Black Berry

BlackBerry is a brandname for a PersonalDigitalAssistant that had a phenomenal growth in popularity, partly due to its good on-the-fly email and WirelessSecurity features. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry

Some of the features of this unit require subscription to specialized BlackBerry services.

The device uses a proprietary operating system but there are JavaLanguage based models. Comments were made that this helped BlackBerry SecurityManagement features stand out amongst competitive WirelessDevices.

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Fallen King of the SmartPhone

I looked at a mid05 glossay for a BlackBerry model 7100g. It claimed email attachments can be downloaded and viewed, including graphics, PDFs, word docs, etc. It also supporting viewing of HTML (and WAP) web pages. I am impressed.

• Is it one of those AlmostTrue thing with hidden gotchas?
• No, it actually works.
• Any idea whether people use it to view PDF attachments much? Seems to me very difficult to use a "viewport" as a sole means to view a regular sized document. Unless there is a printer that will print these out back to normal size, and that means it is again in an office somewhere.

Sadly, after pretty much inventing the SmartPhone, it was swiftly killed by AppleIphone and GoogleAndroid apparently because it was unable to adapt and successfully compete against the new TouchScreen? devices. More on why it failed here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/?page=all

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Resources

FAQ in BlackBerry forum at http://www.blackberryforums.com/faq.php

US Airport using BlackBerry for security checks at http://www.cio.com/archive/081504/tl_security.html?printversion=yes

Squeeze on BlackBerry at http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/04_49/b3911084_mz063.htm?chan=tc&

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CategorySecurity CategoryHardware CategoryHandheld