Linux

Now that Mac OS’s Leopard is out, I figured I’d make a long overdue post about the new operating system in my life.

No, it’s not a Mac (as if the title didn’t give that away already).

A few weeks ago, I installed Linux Mint, a Linux “flavor” based on the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu. I’ve had a few weeks to try it out and I have a number of positive impressions:

1. Linux Mint works well. It’s not different enough from either Windows or Mac OS for any casual user (i.e. needs a word processor, web browser, and chat program and that’s it) to get confused. It is not sluggish, unlike Windows which runs at uneven paces for me. It’s very stable. It’s highly customizable. The eye candy engine (powered by Compiz Fusion which is demonstrated quite well in this video) works wonders, granting me my much-sought-after free clone of Mac OS’s expose feature and other great features without the hardware requirements needed for Vista’s eye candy. It is all together a well built operating system.
2. Linux is not a free version of Windows or Mac OS. Nor should it be, but a lot of people have the misconception that Linux is a “free” version of Windows. That is neither possible (due to Microsoft making various things proprietary), nor desirable. Nobody uses a Mac thinking that it’s just an improved version of Windows — it’s a drastically different system with its own advantages and disadvantages and its own “core design philosophy.” The same applies for Linux. While many distributions do try to emulate Mac and Windows functionality, at the end of the day, the goal behind Linux is not to make a free clone of another operating system slightly improved, but to make something radically different and, hopefully, much better. Whether they succeed or not is up to debate, but it would be a mistake to characterize Linux as purely a “free Windows” or a “free Mac OS”.
3. The success of Linux Mint and Ubuntu comes from their ability to make things work “out of the box”. This, to me, is the reason that distributions like Linux Mint and Ubuntu have been so successful. Ubuntu (Linux Mint’s “parent”) just worked. You could simply boot your computer with the LiveCD in the CD drive, and you could test the entire operating system without installing anything. Following a quick and painless installation, the system worked pretty well with your hardware devices, with playing media files, and with logging on to the internet. Linux Mint takes this usability to the next level — it is a natural dual-boot install candidate (something which many people, such as myself, do because they may need or want Windows for something else) as it has NTFS support built right in. Linux Mint also provides utilities to facilitate installing software, configuring wireless networking, and even setting up a control panel. A built in CUPS system makes it plug-and-play with a wide range of printers. Such quick operability makes Linux Mint an easy switch for people who don’t have the time or the desire to learn the ins and outs of making hardware work on a foreign operating system. And, if Linux people are serious about migrating people, this is the first thing they should focus their time on.

Of course, I also have a number of negative impressions, which I’ve divided into 5 things which are holding back Linux from being widely adopted:

1. Linux lacks native support for some hardware. On my Sony VAIO, the operating system was unable to control screen brightness (thankfully, a programmer affiliated with Linux Mint programmed a utility to fix that). This is a minor complaint, but given that currently only OLPC, Dell, and a handful of other vendors ship Linux with their computers, it means that Linux has the unenviable position of needing to be readily compatible with as many standard hardware setups as possible. It may be all right to force tech nerds and gaming geeks to program their own drivers for their own super graphics cards, but not being able to support an entire brand’s (albeit stupidly designed) brightness settings and my USB headset is an example of problems which may reduce adoption.
2. Linux lacks Microsoft Office. Everybody hates Microsoft Office to some degree or another. But nobody can deny (or if they can, they either have never worked in a business setting or are working for one of the various groups trying to replace Microsoft Office) that it’s a clear necessity on the computer given Microsoft’s dominance (Excel, Word, Powerpoint) in the document-space. Linux has a couple of open source “alternatives” such as AbiWord and OpenOffice, and while each program has its value, they are poor copies of Microsoft. They not only fail to duplicate many of the key functionality (case in point: I’ve never heard a banker rely on Gnumeric or OpenOffice’s Calc), but in their attempt to simultaneously emulate and surpass Microsoft’s product, they end up failing at both. If Linux programmers and open source advocates intend to be taken seriously, they must either create a product which can truly completely emulate Microsoft Office, or a radically better product which people will switch to of their own accord.
3. Open source has its limits. I was fairly suspicious of Open Source as a model of development when I first heard of Linux in junior high school. That suspicion has died down somewhat as I began using a good deal of open source software (e.g. Firefox, Sunbird, Launchy, Pidgin, etc.) It became clear that Open Source was very good at some things — such as patching up bugs and security holes, developing many and powerful features — but it was very bad at other things. With the exception of “corporate open source” groups (like Mozilla and Canonical), regularity of updates in open source projects is weak. The number of projects which have started out strong and just sputtered out due to loss of interest is very high. Lack of a central corporate focus also means that the purpose of the application is oftentimes lost by a wave of programmers demanding that their latest and greatest feature be added, even if it adds little value to the average user and merely delays release and increases the complexity of the code. These extra additions also invariably increase the complexity of the program’s UI, creating the oft-heard complaint that open source programs are not user-friendly. Linux can sometimes suffer from this problem — too many features, too difficult to understand how to use.
4. IRC/Forums are a horrible source of information for the average user. One benefit that Linux and Open Source supporters often tout is the strength of the community. However, because these supporters tend to be techies, by community they are referring to Internet relay chatrooms (IRC) or online forums. These forums are helpful for people who don’t mind getting into the nitty gritty of their operating systems, who know how to and are willing to re-install their programs or operating systems if necessary, and who have some technical background. They are not helpful to someone who is an average user, who has never used the command line, has no idea what a script is, etc. As a result, users who switch to Linux may stop using it, or may not want to switch at all as a result. This underscores the importance of making things work “out of the box” — frankly, the less Linux tech support that the user needs to deal with, the happier they will be.
5. Open Source fanatics. The “core philosophy” of Linux is one pertaining to “software freedom” — not simply freedom from having to pay for software, but being able to completely change and customize everything. This is a noble goal, in my mind. It adds a great deal of complexity and technical difficulty to the software and its usage, but I think it’s well worth it. However, some individuals have taken this philosophy to its extreme, to the point where its not simply about promoting “software freedom”, but to the point where any element which is not perfectly adherent to this philosophy is undesirable. As a result, many Linux distributions do not ship with basic applications which are now indispensable, such as Adobe’s Flash. This philosophical purity is absurd; if anything, preventing someone from using non-free software is itself restricting software freedom. Moreover, the grand truth behind most software users is that they don’t care about commitment to “software freedom” — the average user will not go out of his or her way to re-program any aspect of the operating system in an attempt to tweak it. The average user cares about using the operating system more than some abstract philosophy. If the Linux community intends to expand its market share, it will have to face this horrible truth.

So, all in all — Linux Mint and the open source community in general have produced remarkable products with great potential. But they have some serious design philosophy issues that they need to sort out if they intend to expand beyond the niche userbase that they currently have.

Anxious Complexity

How do you think the economy has been going the past couple of years? David Brooks and Marginal Revolution note that despite the fact that US economic growth has been fairly strong in recent years (ignoring the current credit market crisis) and that US income inequality is not only comparable to the reputedly more egalitarian European economies (and is in fact improving), there seems to be a general perception amongst the public that the US economic system is in shambles. While some of this can probably be attributed to the public falling out of favor with the Bush administration (and hence the years they’re associated with) and to misguided expectations that a strong economy would be like the late 1990s tech bubble, a big piece of this certainly pertains to anxiety from complexity.

While I am loathe to parrot the reactionary yearning for the “good ol’ simple days”, the truth is that the world we live in today is a brave new world very different from the one from only a few decades ago. Post-World War II America emerged as the uncontested military and economic power on the planet. Europe and Asia had no choice but to enrich America’s businesses and its people at little real risk to Americans. The tri-partite alliance between business, labor, and the government acted as a check against the extremes of socialism and of income inequality. The lack of the advanced telecommunications and infrastructure rendered cheap, long-distance, high-speed communication and transportation moot and hence kept everything local. You knew your neighbors. You all shopped at your neighborhood grocery store. You all read the same local newspaper, went to the same Church, had the same style homes and car, did the same type of job for many years in a row, etc. In short, simplicity was the name of the game.

Flash forward to the post-Cold War era. We now have more choices than most people know what to do with. You can choose between multiple major cell phone providers, in addition to niche players, in addition to the home phone service that you have on top of this new voice-over-IP thing. Each provider carries multiple plans each carrying pages of fine print which are intimidatingly incomprehensible — there are multiple phones to choose from with multiple, non-overlapping features — the phones also have multiple accessories that you can buy. And this is just talking about cell phone choice!

At their jobs, people now face an unprecedented degree of uncontrollable complexity. What once was a secure job protected by the triple alliance of business, labor, and government, has now been replaced by a system where all three members of that alliance have diminished in strength in the face of increased competition and complexity. Obstacles to career progression are no longer one’s colleagues and one’s boss, they are now the invisible millions in other cities, states, and countries each vying for top position. Detroit’s big three auto manufacturers have learned this the hard way — where once they could build and push new car models out at a leisurely pace and expect the consumers to buy whatever they sold, they are now facing the horror of an incomprehensibly (to them) efficient and high-quality Japanese auto industry. Labor, once able to make demands of a growing manufacturing sector, now find themselves choosing between the current economic well-being of their workers and the future competitiveness of their firm.

Increased globalization has led to much higher capital mobility and, as a side effect, much greater complexity in our lives. As late as the 1980s, mergers and acquisitions were rare and only executed by the largest of players acquiring moderate sized firms. The rise of hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity groups have changed this to the point where all but the largest of Fortune 500 companies are now accessible targets. This means that today’s employee is not only facing greater competition than ever before, but he/she is also facing the grim specter of being downsized by giant market forces that no layperson has any real understanding or control over. Three and four letter acronyms pertaining to arcane financial concepts now dictate the future of your job, not necessarily how well you got along with your boss or how hard you work. Gone are the personal relationships with your bank — these days your mortgage and bank accounts are in the hands of large institutions who see you as merely a cell in a spreadsheet.

Even things like healthcare have become increasingly complex. With fatalities from infectious diseases on the decline, the former “magic bullet” treatments (low side effects, high efficacy, rapid turnaround) such as penicillin are no longer the wonder treatments of healthcare productivity. Instead, because of modern antibiotics, humans now face diseases which cannot be truly treated, but only managed. This is a major improvement morally and medically from being completely unable to treat cancer and various viral infections, but the added complexity has added anxiety in terms of (1) avoiding the myriad risk factors for diseases where we don’t clearly comprehend the cause (cancer, heart disease, diabetes), (2) dealing with the stress and randomness which comes from being diagnosed with one of these conditions (e.g. you can be a lifelong smoker and not contract lung cancer, and you can be completely smoke-free and still get it), and (3) getting care (e.g. long periods of debilitating chemotherapy/watching what you eat for your whole life, etc).

On a foreign policy front, we see complexity has dramatically increased. No longer is the enemy of the United States clearly the Godless forces of Soviet and Chinese communism, the enemy today is a faceless group of terrorists. And, unlike the Communists, they do not all report to the Kremlin, they are decentralized, belong to different (and oftentimes conflicting) groups with different views and methods. The big threat is no longer the simple instant and massive destruction via nuclear bomb, but the potential destruction of a building, of infrastructure, of our comfort zone.

So yes, we have more money. The era of history which showed a reasonable chance of complete nuclear annihilation ended. We have more understanding. More choices. More power. But with it, we have so much complexity — no wonder people are anxious.

Blackberry + Facebook = End of Productivity

From Reuters:

RIM rolls out Facebook for BlackBerry

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd has launched Facebook software designed especially for its smartphones to make it easier for users to browse the popular social networking Web site.

T-Mobile USA has been chosen as the first carrier to provide the new software to its customers, RIM said on Wednesday.

The application will let users receive Facebook notifications and messages automatically and scroll through them quickly, just like the e-mail service for which the BlackBerry is already well known. Users can also read and compose messages even while off line, RIM said.

The feature that lets users upload photos to Facebook will also be integrated with the BlackBerry’s camera and photo management software, RIM said.

RIM has been expanding its offering of so-called “lifestyle applications” like games and multimedia in a bid to attract more retail users to the traditionally business-focused BlackBerry.

Business-wise, this is a smart move by both parties. RIM increases the “usefulness” (quotes are VERY sarcastic) of their device, and Facebook captures the wealthy demographic who own these devices (including the younger recent graduates who are both Facebook users and employed in high-paying professions).

Of course, I see this purely in terms of my productivity losses .

Forget Carbon Neutral, Go Cheat Neutral

I have recently been put in charge of identifying carbon offset options for our firm’s carbon neutral initiative. Consequently, I have been doing a lot of research on carbon offsetting in my spare time.

The basic idea behind Carbon Offsetting is that it is difficult to completely reduce one’s carbon footprint down to zero. So, instead of continuing to beat down the path of diminishing marginal return (less bang for your extra effort), Offsetting allows you to pay someone else to reduce their emissions by however much you have left to go before you get to zero.

This is a very interesting idea, and one which is particularly applicable on a corporate setting where some footprint must always happen (i.e. consultants flying to the client site). But, of course, there are at least 5 issues that offset purchasers should consider:

1. Verification – This is a major issue. As one can imagine this is very difficult to do. Nothing about Carbon Dioxide molecules makes it easily identifiable who “produced” which molecule (and if you’ve had a basic science class, the idea of the Carbon Cycle will also explain that such an idea is meaningless). There have been numerous cases of Carbon Offsets firms which have been revealed to be completely bogus. It’s thus important to find an offset provider who has been audited and accredited.
2. Type – Not all methods of offsetting are created equal. Convincing a factory to produce less does not have the same “good” impact that encouraging a local utility company to switch to solar or wind power has. The former reduces emissions. The latter reduces emissions and leads to a reduction in emissions in the future. When possible, offsets should preference those projects with greater “good” impact.
3. Locality – Despite China’s protests that clean emissions is too expensive for a developing country, the fact that the developing world lacks a good deal of the clean technology employed by richer countries makes emissions reduction in developing countries much cheaper than emissions reduction in the United States. Different offsetting firms will have different portfolios of projects in different sorts of countries with different types of emitters.
4. “Originality” – This is something that I’m not sure how to define or even call, but it is quite possibly a major issue. An “original” (for lack of a better term) carbon offset is an offset where you pay someone to not emit. An “unoriginal” offset is one where you pay someone who was already going to reduce his emissions, even without the payment, to go through with reduction. This is an issue, as it is essentially a waste of money and effort to encourage someone who was already willing to reduce their carbon footprint — from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, that money should have gone to an oil company or factory which did not intend to. This is an issue that I’m not sure can be solved except through diligence, but it is an issue to consider, nevertheless.
5. Moral – While there is a clear practicality benefit to Carbon Offsets, there is also a distinct moral issue. Harvard professor Michael Sandel noted that fees/offsets are morally distinct from outright bans and limits. The latter of which are a formal moral censure against the behavior (e.g. if you emit more than X tons of Carbon dioxide then you have done a moral wrong). The former of which is a light slap on the wrist (e.g. oh go ahead and emit X tons of Carbon dioxide, just pay a fee). I think in general one ought to side with practicality in an issue with as great of an impact as climate change, but there is a clear issue in that the availability of offsets is moral permission to pollute. One can imagine a “nightmare” scenario whereby a company actually increases its emissions and then purchases offsets which are not verified or well targeted or original.

In my research on Carbon Offsets, I uncovered a wonderful gem of a website:
http://www.cheatneutral.com/ which brilliantly extends the idea of offsetting carbon emissions to . . . offsetting cheating on your significant other!

Cheating causes heartbreak and anger. But, what if you could offset those negative emotions? What if you could, after reducing your cheating until you started facing seriously diminishing marginal returns, offset the heartbreak from the remaining cheating that you just can’t stop? What if you could pay people to stay single and couples to stay faithful? Now of course, you run into the five issues I just described which plague carbon emissions — but golly, you’d make the world a better place.

Cheat neutral: helping you because you can’t help yourself

Marriage Prediction Market

File this under the list of things which are probably practical but also somewhat offensive and not easily implementable but fun to discuss anyways — marriage futures.

Prediction markets allow the application of market forces to make general predictions. Take the example of the Bush v. Kerry election — InTrade allowed individuals to buy and sell what are essentially “shares” (in a stocks sense) of Bush or Kerry winning the election. The basic idea is that the stock will pay out $10 if Bush wins, and $0 if Kerry wins, but that the shares cost money to buy. Thanks to investors buying and selling, the price of the “share” will thus fluctuate depending on what the market thinks is the actual probability of Bush or Kerry winning. If it is priced at $5, then the market believes there’s a 50% chance that Bush will win. If it is priced at $9.90, then the market believes that there’s a 99% chance that Bush will win.

These markets have been applied by InTrade to make (fairly accurate) predictions on political events and have even been applied by companies such as Hewlett Packard to improve forecasting and product development.

A quick look will show that these can be applied to just about anything — maybe even predicting how long a marriage will last? I’m not quite sure how this would work — but the gist of the idea I got is that for a new couple about to get married, friends and loved ones would implement a prediction market, whereby an appreciating asset (say money in a bank, or a bond, or a stock or annuity or something) would pay off after 50 years or at the divorce proceeding. People would then buy/sell the asset. For simplicity’s sake, lets say the asset is currently worth $10, and will be appreciate by $1 every year. If the going price is $15, then the “market” believes the marriage will only last 5 years. If the going price is $40, then the market believes that the marriage will last 30 years.

Now if the market is run anonymously, then this would be an effective way to communicate to an engaged (or thinking about it) couple on what everyone believes is the prospects of their marriage without having to tell them on a personal basis. This can help inform friends/loved ones (how nice of a gift to buy) as well as the couple themselves (should they get married).

What becomes interesting are the theoretical implications — will people who are shorting try to sabotage the marriage? Will people who have them in the long haul try to force the couple to stay together?

Would anyone be dorky enough and have friends open enough to do this?

This is Why Sets are Hot

“This is why I’m hot. I’m hot ‘cos I’m fly, you ain’t ‘cos you not. This is why, this is why — this is why I’m hot.” — MIMS

Mindless lyrics? Yes. Got some lines reppin’ the West Coast? Yup. Really catchy for no apparent reason? Also yes. Excellent way to probe logical relationships using set notation? (hat tip to A. Chandrasekhar). Hell yeah.

The full set of diagrams and flow charts are at the link, but let’s highlight the analysis on the first verse (the one I’ve highlighted above):

The most amazing line in “This Is Why I’m Hot”—and, even at this early a juncture, quite possibly the most amazing line of any song to see release in 2007—is “I’m hot ’cause I’m fly/You ain’t ’cause you not.” Brutal and unassailable in its simplicity. Consider the reasoning, first, of just “I’m hot ’cause I’m fly”

 

Mims is hot because he’s fly. But it raises the question: Does being hot guarantee one’s being fly? “You ain’t ’cause you not” would seem to clear that up:

It would appear that fly and hot are interchangeable. If you are one, you are both; if you aren’t at least one, you are neither.

If you find completely overlapping Venn diagrams visually unhelpful, consider this tautology:

If that’s a bit pretentious, then maybe a blunt flowchart works best:

More wonderfully insightful (read: someone was bored and thought this would be amusing to do) goodies at the link.

One-way Ticket to Nowhere: Economy Class

“If you build it, they will come” is usually not a good piece of business strategy. Detroit’s big three auto manufacturers have learned this lesson many times (and seem destined to have to learn it many more times) as witnessed by the consistent failure of new models to grab the attention of the customer base.

But, in some cases, a product which nobody wants in one market, may be quite the hot commodity in another (from the Times Online):

AN INDIAN entrepreneur has given a new twist to the concept of low-cost airlines. The passengers boarding his Airbus 300 in Delhi do not expect to go anywhere because it never takes off.

All they want is the chance to know what it is like to sit on a plane, listen to announcements and be waited on by stewardesses bustling up and down the aisle.

In a country where 99% of the population have never experienced air travel, the “virtual journeys” of Bahadur Chand Gupta, a retired Indian Airlines engineer, have proved a roaring success.

As on an ordinary aircraft, customers buckle themselves in and watch a safety demonstration. But when they look out of the windows, the landscape never changes. Even if “Captain” Gupta wanted to get off the ground, the plane would not go far: it only has one wing and a large part of the tail is missing.

None of that bothers Gupta as he sits at the controls in his cockpit. His regular announcements include, “We will soon be passing through a zone of turbulence” and “We are about to begin our descent into Delhi.”

“Some of my passengers have crossed the country to get on this plane,” says Gupta, who charges about £2 each for passengers taking the “journey”.

The plane has no lighting and the lavatories are out of order. The air-conditioning is powered by a generator. Even so, about 40 passengers turn up each Saturday to queue for boarding cards.

Gupta bought the plane in 2003 from an insurance company. It was dismantled and then put together again in a southern suburb of Delhi. The Indian Airline logo on the fuselage has been replaced by the name Gupta.

Passengers are looked after by a crew of six, including Gupta’s wife, who goes up and down the aisle with her drinks trolley, serving meals in airline trays.

Some of the stewardesses hope to get jobs on proper planes one day and regard it as useful practice.

As for the passengers, they are too poor to afford a real airline ticket and most have only ever seen the interior of an aircraft in films.

“I see planes passing all day long over my roof,” Selim, a 40-year-old tyre mechanic was quoted as saying. “I had to try out the experience.”

Jasmine, a young teacher, had been longing to go on a plane. “It is much more beautiful than I ever imagined,” she said.

Wiki at Work

AT&T has finally repaired my internet connection, which means the blogging can resume! And the topic of course, is that which I had so little of at home these past six days, and probably a little too much at work…

Everyone, at some point or the other, is distracted at work. I’m willing to admit that on a few occasions, I have spend a few minutes here and there reading my Google Reader feeds (i.e. my noteworthy items feed) — but I challenge anyone to prove that they’ve never done something like check a random Wikipedia page or watch a YouTube video sent by their friend.

What I don’t do, of course, is spend an entire day blogging, cruising YouTube clips, or . . . editing Wikipedia pages. Why? Well, I like my job. That sentence can be interpreted from both the perspective that I enjoy what I’m doing and working with my team, but also from the perspective that I don’t want to lose said job either. And, I’m grateful that the firm does not particularly care about little pleasures so long as they are done in moderation and don’t interfere with the completion of work (like any sensible firm).

Apparently, not everyone shares my sentiments (hat tip to A. Phan):

Japan Officials Edited Wikipedia at Work

Japan’s Agriculture Ministry reprimanded six bureaucrats after an internal probe found they spent work hours contributing to Wikipedia on topics unrelated to farm issues — including 260 entries about cartoon robots.

The six civil servants together made 408 entries on the popular Web site encyclopedia from ministry computers since 2003, an official said Friday.

This next bit really gets me (disclosure: I’m a big Gundam fan)

One of the six focused solely on Gundam — the popular, long-running animated series about giant robots — to which he contributed 260 times. The series has spun off intricate toy robots popular among schoolchildren as well as adults known as “otaku” nerds.

And of course, the no-fun Minister of Agriculture had to note:

“The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam,” said ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura.

You heard it first, America, the Minister of Agriculture is not ACTUALLY in charge of designing big Gundams — as was commonly viewed by . . . apparently people working for said minister. I smell a cover-up…

The other five bureaucrats scolded for shirking their duties focused their contributions on movies, typographical mistakes on billboard signs and local politics, Shimomura said.

The ministry’s internal probe followed recent media allegations that a growing number of Japanese public servants were contributing to the Web encyclopedia, which anyone can edit, often to reflect their views.

The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry, Shimomura said.

NO WIKIPEDIA!?!? But . . . how ever will I have access to the collective wisdom of humanity!? Surely, Wikipedia is useful for something, Mr. Shimomura-san!

The ministry, however, did not object to their limited contributions on the World Trade Organization and free trade agreements.

Someone’s got his sights set on controlling Japanese trade policy. . . you sly devil, Mr. Shimomura-san. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.

Blackberry Cool, AT&T Sucks

Alas, I know that my faithful readership has been wondering why I haven’t been posting this past week. Due to a certain internet service provider, which we shall call AT&T, being completely unable to provide basic customer service, I have been unable to access the internet from home.

In the weeks to come, I am sure I will continue to rail about HOW AT&T’s SERVICE IS VERY POOR in my attempt to punish a COMPANY WITH VERY BAD SERVICE for screwing with me.

On the plus side, these past few days have made me much more adept at using my Blackberry. I’ve also just discovered the Blackberry’s ingenious Google Talk application which has reduced my sense of disconnect with the online world during this “trying” time.

Blackberry 101

Despite my protests to never become “one of those Blackberry owners”, I have, for the past three months, sadly and somewhat hypocritically, become a proud owner of a Blackberry Curve.

Isn’t she a beaut?

After three months of fairly heavy usage, I’ve compiled a list of 12 suggestions and impressions for people who are looking at making a purchase or wondering what the big deal about these devices is:

1. Get a good high-speed unlimited Internet wireless service. The Blackberry Curve is cool because it is one of the only Blackberry devices to have a camera. But, if all you wanted was a camera on your mobile device, you could’ve gotten any number of cell phones. What the Blackberry excels at is in email and Internet applications. Thus, unless you have a service that allows the Blackberry to do what it’s supposed to (mainly, email and Internet), then you shouldn’t even consider getting one of these. It’d be like buying a car but never intending to buy gasoline. 
2. Check with your firm (if this is for work) if they have a Blackberry Enterprise Server. If they are (which is probably the case if your firm uses specialized Microsoft Outlook features to handle email and scheduling), check with your firm’s tech group about which type of Blackberry service you need to purchase. Not listening to them will mean, at best, that your Blackberry device won’t be able to use some of the cooler features (i.e. scheduling meetings through Outlook), and at worse, it means your Blackberry might not work at all. Note also, that while many devices support some type of Blackberry service/software, most of these emulated Blackberrys can’t read from a Blackberry Enterprise Server.
3. Download Gmail’s Java Application. I assume you’re using gmail, because it’s the best, free web-email I’ve seen. If you’re not, go get gmail (for the reason, refer to the previous sentence). Then, go download the Gmail Java application which allows you to use the Gmail UI features (ie labels for email, organize mail by conversations, large space limit, forwarding at will, etc.) while accessing your gmail. If your job is going to be pinging you all day, then you might as well have access to your personal email while you’re at it.
4. To combine your Blackberry and your phone, or not to combine, that is the question. I personally don’t want to lug around two mobile devices wherever I go (assuming I only want to pay for one voice plan — which, I do, because I don’t want to pay for two completely separate phone lines for two separate yet overlapping purposes), so I bought the Blackberry and swapped out the SIM card from my old phone and popped it into my Blackberry. This meant that I didn’t get the new service plan discounts on my Blackberry purchase, but on the upside, I did not have to change my cell phone number or anything. The major downside to this is . . .
5. The Blackberry ties you to work. On the one hand, this has been a major time-saver for me and my team. I rarely turn on my work laptop on the weekends, now, because all the essential functions (checking email, firing replies, scheduling meetings/appointments) I can do from the Blackberry — and I can do any time and in any place that has phone service. On the other hand, especially because the device is the same as my phone and hence I don’t turn it off, I never get away from the email. This of course is mitigated by . . .
6. Turn the email notification off. For the first couple of months, I left the notification on — which meant that every time I got an email from the office, no matter what the hour (and I discovered that some workers send emails at the oddest hours), my phone would vibrate at me. It got to the point where I could feel my blood pressure rise and the stressed out “fight-or-flight’ feeling build up every time I heard the darned thing vibrate. Now that it’s off, I feel much better. But, don’t you miss out on emails that way? No, because . . .
7. You’ll check the Blackberry compulsively. I wouldn’t say that the device is necessarily addictive — although some people would disagree — if anything, I’d say it’s a godsend during boring interludes in conversations or when I’m riding a bus or a train and I have absolutely nothing to do. You just get in the habit of checking the device for no good reason. I’ve gone hours without looking at the device without any sense of withdrawal, of course addiction is partially genetic, and maybe I just lack the “easily addicted to small handheld smartphones” genetic makeup.
8. GPS? Some Blackberries these days come with a GPS device which makes the mapping programs (I use the Google Maps applet) much more useful and much cooler. For those devices that lack a built-in GPS, you can use the device’s Bluetooth system to connect to a nearby GPS device to feed your Blackberry your position information.
9. Buy a microSD expansion. These devices come with more or less no memory. If you plan to use any of the features at all (including downloading big attachments, using mobile Java applets like the Gmail and Google Maps ones I just described, using the camera, or using the music/movie player features) you’ll need more memory.
10. The device charges on USB. Very useful for charging when you have a laptop and laptop cable but didn’t bring the bulky Blackberry adaptor.
11. Consider how fat/clumsy your fingers are when you pick a device. I’m only partially joking here. Case in point: I really liked the Blackberry Pearl, the Blackberry’s general consumption model — it looked like a phone, was much smaller than the other models. Yet, it had two letters to a key, as opposed to the standard QWERTY keyboards that the other models had. That device, while cool-looking, was just not usable for me — and I have fairly small hands. I know people who say that it’s easy to get used to, but given that these smartphones already have tiny QWERTY keyboards, I feel strongly that if your fingers are large or maybe a little clumsy, that you avoid the Pearl and buy one of the QWERTY keyboard-bearing ones.
12. Most of you actually reading this will probably get a Bluetooth hands-free headset thing. You will look like a big dork with no life outside of work. You will probably be a big dork with no life outside of work. You have been warned.

Incidentally, if anyone’s wondering why these things are called Blackberry’s, from Wikipedia:

RIM settled on the name “BlackBerry” only after weeks of work by Lexicon Branding Inc., the Sausalito, California-based firm that named Intel Corp.’s Pentium microprocessor and Apple’s PowerBook. One of the naming experts at Lexicon thought the miniature buttons on RIM’s product looked “like the tiny seeds in a strawberry,” Lexicon founder David Placek says. “A linguist at the firm thought straw was too slow sounding. Someone else suggested blackberry. RIM went for it.”

The “Strawberry”, huh? I picture my curve, but in pink. . .