BB Geeks

There’s no reason to rehash the whole story, since it has been told in multiple ways by just about every news outlet and blog on the planet. AT&T has agreed to purchase T-Mobile, and while the deal faces regulatory scrutiny, we have little reason to believe it will fall through, especially given what T-Mobile gets if the deal fails. It will take a while, but soon enough everything will be under the AT&T umbrella. That is to say, wave goodbye to your current plans, T-Mobile users.

Read the rest of What BlackBerry users can expect from the AT&T T-Mobile merger…

In recent Fridays’ past, we looked at BerryReview’s history of RIM part one and history of RIM part 2. Today we look at the history from 2003 through 2005. During this time, RIM doubled their worldwide users, as they went from 2 million in 2004 to 4 million in 2005. It starts off with monochrome devices, but ends not only with full color but with a few half-QWERTY models. So give it a read, and thank goodness it’s Friday.

Read the rest of History of RIM, Part 3…

Sounds like Kevin is a bit excited about NHL-branded BlackBerry Storms headed for Bell. He’s Canadian, so I’ll give him a break. Yet I wonder, with baseball season starting in just a few weeks, why couldn’t Verizon pull a similar promotion for MLB? Americans love baseball like Canadians love hockey, so this could be a marriage that works. After the jump, a few details on the Bell NHL Storms, plus what I would do for MLB-branded versions.

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Yes, today we’re back with a leisurely Friday post. Last week we looked into BerryReview’s history of RIM. The first part was great, as Ronen uncovered aspects of BlackBerry that many of us did not know — like the BB 900 coming out before the 850, plus some more pre-Berry devices from RIM. Today we get the history part two, which begins at the turn of the millennium. It goes through 2002 and the release of the first Nextel BlackBerry. Incidentally, I got a first-hand look at one of those the other day. It’s a clunker, but all told it’s not too bad — well, it wouldn’t be too bad if it weren’t for that lousy antenna. So check it out and get caught up on your BlackBerry history.
Read the rest of The History of RIM, Part 2…

In the tradition of those Facebook 25 random things notes you’ve surely seen over the past few weeks, here’s one random thing about me: I believe there should be a standard four-day workweek. I’d stay an extra hour or two a night to get Fridays off. You might notice that on BBGeeks I tend to post lighter material on Fridays, including the BBGeekcast (coming up at 11 EST). Today, it’s a link to BerryReview, where Ronen is chronicling the history of RIM. It goes back further than our own history of the BlackBerry, touching on the company’s formation in 1984 and all of their pre-BlackBerry inventions. Check out the first part. It’s a great time waster for Friday.

Read the rest of Digging deep into the history of RIM…

I caught this article from Seeking Alpha, regarding rising tech stocks, including RIM. But that’s not the BlackBerry-related part from this article, though it is an interesting read. Rather, the author uses the following quote: “Modern consumers would eat pancakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner before they would get rid of their Blackberry.” So I got to thinking, I’m a geek for the BlackBerry, but would I really eat pancakes (I thought the joke was ramen?) rather than give up my BB?

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What isn’t there to like about WES? There are great people with great ideas about how we can better use or BlackBerry devices. Yeah, and the free drinks don’t hurt. Over the past two days, I’ve found myself going back to one place more than the rest: The demo theater. This is the place where a real geek can get his or her fix. Representatives from various companies are taking the stage to talk about and demonstrate their products and applications. And for the most part, it’s been very impressive.

Read the rest of WES 2008: I love the demo theater…

I love the flexible nature of the Internet. If this was a print publication, I wouldn’t have been able to mutate this topic so quickly. Anyway, in discussing articles for BBGeeks, we decided that GPS — that is, global positioning system — should be one of the topics we cover. And so we decided to talk about what you can do with GPS on your BlackBerry. I started on my own device, and immediately I realized something was afoot. Then I remembered a tidbit I had heard a while ago: Verizon sort of, um, cripples the GPS feature on its phones. That is, unless you pay them $10 per month, or $3 per use, for their VZNavigator. So right from the beginning, I was hampered. The idea was to start with the BlackBerry Maps program, which comes installed on new devices. But without the ability to explore the program myself, what was I to do?
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First I need to state that the below is an editorial. What that means is that the opinions expressed below are mine alone as a personal human being and are not the opinions of BBGeeks.com as a whole or its parent company.

With that out of the way, a few weeks ago, I noticed that Chris Butler had done a post asking if the BlackBerry rules your life via our Twitter feed. I then saw a post this week about how your BlackBerry can’t love you back that was referencing a post we did this summer about heightening BlackBerry addiction. And I think all of us have seen an article or two about how the BlackBerry is becoming commonplace – maybe too commonplace – and for some, at a price in their personal lives.
Read the rest of The BlackBerry, Your Personal Life and The Blurred Line…