Initial thoughts on the BlackBerry PlayBook

On Boxing Day, as I was wandering the stores looking for ski boots, I came across the BlackBerry PlayBook. Well, not quite. I sort of went looking for it in the hopes that one wasn't available.  I've been debating the place of a tablet in today's home and frankly, I couldnt find a reason one would buy one. But there I was, on the Feast of St. Stephen, walking out of London Drugs with a PlayBook.

I justified getting it in many ways. It was relatively cheap (I paid $249 for the 32GB version; compare that to  $620 you would pay for the iPad 2), in fact, cheaper than my 32GB iPod touch I bought a few years back. It would be useful to test apps and things (I've been intending to build some apps for a while now) and I could use it at home to look up stuff when my computers were not on (which isn't as rare as I thought it would be). None of this really justifies buying one of these devices, but what can I say... I saw something shiny and nice... and I fell for it.

Anyway, onto my thoughts on the device itself, and inevitable comparisons to the other device that rides high in this space, the iPad 2.Note that a chunk of this was written on the PlayBook... but I had to do edits on the PC because of its horrendous ability to correct spelling mistakes (more on that later).

I found the PlayBook to be a nicely built device. Everything about it feels solid and reliable. It doesn't mean I am going to go about dropping it on the floor anytime soon. I must say though that it is heavier than I expected. This is the same reason why I wouldnt get an iPad, the thing is a bit too heavy to hold onto for long periods of time. The display and sound are especially lovely on this device. Of course, I hear the display suffers in terms of visibility in sunlight... but what sunlight are we talking about in dark Vancouver? The sound is especially brilliant. Play something on its stereo speakers and compare it the anything else out there. You'll be amazed.

Now,  for the perceived negatives on this device. Take these with a grain of salt; I expect a lot from RIM and these sorts of devices in general, so perhaps they are a bit too harsh.

The lack of email/bbm/calendar/contacts is definitely annoying. Since I have a BlackBerry phone though, the bridge alleviates that in some way. I don't completely like that way of using email, but in a pinch, that will do. RIM is apparently addressing these shortcomings soon and things should get better. What is a lot more annoying is the lack of auto correct on the tablet. The BlackBerry phone is very good at learning and correcting your mistakes efficiently. I could type proper words quickly on the phone and expect punctuation to be added for me easily. Not so here. On the phone, I can press the space bar twice and it would put a "." for me automatically, as well as capitalise the next letter. This makes sense. Why this feature did not make it to the tablet is beyond me. I expect it to work out of the box on day 1. Still, this too can be fixed via a software update (I hope they do fix it).

The copy and paste/selection thing not working easily is quite annoying. This is especially the case in apps. Let's say I see something in the Globe and Mail app I want to copy it so i can search on google. well guess what? I can't. That is quite annoying. On the phone, the select option exists in every app I have seen. The crippled select/copy/paste mechanism that works (so far only in the browser as far as I can tell)  isn't obvious. I thought tapping on a word would pop something up. Instead, I have to touch and hold for a few seconds before the thing pops up, then you have to select an option in the floating menu and then use it. I had to google that to see if it was even possible.

I can't find a way of searching for text on a browser page. Can you imagine that? This can be fixed too, but the fact that such a simple (and necessary) feature does not exist on a modern tablet surprises me. Or perhaps it shouldn't.

The huge lack of apps is frustrating. I used to think the browser could do it all. I am no longer certain of that. At least not the way it is done today. Some pages do work (like gmail). Many are simply piss poor when it comes to it. There is a Bing maps app. but I can't copy and paste stuff in it. Like when I clicked on the current location button and this error happened.

It searches in the wrong area (Business instead of Location) and doesn't even let me copy the coordinates to search in the right place! Using this app was frustrating. So, I looked for Google Maps. Google has done a great job with the maps app on the phone, and on the iPod et al. But, no such app exists for the PlayBook. So, I went to the mobile website. It never quite finished Loading. The browser tab was useless after I tried loading the page. Now, it could be some messed up JavaScript on the Google Maps side. At any rate, the PlayBook has no useful mapping software. There was an app called MapApp that uses the Google Maps API, but it wasn't very usable.

The lack of an integrated notification framework frustrates me. On the phone, when you get an email, a Facebook message, a BBM, a software update, an SMS, Google Voice message, what have you, they feed into a integrated, usable framework that notifies the user with a visual cue (the blinking light), a physical cue (vibration if you so choose), a audible cue (a chirp if you set it to). And everything went into your messages (apart from Google Voice) app and you could deal with it from there. Nothing of this sort exists on the PlayBook. How do I know if I got Facebook Notifications? Well, you won't know unless you open the Facebook app. How stupid is that? Again, I am sure this can be fixed... but the lack of parity features is frustrating. Why you would build something from the ground up and completely ignore the features that actually made your previous operating system/device highly usable is beyond me. It is as if RIM is working hard to make sure anyone who comes in contact with their device runs away from it. And pisses off those who have used past devices because of the lack of features in the PlayBook.

I used to work for a software company that got bought out by its competitor. The new company then set about building parity features from the old software into their offering. I don't think any customers of the old software quite got over the lack of parity features. Or the fact that parity was used with a lot of poetic licence. Four wheels does not a car make... and the PlayBook OS makes for a poor substitute for the old BlackBerry OS.

As I said, I expect a lot from RIM. I have had BlackBerry devices since 2005. I swear, I can still feel the phone vibrate in the middle of the night instinctively. It is still an extension of myself. I can do a LOT with my phone. I am constantly amazed at how much the BlackBerry can do and for how long. This is especially evident when these Android and iOS folks get all cute about things like messaging or email. My BlackBerry in 2006 had google talk and it worked. It worked for messaging to a desktop, to another mobile device, to whatever. As long as you had a google talk account, I could message you. And it worked well. Likewise for email. It is just reliable and beautiful. It played avi files out of the box. Mind you, it might have skipped if the avi was a bit too much for it to handle. But none of this converting nonsense like you have to do for iOS.

Now, what about improvements? For one thing, the browser is a real browser. The piss poor browser on my Tour (OS 5 I think) is atrocious. It works... but god, does it frustrate me. The browser on the PlayBook is a wonderful piece of work. It plays flash. Unfortunately, it also plays flash ads. And it is incredibly sensitive to me trying to full screen flash videos. It clicks on the ad for you thus opening it (in a new tab, but still). It runs multiple apps simultaneously. I actually find it annoying that RIM has to advertise that. Because the phone has done that forever. But, it is a differentiator to the iOS devices, so you need to point it out. I find it to be intelligent as well. For example, if I am watching a video and open a different app, it pauses the video. Now, if I am listening to an audio feed (like I do with the CBC radio feeds in a browser), it doesn't pause it. Sane and normal.

You can side-load content onto the device. What that means is that I can, using smbclient, connect to my PlayBook over the wireless network, upload and download media onto it. Say I have videos. Say I want to watch videos while I am not at home. I can do that. Avi videos that is. The same for pictures and what not. It also syncs your iTunes account to it, so if you use iTunes for media, then all that is available as well. I don't (there is no iTunes for Linux). 

I've had an iPod touch for a few years now and I use it a lot to consume media. I use it to browse the news, post stuff on Facebook via other apps (mainly news). I am still using it for that. The PlayBook, while it has a much nicer screen and audio output, is no match for the little Apple device. A lot of that is because there is a vibrant app marketplace for iOS. RIM needs to fix that on their side. I've seen the iPad in action as well; it is a delightful device apart from its price. And the fact that you can't do normal things like side-load media. I am also impressed with their split keyboard thing for landscape mode on the iPad. Typing, selecting/copying/pasting etc on the iOS devices is a treat (mind you, it took many iterations to get here for the copy/paste! It was marketed as an actual feature!!!).

Anyway, I think I've gone on a ramble for a while now. The moral of the story is, this device is decent if you want something that is cheap and powerful and has a lot of potential. If you want all the apps in the world and all the polish that you've come to expect from an iOS device, you may be in for a bit of a shock. If you expect it to work like the legacy BlackBerry, you're also in for a shock. With that in mind, I'm still liking this device and will give RIM a chance to make things right. God knows, they've had their fair share of bad luck and poor decisions. Here's hoping, in the new year, that they turn both around. And, if you are an app developer, please, please, please create usable apps for the PlayBook. There are lovely apps out there (like the Al Jazeera one), just take the time to build something and hopefully, the ecosystem survives long enough to make it worth your while. And if any Canadian media types are reading (like the CBC or G  & M/CTV, Shaw types), please build and improve your apps so they are on par with the other platforms.

Moustache season. Now closed.

Some of you may know that I did something this November that I have not (intentionally) done ever before. I decided to grow a moustache for Movember. Along with some like-minded co-workers, we spent a month grooming our facial hair with the intention of raising funds for Prostate Cancer Canada.

When I started the effort, I thought we would raise perhaps $100 a person if we were lucky. We started off with a team of 9 people I think and $900 seemed like a seriously lofty goal. Who in their right mind would donate money for my scraggly facial hair after all?

This was my first time taking part in an event like this. I am not averse to taking up charitable causes, but it usually involves donating some money and getting on with life. Not so with this exercise. I had a team and team mates to cheer on. I had to grow hair for a month to show for it. I mean, it wasn't that hard (apart from remembering to not shave initially), but it still took some getting used to.

We went through a process of transformation over time. Some of us are blessed with hair growing genes. Others, not so much. Some of us gave into peer pressure and gave up (on account of the wives not approving apparently). Some of us had skin issues. Some of us grew hair in patches.

Donations were slow to come by. I dislike hassling people to donate. I firmly believe charity comes from the heart. You cannot force someone to donate. I dislike those random phone calls you get asking you to donate to a charity with some heartfelt story about some tragedy. I also dislike chain mails for the same reason: whether it is the one about how AOL and Bill Gates are tracking your emails and for each forward you'll get a gold bar or if it is some bunk about a poor child somewhere who needs some magical remedy to cure an alleged hole in her heart... I don't like the aspect of using guilt and greed to get anywhere. Thankfully, things like facebook exist, so in a sense, you can virtually hassle people in a creative manner without feeling terrible. 

One benefit of having something physical to show for your efforts is that it becomes a conversation piece. People naturally ask you about your moustache and why you're growing it. In this part of the world, the moustaches sprout up like weeds in a garden during November. I feel bad for the year-round moustachioed men, they must feel a bit bothered by all the attention moustaches get this time of year. Or perhaps they welcome it. Who knows.

Donations started to trickle in. I got $20 from an anonymous admirer (I'd like to think anyway). The team started to get the odd donation. I was optimistic I would reach our goal of $1000. A week into it, someone at work donated a good chunk of change. Apparently, this person donates annually to a charity and decided Prostate Cancer Canada was the recipient this year. After that, donations started to come in. Daily we would get something. Sometimes, it was a buck each. Sometimes, it was 50s.

As the month went on and we took pictures to mark the event, more people became involved. My boss donated money. Others in the company donated money. Friends donated. Friends joined in the cause. Friends who live in far flung places donated money. We finished the month far ahead of what I thought we could raise. The team raised a total of $2,576. Not bad for a team of 20 (we grew to 20) men sporting facial hair. 

Perhaps the best story of the lot was about the Norwegian fellow I work with. He joined in on the first day. He grew hair for a whole month. And no one really saw any hair. He grows incredibly fair and fine hair on his face it seems. So, on the last day, he applied some of his wife's mascara and came to work. He had a moustache after all!  Norwegians are cool by the way. For a country so tiny, they have enormous influence in the world.

Anyway, I wanted to write to thank all the donors, participants, by-standers, patient partners and well wishers. I have not been affected by prostate cancer. But I am sure there are plenty of people out there who have been. So do us all a favour and get yourself checked out. And your friends. And your parents and children and partners. And thanks for putting up with us and our hair.

When I started this endeavour, I didn't expect many people to participate or for people to donate. I finish with a renewed sense of awe of human kind and the power of a (hairy) statement. The 854,000 or so registered participants raised an incredible $112 million  over the course of the month. Us Canadians raised about $40 million of that. I am very proud of the fact that the world as a whole raised so much to fund research into prostate cancer. I'd also like to point out that Canadians participated in large numbers... and beat every other country out there. Be proud MoBros and MoSisters. 

Movember. Now closed. But we'll be back next year. Stay tuned. I'm keeping my moustache for now :).

Something to ponder

I heard this quote attributed to Prof. Sam Keen on the television tonight:

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly. 

What is it that makes us go out and look for perfection when it may not be what we want?

The past

Sometimes, you don't realise how nice life is. But when you are reminded of the past, it gives you some perspective. Not everything is like butter folks, not everything is like freaking butter. 

I can't remember the number of phone calls and meetings I have been where the theme has been like this cartoon strip. I am glad that is in the past. 

Never forget that the sun shines

As I sit here, staring at DurableSubcriber.java, I am drawn to John Denver and his song about sunshine. Sometimes, I forget that the world is a bit more wondrous, a bit larger than my little problems. 

So, put your problems aside for a moment and appreciate the little things in life. That last cup of coffee you had. The last conversation you had with your friend or relative. The last time you had a home cooked meal at your mother's dining table. DurableSubscriber can wait...

Neruda on love

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers 

I ache from the perfumes of spring.

I have forgotten your face, 

I no longer remember your hands;

how did your lips feel on mine?

 Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,

the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; 

I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, 

I am bound to my vague memory of you. 

I live with pain that is like a wound; 

if you touch me, you will do me irreparable harm.

Your caresses enfold me, 

like climbing vines on melancholy walls.

I have forgotten your love, 

yet I seem to glimpse you in every window.

Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; 

because of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: 

shooting stars, falling objects. 

So says Pablo Neruda.

Some days, I miss your perfume. Other days, I wish I never knew what it was. So long, oh albatross of mine (if I may mix a Coleridge metaphor with a Neruda one), for I am finally free of thy curse.

Do you know why we wear poppies?

It is early November and many of us Canadians are wearing the ubiquitous red poppies on our lapels. Those of you who watch the BBC likely have seen our British cousins wear a similar poppy on their lapels. We wear it of course, in honour of all those soldiers who died at all those wars. We wear it for Remembrance Day. Canadians hold the poppy very close to their heart. After all, the inspiration for it came from a Canadian.

As I've touched upon before, In Flanders fields is a poem written by a Canadian soldier and physician, Lieutenant Colonel Dr. John McCrae. He penned that poem after seeing his friend die. The poem stirs up a great many emotions in Canadians I find. While we may not believe in war all that much, you can sense a wee bit of fierce pride when it comes to the wars of yesteryear and what many of our countrymen and women gave up for the world to be the way it is today. If you're into figures, know this: fully, one million Canadians went to fight in the second world war. That may not sound like much. Except when you look at the population of Canada at the time. Canada was a country of 10 million inhabitants. One in ten went to fight. That is incredible. This isn't 10% of the able-bodied 17 to 35 year olds or something. This is fully 10% of the entire population of the country that went to fight in nearly every theatre of war in Europe. I find that statistic to be incredible. Over 45,000 didn't come back. They perished in the various ravages that make wars what they are. An absolute waste of lives.

Our not quite fellow Canadians (at the time) from Newfoundland (they joined Canadian confederation in 1949) sent a percentage larger I believe.

So, you may be able to see  why we so religiously wear these little red things on our lapels. A lot of our blood has been shed on the battlefields of Europe in the name of freedom, King and country. I'll take a pass at expressing my sentiments on how the rest of the British empire fared during the wars (especially the Indians). That will make this post far longer than I am willing to have it.

We mark Remembrance Day (in Canada) on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11 month of the year. So do all our Commonwealth brethren. This was when (in 1918) the Armistice was signed, ending the First World War. We may call it Armistice Day or Poppy Day or Veterans Day but the sentiment is the same. And we wear our poppies. In the freezing cold. In rain. In snow. In whatever mother nature throws our way. But this is where this Canadian story takes a bit of a turn.

You see, when I went to get my poppy this year (we donate funds to the Royal Canadian Legion in exchange for a poppy), the lady gave me a sheet on the history of the poppy. I thought I knew all that I needed to know. Lt. Col. McCrae and the armistice. What more is there? It turns out, plenty more. You see, this American lady who worked for the YWCA named Moina Michael read McCrae's poem and wrote one in response called We shall keep the faith

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,  

Sleep sweet - to rise anew!  

We caught the torch you threw  

And holding high, we keep the Faith  

With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red  

That grows on fields where valor led; 

It seems to signal to the skies 

That blood of heroes never dies,

 But lends a lustre to the red 

Of the flower that blooms above the dead  

In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red 

We wear in honor of our dead.  

Fear not that ye have died for naught; 

We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought  

In Flanders Fields.  

She decided she would wear a poppy to remember the sacrifice of the soldiers. She began a tireless campaign to get the poppy adopted as a symbol of war sacrifice. Remember, this is happening in the United States. She succeeded in 1920.

Along the way a French lady Anna Guérin came upon these poppies and decided to get the war veterans to make poppies and sell them and use the proceeds to rebuild France. She convinced the British and the rest of the Commonwealth to adopt these poppies. 

And this is why we wear the red poppies to remember. A Scottish-Canadian doctor and soldier's poem inspires an American who decides to make it a symbol of sacrifice which then gets picked up by a French woman who in turn convinces the British Legion (and others) to adopt it as an official symbol of remembrance. Read more on the story of the poppy here.

So remember that when you wear the poppy. 

The one thing that saddens me is that I don't see very many of our American brethren wear these poppies. They too have lost much in these wars and I think it would be a fitting tribute to their veterans. In Canada, we may be of various political stripes, religions, ethnicities, colours, countries of origin and what not, but we all wear our poppies. Great effort is taken to make sure Canadians all over the place have them on. The Canadian delegation at the G20 summit had it on. Canadian reporters all over the world have it on. My mother used to send me a package in the mail when I lived in the US. I have every poppy I ever wore pinned on my curtain. And, I will have a new one this November 11.

So this Remembrance Day, take a moment and contemplate what those young men and women gave for whatever country you call home.

Another season of hiking comes to an end

Those of you that have known me in the last few years know that I try and climb a local Vancouver mountain (Grouse Mountain) as often as I can. I hadn't tackled the grind since mid-September last, so I decided to have a go at it. And lucky for me, it was still open. The day was decent (no rain) and the trail wasn't busy. But then, by the half-way mark, there was ice. Everywhere. I fell a couple of times along the way and had a few more close calls. Suffice to say, I won't attempt it anymore this season. Of course, come Monday, they closed the grind for the season. So, I feel lucky that I got to go one last time this season.

This brings us to the end-of-year summary of the hiking season. It isn't so much that hiking season is over as much as Grouse grind season being over. But we shall overlook that simplification.  At the beginning of this season, I had set myself a goal of beating my best time from before. I didn't really come close.

Now, keep in mind that the record was shattered (yes, that is the right term) by one Sebastian Salas and it currently stands at 25:01. That's right, 25 minutes and 1 second. My best time was somewhere near 55 minutes. I have a few co-workers who can do it under 45 minutes. Keep in mind that you are climbing uphill the whole time and gaining 30 seconds on your time is something of a feat. So, here's how I did this year:

As you can tell from the graph, I briefly flirted with the 1 hour mark (I was off by 113 seconds as I recall), but then things went awry. But, if I may redeem myself, I have done better this year than a previous year, both in terms of the number of times I went to the actual times I posted. I don't really have much data from 2010 since I didn't go that much and was busy with home buying and what not. 

So, what's the take-away here? I need to sort out my time. If my co-worker who is nearly 20 years my senior can bound up the mountain more than 20 minutes faster than I can, I have some serious training to do. I think more data points would also help. I wish I had gone more often, I think I would have improved my times with practice. So, the eternal optimist that I am not, I will try and train up for the 2012 season in the hopes that I will a) dip below the 1 hour mark and b) beat the 55 minute mark. 

Here's hoping.