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From Cradle to, Well, You Know: The Creepy Factor of Facebook's Timeline

Kara Swisher — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:46:50 +0000

One of the quotes I always keep pinned to the side of my computer monitor is by my favorite writer, Joan Didion, from her terrific essay, “On Keeping a Notebook”:

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.

Yesterday, Facebook took Didion’s elegant and poignant concept about memories a little too literally (and, of course, nerdily) with its introduction of Timeline, which the social networking giant is calling “The Story of Your Life.”

Oh dear. (And it hopefully will not include the part about that fantastically dysfunctional break-up in a ratty hotel room by the sea.)

Moving on!

You could look at this new offering from Facebook in a lot of ways, from a new super-sized version of its existing profiles to a digital scrapbook of memories to a geek version of a daily planner.

As Liz Gannes wrote today in a cogent analysis of Timeline:

“On one end, Facebook’s platform update will channel every little thing people do around the Web in real time. Meanwhile, the new timelines in user profiles are an acknowledgment and glorification of the past.”

All true, of course, but to my mind the whole idea of a life on display in pixels like some never-ending comic book — with photos and text and video and smiley faces (and frowns, too!) — is, well, more than a little creepy.

It’s not Facebook’s fault at all, because it is just doing better what it already does, born from its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s central notion that being able to share everything online is the sacred goal.

It’s always been his mantra and the young and decidedly visionary entrepreneur visibly bounced around the stage of Facebook’s f8 developers conference yesterday at the idea of it.

His Timeline had a lot about his longtime girlfriend and his dog, Beast. Has there ever been a more over-sharing canine? I think not!

(Actually, as longtime privacy activist Lori Fena tweeted to me today: “Internet Anthropology: 90’s Internet — Nobody knows you’re a dog. 2011 FB Timeline — Everyone knows you’re a dog.”)

But what struck me the most was a video Zuckerberg showed about Timeline, which depicted the life of a (fictional?) Facebook employee named Andy Sparks, from his birth on August 14, 1974 onward.

Maybe it was just me, but as it proceeded through Andy’s awkward teens to his wedding to his own kids and the years flipped by, I got a sinking feeling that it would not stop until we ended up with a crepe-lined profile page and a digital tombstone.

Here lies Andy — if you have any questions about his entire life, please back-click!

Thankfully, the video stopped at middle-age (Andy would be 37 years old now), but like I said: Creepy!

Then again, it also might be a bad idea to digitize everything in sight in the first place, well beyond such concerns, as Maura Johnston concluded in a smart essay about Timeline:

I think there’s something to be said about the idea of personality development over time that makes me quite uneasy about Facebook’s exuberance over being able to chronicle one’s whole life on the service. What does that do to the notion of memory, the fuzziness of which can have helpful functions at times? … And I feel like so many of the innovations involving technology and persona being put forth right now are being fashioned by people with myopic “everything is great right now and will be that way forever” outlooks, and that they don’t really have any sense of what life beyond their VC-funded Silicon Valley privileged existences might be like.

In other words, who we were may not be, in the end, who we really are.

Or perhaps instead, it is what Didion so eloquently wrote:

“Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.”

Well, we’ll see — but, until then, here’s the Timeline video and, below it, Didion’s must-read essay:

didion

BoomTown Checks In at the Online-Only Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:05:14 +0000

A little more than a week ago, while I was in the Pacific Northwest for a Microsoft (MSFT) event, I decided to pay a visit on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Or, as its brand is known now: seattlepi.com.

That would be the pixel-only version of the newspaper that was founded in 1863 as that city’s first, publishing a print version until March of 2009.

It was then that the presses stopped and the computing began at the unit, owned by Hearst Corp. The media giant, weary of increasing losses and declining circulation, tried first to sell the P-I and then–with no buyers in sight–transformed it into an Internet-only operation.

This includes a heavy emphasis on hyper-local, breaking news and partnerships and trying to knit together a regional identity for the Seattle area online.

And lots and lots of interaction with readers, via blogs and other ways for them to contribute.

Thus, it’s been chugging away, trying to increase traffic–about four million monthly uniques and 40 million page views–and make some bank, too, via its local digital marketing and advertising services of Hearst Seattle Media, the business arm.

While, as a private company, Hearst declined to give me any actual financial figures, its PR dude wrote me in an email, “We are on track with our business plan and have an aggressive timetable for profitability which we expect we will reach in the next couple of months.”

Let’s hope that happens, as it would be nice to see experiments like these live happily ever after.

Until then, here is my video interview with the seattlepi.com’s Executive Producer Michelle Nicolosi on how it’s going so far, as well as a short tour of the place:

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple's Next iPhone More of an iPad Mini?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:15:49 +0000

Market source reports from Taiwanese trade publications are usually best taken with a grain of salt, if not a salt lick, particularly when they’re about Apple. That said, Digitimes reports today that the company’s next-generation iPhone is interesting in its detail.

Industry sources tell the magazine that the device will feature a 960×640 pixel double-resolution display, enhanced with the same in-plane switching and fringe-field switching technology Apple used to improve viewing angle and readability in the iPad. The display panel itself is said to be 33 percent thinner than the one in its predecessors, presumably to allow for a larger battery.

Finally, the new iPhone is believed to run an A4 processor with 512MB of system RAM. In other words, it’s built with the same processor found in the iPad, but double the RAM. That would obviously make for an impressive smartphone, though it seems unlikely that Apple (AAPL) would outspec the iPad on that front so quickly after the latter’s debut.

Noticeably absent from the Digitimes report: Any mention of a front-facing camera for video chat. Odd, given what we’ve seen in the two prototype next-gen iPhones that have leaked to the wild.

In any event, Digitimes claims this iPhone will be announced on June 7 during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and that Apple, in preparation for the launch, has placed an astonishingly large order for them with its manufacturing partner, Foxconn. The company has requested 4.5 million units for June and another 19.5 million for the rest of 2010, for a total of 24 million units.

[Image credit: Taoviet.nv]

Netbooks That Are Easier on the Eye

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:07:40 +0000

Like clockwork, retailers were ready for Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Windows 7 release last week with new desktops, laptops and netbooks, those inexpensive, smaller laptops that have become popular in the past year. Included in this selection of netbooks are some that improved the poor screen resolutions that have plagued these tiny PCs.

[ See post to watch video ]

Screen resolution isn’t the same as the size of the screen itself. Rather, it is related to the number of pixels—or distinct dots—on a display, and an indication of how much material can be seen on the screen without scrolling. A higher-resolution screen allows you to see more of a Web page, spreadsheet or list of emails than a lower-resolution screen, even if both are the same physical size.

Because higher-resolution screens cost more, most netbooks come with low-resolution screens to keep prices down. But poor resolution combined with a small netbook screen results in frustrating visuals, like Web pages that display just a small portion of their contents, forcing you to scroll down or horizontally to see the rest of the page.

This week, I tested two Windows 7 netbooks with unusually high-res screens: Hewlett-Packard Co.’s (HPQ) HP Mini 311 with an 11.6-inch screen and a resolution of 1,366-by-768 pixels, and Nokia Corp.’s (NOK) Booklet 3G with a 10.1-inch screen and a resolution of 1,280-by-720-pixels. Both these small computers display the bulk of most Web pages without any scrolling necessary—a big relief on a netbook.

Though high-resolution screens make these netbooks easier on the eyes than others, I still had trouble adjusting to their shrunken features. I liked typing on the HP Mini’s generous keyboard, which H-P says is 92 percent of full size. But its touchpad buttons felt stiff and uncomfortably located at the edge of the computer. The Nokia Booklet had the opposite problem: Its touchpad and buttons worked fine, but its tiny keys made me feel like I was typing on a kiddie computer.

Nokia’s Booklet 3G has a long battery life and sleek design.

Nokia is a bit more of a newsmaker here, because when the Booklet 3G (nokiausa.com) comes out in mid-November, it will be the first foray by the Finnish mobile-device company into the laptop space. Best Buy (BBY) began taking advance orders for them this week. It costs $300 if purchased with AT&T Inc.’s (T) two-year Data Connect plan, which costs $60 a month for five gigabytes of data and allows users to toggle back and forth between two kinds of wireless connections, cellular 3G and Wi-Fi. If purchased without the AT&T plan, the Booklet 3G costs $600—a lot for a netbook—including only Windows 7 Starter, the low-end version of the new OS, and one gigabyte of memory.

The thing most people will notice right away about Nokia’s netbook is that it seems to take its design cues directly from Apple Inc. (AAPL) Like the MacBook Pro, the Nokia Booklet 3G is made from a single piece of aluminum, and its keyboard is made of black Chiclet-style keys. Its edges are rounded and smooth. I used one with a glossy black lid, but it will also come in shades of ice white or azure blue.

Nokia boasts that this netbook’s battery will last for 12 hours; after running it through a harsh test with its screen cranked up to the brightest setting, Wi-Fi on, music playing on a continuous loop and all power-saving features turned off, it ran for almost eight hours straight. This means that under normal circumstances, the battery might last for a remarkable 10 hours.

The Booklet 3G that I used differs from Nokia’s final release version in a few ways: Mine wasn’t loaded with AT&T’s Connection Manager software, which enables switching between Wi-Fi and 3G; it lacked the Nokia Social Hub software, which the company says allows users to track social-media feeds and text messages; and the GPS wasn’t yet connected to the U.S. map data server. My Booklet 3G included Ovi Suite, a Nokia-designed software program to bridge the connection between some Nokia smartphones and the Booklet 3G, like iTunes for the iPhone or BlackBerry’s Desktop Manager. But the software I had wasn’t the final version.

Unlike Nokia, H-P is no stranger to netbooks, having released nine of its Mini models in the past year. The HP Mini 311 (hp.com/go/mini) costs $400 when purchased with Windows XP and costs an additional $50 when loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium. The Mini that I tested costs $474 because it also had two gigabytes of memory rather than one gigabyte.

The H-P model is a little bigger all around compared with the Nokia, with an inch-larger screen; it weighs 3.22 pounds compared with 2.76 pounds for the Nokia. Both felt relatively thin and light, and I carried them home together from my office with ease. The HP Mini 311 had H-P’s subtle Black Swirl pattern on its lid—a faint pattern of silver swirls noticeable only at certain angles. It also comes in White Swirl.

I ran the same battery test on the HP as I did with the Nokia, and it lasted four hours and 15 minutes, giving it roughly six hours of juice under normal circumstances. H-P estimates that the Mini 311′s battery will last for six hours and 25 minutes.

I didn’t run into any problems while installing and using several programs on each of these netbooks, including Windows Live Essentials, Mozilla’s Firefox browser, Picasa 3, TweetDeck, Adobe (ADBE) Reader and iTunes. The HP Mini felt more responsive and, in fact, loaded some programs a little faster, but it had twice the memory.

Both netbooks have slots for memory cards, HDMI ports for connecting to HD screens and three USB ports. And they come with built-in Web cams, a common feature on netbooks.

A cold start on both the Mini 311 and Booklet 3G required roughly the same amount of time: one minute and eight seconds for the H-P, and a minute and 12 seconds for the Nokia. But restarting was a different story. While playing a song in iTunes, running three Web pages in Firefox and using TweetDeck, I selected Restart. The HP Mini 311 took a minute and 20 seconds while the Nokia took nearly two minutes.

Even without the AT&T discount, the Nokia Booklet 3G’s extra-long battery life and sleek design will be worth the extra money for some people—just beware its tiny keyboard. The HP Mini 311 is a good all-around netbook with a comfortable keyboard for typing. No one will be disappointed by the terrific screen resolutions.

-Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

The Motorola CLIQ: WINR or LOZR?

John Paczkowski — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:30:51 +0000

Motorola has finally announced its bet-the-company Android handset. At GigaOM’s Mobilize 09 event in San Francisco this morning, Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-CEO and CEO of the company’s handset division, uncrated the CLIQ, a device it describes unremarkably as the “first phone with social skills.”

Why? Well, the CLIQ, or DEXT as it will be confusingly branded in the U.K., incorporates Motorola’s new “MotoBlur” service, which essentially corrals Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Picasa, GMail and MS Exchange activity into a single feed and presents them on your phone.

In form, the CLIQ is a sideways slider. Like the Palm (PALM) Pre, the device boasts a full touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard. It’s got a 320 x 480-pixel, 3.1-inch HVGA screen and a five-megapixel camera. The CLIQ is video-capable (play, stream and capture) and supports the broad spectrum of media formats. It runs Android 1.5 (Cupcake), and Motorola (MOT) claims a battery life of six hours.

Jha says the phone is not intended to be a single iconic device–like, say, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone. Rather, it is the first of a broad line of handsets, all running Android and Motoblur, that will be targeted at different customer segments around the world.

A wise strategy in the current market? Who knows? But at least it’s a step in the right direction. Motorola clearly needs to do something to right itself after the past few disastrous years. Hard to believe the company controlled 16.1 percent of the global handset market just two years ago. It’s market share today? A modest 6.5 percent. The CLIQ will be sold through T-Mobile in the United States.

The device’s spec sheet below; click to enlarge.

A BlackBerry Priced Right For Newcomers

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:52:03 +0000

Web browsing and email have comfortably migrated to mobile handhelds like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm (PALM) Pre. But many of these gadgets still cost a lot compared with cellphones that come free with renewed two-year contracts.

This week, I tested a new BlackBerry that costs less than any other BlackBerry did at launch—that is, if you buy it at the right place. Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry Curve 8520 costs just $49 at Wal-Mart (WMT)—or $130 if you buy it at T-Mobile. Both prices are with two-year T-Mobile contracts.

[ See post to watch video ]

The BlackBerry Curve has been one of the company’s most popular models. All iterations of the Curve combine a full QWERTY keyboard with a sleeker, more stylish look than bigger BlackBerry models like the Bold. And Curves typically cost less than their larger counterparts. In February, RIM refreshed its Curve brand for the first time in over two years with the 8900. This model was a real upgrade for Curve users, thanks to a brighter screen, faster performance and flatter keys that were easier to press. But six months later, it still costs as much as $199 (after rebate)—a steep asking price considering how some older 8300-series Curves are offered for around $50 with two-year contracts.

This newest $49 Curve 8520 lowers that price barrier. Its monthly T-Mobile service plans are also relatively inexpensive, starting at $55 for voice and data (not including MMS or SMS messaging).

It has two features never before seen on a BlackBerry. First, in place of a trackball or scroll wheel, this Curve uses a trackpad—a mini version of those used for mouse navigation on laptops.

Second, it has designated physical buttons for playing, pausing and skipping ahead or back within media like videos and music. These rubbery buttons are built into the top edge of the BlackBerry.

I like the look of the Curve 8520—especially how the surface covering its screen extends down to the trackpad and its four surrounding buttons, giving it a smooth facade. It comes in two colors, black and frost (I used the black). Its low price, alone, will be enough to draw customers.

But something about the way its keyboard and navigational keys worked felt cheap. Letter keys felt light and hollow while the Send, Menu, Escape and End keys around the trackpad clicked as I touched them.

The specifications of this BlackBerry tell the tale more specifically. Its 320×240 pixel screen looks faded next to that of the Curve 8900, which is 480×360. The blinking red indicator light at the top front corner of all BlackBerrys is a barely noticeable dot on this device.

And its camera is only two megapixels, not 3.2 megapixels like on the 8900, and is the first on a BlackBerry not to have a built-in flash. Also, it doesn’t run on the fast 3G network, though it uses Wi-Fi and automatically connects to trusted networks when in range of them.

First-time smartphone owners may not notice or care about these small details, but veteran BlackBerry users will pick up on them right away.

The Curve 8520 incorporates useful physical features found on previous models like right- and left-side convenience keys that work as handy shortcuts. It comes with a 1-gigabyte microSD memory card so users don’t have to buy their own before loading this device with photos, music and videos.

A strip of rubber runs around the Curve’s edge, covering up and smoothing over its convenience keys and volume buttons. This rugged addition isn’t visible from the front of the BlackBerry and it will probably go a long way in preventing nicks and dings. The word “Curve” is imprinted on the back of the BlackBerry, proudly branding this model.

The navigational trackpad is a cinch to use and moves the cursor up, down, right and left with very little effort. To select, one needs only to press in on the trackpad just as with the trackball. Unlike the trackball, which rolls in place and can get stuck once in a great while, the trackpad doesn’t have any moving parts.

The physical media keys on the Curve 8520′s top edge work to instantly start playing media from any screen, like a music video that I watched. If you were to use your BlackBerry as your sole portable media player, these would be more valuable. And their position on the top of the Curve makes them easy to reach if the device is in a pocket or purse.

In my everyday usage scenarios, I usually forgot about these shortcut buttons and just used the trackpad to find and select a track or video for playing.

BlackBerry’s App World store for applications that users can load onto the device still only offers 2,000 apps, compared to Apple’s (AAPL) 65,000. This means that for now, this new Curve can’t be enhanced with as many outside programs, which is a real downside. And if you do download a lot of apps, or music or videos or photos, you may have to get a bigger memory card.

The Curve 8520 isn’t made for BlackBerry fanatics. But it’s a good entry-level BlackBerry for users who still haven’t let go of their basic cellphones. At Wal-Mart’s $49 price, it’s hard to beat.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Is Bigger Better? Here Come the Supersized Web Ads.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:01:16 +0000

Earlier this year an online publishing trade group promised to get its members to start running new, bigger, harder-to-ignore ads by July. So here they are: The Online Publishers Association says 37 sites, including the New York Times (NYT), News Corp.’s (NWS) Wall Street Journal and Time Warner’s (TWX) CNN.com, will start selling the plus-sized ads this week.

Some sites, like Discovery’s Planet Green, have already been playing around with the new OPA ads, but if you haven’t seen them yet, you can do it with a little bit of imagination. Think of a traditional Web ad as the equivalent of a yard sign. The new ones are billboards.

Like your descriptions more literal? Here’s the technical description of the new formats. By way of comparison, the column of text you’re reading now is 350 pixels wide.

The Fixed Panel: 336 wide x 700 tall, remains constant as the user scrolls to the top and bottom of the page.
The XXL Box: 468 wide x 648 tall, opens for seven seconds to 936 wide x 648 tall with 1/24x frequency.
The Pushdown: 970 wide x 418 tall, opens to display the advertisement and then after seven seconds, rolls up to 970 wide x 66 tall, with 1/24x frequency.

And um, here’s what a really big ad might look like on your desktop (click to enlarge).

If you’re knee-deep in the online advertising business, you’ll be interested in why these ad formats are being pushed by the Online Publishers Association instead of the better-known Interactive Advertising Bureau. I have heard some baroque/petty descriptions of squabbling between the two groups, whose membership overlaps but isn’t identical. But maybe we’ll come back to that some other time.

For now, let’s see if these deliver as advertised–that is, whether they get marketers to spend more money on the Web, without just plowing the money into Google (GOOG).

IBM-Sun Day Monday?

John Paczkowski — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:00:08 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Flip Camcorder Goes High-Def

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:40:05 +0000

Over the past couple of years, Pure Digital Technologies has changed the way people think about video cameras by turning these heavy, expensive, intimidating devices into affordable, user-friendly gadgets that fit into a shirt pocket.

To keep the prices of its Flip camcorders affordable, Pure Digital always made some sacrifices in quality and style. And though the company improved on style in June by releasing the sleek $180 Flip Mino, it stuck with standard definition while other companies boasted high-definition capturing capabilities.

The $230 Flip MinoHD is the first camcorder from Pure Digital Technologies to use high definition.

Today, Pure Digital adds a high-def member to its family: the $230 Flip MinoHD. This handheld camcorder looks like the original Mino (more digital camera than video camera), but the MinoHD is capable of capturing high-definition footage in 1280×720 pixel resolution, or 720p. (The regular Mino records at 640×480 pixels.)

Both cameras can be personalized with colorful designs that people can either make themselves or select from TheFlip.com. It’s also possible to upload personal photos to decorate the camcorder. This personalization process is free on new Minos, but people who want to personalize Minos they already own are out of luck.

I brought my MinoHD along on a weekend trip to a lake in North Carolina and used it to capture beautiful images of leaves at their color-changing peak and games of charades among friends. Overall, I really liked the quality of the footage, which had rich hues and sharp details such as glistening ripples of waves on the lake’s surface. And the MinoHD’s improved sound even clearly picked up the voices of two guys paddling away from our dock in a canoe.

[ See post to watch video ]

But if you’re the type of person who likes to play back videos after capturing them, you might be disappointed that the MinoHD’s 1.5-inch screen is no larger than the previous models. This means you won’t get a good look at the high-definition footage until you play clips back on a computer.

Another downside is that high-definition footage is much too large to easily send to others in its original format, so it must be compressed to 480×270-pixel resolution for sharing on Pure Digital’s software. Previous Flips also compressed videos for sharing (the Mino uses 360×270), but I particularly missed the ability to easily show others my videos in HD quality via the camera’s software. Pure Digital says it’ll enable HD sharing through a partner company by early next year.

The Flip MinoHD weighs 3.3 ounces and has four gigabytes of internal memory, or twice that of its predecessor, yet both hold 60 minutes of video because the HD format takes up twice as much space. In true Pure Digital style, the camera’s seven buttons are easy to use: Press the red record button to start and stop, and press plus or minus buttons to zoom in or out with a 2x digital zoom while recording. A play/pause button plays back videos and a delete button gets rid of unwanted footage to free up memory; alternatively, videos can be offloaded to a PC.

The MinoHD comes loaded with new software called FlipShare. I found this worked much better than Pure Digital’s previous sharing software, which was rather straightforward but had its share of quirks and rough edges. FlipShare worked on Macs and PCs running Windows Vista and XP. I should note that the software crashed and insisted on changing the color scheme on my Vista laptop the first two times I plugged in my MinoHD, but I had no problems after that.

FlipShare’s use of drag-and-drop video organizing resembles the way that Apple (AAPL) iTunes songs can be dragged into playlists. And just as iTunes searches for music when it’s installed, FlipShare scoured my computers for other Flip videos, neatly arranging those clips into folders. I easily named videos, and clips not saved to the computer were clearly marked as “Unsaved.” Eight large icons at the bottom of the FlipShare software illustrate what can be done with the videos: save to computer; play full screen; share via email, greeting card or Web site (YouTube, AOL Video or MySpace — no Facebook as of yet); or create a movie, snapshot or DVD.

FlipShare works with other Pure Digital camcorders, and users of the older software will get a prompt to upgrade to FlipShare next week. It’s also fully compatible with Apple’s video applications, including iMovie and iDVD. And when I plugged in my MinoHD, iTunes opened and asked if I wanted to import my MinoHD footage.

Pure Digital says the MinoHD’s internal battery lasts for two hours of overall use (recording, playback, standby, etc.) or for 90 minutes of straight recording. Compared with other Flip video cameras, this battery life is half that of the Mino and on par with the older Flip Ultra, which runs on two double-A batteries.

After using the fully charged device to record 60 minutes of footage over a weekend, I still had about one hour remaining. It charges by plugging its pop-out USB connector into any computer’s USB port, and will also work with some USB chargers, though not Apple’s. Pure Digital will sell a standalone charger for $20 that should be available by the end of the year.

If you’re in the market for a simple camcorder that records high-quality video, the Flip MinoHD is definitely worth $50 more than the regular Flip Mino. But don’t say I didn’t warn you so when you’re bummed out by the screen’s still-small size and its inability to share true HD footage via the FlipShare software.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

Think of It as an iPhone With a Broken Touchscreen

John Paczkowski — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:14:35 +0000

With its curvier edges, stylish silver trim, half-VGA 480-by-320 pixel screen and improved iTunes compatibility, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) new BlackBerry Bold should be a big hit with IT operations professionals convinced the iPhone isn’t an enterprise-class mobile device but driven to near-aneurysm by discontented employees demanding them.

The device is largely as expected–an iPhonish-looking thing with both GPS and Wi-Fi, 1GB of permanent flash memory, a 2-megapixel camera, full HTML browsing, 3G support on GSM networks with HSDPA access and, of course, the BlackBerry’s one-trick killer app: instant, secure email. That’s a compelling combination for business users and casual ones not easily swayed by the iPhone’s hype juggernaut as well. Indeed, Citigroup analyst Jim Suva says it could boost RIM’s quarterly shipments by 200,000 to 400,000.

But perhaps not without a bit of struggle. The BlackBerry Bold won’t ship until as late as August, which means Apple (AAPL) could beat it to market with the enterprise-friendly 3G iPhone it’s rumored to be uncrating at its Worldwide Developer’s Conference in June. Which has got to worry RIM. After all, the first-generation iPhone had claimed a 28% market share by the fourth quarter of 2007. That’s still less than the BlackBerry, which holds about a 41% market share, but the iPhone hasn’t even been on the market a year.