Suing over intellectual property you do nothing with but sit on and sue people who actually innovate/create is bad enough. Interpreting it as broadly as Lodsys now appears to be should be considered illegal.

RIM has yet to officially respond to the claims made against Radcliffe. Though when they do, we hope it’s with plenty of spite directed at Lodsys. With that said, we also hope RIM lends a few of their own lawyers to the cause. Radcliffe has already said that even a few hours worth of consultation with a couple lawyers will wipe out all of his profits from Lonely Turret.

Stay tuned…

Source: The Globe and Mail | Via: BerryReview

To be clear, the PlayBook will now be able to pull contacts, calendars and email free of charge. But using the internet portion of BlackBerry Bridge is what requires the new added charge.

Consider the PlayBook’s usefulness on AT&T’s network effectively killed.

To RIM we only ask one thing: What the hell were you thinking giving AT&T the authority to effectively remove one of the PlayBook’s required, core features from the masses? Looks like those open letters were spot on.

As for AT&T, their assertion that they needed to “properly test” the BlackBerry Bridge app is a blatant lie. Every single other carrier supporting the PlayBook released the BlackBerry Bridge app as normal on launch day. Provided they got the app at the same time AT&T claims — and don’t kid yourselves, they did — it further proves AT&T’s complete disregard for the customers. The only reason AT&T delayed the Bridge app was to rig it up in their systems to require the unnecessary $20/month tethering charge.

What’s currently unknown is how this new revelation will affect the countless AT&T PlayBook users already using the Bridge app that was made available through unofficial channels shortly after it became apparent AT&T was withholding said app. Will they fly under the radar or be hit with tethering plan upgrade charges. As asinine as AT&T is, we suspect the latter.

If RIM has even the slightest drive to truly get back into the game and compete with iOS, Android, and even webOS, this shit has got to stop. Doing things like this only furthers there competitors’ market share while also making RIM look even more incompetent/clueless than they already do.

Source: AllThingsD

Today, BGR posted stories from two more sources — one a former RIM employee the other a current RIM employee — whom BGR claims are 100% legitimate.

In short: RIM is all kinds of f*cked up internally and is still in a 2005 mindset. Catch the full emails after the jump…

Letter 1

This letter brilliantly articulated just about everything I’ve thought and/or heard relating to the company in the last two years.

I was an employee at RIM for a year and a half. I worked in the legal and business affairs departments, and despite having originally thought I’d landed the jackpot job-wise, it took no time for me to begin planning my exodus.

My first week started with a complete change in my title and duties without anyone telling me, and when I dared ask what was happening, the director (my boss) and her BFF the OD business partner ganged up on me and threatened to let me go, setting the tone for the remainder of my time there.

Over a year an a half, the four of us in the same position dwindled to just me and yet I was responsible for getting all four jobs done for the better part of a year, since this is how long it took the department to hire other entry-level people. Two individuals who had less education and experience (not to mention drive or intelligence) than me were promoted several times while my boss continued to tell me up and down that I had reached my ceiling at RIM due to my lack of education (two degrees!) and experience (5 years!)–as an administrative assistant. Rather than attempt to fight this system I figured I could transfer departments, only the company policy requires the supervisor to act as a liaison and reference for internal applicants. The insanely high turnover rate meant the department head wouldn’t let anyone go, in addition to refusing to promote from within (pets excepted). People were pitted against each other and an incredibly tense and hostile work environment was fostered. People around the office started referring to the office politics as “Survivor: RIM edition.” And we all remember the great movement to make recycling physically impossible across the entire company because one person let some confidential information slip.

Then, as I was saving up to return to school and make a better life for myself, I received a series of nasty emails from HR letting me know that since my boss had failed to log my vacation time a year earlier on SAP (despite my insistence on her doing it at three different times), I would have two full paycheques deducted to “pay back” the company for what was being portrayed as my mistake. I never received an apology and almost had to drop out of school due to the loss of a full month’s pay. On my last day my boss deliberately avoided me at all cost. The best part is that I recently heard that my boss just got promoted to the VP of the business affairs department.

I write this not to rant about my discouraging situation (it was a few years ago), but rather to relate that my experiences seem (even now as I maintain contact with many work friends) to be the rule rather than the exception across the company. Individuals who have fresh ways of thinking and who try to do things in new ways are not only reprimanded, but demoted (did I not mention I was also demoted at one point for asking too many questions?). Passive-aggression fills the halls where collegial interaction should thrive. The amount of red tape required to get just about anything done is exhausting, slowing progress and removing all incentive for employees at any level to innovate. Success cannot be borne of a 2005 status quo when the world looks a lot different now than it did even 12 months ago.

Despite what I endured at the company, I continue to support RIM as I love its products and sincerely wish it the best. Perhaps if it can take the recommendations from the employee’s open letter to heart, change will be ignited sooner rather than later, and employees and consumers alike will gain as RIM refines its most crucial relationships.

Letter 2

Inside RIM there is a small-ish (maybe 200-300) group of employees who’s only focus is keeping the BlackBerry services (Email, Browsing, BBM, the network, etc) running for our customers. We’re a 24/7/365 organization, maintaining 10?s of thousands of servers, network devices, services and basically anything that keeps devices working with our service. Keeping this massive service running smoothly, and keeping visible downtime to a minimum is a monumental task, made worse by the poor management decisions we deal with every day.

If I could have time with Mike and Jim to talk about the problems I see, I would happily reinforce what your executive said, and add a few things:

1) No longer “In Motion” — the operations teams are full of extremely skilled and talented individuals who are excessively good at what they do — they were hired for that reason. We have pulled in resources from many of the best companies, from literally around the world. Many come with years of experience in the industry, and a lot of ‘been there, done that’ knowledge that is invaluable. However, each one of us has been handcuffed by overdone, poorly planned and every more poorly executed process. It can take weeks of time to make small changes, and months to make major ones. Whenever something goes wrong (incident, problems, even non-customer impacting) a lengthy and involved process of finger pointing starts, and without fail, a new process is born. And, sadly, since the announcement came out about the financial problems and layoffs, it’s become worse. Many of the managers are saying we need to rely more heavily now than ever on process. To those of us who need to deal with this process, which consumes days of work generating documents that no one will read, it’s an obvious case of CYA on the managers part. If they say ‘but we followed the process!’, they seem to hope their heads won’t be on the line. We are no longer a company that is innovative and energetic, we are drowning in paperwork. RIM needs to capitalize on the resources they have – hundreds of very smart, dedicated and driven individuals that can solve problems without needing a flowchart or document. We need to get out of this process paralysis, and back “In Motion”.

2) AT&T – Internally, there’s a large joke that we should be called “RIM-T&T”. A *lot* of our senior leadership has come from there, and they come in with ideas from an old, stodgy, process driven industry. Having worked in a telecom like position in the past, I know how much paperwork and process they love – AT&T (and Bell, and other carriers) are dealing with a century of regulation, knowledge and process. Maybe they have some great best practices, but you don’t see ‘new and innovative’ happening a lot at AT&T. It also opens up a lot of questions about business directions when many senior leaders came from one of our carrier partners. RIM is not AT&T. RIM is not Microsoft. RIM is not Google. RIM is not Palm. RIM is RIM, and needs a RIM created focus, RIM ideas, and RIM leadership.

3) Poor leadership – My small team of people has over 80 projects assigned to us right now. Why? Because leaders are afraid to say no. And we’re not the only ones – if you polled the various teams around operations, you’d probably find each and every team/individual has a list that is completely unattainable. But, no one is putting a foot down to say ‘ok, enough’. No one wants to upset someone above them by saying ‘no, we don’t have the time’ or ‘no, that’s not valuable’ or ‘no, you clearly don’t understand what it is we do around here’. Instead, there is (again) a lot of CYA and placating going on. Add to this a lot of process, and you have a workforce that is unable to deliver things quickly, properly, or with any degree of pride in their work.

4) Morale – Being swamped by process, led by poor leaders, and buried in too many projects understandably leaves all of us feeling hopeless. When there isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel, but you are still expected to work 12 hours a day (and only paid for 8), it becomes difficult to stay focused on what needs to happen to make things better. Then, throw in notice of layoffs without any discussion internally, defer promised raises, and cut out expenses that may have been used to bolster morale (staff social events, travel, professional conference attendance), and you have a large workforce of people who are disillusioned about their future. And we’re supposed to be working *harder* to make the company strong right now.

5) Guts – As the other writer said, there are far too many people sitting back and letting others do their work, and nothing happens to them. Everyone knows who these under performers are, but no one does anything about it. Having spoken very directly about this matter with a number of managers, the common thread is that it’s more work to try and get rid of them than to simply put up with them. A combination of laziness and poor OD processes is causing RIM to rot from the inside. We are actually happy to see layoffs here (assuming they don’t target us), because we’re hoping the right people are pulled out and that will open room for us to work properly, or even replace them with someone skilled and who wants to work hard.

6) Products – if you walk around and talk to RIM employees (in operations, I’m sure the development teams are better) about the products we make, you’ll find most of us a) don’t know anything about our new products, b) don’t like our current products and c) pine for the old products. There is so much secrecy in the company, no one knows anything about new things until we see it on the news. That means we’re not able to tell our friends and family anything about new things, and that reflects badly on RIM. The current products are slow and underpowered. It’s generally acknowledged that our devices are inferior to other devices, and indeed, many people have personal devices from our competitors. Our old devices, when we were leading, are snappy, nice to use and highly functional. We need to get back to that. Bells and whistles are nice, but when reading email on the device is difficult, I don’t care if I can play pod casts. Internally, the feedback we can provide is ignored or filed as a ‘bug’ and then ignored. RIM has a big set of internal testers, but ignores their feedback to their own detriment.

7) Sales channels – I heard someone telling this story around the office. Their sister went in to a local carrier store to buy a new BlackBerry, replacing an Android phone they didn’t like. They walked in with $400 in hand and wanted a BB, and walked out with an iPhone. When the sister asked the carrier sales rep for a BlackBerry, they talked her *out* of a BB by telling her how bad they are, then offered her an iPhone for $39. How could the sister resist, after having the BB trashed (slow, useless, hard to use), and then a price like that for a competing product dangled in front of her? When our only avenue to selling our devices is through a ‘neutral’ 3rd party, and is just as happy to sell someone a competitors product as ours, we are at their mercy.

Marketing – my friends love to poke me and make fun of our ads. Sure, BlackBerry seems to be sponsoring a lot of concerts and baseball games, but looking at my circle of friends and family, no one cares about that. Our marketing is boring, our ads are plain, and completely uninteresting. The whole campaign around the Playbook seems to be “IT DOES FLASH! LOOK!” .. but honestly, my mother doesn’t know or care about that. She wants to know ‘can I play Angry Birds?”.

If I could only tell Mike, Jim and the rest of the C*O crowd one thing, it would be this: stop keeping the incredible pool of smart, talented and capable people handcuffed by poorly thought through process. It’s destroying the company, and destroying those of us that have to manage it. Being able to move quickly and innovate is what will save the company, and that goes completely opposite all our process.

Well, RIM. Care to finally come clean about your internal problems or do you prefer the cooler temperatures your heads endure underneath the sand?

Update

An O2 spokesperson responded with the following:

We currently have no plans to release the BlackBerry PlayBook on O2 – we’ll continue to look at all RIM’s products to make sure we’re offering our customers a range of the best products on the market.

Via: Engadget

On the surface, it may seem like a good idea to remove the competition by permanently restricting the the sale of your games, or at the very least employing an exclusive period. But in the grander scheme of things it’s a disappointing oversight…

For starters, Steam earned their popularity by providing a vast library of games. Add to that the ability to re-download purchased content to multiple computers as well as frequently occurring sales and you’ve got the receipt for success.

EA has officially acknowledged the recent removal of Crysis 2 from Steam nor have they mentioned anything regarding exclusive periods and/or the permanent ban of EA games on other digital storefronts. Though it’s worth noting that EA’s upcoming Alice: Madness Returns is listed as “Origin exclusive” until June 17th. Is this a sign for all of EA’s future game releases?

What’s most disappointing and downright maddening, however, is EA’s continuing pricing layout — there is absolutely no reason to charge for a digital game the same price you’d pay for the box copy. The former doesn’t have any shipping, packing, or revenue sharing fees. It’s EA being a bunch of greedy *insert colorful language here* and pocketing the much higher profit margin instead of passing the cost savings to the people that really deserve it most — gamers.

In the end it is you the consumer who can voice your disapproval. Don’t like EA’s policies? Don’t buy their games from Origin and wait until they hit Steam (if they hit Steam). What EA fails to realize is that as long as Steam is popular, EA (and all involved game developers/publishers) will make money. Greed at its finest.

EA is said to be making a public statement regarding the matter later today. Stay tuned…

Update

EA has officially responded.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Via: Geek.com

Ironically, Colao believes that a government body — any government body mind you — can efficiently regulate something as global and fast paced as the internet. It goes without saying Calao is either incredibly naive and doesn’t understand the very basics of the internet or is completely incompetent…

We’d say a mixture of both based on previous comments by Calao also calling for governments to regulate businesses that access the internet and consume large amounts of resources. Again, Facebook is used as an example. Ideally under Calao’s visions, Facebook would have to pay Vodafone (and every other ISP and carrier) for use of it’s bandwidth. This is an incredibly dangerous precedent and misguided for the simple fact that Facebook already pays for it’s hosting and bandwidth costs at home. Abroad, it is consumers who pay for access to the internet. Making Facebook — or any company who is online — pay each and every ISP for access is not feasible, and at best, an attempt for companies unable to innovate or balance their checkbooks placing the blame on everyone else but themselves.

It appears it is time for Calao to step aside and step down so that a younger, more technologically competent successor can breathe new life into a company apparently grasping at straws.

Source: Financial Times
Via: MocoNews

Smartphones over the last couple of years (and foreseeable future) all look the same. They’re a smooth, thin slab of plastic with one side containing mostly glass. There’s only so many ways you can design said device in a way that is truly “unique”.

As far as Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung regarding hardware — it’s stupid. Software on the other hand is an entirely different thing. We’ve long said that Samsung’s Touch Whiz is (1) god awful atrocious and (2) a blatant rip off (a poor one at that) of Apple’s iOS UI. In that regard, we wonder what took Apple so long.

Regardless, both sides will likely come to some sort of secretive agreement behind closed doors after some money exchanges hands. Because in the end, Apple and Samsung both make large sums of money off of each other.

Luckily for us, one diligent CrunchGear reader took the plunge and bought into the “you have to buy a protection plan to walk out with an iPad 2″ game the local BB manager was playing. After said purchase, the reader went to another BB location in the area and inquired about this new “policy”. Wouldn’t you know it, the manager denied any such policy existed.

And that, folks, is why you shouldn’t shop at Best Buy for an iPad 2, TV, CD, and pretty much anything else.

With two of the market leaders — Amazon and Apple — already years ahead of RIM when it comes to catalog size as well as pro-consumer policies in regards to music content, it’s highly disappointing to see RIM start the PlayBook off on such a bad footing out of the gate and not make use of their competitors previous follies. Hopefully RIM can work their magic and re-write the offending licenses and deals neutering their PlayBook music store or flat out find a new partner to deliver the goods. As it stands now, 7Digital is a shackle to an otherwise seemingly great tablet.

Via: Inquirer

It’s certainly alarming even if it wasn’t all that surprising. Though it further backs my opinion of Samsung (in the mobile smartphone arena at least) — they care little for their customers and only about their bottom end. With that said, I will never buy a Samsung smartphone as long as they employ this methodology for firmware/OS updates. Perhaps if enough end users start doing the same, some real change can happen. Full account after the jump…

Hello,

I’m going to step across the NDAs and explain the issues behind the Android Froyo update to Samsung Galaxy S phones in the United States. I think most of you have come to this realization yourself now: the withholding of the Froyo update is a largely political one, not a technological one: Froyo runs quite well on Galaxy S phones, as those of you that have run leaked updates may have noticed.

To explain the political situation, first, a primer on how phone firmware upgrades work for carriers. When a carrier decides to sell a phone, a contract is usually written between the phone manufacturer and the carrier. In this contract, the cost of updates (to the carrier) is usually outlined. Updates are usually broken into several types: critical updates, maintenance updates, and feature updates. Critical updates are those that resolve a critical bug in the phone, such as the phone overheating. Maintenance updates involve routine updates to resolve bugs and other issues reported by the carrier. Finally, feature updates add some new feature in software that wasn’t present before. Critical updates are usually free, maintenance updates have some maintenance fee associated with them, and feature updates are usually costly.
In the past, most phone updates would mainly consist of critical and maintenance updates. Carriers almost never want to incur the cost of a feature update because it is of little benefit to them, adds little to the device, and involves a lot of testing on the carrier end. Android has changed the playing field, however – since the Android Open Source Project is constantly being updated, and that information being made widely available to the public, there is pressure for the phone to be constantly updated with the latest version of Android. With most manufacturers, such as HTC, Motorola, etc. This is fine and considered a maintenance upgrade. Samsung, however, considers it a feature update, and requires carriers to pay a per device update fee for each incremental Android update.

Now, here’s where the politics come in: most U.S. carriers aren’t very happy with Samsung’s decision to charge for Android updates as feature updates, especially since they are essentially charging for the Android Open Source Project’s efforts, and the effort on Samsung’s end is rather minimal. As a result of perhaps, corporate collusion, all U.S. carriers have decided to refuse to pay for the Android 2.2 update, in hopes that the devaluation of the Galaxy S line will cause Samsung to drop their fees and give the update to the carriers. The situation has panned out differently in other parts of the world, but this is the situation in the United States.

Some of you might have noticed Verion’s Fascinate updated, but without 2.2 : This is a result of a maintenance agreement Samsung must honor combined with Verizon’s unwillingness to pay the update fees.
In short, Android 2.2 is on hold for Galaxy S phones until the U.S. carriers and Samsung reach a consensus.

Some might wonder why I didn’t deliver this over a more legitimate news channel – the short answer: I don’t want to lose my job. I do, however, appreciate transparency, which is why I’m here.

U.S. Galaxy S owners: Thoughts?

Via: Lifehacker

It is now a full three and a half years after the first generation iPhone was released and two and a half years since the iPhone 3G’s release. But even still, AT&T”s performance in heavily populated cities is god-awful. You’d think they would have extra network trucks on hand. (If they were there, I didn’t see them, and they failed miserably regardless.) And now as we close in on the week of the Verizon iPhone announcement, AT&T’s PR boss, Larry Solomon, has begun criticizing Verizon’s version of the iPhone saying he’s “not sure if iPhone customers are ready for life in the slow lane” — highlighting HSPA+’s speed advantage over CDMA.

What Mr. Solomon fails to highlight however, is that when it comes down to it, his company has continually failed me, you (assuming you’re using AT&T) and countless other millions of Americans who have had to deal with AT&T’s disgusting track record. With that said, AT&T is the last person who should be criticizing anyone over their cellular performance. Because as I experienced this week, AT&T was hands town the WORST carrier at CES.

Issue a press release on that…

I understand you have to pay the bills, but these changes are just ridiculous. Combine the above with the new, higher ETF’s and you have a a recipe for disaster. At this point, Verizon is becoming less and less relevant even if they do have super speedy LTE. And here we thought Verizon was getting better with this whole pro-consumer thing…

Look for the changes to go live by January 16th.

Via: Android Central

[We use] a number of different methods to accurately identify the application — methods like heuristic analysis, behavioral and historical analysis, deep packet inspection, and a number of other techniques. What’s key is that we have the best application identification available on the market, which means that even applications that are encrypted or use other methods to evade detection will be correctly identified and classified… We essentially feed this real-time information about traffic and application usage into the policy and charging system. Each subscriber has a particular service plan that they sign up for, and they’re as generic or as personalized as the operator wants.

Nope. Still sounds like the apocalypse to us. Not to mention, being able to scan and “determine” even encrypted services sounds like a security nightmare to us. Out of all the useless agencies we have needlessly policing people in this country, I’m sure we’ve got at least one or two that would have a field day with such a service.

**Note to carriers: Implement any form of this crap and I’m gone as are millions of other users…

Source: Fierce Wireless W
Via: Wired, Engadget

According to Microsoft’s Albert Penello in an interview with Official Xbox Magazine, customizable faceplates were “what everyone wanted to do”. Apparently not. Sales we never anything to write home about. With the recent Xbox 360 refrsh, the plates were discontinued entirely, leaving the scores of custom Xbox 360 faceplates to collect dust on retail shelves and forever live in the bargain bin at your local walmart checkout lane.

But one, rare occurrence where Microsoft admits defeat.

Source: Official Xbox Magazine
Via: Engadget, Kotaku

We already know Microsoft’s stance — that we wait for “Certified” SD cards to be released before cramming them into our WP7 devices. However, it’s not a matter of SD Classes as one would think. Engadget has already managed to fry an SD card of their own after attempting a swap in their Samsung Focus. Even more scary however, is the verbiage found in documentation on Samsung’s website:

A microSD card inserted into a Windows Phone 7 device and integrated into the device’s file system is intended to be a permanent modification to the device. Once a microSD card has been integrated into a Windows Phone 7 device’s file system, it will no longer be readable or writable on any other devices such as computers, cameras, printers, and so on. This includes an inability to format the microSD card for use in these devices. Improper use (including inserting or removing) of microSD cards on Windows Phone 7 devices may result in one or more of the following…

Clearly, Microsoft and/or Samsung dropped the ball big time. Under no circumstances should any OS or phone change an SD card so much that it is rendered useless (read: no more read/write ability) on all other gadgets/computers so much so that you can’t even reformat it.

Any other WP7/Samsung Focus owners care to chime in?

Via: Engadget