Eideard

Research In Motion shares fell as much as 14 percent as analysts said a reduced profit forecast hurts management’s credibility and raises pressure on the company as it heads into an annual trade show next week…

“This further damages already low credibility, making them the ‘poster boy’ for a show-me story from here,” Mike Abramsky, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in Toronto, said in a research note…

RIM is struggling to compete against Apple and Google in the smartphone market. The company, which will host the BlackBerry World conference starting on Monday, has to update its BlackBerry lineup and provide some evidence its products can do better against Apple’s iPhone and devices that run Google’s Android operating system, said Paul Taylor, chief investment officer at BMO Harris Private Banking in Toronto.

“Management needs to deliver on the product side,” said Taylor, who manages about $14.5 billion including RIM and Apple shares. “That includes competitive next-generation smartphones and building out the app library.”

Apple offers more than 350,000 software applications, or apps, and Google’s Android Market has more than 150,000, compared with more than 25,000 in BlackBerry App World…

At least four other analysts — Jefferies & Co. Inc.’s Peter Misek, Cormark Securities Inc.’s Richard Tse, Gleacher & Co. Securities’ Stephen Patel and National Bank Financial’s Kris Thompson — reduced their ratings on the stock…

“The sales on their existing devices must have fallen off a cliff,” said Matt Thornton, an Avian Securities LLC analyst in Boston who has a “neutral” rating on the stock. “They are getting hit by a combination of a stale portfolio and heated competition on devices.”

Complacency, dealing with the most dynamic marketplace in the world of commerce as if it’s the railroad business in 1890 never delivers stability and long-term confidence.

I can recall emailing folks I knew inside Palm about the potential for building their OS into a fully functional operating system – keeping it small and adding needed potential while resisting bloat. Just like RIM they said, “Hey – we’re doing just fine as we are.”

Egypt’s shutdown of the Internet within its borders is an action unlike any other in the history of the World Wide Web and it might have only taken a few phone calls to do it.

“It’s something I’ve never seen; it’s totally unprecedented,” said James Cowie, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Renesys, an IT company in New Hampshire that helps Internet service providers monitor the security of Web networks and infrastructure.

“Over a period a period of about 20 minutes, it’s as if each of the primary service providers started pulling the routes that lead to them. It wasn’t like a simultaneous withdrawal.

“Nobody flipped an off switch or hit a big red button. It was one by one until they were all gone.”

The Egyptian government cut off nearly all online services between midnight and 12:30 a.m., Egyptian time, on Friday, Cowie said — something he noted on his company’s blog as he witnessed the blackout…

“Egypt is a modern country; the government doesn’t own the Internet,” Cowie said. “There are private companies of varying sizes that own and operate their own infrastructure. But it seems that they got a call and so they turned it off.”

This is perfectly legal according to the laws of some countries. And if ISPs wish to do business in such countries they will sign contracts that agree to the laws of the land.

Some members of Congress are trying to change that.

The TTC bus driver was texting on a BlackBerry-like device while driving around 50 km/h when passenger Mike Schmitz took an iPhone photo of him.

The shot, taken on a 165 Weston Rd. North bus that was “full of people”, shows the driver focused on the device, and the orange needle of the bus speedometer pointing upwards…

The driver would alternate between holding the device with both hands and steering with his forearms, and driving with one hand while holding the device with the other and texting with his thumb, he said.

“This is incredibly serious,” said TTC spokesman Brad Ross, who got a glimpse of the photo on Thursday. “It would appear … that he’s doing at least 50 km/h while texting, and his eyes are not on the road.”

The TTC has “a clear policy” when it comes to prohibiting its drivers from using personal electronic devices — such as cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPhones — while on the job, Ross said. “This is a serious breach of public safety,” he said, adding that drivers are not allowed to talk on cellphones or text even while the vehicle is stopped…

As of Oct. 26, 2009, Ontario drivers have been banned from talking on cellphones, texting or using hand-held electronic devices of any kind while behind the wheel.

A bit more than an oops! No one needs to see bus drivers volunteering for a Darwin Award.

In a deep and sonorous study by the dating site OkCupid, there seems to be no doubt: iPhone owners have more sex than BlackBerry owners and a lot more sex than the worthy, solemn, dedicated purchasers of Android phones.

The numbers for women might leave some readers breathless–as they rush to their local Apple store to buy an iPhone.

For this analysis of 30-year-olds with smartphones suggested that women with iPhones had an average of 12.3 sexual partners (I am sure the 0.3 knows exactly who he is), while their age-equivalents who had opted to put an Android into their purse scored a mere 6.1. (It was 8.8 for the BlackBerry owners, but some might feel these more businessy types would most likely be having sex while still on their BlackBerrys, so that hardly counts.)

For men, the disparity was only slightly more narrow, which perhaps merely reflected a proportionate reduction in the width of their minds. Interestingly, though, Android-owning men seem to have exactly the same amount of sex as Android-owning women…

OkCupid’s calculations also offered that the sexual attraction that seems clearly to be offered by the Apple logo stretches to all ages.

Android owners from 18-40 seem to consistently droop into relative sexless oblivion by comparison…

There will be those who believe that the iPhone makes them look and feel sexier. Others will claim that only sexy people purchase an iPhone in the first place.

Cripes! Apparently, there’s no need at all to count users of smartphones running Windows Mobile.

The BlackBerry — renown for the security of its messaging — doesn’t offer 100 percent protection from eavesdropping. At least not in the United States. Law enforcement officials said they can tap into emails and other conversations made using the device, made by Research in Motion, as long as they have proper court orders.

RIM’s willingness to grant authorities access to the messages of its clients is a hot-button issue. The United Arab Emirates claims it does not have the same kind of surveillance rights to BlackBerry messages as officials in the United States. It has threatened to clamp down on some services unless they get more access…

“The ability to tap communications is a part of surveillance and intelligence and law enforcement all over the world,” said Mark Rasch, former head of the computer crimes unit at the U.S. Department of Justice.

RIM is in an unusual position of having to deal with government requests to monitor its clients because it is the only smartphone maker who manages the traffic of messages sent using its equipment. Other smartphone makers — including Apple Inc, Nokia, HTC and Motorola Corp — leave the work of managing data to the wireless carrier or the customer…

Rasch said that RIM may feel uncomfortable granting such access to officials in UAE. There may be concern authorities could abuse that access, he said.

“You reach a point where a company feels uncomfortable from the client perspective with what a government is asking them,” Rasch said. “It may be a function of what they are being asked to do, or it may be a function of which government is asking.”

U.S. rules that govern wire-tapping are designed to avoid abuse of power.

Har! I suppose Reuters had to include the paper description of U.S. avoidance of abuse of power.

In practice, abuse of power is perfectly OK [1] if no one finds out about it; [2] the government has enough tame judges who will overrule any objections; and [3] Congress will make the abuse legal if citizens complain about the abuse.

More than a million BlackBerry users may have key services in Saudi Arabia and the UAE cut off after authorities stepped up demands on smartphone maker Research In Motion for access to encrypted messages sent over the device.

BlackBerry’s Messenger application has spread rapidly in the Gulf Arab region but because the data is encrypted and sent to offshore servers, it cannot be tracked locally.

“Certain BlackBerry services allow users to act without any legal accountability, causing judicial, social and national security concerns,” the United Arab Emirates’ Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in a statement.

The UAE said it would suspend BlackBerry Messenger, email and Web browser services from October 11 until a fix was found, while industry sources said Saudi Arabia had ordered local telecom companies to freeze Messenger this month…

India raised similar security concerns last week, and Bahrain in April warned against using BlackBerry Messenger to distribute local news. As far back as 2007, France cautioned officials about using the services…

Users of the device said that could mean disruptions for companies and individuals who rely on the services, including almost 700,000 in Saudi Arabia and some 500,000 in the UAE.

Frankly, it sounds as much a problem of government officials distrusting RIM – as much as simple censorship.

USA.gov has unveiled a slew of free mobile apps that provide information about product recalls, most-wanted criminals and other federal government information and services.

Most of these tools aren’t standalone software; instead, they use information from interactive websites optimized to work well in “microbrowsers,” the small-size, limited-functionality web browsers that come with many mobile phones.

As far as access to government is concerned, mobile-friendly websites are a very good thing. That’s because…the vast majority of U.S. mobile phones in use are not smartphones with full-featured browsers. Also, mounting wireless network congestion can make standard websites frustrating to use on smartphones.

You don’t need a smartphone, a data plan or even a high-speed data connection…to use a WAP site, just a phone with a mobile web browser and an ordinary cell network connection.

There are 17 apps listed on Apps.USA.gov. Twelve of the USA.gov apps are available as WAP sites, and most of these (nine) are available only as WAP sites.

iPhone apps: The FBI Most Wanted app, the NASA app, the BMI calculator and the White House app are available only as iPhone apps. Two other apps (MyTSA and U.S. Postal Service Tools) offer iPhone versions in addition to WAP sites.

Two Android apps: Product Recalls and UV Index

One BlackBerry app: Only the UV Index app has a BlackBerry version.

Knock yourselves out, gang. They’re limited to smartphone apps; so, I’ll wait till the iPad versions appear.

An update for Blackberry users in the United Arab Emirates could allow unauthorised access to private information and e-mails.

The update was prompted by a text from UAE telecoms firm Etisalat, suggesting it would improve performance. Instead, the update resulted in crashes or drastically reduced battery life…

Etisalat is a major telecommunications firm based in the UAE, with 145,000 Blackberry users on its books.

In the statement, RIM told customers that “Etisalat appears to have distributed a telecommunications surveillance application… independent sources have concluded that it is possible that the installed software could then enable unauthorised access to private or confidential information stored on the user’s smartphone”.

It adds that “independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry Handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server“…

The update has now been identified as an application developed by American firm SS8. The California-based company describes itself as a provider of “lawful electronic intercept and surveillance solutions”…

Etisalat issued a brief statement calling the problem a “slight technical fault”, saying that the “upgrades were required for service enhancements”.

RIM has issued a patch allowing users to remove the application. Phew!

IPhone users will be able to make free phone calls from today as Skype becomes available for the first time on the popular Apple gadget.

Skype, the internet telephone unit of eBay, has more than 450 million registered users. It has been pushing to make its service available on “smart-phones” – such as the iPhone – rather than only desktop computers. As with the Skype service on PCs, phone calls will be free between Skype users and calls to other landlines and mobiles will cost less than normal network rates.

Scott Durchslag, Skype’s chief operating officer, said: “There’s a pent-up demand. Skype software for the iPhone has been the No 1 request among our users.”

Skype also said that its service would be available on millions of BlackBerry phones in May. It has already announced Skype for Nokia phones, as well as handsets that run on Google’s “Android” software for mobiles such as the T-Mobile G1, and Windows Mobile phones.

Telephone companies continue their death spiral. They deserve it.

Most BlackBerry owners, for example, know they can improve their Interstate IQ by using the navigation function of their smartphones, and people with a Web browser on their phone can check out World Traffic Cams to see if there is congestion at the Lincoln Tunnel before heading into New York.

Indeed, our love affair with cellphones is increasingly being coupled with our love affair with the automobile, spawning applications — some silly, some sublime — that drivers can download to their mobile handsets for little or no money.

On the practical side, there are programs that help with the more mundane aspects of automobile ownership. One free application for the iPhone, for example, tries to demystify repair bills. Tap in the make and model of your vehicle along with what ails it and RepairPal spits out estimated parts and labor costs. It does not include diagnostic fees and taxes, but it does offer a list of nearby repair shops with customer ratings, should you want to comparison shop.

Conversely, on the pure fun side, there’s Dynolicious. Using the same kind of technology that enables a Nintendo Wii game controller to follow your gestures, this $12.99 application uses an iPhone’s built-in accelerometer to gauge 0-to-60 times (to within 0.08 of a second) and other performance characteristics, including lateral G-forces. Like competing programs such as g-tac pro ($19.99), Dynolicious will also let you assess your vehicle’s top speed, but to get precise results you’ll need to secure the phone in a cradle…

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