I recently mapped the left-side softkey of my Blackberry 8700 to the keypad lock function, and I’m experiencing a startlingly big improvement on a daily basis. I had previously had that key mapped to the profile selector, so that I could quickly shut off the ringer when going into meetings, without fumbling through the desktop, down to the profile icon, etc. It took me this long to realize that since the Blackberry is not actually my primary phone (except in the U.S.), I wasn’t using that feature much. I do use the Blackberry daily for data (mostly email) all over the world. It’s a pity that I never realized this before!

Making the switch has revealed an odd quirk: If I press a key while the phone keypad is locked, I get a message saying: “Keypad is locked. Press * ‘enter’ to unlock.” Not very different from my older S40 Nokias’ unlock messages. This is a pain, however, since finding the asterisk and enter keys requires more attention on a Blackberry than on an ordinary 16-key phone.

Oddly (but more usefully), if I scroll the scrollwheel up from a locked screen, I get a different message: “Keypad is locked” followed by three clickable button options: Unlock, Emergency Call, Cancel. The default is on Unlock, which can be selected by clicking the scrollwheel.

It turns out that a quick scroll-up followed by a click is far simpler than a tap and two specific key presses. I learned quickly to unlock via the scrollwheel.

But why on earth are there two different messages in the first place?

Everyone talks about Blackberry Thumb. I get Blackberry Shoulder, holding it up so I can write in bed…

On the meaning of small messages, oft repeated:

Apple’s Mail, Blackberry OS and surely most other enterprise applications always put the “work” number preferentially at the top of the stack if you have multiple phone numbers for a contact. “Home” gets pushed down towards the bottom. The (reasonable) assumption is that if you have a work number for somebody, you probably do business with them, and are most likely seek the work number.

The subliminal message? Work matters more than home.

Goebbels (and Hitler) are both quoted as saying that you can get people to believe anything if you repeat it often enough. What is the impact of the constant reinforcement of the Work Over Home message? How does it affect our relationships at work and at home?

I’m going to drop a bucket of Blackberry posts in a heap here. I suspect that I won’t be making any friends at RIM anytime soon, if they read these.

First noticed when bedridden with the flu: Keeping your Blackberry 8700 too close to your 30GB 5G iPod may be harmful to your hearing. The electro-magnetic radiation bursts emitted by the BB will trigger and randomly mess with the iPod’s volume control, meaning that you may suddenly find that you are on full volume. Quite a shock, let me tell you.

Is this indicative of a lack of shielding of the Blackberry? I have noticed that while all cell phones trigger speaker activity, the Blackberry does so more than most. Or is it a lack of EMI shielding of the iPod?

Whatever the case may be, let me encourage you to allow your iPod and your Blackberry some personal space; don’t drop them both into your pocket or purse (or pillowcase) if you’re going to have earbuds in.

Just like my cell phone camera lets me catch snapshots of the visual images I see around me — not as clear as a good digital camera, but it’s there with me — the BB lets me capture snapshots of thoughts I have when I’m not sitting at the computer. I’m not talking about quick email fire-offs, but blog thoughts like this one: in the taxi, in a waiting room, while nursing the baby. There’s a stress-reduction in not worrying that I’m going to “lose the thought” before getting it down. That’s my primary use of the Blackberry, as it turns out.

The secondary use is to ensure that I don’t miss important emails while on the road.

Blackberry has this nice feature where you type a word without bothering with capitalization or punctuation, for example, typing “im” for “I’m”, and it changes it on the fly. (Funny, because there’s no actual spell-check…) It’s a feature that’s convenient, although I tend to under-use it.

Anyway, little glitch, I tried to send someone my Israeli email address the other day. It ends with @netvision.net.il. Except that my alert Blackberry insisted it was @netvision.net.I’ll. I went back to erase/change/fix maybe 6 times, unsuccessfully. Not a helpful feature, in this case! Why should I be in a power struggle with my cell phone?

As with many of my blog musings, this one is written on my Blackberry. It’s one of the main uses I have for it: jotting down thoughts and notes to myself for collection and processing on my laptop later on. I’ll have to move now before I get beaned by a hard date; several have clunked down hard from the date palm under which I am sitting in the warm breeze of a luscious Israeli autumn afternoon. Golden light. Sweet smell of the dates. Some lazy, dusty trees in what was, I guess, an orchard some years ago, but now is the parking lot adjacent to a major corporation. Aaaaaaah.

Update (December 16, 2007):

Found another one: can’t type the word “id” (as in Freudian), or the initials for identification or industrial design (ID). I just keep getting “I’d”.

When is the tradeoff of 95% accuracy offset by the 5% error rate (uncorrectable errors)? Another long tail question? Kind of.