Жадный Жадина

I am a tethering freak. Apparently I really am, as I am doing this almost on all my recent devices (and I've been through quite few of them). And after I did upgrade to Blackberry Bold2 (or Blackberry Bold 9700 :-) I am doing this again. If you've been following me on Twitter (or just reading this blog on the regular basis) you probably already now that I was (and actually still am very satisfied with Curve 8900). The only reason why I did upgrade, is because I was able to get it with the very great deal, basically bringing it that I had to pay only restocking fee, and got the new device. So, I pulled the trigger and got it. And here we go.

The phone feels great - very nicely build, very close to iPhones sturdiness; it's heavy enough, but still it's awesomely comfortable. OS 5.0 makes some differences, feels snappier and just overall more satisfying. I really have on huge problem - and the problem is that multi-language software package Blackberry has for 9700 -- does not have Russian input method. That just SUCKS big time. I know device was released just recently, but what the heck? It does exist for 9000, for 8900 -- why not for 9700?? That just so disappointing!

But anyways, let's move on. I certainly will rant more about non-existing support for Russian input layout on Twitter. Or here. Unless RIM will move on with some updates which include it. :-)

So, tethering. Used the same path I described earlier and used successfully with Curve 8900 - I decided to give it a try again. Did it work? Yes. Flawlessly. And I also now just have to accept that I was wrong saying that 3G on AT&T works same way as EDGE. I was wrong. It does work faster. How fast? Compare yourself -- my data from 3G test:

It's enough fast to do something very comfortably.

Enjoy your Blackberries. :-)

P.S. Give me my Russian input, RIM!!! :-E~~~

Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

So, needed to create tiny Ruby script which will work with MySQL via DBI. It almost ate my brain. Didn't want to work! But I can swear that it did work before (until I upgraded to Snow Leopard!). Found this link http://freaking.hilbrink.org/?p=7 and it happened to be my problem:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

So easy and stupid :-(
Works now.

Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

Apparently, my blog becomes a place discussing Blackberry phones, but it's okay. I'll keep up to it, and want to say that tried tethering (using the following instructions) on my Mac with Blackberry Curve 8900. Works just fine. Speed is so-so (it's EDGE only, remember), but works pretty nice to get some small work done.

Love how easy it was. By the way, I find my Curve 8900 really comfortable and sleek. Happy that I chose it over Bold (despite the lack of 3G!), but the camera is awesome, and the phone feels just right. It's an phone, not a toy now :-)

Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

As promised long time ago I am going to do kind of detailed review of my experience using iPhone 3GS and Blackberry Bold. I switched so many times back and forth, so I believe I cannot say that I prefer one to another. I did give up though on Blackberry and currently (and hopefully for a while) on the iPhone, so this is my disclaimer. At the end, this is just my personal experience, so it certainly may be opposite to yours.

So, let's start with the most annoying piece: Reliability and Build Quality.
iPhone had zero problems. Didn't have problems with my old and badly abused iPhone 2G, neither had my wife. No problems with 3GS's. My brother didn't have problems with his iPhone's either. One of my friends got a problem with his iPhone's battery, two days before warranty ended and actually Apple store did replace the phone.
Blackberry gave me some serious hard time. I have used 6 different Blackberry devices in a very short period of time, and 3 (or 4? don't remember really, but it does not matter that much) were brand new, on warranty. They all crashed, rebooted, heated badly (with consequences of being frozen, slowed down, etc.). When it worked it was like a charm. But I actually used "pull off the battery" almost every couple days, and "ctrl+alt+del" used every other day. And you know, it did help. So it reminded me Windows, but heck - I was just thinking it's just a coincidence! Apparently - not. I did dig quite a lot on that, and found out that a lot of people on Crackberry forum were on 2nd or 3rd Blackberry before they found good working phone. Sometimes they had their new phone replaced by refurbished (because these are warranty terms in AT&T) within 2 months.
As for the build quality - I would say iPhone wins hands down. It feels solid and very nicely built, while Blackberry brings some cheap plastic, which is annoying. You can get used to it (comparing to other crap phones like Samsung or whatever else), but it's not iPhone. I do not care about this part too much, but it's just the way it is. Necessary to mention, but it's only up to you if you pay attention to that.
I see the biggest problem here is that RIM is releasing many devices per year, so they know next year you have few devices to choose from, and probably you'll get new one. So there is no need to spend much time and efforts on building nice and solid phone, as customer will get rid of it next year anyway. Apple is not thinking so, that's why you can still see a lot of iPhone 2G around in decent condition, and I wouldn't be alone to say that Apple laptops are living at least twice as much as their PC brothers and sisters :-)

Phone itself. Much happier with Blackberry. It's louder, it heps to dial number faster, you can start typing name and it will go into contacts right away. Very very very much more phone. iPhone still feels like "phone" is just an extra feature among others, not the primary one.

Now, the User Interface. It's very touching and personal, even intimate topic. I happen to like Blackberry UI. It's more serious, if you will, than iPhone's bubbles all over the place. Tired of rounded bubblish icons - but may be it's just me. I did like Blackberry's ability browse through the text with trackball, liked that many things are in text, and that's so easy to navigate. iPhone is very good UI, I just wish I could have customize it? At least some predefined option to make it more "manly"? Or something. It does not affect my productivity with the device, just it would be nice to have something like that.

Keyboard. Like there is much to say here! iPhone has no keyboard. Blackberry has the keyboard. Bold has the best keyboard you can wish for. Very comfortable, very nice feeling, very crazy cool nice keyboard. iPhone has no keyboard -- did I say that already? Yes, I did. But heck, when you are comparing this fact to Blackberry Bold -- you want to say this again. Clearly Blackberry wins for me. And this was couple times a deal breaker for me. It was almost painful to get from Blackberry to iPhone. It literally hurts my fingers ;-)
However, I would not lie -- With landscape keyboard on iPhone you can type really fast. Really comfortable. Relly really an improvement comparing to portrait mode; however, missing real feel is a huge miss for me :-(

Flexibility of Settings. Blackberry wins here again. Very customizable devices. Can do this and that, and also can do this with that. Nevertheless, it failed to support different "From:" for the email accounts (as well as iPhone), and at some point I realized I don't need even half of those customization options. I am stupid, and I am just using what I am using. I don't need too many options. They make me think I missed something. I am pretty fine with what iPhone gives me. Happy that Blackberry does more, sometimes tweaking some minor thing easy makes you feel powerful :-) But I could care less about it. I did like I can use any MP3 track for Blackberry as a ringtone, while for iPhone it's more work. That's the only thing, I guess.
 
Internet and Tethering. Tethering is crazy easy and simple and nice working for Blackberry. iPhone does not have tethering. Well, I remember it did have it in 3.0? But with more recent OS's it does not. You can jailbreak, but I am not going this route.
Internet browsing and Internet apps (like SSH) are much more powerful on iPhone. Everybody knows that, and I am not going to repeat it again. Blackberry, you look like Motorola in 1992 comparing to iPhone for the Internet browsing.
Now, BIS and BES. What the crazy, terrible thing is requirement to have BIS? Why would I need that? Why, no really? Why can't this be an option? RIM is doing this the way -- they are requiring mobile carriers to keep their BISes... weirdo, just another point of single failure (and outages happen) - why would not make it an option? You bring this shit on yourself, so...

E-Mail and IM, and SMSs. I do not use MMSs. They do work on iPhone (finally). But it's not what I care about, so it's not an argument for me. And BBM. I do not use it, and I don't have much friends who are using it. After all, we all can use SMSs, they are not that expensive. And we are using emails. And IM. So BBM -- it's cool, but limit yourself even to big, but still limited Blackberry community - thanks, no.
Now, e-mail and IM and SMS. What I did love that everything goes to one "place" on Blackberry - one folder called "Messages". Yes, there are separate other folders for SMSs, and email accounts, but they all are combined in one. Awesome idea! And the LED indicator -- I can just take a look of my phone and see if I have new email, SMS or IM message... that's worth a lot of me. Really love this, and miss on iPhone. iPhone shows unread counts for every separated entity. Not too useful. Need to remember how many unread emails I had before. Or unread SMS. And I need to "unlock" the phone before I even can understand if I have something new. One tiny indicator would save thousands of my finger swipes :-)
However, the winner is not obvious. Right, Blackberry does push e-mail, but iPhone with MobileMe or GMail (through Exchange configuration) does it too. HTML messages on Blackberry? Save your eyes. iPhone renders them beautifully. Blackberry still does not support just IMAP folders. It does not support two-way sync for GMail (that means if you do something on Web, it does not reflect on your phone). By the way, if you do want to star/archive message from your "Messages" folder - it's not going to happen. To do that you have to go to the separate "email account folder". That's a bummer.

Multitasking. Ahhh, Apple. You suck here. and the iPhone sucks. Because Blackberry's multitasking did work very very very nice. And it did work. And there was multitasking. And, you know, you could never imaging how nice is to have multitasking abilities before you get one (with Blackberry) and then lose them (getting back to iPhone). However, here is my shit to Blackberry's yard. RIM guys. If you do multitasking, why the hell your browser supports only one open page at a time??? What the hell? How crazy is that? My UberTwitter opens page, I want to open another page -- and voila - only one is there. Where are others? Don't know. Neither does Blackberry. There is an option of using Mini Opera 5 beta which has "tabs" feature, but I found it too heavyweight as a browser for my Bold.

Battery Life. Blackberry wins. First, I can change battery. Second, it lasts longer. Only fraction of time, but this fraction is large and powerful enough to show the difference.

Applications. Like Blackberry has them! Just kidding, of course it has, and frankly speaking I am enough satisfied with Blackberry's selection. I did miss couple. Dropbox, online banking apps, Flickr (Blackberry has one, but it's not even close to what iPhone does), SSH.. and games? I do not play them, but for many peope - it's a great "wow" factor.

Media. You can play video and music on your Blackberry. iPhone does it nicer, but still, it's possible on both devices. Comfortably enough. However, when I were in the gym - I couldn't use Blackberry as media device. Unless I just set up playlist and do not touch it. With iPhone I can easily switch/jump/play from song to song, artist to album, and whatever not -- very easily - during working out. UI for media for Blackberry sucks big time, reminds me Windows Media Player.
Photos suck in quality on Bold comparing to 3GS, but "flash" really works nice and in many cases very useful. Video recording - it's cool, but I didn't use much though. And not much sense. With iPhone I can upload my video to Flickr right with app, with Bold it's much more complicated - you either have to email yourself the video in 3GP format, and then do some magic, or you have to download it from your SD card... None of them are natural and simple.

---

I guess I covered everything. At least all those moments were important to me, and may be important for you. Ask questions if you have any, I'll try to answer. Would I want Blackberry again? Yes. Or, if given an option of iPhone with keyboard, I would love to have iPhone with keyboard instead. But I guess this not going to happen any time soon :-\ Droid eventually may be an answer, or may be something else, I don't know. We'll see. I am open to what technology can give me.

Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

I was really surprised while digging in the Blackberry App World that most of apps I've been using on iPhone are here, on Blackberry. Not games (I didn't play games on iPhone either, though my son did ;-), but apps which are actually useful. So, here is the list which I downloaded and installed already, and enjoying. I will try to keep it up to date :-)

• TripCase
• Dictionary and Thesaurus
• iheartradio
• Tax Magic by RideCharge
• Flickr

Woo-hoo. And I still enjoy the keyboard and phone I have. :-)

Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

So, as I tweeted earlier, my 4th (fourth) Blackberry Bold 9000 showed it's bad manners and tried to die on my hands. Including used BBs which I got from Craigslist it's 5th, but who counts. In some way every of BBs which I tried gave me a hard time. As much as iPhone gets on my nerves with it's own bugs, it's not even close. I crawled through CrackBerry forum and found that I am not alone! At least few other posts stating that people had at least 1 to 3 exchanges of their Blackberry's due to some malfunction within a year of their life. It gives a lot of information to think that RIM's biggest problem with competition against iPhone and Android is not "applications", or "interface", or whatever else, but the most important thing - reliability. When the phone is a piece of crap - it's not reliable. Even if it has great email, keyboard, many other features - nobody gives a damn. Why would I want to exchange my phone ever so often? Don't know. I've been using iPhone 2G since it was released couple years ago. It's not perfect, slow, does not work as good as "phone" has to work, "bubblish", etc. - but I never got any reliability problem. Yeah, batter ran off. Who cares, we all knew it sucks with battery life. But no sudden reboots, no freezing (which gives the only option to pull of the battery!), no lost icons on restart (requiring one more restart to get them back)... That's not fun, I am telling you.
I wish all the best RIM to figuring out their priorities, but I am stopping my experiments in finding good version of Blackberry Bold 9000 which can live for my needs. Back to iPhone 3GS, and I am going to curse it for being what it is, and only hope Apple fixes it fast with their updates, but at least I know I have some piece of phone working for me. If I would look into Blackberry field again, I would try to research as much as possible about reliability of those phones and exact models I'll be looking into; and probably I would value Android's creatures for now much more than Blackberry. At least, what I want to see anxiously is Verizon's Droid, as I heard a lot of great reviews about it. It will be released tomorrow, as rumors are saying, so probably I'll be able to check it out at Verizon store too.

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Great time for fountain! :-)

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Apparently, this thing works incredible easy. Easy to setup, easy to use.

I would suggest to read this thread The How To: To Mac Tethering: Your Problems Solved (http://forums.crackberry.com/f62/how-mac-tethering-your-problems-solved-260401/) on Crackberry, or may own experience is right here:

So, I've been using:

Blackberry Bold 9000 AT&T (4.6.0.297 on 4.0.0.247 platform)
Snow Leopard (10.6.1) on Macbook Air

Steps are the following:

 1. on Mac: turn on Bluetooth
 2. on BB: Setup -> Setup Bluetooth -> ...
 3. on BB: set device name for pairing, click OK, then Listen, it will start waiting for connection
 4. on Mac: System Preferences -> Bluetooth -> Setup new device -> ...
 5. on Mac: choose your mobile phone name, click Continue
 6. on BB: enter passkey which will be on your Mac screen, click Enter
 7. on BB: choose Yes, and check off Do not ask again
 8. on Mac: Bluetooth Mobile Phone setup screen will ask for data
 9. on Mac: Vendor = Other
10. on Mac: Model = Blackberry 3G CID1
11. on Mac: Check off Enable error correction and compression in modem
12. on Mac: Dial mode = Wait for dial tone before dialing
13. on Mac: Dialing = Tone
14. on Mac: Sound = On
15. on Mac: Username = wap@cingulargprs.com
16. on Mac: Password = CINGULAR1
17. on Mac: APN = wap.cingular
18. on Mac: Click Continue
19. Enjoy tethering - Connect Bluetooth DUN and that's it.

It's not 1-2-3, but it's fairly easy.

Before starting - you need to unzip this archive into /Libary/Modem Scripts/ or you will not have proper modem script for the Blackberry Bold.

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So, just saying that I am back on Blackberry Bold. Finally iPhone got on my nerves, and after considering different options I figured out the Blackberry would work better for me, and it's more "win" for me now. So, I got rid of iPhone, and more detailed review/comparison of iPhone 3GS battle vs Blackberry Bold will be posted on Crackberry's forum and probably :-) here as well.

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Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

Enjoying nice weather and dragons in Coyote Park in San Mateo

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So, for the third time I am getting rid of this RIMarkable phone. Awful! I am literally forcing myself not to do that :-) so I can give more competition to Apple :-)

It really didn't make it through the fight with iPhone 3GS. As much as I loved the phone, concept, design factor, message management - I could not find it superior to iPhone. And trust me, I really wanted to see it. As much as I need email management to be perfect on my phone, but I also need all those minor things like maps with GPS, browsing, terminal, etc. which it simply cannot do good enough. RIM rolled out recent BIS update in Northern America and still no two way Google mail sync. Still poor contacts sync with Google. And not only Google, but any Exchange -- you are so limited with what you have there. And even if I was closing eyes to many of it's disadvantages, I found myself much more productive with the iPhone.

I am really hoping RIM will come up with changes and will resurrect. Until then, I am afraid that even Android (which I do not like too much due to the lack on good hardware vendor, as HTC is just "trying", but this is obviously not good enough) has more chances than Blackberry devices.

Don't get me wrong. I am loving Blackberry Bold. It's actually the phone which raised my personal interest and requirements to the phone to the very high bar. It did make me want to handle my emails more effectively, and especially to require more from the phone to actually be *the phone*, not just Internet device (yes, I am throwing this one to you, iPhone!).

Nevertheless, if you line up cons/pros iPhone 3GS wins. However, I cannot stress strong enough that I am waiting for action from RIM. Like really waiting. Rumor has it that Blackberry 9700 (Bold 2 or Atlas or Onyx) is coming in November, and Blackberry may bring some software updates which will be very interesting to accompany it as well. Also there is a rumored Blackberry Magnum or Dakota which may be a hybrid with touchscreen and still QWERTY-keyboard next year. Nobody knows if this will be failure or resurrection. I hope they create nice competition to Apple and Android, so we can see some progress going on.

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Seriously. I am just testing geotagging with my Blackberry. Interesting if Posterous would be able to put location of the photo at the bottom of this post like it does with the iPhone photos.

By the way - one hand typing on Blackberry IS possible (comparing to iPhone), though I may have fat big fingers as it's not accurate at all. Two fingers typing is doing OK, and I can occasionally stop looking at the keyboard and type by "feel" only. Nice. But why the heck do I need it? It's a question.

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Posted via email from olexiy prokhorenko's blog

Here are my "dark theme" preferences for Eclipse. Not only color preferences, though, but everything.

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I've been using NetBeans quite for a long time before and after Eclipse, and actually liked the way it comes as one bundle of everything Web developer may need. In Eclipse, engineer is forced to find all pieces of the so needed software to put them together, while NetBeans does this job for you.
Apparently, this part did not change, but many others did. So, Eclipse - latest Galileo with Subclipse and Maven plugin. NetBeans - latest 6.7.1. Love fast track to coding from NetBeans. Love so missed dark theme (TextMate people will understand me :-)
But heck, why Maven project builds from command line but does not build from NetBeans? Why if project IS build, NetBeans shows zero errors and works great, otherwise pages are so reddish of errors? Why if I added/changed classes right click on project and "reload" does not help but IDE restart does? Why Cmd+Space takes so much time for "Indexing..."? Why can't I generate stubs of hashCode and toString without installing separate plugins? Are we what - trying to be "plugin for everything" now? Literally, I was so full with "why's" so I ran Eclipse in parallel. So, what do I miss? Right, I miss at least one neat thing - dark themes. Okay, so I Googled for that a little bit, yes, Eclipse still didn't make it easier than importing FULL preferences... So I got somebody's dark theme and adopted for myself (I'll upload it somewhere soon so everybody could see and try it out). Other than that - yes, very ugly, but Eclipse just did work fine for my regular needs. Weird! Eclipse is still so so for Ruby. RadRails helps, but it's still a heavyweight in this RoR world. So sticking to old TextMate... If only it could do Java better... :-)

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