Bigger problem is it’s so easy to stir because the triggers and responses are so predictable. Which is why, I guess, it’s so tempting for anyone who’s bored and has the motivation to go “watch-what-happens-when-i-do-this”. Sometimes you don’t need an intentional agent though; things just happen by chance. When things do, the stuff that crawls out the woodwork never ceases to astound me…

Today was definitely a BlackBerry vs iPhone day. The BB service was out and just like that, all the “jokes” come tweeting out. Some even tried roping in the recently deceased to flesh out their attempts at humour like an amateur stand-up comedian high on bad drugs. Ugly.

Different technology, different software, different hardware- in fact different anything- exists for a reason. It’s just different. It does stuff differently. Not better, or worse necessarily (economics *should* weed out the bad over time). Just different. Some folk like iPhone, others Android. Others BlackBerry. Some don’t like any of the above. It doesn’t really matter. Each have their own purpose and fit their own- it’s why they all have *a* market share. Who really cares whose is bigger? It seems the classical jock envy pervades all facets of life and is gender-immune.

But if getting into a flame war, trolling or just stirring the pot is your thing, then so be it. I do think though, if we had to harness the collective creative energies of our generation (less the amateur stand-up comic wannabe’s maybe?) and directed it towards solving problems, rather than trying to trump each other on points, we would more than likely be half way to a half decent sustainable world.

But then again, going by what Batman said: “we’re defined by our actions”; I’m not sure it’s what we really want. Maybe being “in” with the #1 technology is more important…?

You will have -a- version of the SDK setup nicely. You will also have your signing keys installed with the .p12 file artifacts along with some barsigner.csk and barsigner.db files. You will also have updated your bbwp.properties file. Now, when you install the new SDK, it will display a prompt along the lines of: “Detected previous version. Uninstall old version first. Cancel, Ignore, Retry”. Wait.

If you uninstall your old version, you’re going to lose all those artifacts. You WILL need to request new keys and install them all over again. Mission, but not impossible

You might want to cancel and think it over. I chose “Ignore”.

I ignored the warning and went on with (Plan A) installing the newer SDK alongside the older one. This kinda worked well, but there were some issues with the paths and picking up the correct one (a non-signing SDK alongside the first version of a signing SDK). It got messy. It turned out easier (at this stage) to just uninstall everything, request new keys and start again.

With the next upgrade, I chose “Ignore” again. But this time, I just installed it right over my old installation folder. I got prompted during the install to “Overwrite existing file? Yes/No/Yes To All”.

“Yes to All”, please.

Didn’t need to request new keys or configure any additional paths- it just worked. Re-compiling against 0.9.4 and signing went off without a hitch.

So, based on my experiences, I would say, once you have a 0.9.n version of the SDK setup with signing keys and it’s all good, the next upgrade experience should be relatively safe if you just ignore the previous version warning and install right over the old SDK

Of course, if it didn’t (or doesn’t) work for you, you probably didn’t (or won’t) do something that I wouldn’t not have not recommended or didn’t suggest you shouldn’t have tried or didn’t do something that wasn’t not unlike the process that I haven’t described in this or any other post that I may not have written (sic) :p

Sure, updating your WordPress installation is just a click these days- but this is just one piece of software yet a good analogy. It’s rarely the core system that gives you the hassles- it’s all the integration points. The plug-ins that were dependent on the core. Assumptions would have been made in those integrations that were beyond the documentation, the implementation or vision of the core platform. Or they within scope, but now have to change due to “architectural changes” (or any other all-encompassing label). Trust- it can get messy. If you’ve been there, you will know.

And in all that, nothing has impressed me more than the way CellC recently rolled out their billing systems upgrade. They tweeted, they facebooked they warned everyone. It was like their upgrade was a major party that you had been invited to share in and it was going to be awesome! They kept tweeting hour by hour updates as to progress and where the problems were. They released press statements highlighting their challenges and where they were getting unstuck. And when they solved those problems, they let us know. And when it was all done, they kept us in the loop with more updates.

Was I impacted by their upgrade? Yes. Did it affect me to the point where I couldn’t communicate and do business? Yes. Was it for very long? No. Was I satisfied with the progress and the way they handled it? Absolutely! Would I recommend CellC as a provider? Yes! Am I a fan? You bet. Am I amazed by their execution (knowing what I know an upgrade to be like?). Definitely. Geek respect. They did an awesome job.

In days of old, ok, not that old, a hacker was someone who lived, eat and breathed binary. They were the geeks of the day and relished their 10000 hours on the computer with zeal. They were not necessarily deviant or trying to overthrow governments, banks or universities. They just (mostly) coded. And then somewhere between 1980 and 2000, the meaning of the word changed and now a hacker is largely understood to be a “bad” person. And I use the term “bad” loosely because one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Heck, these days, just participating in a DDoS (even unknowingly- ha!) can get you labelled a “hacker”. Oooo…

Phishing is another one. I have trouble with the word phishing. Just coming up with the term and calling ‘it’ by something else robs the essence of what ‘it’ is. Let’s face it, phishing is fraud- on so many levels.

If someone knocked on your door, dressed as a policeman, claiming to be a policeman, flashed a policeman badge and requested to enter your house on the premise of official police business (but he wasn’t a policeman)- he would be arrested, tried, found guilty and sent to jail for doing only that. He wouldn’t even need to enter your house to make new chums in the block. He just needs to pretend to be someone he’s not in order to gain something that’s not his. He’s a conman. A fraud. A liar. A cheat. A decepticon.

Do this online (or via text) and you’re only phishing. Happily, justice departments see through the thin veil that the word phishing tries to hide. They apply existing criminal codes which match the behaviour of the phishing agent(s) and go to trial based on that but we tend to be blasé about the word despite very real consequences. Only when there’s a consequence do we upgrade our language and start calling it for what it is: fraud.

Hopefully, with time, the word phishing will convey a stronger sense of immorality. That way, when we are confronted with phishing emails, sms, phone calls, we take them a little more seriously. Not just, “Oh. Spam. Delete”. If some “policeman” was walking around your neighbourhood knocking on everybody’s door, asking to come in, would you just: “Oh. Fake. Close door.” and carry on as you were? Or would you: “Uh-oh. Call the real cops. There’s a phony on the prowl”?

Continuing with cliche abuse, evil reigns when good men do nothing. With Data Protection Day coming up (28 January 2010), think for a moment about your contribution to the battle against fraud.

The scrolly-wheely-thingy on my Curve 8900 was giving me hassles. Remember the days of the scrolly-wheell mouse? And how it all got tangled with grit and dust and hair… ew! Well, the same thing happens with the BlackBerry after miles of tracking that ball. So what’s a man to do when you can’t scroll down to read that email, tweet or web page? Why, take it apart and clean it, of course!

I double-checked for a step-by-step guide as to the disassembly of my phone here. Turns out, the instructions are very accurate

The result?

BlackBerry Curve 8900 Disassembled

If you going to do this yourself a couple tips:
* use the right tools (TX 6)
* everything you detach, put on sticky (or non-slip) surface
* keep all the tiny bits- they really are tiny
* try finish with no left-over bits
* try finish with no missing bits
* be patient

So if next you have a hardware issue with your phone, follow the tradition of fashion apparel and handymen around the world and Just Do It… yourself.

NOTE: you may void the warranty on your phone if you try this. Which is not such an issue unless you end up with an epic fail.

So the first thing you need to do is install the PC Suite from Sony Ericsson. And then it’s straightforward: Tools > Phone repair. Simple.

The app will prompt further instructions; follow those (yes, you actually have to read the screen). And remember to press the BACK key while connecting the USB cable to the phone.

Of course, that doesn’t always work or solve ALL your problems. Sometimes you just brick it real good- like mine.

On your BlackBerry, click on Update and then *Fetch Latest CPI Values and *Fetch Latest Lending Rate Values.

Took a new entry-level MacBookPro and swopped in a SSD. Whooaaa. Speed. Seriously. My SSD Rocks. The daunting problem was getting up and going again with all my applications, emails, developer configurations, blah, blah, blah…

Hello, Time Capsule. Hello, Migration Assistant. Hello, Joy. In less than an hour, I’ve got my “old” machine back, on a brand new harddrive, on a brand new spanking machine. And it just works!

I’m so happy right now

I once read the question that asked wether the bandwidth limitations do in fact impact on our behaviour (and hence performance in the education/business world).

For example, at the time of writing, a 5GB cap on bandwidth “seems” like a lot of bandwidth for home (or small office) users; and let’s say that’s on a 1024 kpbs line.

Now would getting 15GB (for the same price and maybe bump up the line speed at the same time) really make a difference to how you use the internet? Surely if you get by on what you got, getting more is not really going to affect you? Well, to argue by hyperbole, how would “no cap” change the way you use the internet?

Would it make you more productive?
Would your (small) business benefit from the boost- in a measurable financial way?

Or what about on the negative side; would it syphon time away from “real” world activities into the virtual world of increased time spent on social networking and virtual marketing. Is that so bad?

Whatever answer you come up with, the boost does impact on your home (or small business) at least in the short term. Think of a toddler who has been denied Smarties only to arrive at a birthday party with a bowl full of Smarties in the middle of the table (within easy reach) for everybody to snack on. And for one thing, it makes the cellular provider data bundles an absolute joke, trying to “sell” you increments of 10MB. But that’s a different rabbit hole..

Note:
I see the same kind of frustration when users migrate from Windows to Ubuntu or Mac.
I see the same kind of disappointment when users switch from Symbian to BlackBerry.
I see the same kind of disillusionment when developers switch from [insert-language-of-choice-here] to Ruby.

Security prompts on the BlackBerry platform are one of those areas that come up for discussion quite often. To understand “why” it does things the way it does things, here’s an 8min video clip which is extremely useful in explaining that. You decide wether that’s good or not, but whatever conclusion you come to, remember, it’s just the way it is.

Personally, I think giving the user (or the BES admin) the final say and control is the better policy when you start examining all the other options available.

Yes, it can be argued that it does demand a level of sophistication on the user’s part, but like anything out there (be it a carving knife, a phone, an OS, an application, a motor vehicle, a bank account or a piece of sports equipment) your understanding of that “thing” is directly related to your proficiency and enjoyment in using that “thing”. A phone, even a BB, is no different.