Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of Blackberry Storm Theatre, with your host, Don Burnside.
Drama added for effect. Did it work? I’m guessing not, so let’s just get on with the story.
About 2 weeks ago my Blackberry Storm went caput. Well, not 100%, but the speaker and microphone quit working. Problematic to say the least, especially since it is the only device I have for voice communication. Prior to this happening, I was perfectly satisfied with the Storm, after I made a few updates and changes to the device based on information I gleaned from Crackberry.com and a few others.
Ok, phone caput. New one is sent and it works fine, kinda. While the microphone works, it sounds like I’m talking with a mouth full of marbles. Not the greatest. So, another call to 611, the tech agrees the call quality is poor and sends another phone.
That is sitting in the box on my desk.
Upon receiving phone numba 2, I decided that I would wait for Verizon to push out an update for this device, instead of downloading it from the intartubes again, thinking that it might have been a bad build or something that broke my phone. So, I have been running software that was released on or about December 8th of last year. And it sucks.
It’s version .75 of the Storm software and, if I’m honest, it’s horrible. Almost worse than v.65 that originally came with the phone. It’s completely unusable with this version. The buttons don’t press correctly, the accelerometer is painfully slow to adjust and doing almost anything causes the phone to stop responding for about 30 seconds before it starts going again. Not good, not good at all.
Finally, after spending the day staring into the 100+ degree ball of fire in the sky and having my phone not work the way it should 1 more time, in a fit of rage, I contacted support. But, I was nice. No, really, I was.
I asked if there was an update coming this week. He said no. I then asked if it was possible for me to exchange this device for something else. He explained a few things about that too. When he finished, he asked if he could make a suggestion and explain something.
me: Sure, go ahead
Tech: blah blah blah blah we don’t ask what version software you are running when you call blah blah blah blah.
So, in a very roundabout way, without telling me it was ok to upgrade the software on my phone, he told me to update the damned software on my phone!
Which I will be doing tonight with the unit that is in the box before I even activate it.
Follow along at Twitter and Facebook for the blow by blow, as it happens!
Much like the iPhone epidemic of aught seven drove me beyond distraction, Twitter is doing the same.
I use Twitter. I like Twitter. I think it’s handy to have around. But lately it seems that it is the only thing anyone can talk about.
For example, the word Twitter appears over 20 times on the front page of Mashable. I have unsubscribed.
In the last 2 episodes of TWiT, more than 50% of the stories were about Twitter. I have unsubscribed for the time being. Hopefully normal tech talk will resume soon.
Even on Twitter there is getting to be too much talk about Twitter. I just finished unfollowing about 5 of the worst offenders there.
It’s time to realize that there are more important things to discuss than how many people follow you on Twitter or what’s the best Twitter app to use or, or, or.
You people are like Pitbulls. You find something you like, get it stuck in your jaws and wave it around until it’s a bloody, limp mess that nobody wants anything to do with anymore. Time to find something else to talk about.
It’s been a bad week. I can’t tell you why, but it is personal. Work is going great so far however. This has led me to needing distrations.
First one is I am going to attempt to do a Flickr 365. It’s perfect. I spend a little time thinking about the shot then take it. Bonus if I can do it with my phone, then I don’t have to offload photos from a memory stick everyday.
The ‘rents are out again (hi Mom!). That usually provides a pretty good level of distraction as well which I am welcoming this time around. Thursday night for example Mom showed me her photos and is bummed that she can’t upload all of them to her Flickr. Pro account for her birthday? I think so. Or Mother’s Day.
After that, I showed them the goodness that is Hulu.com. All of this happened after I gave them both a full tour of the new site I’m working on. Sorry, it still only lives on my computer, but you’ll hear about it as soon as it goes live.
Yet another distraction that I have right now is the gym. Getting there is a distraction that I’ve been missing this week and, as it turns out, scheduling time to get there is quite the distraction as well.
I’ve also been distracted by Apple stuff. Primarily the coolness that is the new iLife and the holy-shit-are-you-kidding-me pricing of the new 17″ MacBook Pro. I built one yesterday that came to almost $6,000! Big thanks to everyone for making fun of my toot typo/missed letter last week too. That was not nearly as awesome as you think it was. Really.
Speaking of, you might have noticed the toots have been a little light this week. Between being fairly busy and not really being able to fully appreciate the replies they have been getting either on Twitter or Facebook, I’ve slowed down a bit. Yet another distraction, this one very much unwanted.
Finally, I have 2 websites that I need to finish that aren’t work related and 1 that still needs the WP upgrade. So if I’m not around much for the next week or so, you’ll know why.
We all know what a huge fan of OpenDNS I am right? I mean, I’ve had the graphic on my page for over a year. Everyone that I directly support is using OpenDNS too. It’s good stuff and they are good people.
I was reading about the latest phishing scam on the Twitter blog. Out of curiosity, I thought I would see what that page looked like for myself. If it weren’t for that graphic above, it would have popped right open. As it worked out, I had to actually click through one more time to view the site. And they are bad bad people.
There is the Twitter phishing site, but if you go to the main root of that domain, they have an exact replica of Facebook as well. This site too was initially blocked by OpenDNS.
Let’s let this be a reminder to all of you out there to make the switch for you and your users. It’s quicker, it’s super reliable and safer. Bonus it’s free! You can sign-up for an account (which is also free) and get some pretty kick-ass controls if you want to do some serious site blocking. Super handy for you small-office-users-without-a-full-time-IT-guy.
Give it a go. I’m sure you’ll find your Internet experience to be greatly improved.
It’s almost the New Year so I think now would be a good time to check in.
The Technology Challenge
You remember this from late ‘07, right?
And, while you are making your new years resolutions this year, pick someone close to you and introduce them to something new to use the internet for. If they got a digital camera for Christmas, help them with a flickr account. Show them how RSS works and help them set up a Google account. Introduce them to Podcasting. Show them the wonders of Craiglist. Anything. Just pick one and try to make it happen. It’s time these people find out that the web is more than email and banking!
How’d you do?
Wait! Before you tell me how well you did, let’s see if you can beat me.
- Mom got a new digital camera (like mine) and flickr account. Ok, so there are only 2 photos, but it’s there and I will be getting her to use it more this coming year.
- Mom is an MMS sending fool. Sounds and photos from her camera to anyone in her contacts list on her phone. Oh, and she is even emailing them to herself on her phone.
- Grandad is now rockin’ a hot new computer with Office ‘07 and Vista. Sure this counts. Have you seen the changes from XP to Vista? From Office 2K to ‘07? From Outlook Express to Windows Live Mail? I totally get credit for this.
- I got Jeannie to turn her new laptop on!
- I got someone to switch from Windows to Mac. Verified.
- Fireball Tim started a blog.
So, I think I did pretty good.
I believe that 2009 is going to be the year for RSS for my users. I thought it might be the year of Twitter, but I think I’m going to continue to keep that to myself. Besides, Mom gets really frustrated when trying to send a text message.
Ok, your turn. Belly up. How did you get your users to use technology? Or did you fail? It’s ok, you can tell us, we are all friends here. Besides, someone might have a suggestion to get you started!
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