Crackberry Adventures

Well, I had a Crackberry for 2 days, returned it, and am expecting another tomorrow.

Two top tips (explained below):

1. Before you get a personal Blackberry, check whether any of your emails are going to come from a Blackberry Enterprise Server. If so, you will need a BES-configured handset.
2. If you are a Vodafone customer, call Vodafone's upgrade or retention team to order your BES handset, and say you'll pay no more than £5 per month (on top of line rental) for email access.

Here's why:

• Crackberrys are configured to run either the Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) or the Blackberry Enterprise Service (BES).
• Only a BES-configured handset will accept email from a Blackberry Enterprise Server (really only affordable for larger employers), in addition to email from other servers.
  
• A BIS-configured Crackberry will accept mail from MS Exchange etc., but not a Blackberry Enterprise Server.
• Vodafone's high street stores only stock the BIS-configured Crackberrys, and offer email access for "only" £5 on top of your line rental (for what?). If you ask a store for a BES handset, they will offer to order you one, but charge you £28 on top your line rental for email access.
  
• At the suggestion of Vodafone customer services, I called Vodafone's upgrade or retention team from the store, and they offered to deliver a BES handset with email access for "only" £5 on top of my line rental.

Will IT ever be easy?

Bad Phorm?

Back in February, I commented on the Open Internet Exchange initiative being planned by Phorm, whereby and major ISP partners BT, Virgin Media and Talk Talk will be paid for allowing all the web browsing by their customers to be trawled for advertising purposes.

Not a lot was known about the initiative at the time, but negative news has been snowballing since, and opponents are taking to the streets. The Register is maintaining a dossier, known as "The Phorm files", and a "No Deep Packet Inspection" street demonstration is timed for BT's AGM on 16 July 2008. See also the Facebook Group "Save UK internet privace - reject ISPs that use Phorm".

Incidentally, you might wish to be more wary than usual of the Wikipedia entry on this subject.

The concerns raised are similar to those related to Facebook's "Beacon" initiative that led FB to significantly alter the functionality (though you might wish to be somewhat sceptical of that Wikipedia entry too!). The chief one being that there seems no reliable way to ensure that you are really opted-out. However, the Phorm scenario is worse than with Beacon, because the inspection, storage and use of data is at the ISP layer, making it much harder in practical terms to avoid the service than if it was operated, say, on a site-by-site basis. In other words, you can't decide simply not to visit certain sites if you doubt that the opt-out would actually prevent the abuse of your personal data. Instead, you would need to switch ISPs. However, you may not actually be able to avoid using one of the "problem" ISPs (e.g. at a friend's place, work, or via an internet cafe). And what if all the ISPs join the initiative?

Further, as the Guardian has noted, the challenge for Phorm is to reconcile two apparently contradictory statements:

"Advertisers are told that it will be able to profile the surfers, based on where they have visited, and target them through that uniquely numbered cookie. But users are told they will not be identifiable. It's the apparent contradiction in those statements that has infuriated so many."

If you are remotely concerned, now is the time to make your feelings known to your ISP, your MP, and participating advertisers.

Don't Drink the Kool-Aid

Comes a time when your leader is Hell-bent on a scheme the rationale for which is utterly mystifying. In fact, it seems plain wrong to you. But the message from on high is that it has to be pushed through and you have to do the pushing. Willingly, enthusiastically, with your usual passion and zeal.

How do you get there? How do you summon the energy to override the natural urge to question, debate, argue, or rebel? Or to get the hell out of your office and run? Or to cross the floor and sit with the Tories? Or maybe even the Lib Dems?!

The only way to get there is to imbibe the same stuff your leader is on. You've got to "drink the Kool-Aid".

But the derivation of this expression tells you that drinking the Kool-Aid, is very uncool indeed. Fatal, even. Okay, so most of the 913 victims in the Jonestown massacre actually drank their poison in the less-memorable rival Flavor Aid (apparently a British knock-off). And plenty of people probably did survive the Merry Pranksters' LSD-laced cocktails featured in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" without lasting psychiatric issues. But you get the drift. When it comes down to it, drinking the Kool-Aid is about the last thing you will ever do.

So, people, next time Gordo and his advisory clique dream up one of those wild and crazy 10p-tax-abolition, 42-day-detention, ageing-vehicle-duty, let's-call-citizens-in-the-dead-of-night reform ideas of his while £500m worth of military helicopter sits motionless in a shed, please don't go rummaging for another can of the Kool-Aid. Get yourself strapped to a gurney and go cold turkey if you have to, but please say to the big lump, "Gordon, that's a really bad idea and I don't want any part of it. Let's do something calm and rational instead. Something that will save the country a shedload of public money. Let's get the whole cabinet into one of those mint condition Chinooks and fly out to meet the Taliban."

Even I Now Have a Crackberry

Yes, even I have finally succumbed - a decade of Nokia loyalty overturned. With my Nokia E61 forlornly relegated to back-up status, my life's data is now on the dreaded Crackberry.

This Seismic Shift was caused by the internal communications etiquette of my current client. The company generally requires employees and staff to have their own mobile phones. So, to avoid the undue use/cost of mobiles, the preferred modes of communication are email or calls on the company's internal telephone system. Most requests that someone call your mobile seem to go unheeded in favour of email, as everyone assumes that your mobile is a Crackberry - you'll see the email anyway.

Ironically, I can't get email on my new Crackberry as the relevant server isn't responding to my password yet. So, the only way to communicate effectively would be to throw it at the next person I see...

Worse still, I remain deskbound, since approval for remote email access via my company-issued laptop is yet to reach the Guardian of the VPN.

Woe betide the next person who passes my office door!

A Further Sign of the Credit Crunch - Luxembourg