Custom Search
No Clean Feed - Stop Internet Censorship in Australia

Thursday, December 20, 2007

NZ's 8830 WorldMode Edition



Excuse the crappy quality, was taken in reduced quality for MMS format...

As stated before I am just about to fly back from NZ after providing training for the Blackberry Helpdesk for Telecom NZ. The first device for corporate customers only at the moment, is the Blackberry 8830 WorldModel edition featuring access to both 800/1900 Mhz CDMA2000 and 900/1800 Mhz GSM/GPRS networks. I think this device is brilliant for Governnet and C level Clients and security personell, but I wish that RIM could have made available an 83XX WorldMode edition handset, as this would have been more appealing to the wider community. The pearl 2 that is due to be released early next year should be a breath of fresh air by then when Telecom NZ receives this device as it will be a long time between drinks by then :)

4.1 Service Pack 4 Maintenance Release 4

After hearing along the grape vine about installs with Exchange 2007 failing due to the public folder database not being created (as MS are fazing this out) this MR fix's this issue.... Not much else to report.... Bring on SP5 :)

Monday, December 17, 2007

I'm still here !!!

I'm just over in NZ training some Blackberry Administrators for my good friend NZ Geek Girl.

http://nzgeekgirl.wordpress.com/

... just listening to the BB Cool podcast and just found out that RIM has now launched an official Blackberry store in Michigan...

Will we ever see a dedicated Windows Mobile/Intellisync/Goodlink store ?

Doubt it..

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Scrubbing

One handy feature of the OS is the scrubbing after wiping feature.

RIM defines it as the following -

"the process of rewriting over memory to remove any residual unmapped data on the BlackBerry device. The scrubbing process could take up to several hours."

I am still trying to find out the exact details of scrubbing, as it is still a bit hazy, would love to post the exact method/mathematical formula/algorithm used.

I like this part -

"Note: Once scrubbing has been triggered, there is no way of stopping it. The process must be fully completed before the BlackBerry device may be used. Removing and reinserting the battery of the BlackBerry device will only start the scrubbing process again from the beginning.

The duration of the scrubbing process depends on factors such as the actual processor speed of the BlackBerry device, the amount of memory that it has, and the actual memory speed."

Thursday, November 22, 2007

RIM the Confusing :)

Q: How do I determine if an MR is a hotfix or a rollup?
A: The www.blackberry.com web site and Release Notes clearly identify the MR as either a hotfix or rollup

Taken from Here

I'm still a little bemused by it all....

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Mobility Man Enjoying Beer !

Well... he would be if he wasn't on standby waiting for his new child to arrive in this fine world.

Sporting a Mo, as we are all supposed to be as Movember is a great cause, since us blokes rarely visit the Doctor.

He has more on his site here

Aussie Media Coverage

Since my inbox was overflowing with emails surrounding this article, I thought i'd post here.

A few interesting comments around expected growth.

4.1.4 Maintainence Release 3

RIM seem to be pumping the fix's atm, when will the features arrive ?

Apparently sp5 is not due out until Feb 2008, check the RIM Lifecycle Page.

Remote Services

I recently had the pleasure of being asked to train up some of our NZ boys around Blackberry. Fun was had by all, esp. the Greek in the middle :P

Mark had brought something to my attention whilst doing a remote router service install and noted that the usual registry entry change needed for remote services was already enabled.

It seems the remote service's are now crying out for mummy when installed, thus enabling it automatically.

Nifty idea ... but can this be exploited somehow ?

Monday, November 5, 2007

Wireless reconcile

when switched off does not perform to 100% after a period of time.

I don't know why

BES logs are clean.

Not happy

Hopefully fixed in 5.0

Media on the 8310

Enable mass storage mode and smash some tunes on the card and rock away puppy!

this Business phone goes great comparably in regards to music playback.

Playing music for an hour at full ball with medium sized JVC headphones , the battery hardly goes down at all!!!

comparable to an i-pod i would say... 10 hours or more would drain the battery i estimate.

I was very supprised by the amount of performance from a business phone... i am happy to say that it out preforms a nokia in regards to playback.

very sharp.

8/10 only because the play is very basic.

stops in between songs.
stops when unlocking device etc....

Holiday fun and the Blackberry 8310!

Hi All,

A couple of weeks have flown by, to the lack of mentioning my annual leave from the grind :(

never the less, i managed to fully test out the Vodafone GPS Application on 3rd Service pack release for the whole trip - from Wollongong to the Gold Coast.

So much to say, so little time, lol.

1st point - it got me there
2nd point - questionable
3rd point - it improved
4th point - i needed it bigtime and it didnt fail

it worked well, although it's routes were questionable it still got me there. The VF product is supposed to be up to date but i did find on a few remote occasions that the map didn't know where i was ?? i.e on newly built bypass's etc.

1 thing i don't like is the lack of which town i am in now ?

when you are driving a long way and someone calls you would like to tell them where you are Vodafone !

anyway..... ill elaborate later.........

the Holiday was great... i had a great time and if it wasn't for my Blackberry's long battery life and reliability i would have had a poor experience.

more to follow....

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

BES 4.1.4 MR2

Maintainence Release Two - RIM actually have in brackets (Hotfix), must be the new RIM naming convention requirements that we no longer refer to these "patch's" as Hotfix's.

What can I say ?

Smooth install... nice and easy... you end up with a nice little version number of 4.1.4.15

Did someone mention service pack 5 ???

Should be getting my grubby little hands on the above mentioned soon... will be providing a nice indepth review when i do.

Has anyone managed to get service pack 5 yet ?

Monday, October 1, 2007

Vodafone Compass Part 2

After the recent updates to compass the software has become more usable. Takes a while to get used to it still. Whilst on the long weekend here in Oz, I decided to give it a a good run in the car on the way to Sydney airport and back to wollongong. The device handled it well.... seems to be getting up there in the likes of tomtom etc.... it really sucks the battery, with only 30 minutes of usage burning up half the phones battery, that's including the constant connection to the BES, receiving email and phone calls....etc..
The screen was pretty hot after 10 minutes so I guess this is the reason why. A car charger is definately mandatory for this operation.
The gps even in a car door pocket managed to find about 8 satellites and was about 3 meteres acurate the whole way, so it said.
Looks good so far, can't wait for the October update.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Mobility for Lunch anyone ???

Craig Pringle has put together a notion about chatting about Mobility...

I'll be attending .... here's the link

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Symantec Vision 2007

I had the please of attending the Symantec Security conference last week... nice bag and some nice food and a few beers aswell :)

The speakers were well versed, with some nice unqualified comments coming out of it.

Mobiles outship PC's at a rate of 5:1. - Well ... this is a silly comment becuase we aren't exactly comparing apples to apples are we ?

We all know the threats are real and where the "New Enpoint" is in todays age.

I found it interesting that Blackberry was an official sponsor but they didn't off a product for Blackberry due to the following comment made :- "Blackberry doesn't open it's code up enough for us to provide access for us to write something to protect it" or something along those lines....

Maybe that's why it is so secure ?

Are symantec that nieve ?

They weren't even ranting about a windows mobile 6 release of there mobile AV solution.

I also found it funny that all the solutuions mentioned through the windows mobiles security suite are standard and have been standard with the Blackberry solution for years.

i.e Firewall on the client?

wow... i wish i had that in 2004... oh wait, i had a Blackber !




Symantec will see the coming of releases between symbian and windows mobile
Mobiles outship pc's 5:1
Smartphone growth 77%
Mobiles 27% growth
Mobile. Devices viruses have doubled every 6 months since 2004
80% of companies have devices on their netework but 5 and 10 percent have secure devices on their network.
Allowing to be used but not thinking about security.
Treat them as a computer
Far more connectivity
Left unprotected thew represent by far the weakest link on the entwork
All smartphones
Attacks now for financial gain
30 of top 50 exposed user data
Mobiles becoming payment methods
Becoming digital wallets and identities
Snoopware
If a phone is always with you its akways at risk
70% use their mobiles as alarm clocks
Mobile security suite 5.0 for windows mobile
over the air management is critical for devices
Anti sms spam
Whitelist blacklist
Loss mitigation
Security settings
Define card policy
Phone feature control
Vpn compatible with cisco or nortel
Allows control for nac
Verification of all nac rules and adhered to before allowing
Enterprise management
Move to versiion 11
Firewall event chart
Symbian security
Planning for smartphone usage
Sensitivity on controlling the phone
No mindset that there is a risk of anything on their device
Are we using a smart device
Rember how much time and money we spend on keeping the information secure in the data centre, we need to be the same as the phones.
Blance of education.
Roll out in stages
Make data phones as part of the end point
FIrst thing to do is to put av on the device
Protect data and protect it when lost
Match response to risk
15% smartphone deployment globally
Acceptance of the user
Make part of pc community
Bring into a simgle management console
Hackers are clearly making there way into devices
one console
Think of security as an enabler
Rpregnell@symantec.com

Friday, September 14, 2007

Service Pack 4 good bad ?

After 3 Months of the Service Pack "in service" .... lol I have been please to say that it has been a roaring success. The addition of lots of cool insites into the future of the Blackberry solution aswell as some current functionality increases makes the move very worthwhile.

We can all sit there and go throug the release notes and we'll feel like we know what a service pack does. Truth is, you need to get amongst it as any BESAdmin will tell you that SP4 is a far cry from 4.1.0.

Symantec's Thoughts on Mobile Security

I recently attended the Symantec Vision 2007 conference in Sydney on Wednesday.... needless to say I learnt alot. Symantec are obviously partners on the Mobile Scene with Windows Mobile, even though all their marketing at the event was around Blackberry and their 8310 Curve. The reason I drew this conclusion was dues to a speach made by their Mobile Specialist. He went about the security features surrounding Symantec's mobile product version 5.0. The features that were listed were very good, infact so good that they actually were what Blackberry has had for a number of years. A question was asked if Mobile 6.0 was supported and apparently not until the end of the year.

Question: How can Symantec preach "the endpoint is the user" when they aren't supporting Mobile 6.0 for months after it has been released ?

Once again, the TCO of a Windows Mobile fleet is even more expanded due to the licencing of the Security features.

Besides this, I did gain a terrible lot out of Symantecs Sales Sessions and I still regard Symantec as the leading brand in Security (whether I agree with them or not)

I think they gave Blackberry a silent "plug" by announcing that the reason they don't make Anti-Virus SW for the Blackberry Devices was because they haven't openned up the OS Code for developers to be able to write SW for their operating systems.

Could this be why there are no eligble virii in the wild atm ??

My gut says yes.

Although ... one to ponder....

New Site for Blackberry ???

http://www.blackberry.com/

seems to have reinvented itself, yet again....

I wonder what for ????

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Vodafone Compass

Had the pleasure of toying around with the New Vodafone Compass product made by Yapp Software in Sydney today.
The first release looks exactly that "first release" not very impressed so far, was shaping up to be good, icons look good on the 8310, the download process was nice looking and worked well, but the actual program is very user "un friendly".
The product looks very promising, but very infant and I doubt that it was properly tested for user acceptance and usability before being released.
Word on the wire is there is going to be a big release of this in the coming weeks, watch the Vodafone AU space.
The software uses the live.vodafone.com.au APN and VF Australia have kindly made the page worth zero vaule. Since Data from the live APN is free the Compass service is free :) until December first so get in quick peoples !!!
Apparently there is going to be a monthly update program which i am pleased to hear but these things tend to go no where so i'll wait and see if the proof is in the pudding.
The whole voice telling you where to go is neccesity for mobility these days and it's great that it's using the streamin technology and not stored "old" map data.

http://www.vodafone.com.au/Business/BusinessSolutions/VodafoneCompass/index.htm

Duress Notification Policy thumbs up !!

Has anyone implemented this policy in their organisation ?

It brought a smirk to my face when I first saw this puppy as it just goes to show the level of depth and thought that has gone into perfecting the whole solution, aswell as showing that RIM actually responds very well to feedback from their customers.

I'll be posting a service pack for Eval on here soon... my SP3 one is on the forums.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Oh Little Johnny, you have redeemed yourself...

Our beloved prime minister made one of the best jokes I have heard him say (and let me tell you he doesn't make many good ones)

Warren Smith to Prime Minister John Howard @ the Dally M Medal Award's

It went a little something like this (don't quote me :) )

WS - So, I hear theres a little meeting happening in town
JH - Yes there sure is
WS - I also hear that president bush is in town tonight
JH - Yes he is, he was supposed to of landed 15 minutes ago..... I knew that the NRL Dally M's were on so I sent the treasurer to Greet him...... gotta have your priorities right you know !!!
WS and Crowd and myself laugh loudly.

Gotta Say good call PM !!!


Also, well done to Johnathon Thurston - Well Deserved !!!

Darwin Theory of Evolution

BG and BBCool mentioned the other day on their podcast interview (see earlier post) that the Blackberry's released since the 8700 have all been "redesigned 8700's". I do agree somewhat, but not in a bad way, here's why....

The Motorola V3 Razr ...... now in it's 4th year ??? or something like that .... the Razr pretty much inherited the OS from previous phones from Motorola making the OS run for a very long time. Same can be said for the Nokia 1000 series phones.

If something works why change it , just enhance it!?

Blackberry and Beer !!!

Now that I have your attention .....

If you are like myself and love the odd/regular drop of the ultimate pure golden nectar itself known as Beer, you would have ecstatically peeled your eyeballs back and near licked the screen clean with the salivation on the thought of CnH2n+1OH mixed with our beloved Black Fruit.

I know I did !

As it turns out it was just a crappy article on some news site, forget which one, stating that a beer company was using blackberry to get the freshest results, blah blah blah, it did get my heart racing for some stupid reason, but I was let down considerably. I don't know what I was expecting but I know it wasn't that.

New site not for a while ....

Godaddy quickblog service is not for the technically minded such as myself ;)

will pursue but will be a while....

anyway, back to it for now.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Lee Williams' Blog

As promised, here is Lee's "all things mobility" blog ....

Bound to be full of in-depth knowledge surrounding mobility, I look forward to the post's ahead.

The HTC Kaiser seems to be catching my attention, a first for Windows Mobile devices.

Here it is...

www.leew.info

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Blog is moving ...

Yes , no post's due to working on the new site (hosting wise)

will be up in the not too distant future....

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Mr System Manager doesn't like Mr R2 (apparently)

Is it just me or does Windows Server 2003 R2 (MMC 3.0) seem to have issues around Exchange System Manager ?

I came across this issue on friday where the DLL seemed to not register correctly thus rendering the MMC 3.0 console not knowing what to with the snap-in.

On a quick scavenge of the internet (as I only had 10 minutes at the time) I found similar instances of this issue.

I can't understand why Microsoft would and does continually do stuff like this. Windows is big, right... Exchange is big, right.... you would atleast make sure (and spend a few more days testing) that these two core products would work well together before a release.

BTW heres the spec's
Windows Server 2003 R2 with all latest Windows Updates and Exchange System Manager (6.944) - snap in failed.

No errors in the Windows System or Application event log's either, strange.

A re-install fixed it.

Why it worked? I do not know.

Side Note - I know it's not Blackberry "per say" but it's a BES requirement, thought i'd rant!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Boygenuis talking to Blackberry Cool Continued...

Very interesting podcast. I was not expecting what I heard, I had always assumed that BGR and BBC were of a more technical background. I think I would say, slightly dissapointed. There are a few points that came out of Part 1 of the the Twin sessions but I left my notepad on my desk at work. From what I can remember there was a whole 8800 vs 8300 vs 8310 discussion contained within the conversation that was about how all 3 devices are extremely similar. There not!
Point 1 - the 8800 has the best battery life out of any smartphone on the market, source unknown on that one, will seek qualificatoin.
Point 2 - the 8800 has in built GPS but not camera but long battery life. the 8300 has GPS but a camera, the 8310 has GPS and has a camera. They are in a range for what features you need most.
BES/OS 5.0 Information was a letdown hopefully it is revisited next post.
1 thing that stood out was there massive comparrison to the iPhone. Australia is yet to experience this and I hope that it is an over rated phenomenon, since BGR and BBC were convinced the iPhone is a competitor to Blackeberry.
On a side note, Windows Mobile didn't even come into conversation throughout the interview, maybe only in passing comment but it really showed us Australian's an insite into the US/Canada mobile data market space.
I was reassured when BGR said that Blackberry wins hands down in the enterprise environment, confirming what I already thought for the US market.
I am even more keen now to find out about the road map for the Blackberry future as they definately hold there cards close to their chests.

Quote from the podcast "steve job just has these massive medicine balls..."

more to follow.....

Boygenuis talking to Blackberry Cool

Since I am an avid fan of both the above mentioned I thought I would encourage people to listen to this rare podcast from BBC. Very very informative ... heres the link ...

http://blackberrycool.com/2007/08/22/005426/

I'm still listening to it, comments to come...

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Office Communications Server 2007

At present I am currently testing the new released (is it released yet ?) Office Communication Server 2007 capabilities for Blackberry. Nothing to report yet... but it does look promising. I have a vision of getting an inhouse dev to provide an app that will provide Ocs2007 functionality to the palm of your hand, which leads me to my next though...
Why have Blackbery been so late into introducing higher speed devices into the GPRS market ?
They had a stab at it with the 8707 but WCDMA proved to be not all that it was cracked up to be.
For Australia to move forward in the market an HSDPA (or next generation, lol) device is needed, hence Telstra's enthusiasm to be the first in the world with the fastest device.
I can't see the average organisation utilising the faster speeds with how the Blackberry works but I can see the largest enterprises utilising this eventually. Not for a few years yet ;-) Did someone mentin next BES ?

How To: Disable Email Delivery in 4.1.1

One of the most frustrating problems I have had ever finally was solved last week.

The Problem: To NOT recieve email's on a Blackberry Device.

The Solution: Seemed extremely straight forward, disabled from the handheld but to no avail, disabled email reconciliation and still failed, firewall still failed. This puzzled me to no end. Log's showing messages being delivered to device so for some reason the changes weren't being recognised by the BES. Here is how I eventually fixed it....

1. Remove check box's from the folders to be redirected
2. Create a special IT policy that disables wireless reconcile
3. Disable sync in properties of user on the BES
4. Wait for a couple of minutes for config to update device
5. Change back to default IT policy and enable Synch.

Seemed a little strange to me but that was the only way I could figure it out. For some reason the clients solution was intent on NOT getting email out to those devices.

Good to know that trying to break the solution is hard :P

I think the RIM developement team mustn't have had much feedback on this component of the SDLC, lol.

Ancient Hisotry

About 2 years ago around when Service Pack 2 for Exchange was coming about I was shown some documentation around the Windows Mobile architecture for Direct Push. One thing stood out and one that I found amazing was the amount of Data consumed by a Windows Mobile device just to keep the connection alive. 2 years ago it was around the 2c per kilobyte figure and having Exchange Active Sync enabled on the devices over a Month would rack up an aproximate bill of 15mb! @ the before mention price equals $50.00 without any email! This astounded me as Blackberry on the lowest plan only needed 1mb of Data at the time in Australia.

How is it that one solution without email needs 15 times the amount of data than a solution with email?

It makes me wonder where else the fat is going.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

First things first....

Blackberry just works.

Period.....

To sell Blackberry is very easy these days due to the above statement.

You might find that's a pretty weird way to start out a newly created Blog specifically to do with ideas surrounding the Blackerry World and the Mobility workspace it plays in, but that's me.

Who is me ? you might ask ....

A self confessed Blackberry NUT ! Yes that's right, i'm very into Blackberry more so from the Technology point of view and how the whole Solution has captivated/captured the market.

I live in Wollongong and work in Sydney for an ICT Solutions provider in Australia called Gen-i who are part of the Telecom Group of NewZealand (AAPT and Powertel are also owned by them).

I have been directly involved in Blackberry since 2004 providing Blackberry Consulting services for 2 of the 3 Carriers in Australia up until this year where I joined Gen-i/AAPT in January.

I work closely with my colleagues Lee Williams (All things Mobility Guru) and Craig Pringle - Tablet MVP and Messaging and Collaboration Guru (http://www.pringle.net.nz) and the IT Infrastructure team in the Mobility Space where I am known to them as the "blackberryman".

I have been a member on Blackberry forums (under an alias) since early 2005 and would like to do my first plug for them as the community there is absolutely fantastic, although at times can be inundated with BESAdmins on panic alert .... Ill save that for another post.

Secondly, one of my Goals of this Blog is to not turn this into a marketing page. I could slap a few domain names in here as examples of a non thinkers blog, but i'll be patient and conserve my energy for other areas.

Thirdly, suggestions are noted well. Like I said, this blog is about ideas around Blackberry and that's the way i'm going to keep it.

That's it for now... tomorrow is Blackberry Blogging day.....

"At 3am last night I got this important email, damn I hate my Blackberry" - positive negativity