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The Black Gift.

I know I'm a bit late with this but here goes.
As promised RIM has started rolling out free premium apps to users in showing their gratitude to the millions of users that was affected during the blackout last week.

The first and only app for now is the DriveSafe.ly app that reads and responds to your text messages, emails and twitter messages using voice recognition, its has proven to be an interesting application that drains your battery.

With that said, it leaves me wondering if RIM will release any useful apps that are keepers or they will use the opportunity to do spring cleaning in the fall by offering us stuff for free that wouldn't sell because people see them as useless?

But I still would like to say thank you to RIM's management for having the forsight and "testicular fortitude" to have taken the decision to compensate users for loss of use (like a good insurance company) they paid out to you for damages and in turn you renew your premiums by sticking with them.

From the beginning of the blackout I wondered if they would make such a gesture, I even discussed it with my good friend @79stanger who's only concern at the time was getting back full service from RIM.

Even though I pondered about it many times, if they didn't opt to compensate I will still and always be pro BlackBerry, but they did and in doing so made alot of peoples Day.

Thank you to the RIM team!
Dexter Harroo

Another useless app!

Well, They're at it again, why would S4BB build an app that has no apparent use to the BlackBerry community?

Last night I think it was they relesed WifiMonitor and it was free so being the enthusiast that I am I sped over to appworld and downloaded it but I took the opportunity to browse appworld so I didn't test the app until this morning.

The first thing I realized is that the app don't do anything for you that your BlackBerry already does, which is tell you what wifi network you're connected to, the band you're on and the channel, it doesn't tell you the security type your device is using to connect to the router.

So I remembered having SmartWifi installed on my device also made by S4BB, it was now comparison time unlike wifiMonitor,' smartwifi connects you to a hotspot when in range and activates the wifi interface when in range and deactivates it when out of coverage, thus helping to maintain longer battery life.
On closer examination it was evident that smartwifi was Dissected and the loging parts and wifi identification was used to build the waste of time to download and energy to use, so from me they get a *thumbs down* for that creation, I guess that's why its free!

One thing that got me about the app and I'm beginning to believe that is their selling point for it, there is a voice thet comes up when you get connected/disconnected that says, "Connected/Disconnected wifi has" in a *yoda voice* It almost scared me out of my skin when I heard it didn't realize it came from my phone, then I was rotflmao, so they get almost *a thumbs up* for that so for now i'll be keeping it just to hear the Great yoda's. Give it a try you can find it here: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/48849

Leave a comment and let me know what you think if I'm over reacting.
Dexter Harroo

The BlackBerry BlackOut.

It was happening for a couple weeks now, but only intermittently, people were satisfied; still we lived with the intermittent service and continued to love our BlackBerry.

On Monday it worsened and by Tuesday it was an epidemic of worldwide proportions it reminded me of the recent movie Contaigon,
everyone you spoke to was affected in some way or the other.

People were complaining on all the social networks from FaceBook to Twitter to the struggling Google+, Iphone and Android users were making fun of us BlackBerry users.

It was a difficult time for many, especially the BES/Corporate users but the crackberry addicts like myself on BIS, was going through withdrawal, you would take out your device and look at it ten times in two minutes. You were missing something, the Alert/Notification you longed to hear or feel the vibration from your BB.

It was like Music to my ear and light to my eyes when I heard the Alert and looked and saw the message on BBM or an Email even a Tweet from my UberSocial App.

It was also funny to see some of the people that are always complaining about getting Broadcast,even they were sending them out, asking silly questions, "am I getting through"! There was also the now infamous, "Send these random numbers to all your contacts and your BB will update" or the famous message from RIM that they ask you to forward so your contacts won't disappear, FOOL if the servers are overloaded Why would RIM tell everyone to spamm a message? Silly Kids! It got so bad that RIM had to write aboiut it on one of their websites
Link here: http://www.rim.com/newsroom/service-update.shtml

I've said all that which brings me to the question; Can you live without your BlackBerry? Let me be the first to answer that.
No I can't live without my BlackBerry, I can't do without any of the services that the friendly Folks @ RIM offer through my Device. I'll even go further and say that a lot of y'all can't live without your BlackBerry Device!
With that said, allow me to introduce myself.
HI, My Name is Dexter and I'm a Berryholic.
Dexter Harroo

How big is your friend circle?

We all have friends, some of us have them in the thousands, but how many of them are really people we interact with?

My friend circle is fairly big it includes msn messenger friends, yahoo messenger friends, Wayn friends twitter friends, google talk friends Facebook friends, BlackBerry messenger friends and real life personal friends, I must say that people from some of these social network sites have made their way into my personal friends category.

Most of these people I have met online apart from the circle of work friends, that I forgot to mention earlier and personal friends, my msn yahoo,Wayn BBM friends etc, are people that I have never met or interacted with physically, is that what friendship has become?

We have people on our Facebook pages that we went to school with, but at school you never spoke in some cases you fought with each other, but for some reason they show up on your friends list, messaging you about the good times you all had at school, are they really trying to connect with you, or are they just glad to see a familiar face on the book?

When I'm going about my business daily I bump into folks that I haven't seen in ages and the way they react and greet you its as though they found a long lost family or friend, when in reality you're neither to them! But for some reason they reach out to you.

So when you minus the people who are acquaintances, minus the cyber friends save the ones that has really made an impact on your life, minus the family that you add as friends on the social networks, eliminate the coworkers you have on your BBM and filter your msn and yahoo messenger list unfollow the unknown on twitter what do you remain with? In my case a few good people that I have come to love and I'm proud to call them my friends!
Friendship is nothing that happens overnight it grows with time and needs alot of nurturing just like any relationship, what I'm getting at is we sometimes come into contact with people and the next thing were saying is they're our friend but really they are our acquaintances! Why are we so obsessed with friendships and always feel the need to have a big circle of friends? I leave that for the scientists to answer, but whatever the obsession, don't matter how many people are in your circle always remember you were born alone you go to sleep alone and you'd die alone no friends.

"If the people you find yourself hanging out with are the same people you work with you need to check yourself, you haven't got a life".
Dexter Harroo

GONE ARE THE DAYS

Its the beginning of the summer vacation here in Trinidad & Tobago an I couldn't help but wonder what the kids between ages 12-17 are doing for this two month period, what caused to wonder, you see I was on my way to work and on passing through a particular area I noticed alot of the young people from the neighborhood just sitting there on street corners and to the front of homes as if there was nothing to do.

As I drove I couldn't help but think back to the days of my youth when school was out for the summer vacation, a feeling of nostalgia overwhelmed me and I longed to be on summer vacation like the school kids so I could go do the things that we did back when we were little, but as I reminisced on what was, reality crept back in slowly and brought me to the realization that; Gone are the days.
Gone are the days when children went to the mango fields when off from school, the mango trees are no longer there, they have given way to houses.
Gone are the days when boys and girls went to the cane fields in search of the premium breed sugar canes or as we called it experimental, the cane field lay empty and barren from over planting and harvesting some of the plots are now laid with duplexes and condominiums.
Gone are the days when teenage boys would go to the citrus fields with bags on their backs to harvest oranges, grapefruit and Portugal to sell to make enough money to go see a movie, the citrus field no longer exist, the place where it used to be is now a gated community or a controlled environment.
Gone are those days when we raided the cashew fields and made chow or wines with the cashew fruit and roasted or baked the cashew nuts, even play a game of marbles against one another for the cashew nuts before roasting them, the cashew fields are now filled with Million dollar houses.
The chennette trees, the almond trees the tonkabean trees and the coconut trees are nowhere to be found all taken over by industrial estates.

Therein lies the woes of the activity or inactivity of this country's young ones.
Gone are the days when the guys would come out on evenings and play Small goal soccer/football the void is now filled with football/soccer on the Playstation2/3.
Gone are the days when cricket would be played in the community savanna or roadways, that time is now utilized playing Brian Lara cricket on play station or XBox.
Gone are the days when the boys would play the girls a game of rounders and lose to them just to make them feel good, this time is now spent on the computer visiting social network sites like Facebook and the likes of twitter.
Gone are the days when a good river lime was enjoyed by all, the rivers are now polluted with chemicals and filth.
Gone are the days when races were run in the street every evening now it seems like everyone has a Wii.
Gone are the days when you'd leave your neighborhood and go to another to see what your friend was up too, these neighborhoods are now patrolled by armed gangsters.

Its sad to look back at those days and say they were good days, kids should be able to say these are good days, but who know, my days was good they will probably think the same when they are older and look back at live then to their now and say Gone are those days.
Dexter Harroo

Natures wonder!

Gods promise, a reminder of the water and the pending fire!
Dexter Harroo