Barack Obama - Special Package ???

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24951266-5012572,00.html?referrer=email

Referring to the above link...

As the article states, the US President has allegedly received a " "super encryption package" custom-built by the National Security Agency. ".

Someone like myself is intrigued by this as with a device that is straight out of your local Blackberry store you have the ability in conjunction with a BES to use AES 256 bit encryption of the data in transit aswell as the data on the device and/or memory card. On top of this you can use certificate based authentication aswell a secure mime. You can alos use your favourite VPN with a token and use a swipe card reader aswell. You can also change your key store password any time you like if you feel it is has been comprimised (so slim of a chance), also firewall for random messages and unwanted services and default application permissions, just incase this gets into a bit of trouble some how, secure encrypted carrier phone calls, not to mention the total control from the BES using a private peer to peer encryption key and minimising password attemps, compelxity requirements, disabling non essential blackberry services, duress notification, wipe on holstering etc... the list goes on ........

Now my math is pretty good, but to do the math on the above I can only imagine the amount of time needed for the best spec PC to allow someone to hack into an Obama layer cake like this.

My predication is that there is actually nothing special besides what I have mentioned, out of the box delivered by the Blackberry that the National Security Agency has done.

I can only imagine that there has been an application on there that has been placed to provide challenge questions periodically or the like, to ensure it is actually the president using the device... or something of the like.

I think an internal attack from within the network is more likely than someone wirelessly launching an attack on Obamas baby blackberry, but, it's about getting stolen I would say.

Anyway, that's my Two Cents.

Interim Security Update 2

Has been released.

Word of note, is that when you apply it to an early service pack, i.e. sp3 and upgrdae to say, sp5 you will have to reapply the patch again, sounds obvious, but i'm sure a ton of BESAdmins will forget to do this simple thing.

Back from the dead...

It's been a while, as I have been on two months Holdidays :)

But i'm back and better this year.

4.7 Install - End User License

One little addition to the usual boring install of 4.7 is this little puppy.

Administrative Puposes ? or is this for other sinister uses ???

after running through the boring install hundreds of times over the years, the EULA was always the same until this showed up and why it was made so prominent i don't understand.

No Clean Feed Support

Although not Blackberry Specifically related, I thought this is one thing that could effect Mobility Devices in general and that is internet filtering. Latency and throughput is already slow enough, now the Government wants to slow mobile devices down further.

So i've added the nocleanfeed link up the top.

Fingers crossed this is immediately knocked back in parliament asap....

Exam Day Number 2 :)

I am now a Blackberry Certified Solution Designer :)

Now all I have to wait for is the Certified Trainer Exam and that will be a pip :)

Exam Day :)

A Good day today.

Now I am officially a Blackberry Certified System Administrator

Now for the Solution Designer Exam Next Week :)

Highly Recommend this Interview with Senior Product Marketing Manger from RIM

CLICK HERE

Quotes of the session -

"The convergence of four screens - TV, Home PC, Work PC, and Blackberry"

"Disruption"

The one and only Bold

Well, here I am, sitting @ Stanwell Park, enjoying the view.

I thought, i'll make a phone call to my wife, so I get out the Bold, and the headphones that come with the bold since I have not used them, and begin to make a call and to my frustration theses stupid suction based earphones were unusable!!!

The headphones are rubbish RIM !!! Why did you go and re-invent the wheel ????????

Highly highly annoying.

They keep falling out and there is absolutely no bass and that kind of chord is frustrating as it has friction on your clothes and is hard to move around.

Well all as I can say, since I have been using the Bold for a while now is that the only thing I can complain about the Bold is infact not even technically part of the Bold.

The Bold lives up to all the reviews scattered accross the Net. I'll have to disagree with the fragile'ness of the device as I am finding it very similar to the Curve, fingeres crossed.

The screen is freakishly amazing. iPodone's screen quality is no match.

I probably use my device Half/Half as I travel 2.5hours each way every day to work and including wekends for Business/Recreation and I am finding this device has two distinct cores that have been meshed into one perfect blend of an Enterprise Consumer device.

If RIM don't sell millions of these puppy's then the order of the universe has been adjusted and i'm not writing this!

Battery life is true, hardcore using and abusing of all features on this device with only 1 initial charge from out of the box gave me 8 hours and 50% battery level left, once you have had it for longer it starts to be 2 full days of hardcore business and recreational (awake hours) use, so you don't even worry about the battery running flat that day if you charged it fully before you left no matter what you have on.


WIFI - What can I say ? this device with it's 624Mhz processor was build for WiFi, sending emails, IM'ing, Webbrowsing, felt like the only bottleneck was my ISP! the device even has quicker communication arrows and that was @ 48mbps.

It seemlessly cuts over from Cellular to Wifi and initiates that 443 connection effortlessly and quickly without any user action once setup.

Now wheres that UMA client?????? and why can't we use it in Australia ??????????

Media upgrade was evolution and is a definate compeditor for other media devices in the consumer space, video is seemless getting atleast 32fps without flicker. Audio is outstanding.

Great job RIM, well done, EXCEPT THE FREAKING EARPHONES!!!!

Hopefully I will resist the urge to come in and edit this and make it into 50 pages as I have fallen in love.

a quote that rings true, "Once you go Bold, there's NO going Back!"

Exchange, Groupwise and Lotus Domino

Has there ever been a comparison between the three for BES ?

In the coming weeks I will be doing a direct comparison between all three environment for BES and to find out which service wins the speed race.

Of course it will be fair as all results will be quantitive and not objective.

Internal BES competition. Why compare other Mobility Servers when there has yet to be a true competitor ?

will keep you posted....

Official Proof of the Kickstart Flip Phone(s) ? :)

There are multiple references to the Flip phone(s) in the Policy Reference Guide for 4.1.6....

Seems all the rumours were true.

Heres an extract of one mention....

Force Memory Clean When Closed IT policy rule
Description
This rule specifies whether BlackBerry® 8220 and BlackBerry® 8210 smartphones run the memory cleaner application when
the flip is closed.
Default setting
The default setting is False.
Minimum requirements
• Java® based BlackBerry 8220 device
• Java based BlackBerry 8210 device
• BlackBerry® Device Software Version 4.6
• BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Version 4.1 SP6

Guest Blogger @ Blackberryforums.com

Throughout the years, i have posted, replied, mentioned and blogged a fair bit about Blackberry, now it has led me to the Mothership of Blackberry Socialites, the Blackberry Forums.

I'm now a Guest Blogger for Blackberry News dot com :)


Look out for my postings.... if your smart :)



P.S. they pay good :)

HTML Email at Long Last !!!

Thankfully, over the weekend, RIM upgraded there Asia Pacific BIS Servers to 2.5, thus allowing HTML Email and a whole host of other features.

I say it's fantastic, give it a go.

I have HTML email running on our 4.5 BES but I guess i'll have to wait for corp IT to upgrade to 5.0 or the Hack, to get my BES emails in HTML.

One more box ticked on the Microsoft Push solution, couple that with the Bold then I really cannot see 1 particular advantage over Blackberry Microsoft has.

I plead with you all to write a comment and tell me just one ?


----

EDIT - SP6 is released! Let the HTML Email FLooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow!!!

1.2%

A significant mention must goto SMH for this article, as I don't normally comment on articles I felt i had to since it is one of the best that I have seen from an Australian Media outlet.....

http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/where-to-now-for-the-blackberry/2008/05/19/1211182701198.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

The killer line's from the whole document which pleases me immensly is the following:

"International consultancy firm Nomura estimates that of the 600 million-700 million corporate email accounts around the world, only a tiny 1.2% have been "mobilised" to date.

"There's 1.2 billion cell phones sold every year. This is a huge market that isn't anywhere near saturation level. I think right now there's lots of room for all of us," says Mr Lazaridis."

Something tells me Wireless Data is the place to be :-)

4.5 Device OS

I have it i installed on my corporate device (will install it in the lab tomorrow), way too many features to blog about right now, very tired....

1 feature which really stands out is the browser!!!

very very impressed.

Watch this space.

------

First Impressions.... they have gone into separating data, moving away from the traditional "loads of information" in one streaming data list for just about every application on the device. Looks good. Having a problem with some themes ATM, unable to lock the 8310 with the alt-enter combination from the Home screen, not the applicahtion screen. Have to have the localisation service on to shift-space and then it works, if you turn it off it stops working.
The equaliser is not always there in the media player, I was doing a demo to a work collegue and all of a sudden the EQ vanished! At this point in time I migh point out that I am using version 4.5.0.10. The Browser is getting there... it is rendering pages pretty close to the PC level now. The HTML email handy and a natural progression. In all... the Bold with the increased CPU speed and HSPDA capabilities will make this device a powerhouse for Blackberry again. The feel of the new OS is fantastic and you just get a sense that everything just works. Can't wait for that BOLD !!!

on a possible negative note...
How will the Battery go ?
Will it stoop down to the Windows Mobile Powered device levels and last for 3 hours ?

I think @ worst it will have the battery life of the 8310. It's going to be interesting to see how they switch between the 3 DATA Transports (GPRS/3G/HSDPA).

One theory of mine is that it will stay on GPRS just as normal and in true Blackberry Style it will connect to the 3G/HSDPA Network as needed, meaning the battery life is going to be huge!!

Wifi connectivity is nothing new, looking forward to the UMA ideas that are finally going to be floated around in Australia.

/me is off to talk with our RIM Account Rep :)

New Blackberry Front Page

www.blackberry.com

A welcome screen with select your country... this was long overdue, just hope that it's not a total redirect to the old site and has localised content... i'll be watching closely.

Blackberry Monitoring Service 4.1.5

I am installing the monitoring service now, very intrigueing to me as this is the side of my work where I live :)

4.1.5 was definately released as a service pack, no visual triggers to make you want to have it, only the addition of the tab in the domain selction tabs.

The Blackberry Monitoring Service installs three (3) services so to speak,

There is the Data Router, Engine and the User Interface.

I suspected that this would be web based and I was plesantly suprised that it was. When first installed the default browser is opened and 127.owed:5089 and up comes the Welcome to Blackbery page.first to note is the default username and password, one would expect these to not be changed by lots of organisation , resulting in a security breach.

Thankfully as soon as you press ok, you have to change it straight away... as expected from RIM.

Ahh my first glitch, the monitoring service uses SNMP traps, away i go to install :)

..... back.... been very busy @ work... new Job and all.... still no the trail... just very busy.

Have it working, just a few minor details before I release some screenshots, etc..

4.1.5 Install

The first notable inclusion in this release is Java 6.0 Update 2.
For a longtime now ofcourse Java 5 Update 11 was the standard.

Everything else is exactly the same as the service pack 4 installation..... ill wait until i reboot to finish this post.......

Side note, I am installing 4.1.5 Bundle 79, available through Partnerzone and not publicly anounced yet.

well... that was an anti-climax.... except the BLACKBERY MONITORING SERVICE!!!

A little present from RIM.... 4.1.5 (service pack 5) :)

Guess who is the lucky owner of SP5 :)

installing as I blog..... will keep posted :)

I never thought it was coming.

Blackberry's Outstanding Figures - as usual :)

It's of no supporise that RIM have doubled there income since the same time last year.... hence my employment :), but there have been some out there attempting to predict Blackberry's downfall, and have obviously no idea what they are talking about, amongst other things.

When the number just keep coming good.....

see: http://www.rim.com/news/press/2008/pr-02_04_2008-01.shtml

....it's a sure bet this time next year will be looking good aswell.

It's definately a massive sign that Blackberry is by no means, going away anytime soon.

I predict 18million subscribers next year ... big call, but I think it is realistic.