the hopefully not so distant future. The demo at BlackBerry World of running the Dalvik VM/Android apps on a PlayBook has everyone amped up, and we’re looking forward to taking some wind out of Google’s sails with it.

• That’s really it. We know there’s work to be done, we know things aren’t perfect, but we’re all in for the long haul. Regardless of what the analysts or media say when we hit our upswing it’s going to carry us well into the next decade, that we’re sure of.

 

Steve Balmer and Mike Lazaridis Announce RIM-Microsoft Partnership

Today during Mike Lazaridis’ keynote speech at BlackBerry World, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer made a surprise appearance and announced a partnership between Microsoft and RIM. The partnership involves the integration of Microsoft’s Bing search engine into the Universal Search feature of the BlackBerry OS.

Slated for a holiday 2011 launch, the new search integration will be designed not just to search for text and relevancy, but to also utilize location and social graph to deliver highly contextual answers about your area before even needing to ask.

The developer leading the project Blaise Agüera y Arcas spoke of bringing search results “right to the glass”. He spoke of the search “completing a task” bringing useful information right to the user in a mobile context instead of prompting the user to sift through results.

This fine-tuning of the search will require less clicks to find what you are looking for; less clicks means time saved.

For more info about the announcement, check out Microsoft’s press release.

via:bbcool

Dial *677 – Rapist Impersonates Police Officer (Ontario)

Female college student pulled over in her car by a cop-impersonating would-be rapist is rescued by a real officer after dialing *677 on her cell phone (Ontario, Canada version)

Description: Urban legend
Circulating since: July 2004 (this version)
Status: Grain of truth
Email example contributed by A. Mann, July 22, 2004:

Subject: Fw: Good advice and the importance of *677

I knew about the red light on cars, but not the *677.

It was about 1 PM in the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. Lauren's parents have 4 children (high school and college age) and have always told them never to pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather wait until they get a gas station, etc. Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called *677 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away.

She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her.

The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she was and there weren't, and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back up already on the way.

Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground. The man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes. I never knew about the *677 Cell Phone Feature, but especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car. Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going to a "safe" place. You obviously need to make some signals that you acknowledge them (i.e. put on your hazard lights) or call *677 like Lauren did.

Too bad the cell phone companies don't generally give you this little bit of wonderful information.

*Speaking to a service representative at **Bell** Mobility confirmed that *677 was a direct link to OPP Dispatch.

So, now it's your turn to let your friends know about *677.

Send this to every woman you know, it may save a life.
Analysis: What you have just read is an Ontario, Canada variant of an urban legend circulating via email since March 2002. While it’s true that the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) can be reached by dialing *677 (numerical equivalent of *OPP) on any phone in the province, the rest of the story (a college student named Lauren narrowly avoids becoming the victim of a rapist impersonating a police officer by calling the real police, etc., etc.) was cut and pasted from the original three-year-old message. The tale has never been substantiated.

That said, there have been cases in Ontario and elsewhere of criminals impersonating police officers, so caution may be warranted for drivers pulled over in isolated areas. “What I suggest is that you pull over as soon as it is safe but keep your doors locked and windows rolled up until you are satisfied the officer has properly identified themselves,” said a police sergeant interviewed by YorkRegion.com.

A spokesperson for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association said Ontario drivers can reach police in an emergency by dialing either *677 or 911.

 

Virginia-based Verizon Wireless subscribers experiencing service outages

Looks as though Big Red is having some rare service issues in the state of Virginia. BGR reports…

Verizon Wireless’ tech support team has confirmed the problem to BGR, and it states that the cause of the massive outage is currently unknown. Verizon says it is investigating the matter just as fast as it can, of course, though the company has no idea when service will be restored. 

UPDATE: There are reports that service has been restored for most subscribers as of shortly before 5:00 PM.

• Anyone else experiencing Verizon data outages? Let us know…

via:BGR

 

BlackBerry OS Surpasses iOS in Terms of Web Browsing in the US

StatCounter is a web analytics company that has published some interesting data about web browsing on the various smartphone platforms. According to their stats, which are sampled based on 15 billion page views per month in the US, BlackBerry OS trumped Apple’s iOS in web browsing for the first time at 34.3% versus 33% respectively. 

One of the reasons BlackBerry’s web browsing has shot up recently is probably directly attributed to the success of the BlackBerry Torch and newly upgraded devices to BlackBerry 6. As we leave OS 5 behind, we can expect more BlackBerry devices to be hitting web sites. Go baby go!

Source BBCool

BlackBerry PlayBook webcast series for developers starts tomorrow!

As we mentioned a little while back, Research In Motion is starting up their series of five webcasts to help get developers started on the BlackBerry PlayBook. The first of the five “Develop for the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR” webcasts will actually be held tomorrow and will guide you through the process of installing, setting up BlackBerry PlayBook SDK and get you started on building applications. Research In Motion experts will be there as well as Adobe experts to answer any questions you may have throughout the process.

Date: Thursday, November 4, 2010
Time: 2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST
Presenters: Prosanta Bhattacherjee, Application Development Consultant, Research In Motion Limited and Renaun Erickson, Adobe Developer Evangelist, Adobe Systems Incorporated

We’ve already got to see a ton of great PlayBook apps from developers around the world and this, is just the beginning. Be sure to sign up for the webcast series if you’re interested in learning more about developing PlayBook apps.

• Register For The Develop For The BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR Webcast>>

The state of 4G wireless at a glance

updated 9/21/2010 5:29:46 PM ET

This is a summary of how U.S. wireless carriers are dealing with the transition to fourth-generation, or 4G, network technology, which promises faster data speeds:

— Sprint Nextel Corp. subsidiary Clearwire Corp. already has a 4G network up and running, and Sprint started selling the first compatible phone this summer. But Clearwire is using WiMax, a technology that’s imcompatible with LTE, which everyone else is using or plans to use.

— Verizon Wireless plans to bring LTE to 25 to 30 cities later this year, mainly for PC modems. Phones will come next year.

— AT&T Inc. plans to launch commercial LTE service in the middle of next year. In the meantime, it’s upgrading the speeds on its 3G network.

— T-Mobile USA hasn’t made any specific plans public. It’s focusing on upgrading its 3G network for now.

— LightSquared is a dark-horse entrant funded by a private equity firm. It plans to build an independent LTE network, with service starting next year, but financial and regulatory hurdles remain.

— MetroPCS Communications Inc. turned on LTE in Las Vegas on Tuesday, and plans to expand it to the rest of its coverage area by January.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

MetroPCS to customers: Bring your own phone

Company will program phones from other carriers to its network

By Peter Svensson

updated 6/27/2008 5:56:13 PM ET

NEW YORK — MetroPCS Communications Inc. has become the largest U.S. wireless carrier to say it will let customers bring cell phones from other carriers, which it will then reprogram for use on its own network.

This week’s announcement by the Dallas-based regional carrier is one of a series of moves in the industry that amount to a gradual opening of the U.S. wireless market, giving consumers more choice over what phones to use on what networks.

Carriers generally sell phones that are locked to their own service. This protects their business model, which is based on subsidizing the cost of the phone by hundreds of dollars, then making that money back on monthly service fees.

MetroPCS’s move threatens these traditional rules. It allows customers with certain models of phones from Sprint Nextel Corp., Verizon Wireless, Alltel Corp. and a few other carriers to bring their phones to MetroPCS stores, where they will be reprogrammed.

Overviews & WebKit Browser Comparison In 3 New Videos Of The BlackBerry Bold 9800 Slider & OS 6.0! July 18th, 2010 @ 10:54 PM | By: Mauricio

What a way to end the weekend! Our buddy Salomondrin put up not one or two but three, new videos each showing off different aspects of the BlackBerry Bold 9800 slider and OS 6.0! These videos are also a bit longer than the usual quick overview offering a better look at OS 6.0, how media is handled and a comparison of the old browser with the new WebKit browser!

The Rest of the Story is on Phantomberry.net