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 :)

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..

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."

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....

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 ?

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....

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 ?

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.

Mobility for Lunch anyone ???

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

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

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

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 ????

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