Tag Archives: blackberry

End of the Blackberry World? I hope not.

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Photo courtesy of Fred Lum with the Globe and Mail.

Several years ago I got a Blackberry as a gift from a friend. I’ve been hooked ever since. I like the streamlined push email notification. I like the rugged business simplicity of it all. I the way it looks and the fact that it’s not too fancy. Finally, I like how its made by a Canadian company that’s funded a whole slew of enterprises around Waterloo in lower Ontario. When I recently got a new job and had the option of getting an iPhone or Blackberry, I chose the Blackberry. When it comes to sending and receiving email (a key function of my day to day job) – it’s still unbeatable.

I would know, as I’ve also got an iPhone. While sleek and great for digital media, when you get down to the core function of talk, text and email it just can’t compete. Ultimately, that’s the key thing for me in a business environment, not the latest Eat Street App. And don’t even get me started on the number of dropped calls my iPhone has made.

For a long time I only one voice among many when it came to praising the little handheld device. Blackberry was the darling of just about everyone. But these days its been tough times for Blackberry maker Research in Motion. After controversy around its security in the developing world, posting poor sales in successive quarters, the disappointing reception of its new operating system QNX and a recent global Smartphone outage, the stock price of RIM has dropped from over $60 a share in February last year to $23 per share. Many investors are calling for the replacement of the co-CEOs. Many businesses and organizations that make up the RIM ecosystem in Southern Ontario are in trouble.

But despite these challenges, all is not lost. As a recent Globe and Mail article recently pointed out, the business community still likes and uses Blackberries (even if we don’t hear about it that often). While many are using both an iPhone and Blackberry, the common factor seems to be an acknowledgement that when it comes to business needs and functions, Blackberry is still the best, no matter what the iWorld will have us believe.

While RIM has been knocked down to competing for #3 spot in the consumer SmartPhone world and is no longer the unrivaled Goliath when it came to mobile that they once were, they still have a niche. It’s worth remembering this and considering it the next time you need to purchase a new mobile device for work. Fancy gadgets and App-packed platforms are great, but not always best for getting the job done.

City Chase Training Guide – Get Prepared!

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This is the official Daily Gumboot, triple-tested, double-proof, training guide for the City Chase, the worlds largest urban adventure series. We’re really excited here at the Gumboot because we love adventure, and we love to play, and wouldn’t you know it City Chase brings together adventure in our western outpost of Vancouver, and supports Right to Play.

City Chase

Clue Sheet from Chicago 2010

Adventure is awesome, Vancouver is awesome, and Right to Play do awesome work in some of the most disadvantaged areas in the world. Mix it all together and you get City Chase.

If you want more background you’re best to jump over to the City Chase site and do some reading, then close that window and come right back here for your guide on how to best prepare to, uh, best the competition.

Urban

We’re rocking it at City Chase Vancouver, and like other City Chases, the City part is key. In this race you use only your feet, transit, a map, and if unlike me you actually don’t drop your cell down elevator shafts, a phone. This means you need to get used to navigating your city free of the cage that is a motorcar.

Bike – Getting out of a car and onto the streets by bicycle will help you discover shortcuts, hidden gems, and, unfortunately, some people who *ahem* cling to the notion that no underwear with short-shorts is cool. In all seriousness, you’ll learn more about your city, community, and how to get around it efficiently than you can ever hope to if you’re stuck in the car.

Plus, we can smile and say hello to each other on bikes, which is way cooler than cutting people other off racing for the next amber light.

Tourist – Pretend you’re from The Continent, and hit up your local tourism website. Make a little time in your day to vacation at home by checking out your local history, parks, and then find a good patio and people-watch.

Adventure

Right, so it’s an urban adventure series. That means you’ll need at least a little adventure gear. Here’s the Daily Gumboot recommended setup:

Adventure Shoes – To be worn on your feet, they’ll protect you from the elements, help you overcome the crazy challenges, and help gain you access to establishments with “no shoes, no shirt, no service” rules.

Adventure shirt – See adventure shoes, but this will be worn on your upper-body.

Adventure pants or Adventure pants-that-are-short – There’s a lot of debate going on out there about whether underwear are a necessity, I know this because I commute to work by bike and some dudes need to either wear underwear or longer pants-that-are-short. Regardless of your stance on skivvys, having something to cover you up is key to successful adventuring. They’re like shoes, but instead of protecting your feet they protect your dignity.

There you have it, you’ve touristed, biked, walked, sipped and supped at a great patio. You’re now healthier, happier, well-fed, perhaps just a little fuzzy thanks to the awesome local micro-brew you discovered at the great patio, and totally stoked to compete with the Daily Gumboot at the City Chase.

Oh yeah –  you’ve got a chance to win your registration too! Check out John’s post for the details, and we’ll see you out there adventuring!

City Chase the Daily Gumboot

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On Saturday (August 28, 2010), six members of the Daily Gumboot team will be participating in City Chase Vancouver. And it’s gonna be fun! Over the next few days, you will be hearing from members of our hopefully victorious crew about this Amazing-Race-like event and the myriad ways that it creates community. We’re excited to explore Vancouver in fun new ways, laugh at ourselves as we stumble over, around and through obstacles and, most importantly, we’re excited to do it all in our gumboots!

WIN AMAZING PRIZES!

If you know what City Chase is all about then I’ll cut to the, um, chase:

Email cpayne@citychase.com with “Daily Gumboot and City Chase” in the subject and receive a Promo-Code, which will give you a discount on your registration.

Speaking of prizes and registration, the Daily Gumboot is in possession of two free registrations! Now. You may or may not know that I am not only a fan of pirates, but that I’m also a certified Piratologist.

FOLLOW THE LINK If you want to win two free registrations (so, one team)

To summarize:

Eemail Chris Payne at cpayne@citychase.com with “Daily Gumboot and City Chase” in the subject to receive a discount Promo-Code; comment on a Daily Gumboot article involving pirates for a chance to win free registration.

Savvy?

CITY CHASE: WHAT WILL IT MAKE YOU DO?

So what if you don’t know anything about City Chase? Well, it’s a race that will get you out of your comfort zone and raise your potential in ways you never knew possible. Teams of two explore their city en route to tackling/solving/overcoming a bunch of hilarious and/or mind-bending and/or precarious and/or fleet-footed challenges, obstacles and problems. Using only public transit, their feet and their minds, hundreds of teams will be careening around Vancity this Saturday in hopes of best navigating the course and, if victorious, representing their community at the National Championships. You just need to ask yourself this question: what will City Chase make me do?

Let the chase begin! And let’s have fun with it!

- JCH

Blackberry World vs Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.

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This just in – the much of the Saudia Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are gunning for private blackberry information. And if they don’t get it, they’re threatening to cut all messenger services in their countries.

RIM is in negotiations as we speak. But even if successful, these negotiations could  jeopardize the growth of RIM, the Canada’s most important tech exporter. It could also set a horrible precedent, breaking the super-secure network to potentially hostile government scrutiny.

As negotiations progress the list of states who say they intend to review their policy and potentially add their name to the list of countries willing to cut down the blackberry community is growing.

In addition to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, India is in talks with the company over gaining access, and both Lebanon and Algeria, according to a newspaper report, are reviewing the situation and might soon also might join the list. India in particular has pointed to the casualties caused by the terrorist attack in 2008 in Mumbai and when militants used wireless phones to direct attacks. They say it all comes down to national security and want to be able to monitor Blackberry traffic.

But many feel there’s a lot more at stake than monitoring the wireless emails of select terrorists. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis’ summed it up in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

“Everything on the internet is encrypted. This is not a BlackBerry-only issue. If they can’t deal with the internet, they should shut it off.”

For Lazaridis such a move to monitor the electronic communications would significantly undermine the world’s e-commerce. The potential for abuse would be enormous and goes to the heart of what the internet is all about. Free access to information and communications of that information for all.

But Lazaridis and the RIM team aren’t the only one kicking up a fight on this one. While the Canadian government is coming down firmly on the side of RIM, more importantly, the issue has come to the attention of Hillary Clinton who’s already indicated an interest in hashing it out with any governments eager to get their hands on private data. Turns out business isn’t the only fan of the blackberry. They’re also been widely introduced to the US military. And when the US military is concerned, watch out.

Here’s hoping RIM will win these negotiations and stand firm. Else it’ll be a very slippery slope that most of us (with the exception of the police) probably don’t really want to go down.

To Douchebag, or Not to Douchebag?

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Editor’s Note: let’s face it, some people are just jerks/a$$holes/sharks/douchebags – and they exist in our neighbourhoods, classrooms, workplaces, families, and many other communities. Can, or should, we change them? Should all members of said communities be held to a higher, golden-rule-ish standard of kindness, inclusiveness and non-douchebagery? The question is discussed and debated below by superawesome Correspondents, Steve and Michelle. When you finish reading be sure to join the thread of commentary. Whether or not you pick a side is totally up to you. Thanks!

- John

Befriend a Douchebag Today!

By: Stephen Sloot – Special Guest Correspondent

Communities are chock-a-block with douchebags.  Spend an evening at your local pub/café/park and you’ll undoubtedly encounter a table of douchebags whose football-throwing-Hollister-clad-Diesel-reek so disrupts your table’s collective vibe that conversation turns to abrasive mocking of said douches.  Some of us (those who self-identify as non-douches; folks perhaps part of a food co-op, ultimate Frisbee team, or other things that White People Like) feel compelled to verbally tear apart this group, as though we were given special licence to vituperate the subculture without remorse.  This does not encourage togetherness (a mainspring of community).

Douchebags can play an important role in your community.  It’s unchallenging to see their negative impact on community fabric.  Yes, their presence is a continuation of a high school cliché, the early douche antagonizing innocent drama club or student council members. [see Freaks and Geeks, ep 01 – ep 18].   The fully-grown douchebag exists as the metaphoric canary of community health.  Their individual gravity codifies social structure, in fact.

Imagine for a moment that you and your special lady/man are walking down the street, maybe popping in to King of Dosas – a douchebag unmistakably buds in front of you in line.  You’re a nice guy/gal…you don’t want to say anything because it’d just create more trouble/work for you.  It’s best to be polite and stew.

Enter the anti-douche.  These are the people who are specially designed to aid social protocol.  They emerge from their otherwise gentile exteriors to out-douche the douche.

“Get the fuck out of line, douche,” the anti-douche will say.  And 4/5 times, the douche skulks to the back of the line, muttering something about a left-wing politics and a Prius.

Being part of a community is not choosing a circle of friends.  Douches belong whether we like it or not.  Labelling subcultures breeds tribalism, the antithesis of community.  Tempering the douche is the responsibility of all.  Let out your inner-douche every once in a while.

If we seek to eliminate the douche based on a learned set of behaviours we reduce ourselves to: “if you’re not like me, leave.”  The communities I want to live in, contribute to, they’re the communities that encourage constructive dialogue and concede that none of us are perfect, surface or in our safe enclave where everyone agrees.  Difference helps us become better people, creative folks with different solutions to complex problems within our communities.  Befriend a douchebag today!

For the sake of the community, bring out the antidouche!

By: Michelle Burtnyk

Do you like interacting with douchebags? Do you ever find yourself coming home at the end of a long day, fondly remembering your run-in with a douchebag: Man, I LOVED listening to that douchebag talk on his Blackberry to his buddy about how he was so much better looking that all the other guys at his gym, while holding up the grocery store line … that conversation was so interesting! Or, how many times do you come home from a party thinking how much more fun it was due to the high douchebag-antidouchebag ratio:You know, that party was awesome – I love how all those guys kept on hitting on my fiancé even though they knew we were engaged – they really know how to stir things up!

Don't let this happen to you - stand up to the Douche!

No, I didn’t think so. Nobody likes douchebags. Douchebags don’t even like douchebags. They’re obnoxious, arrogant, and think they’re better than everyone else. Luckily, most of the time they’re pretty easy to pick out – besides their dreadful attitudes and defective personalities, they usually sport pretty ridiculous outfits (stay tuned for Godfrey’s post on Douchebag fashion for top tips on picking out your resident douchebag).

Mr. Sloot would have one believe that douchebags belong whether we like it or not – and labeling a douche a douche leads to tribalism and a decline in community. I beg to differ. Imagine a community without douchebags … go ahead, it is possible! There would be less conflict, less tension, and less doucheyness in the air (due to the decline in Axe body spray sales, I believe). How is this douchebag-free community achievable, you ask? As mentioned, douchebags are pretty easy to spot. And, most douchebags are fairly cowardly, prone to skulking off once their inflated sense of self has been popped. Douchebags need to be confronted – it’s only in this way that they’ll realize their behaviour is unacceptable. While Mr. Sloot (in a somewhat douchey way) suggests we all let out our inner douche once in a while, I would suggest instead that it might be time for us all to look inside and let out our anti-douche.