Unimaginative.

In today’s digital age, we find ourselves surrounded by different gadgets, devices and technologies every day of the week. Often times, the various options presented to us make it difficult to decide on a particular product, leaving us pondering all available choices as we walk back home from the store, empty-handed. Such is the experience to many of us when it comes to mobile phones, which have since evolved from a simple communications device to a full-fledged mobile computing power machine.

Indeed, the device once intended only for voice calls now connects us to people around the world in real-time, with video even, and lets us surf the Web from wherever we are, utilizing speedy 3G networks that are faster than the average broadband Internet connection. In the not too distant future, the mobile phone will allow for even more functionality, eventually allowing us to pay for our groceries, file our taxes and mow the lawn. Our generation is so attached to the mobile phone that people are far more likely to leave their keys home than they are to leave without their mobile phone. As such, it is very important to make the right decision when it comes to a device that we carry with us for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, literally.

Top contenders in the market today are Apple, Google and RIM. With the passing of HP (Palm) as we know it, and Microsoft’s merger with Nokia, we have witnessed tremendous change in the market – something that most analysts didn’t see coming a few years, or even months ago. Therefore, I think it is better not to take webOS, Windows Phone, Symbian or MeeGo Harmattan into account, as the market continues to fluctuate and the direction for these platforms is uncertain. Starting from the top, Apple released the iPhone 4S recently, Google launched the fourth incarnation of its Android platform, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, and RIM announced a completely new BlackBerry platform at BlackBerry DevCon. Of all these releases and announcements, only one really captured my attention: RIM.

My history with BlackBerry products is not out of the ordinary, but there indeed is something that to most people is shocking when they first hear about it. Back in late 2008, I had a regular Nokia mobile phone, just like everybody else I knew. Shortly after, my Nokia began malfunctioning and I was in dire need of a new mobile phone. With a limited budget, I decided to scour the Web for auctions of used mobile phones. At the time, I was extremely interested in PDA devices ever since witnessing one with a touch screen when I sat next to a soigné businessman on the train. It only took the keyword “QWERTY” to finally ascertain the existence of something I had never seen before; the BlackBerry smartphone. This remarkable discovery I remember very well, as I quite truthfully fell in love with the design of the handset. It was a BlackBerry 8700c, with a few cracks and dents, but most importantly, it had the keyboard and the look and feel of a PDA device. Needless to say, had I not turned to la Toile, had I not taken possession of this lovely device for the measly 50 euros its previous owner asked for.

Much to my surprise, this small experiment quickly turned out to be an addiction of some sort, and I started researching the BlackBerry smartphone day and night. Long it wasn’t until I arrived at CrackBerry.com, the largest BlackBerry community online. It was the very first online community I joined and a magnificent resource to quench my thirst for information. (Later, I also blogged for CrackBerry.com for a year, helping establish the International News section.) As I kept making new discoveries, I came to realize that I held something special in my hands, something that nobody else had in Finland. And to this day, that has not changed. Not even a bit. For the last few years, I have been the proud owner of a mobile phone that isn’t even supported in the country I live in. No carrier in Finland has BlackBerry Internet Service, no electronics store would even recognize the name “BlackBerry” and no Finnish person has ever seen one – yet I’m on my ninth BlackBerry smartphone currently, progressing from the 8700c to the Pearl 8110, Curve 8900, Storm2 9520, Curve 8520, Bold 9650, Curve 3G 9300, Torch 9800 and finally, the Bold 9650 (again).

Why would I use a BlackBerry smartphone then, if I cannot have push email, BBM or even access to BlackBerry App World? Quite simple: out of the top contenders only RIM has crafted a mobile phone that suits my needs. As I’m from Arabic origin, it is natural for me to expect and require proper support for my mother tongue, and apart from the BlackBerry smartphone, only the iPhone provides that support, sans predictive input as provided by the former. Android, on the other hand, has poor support for Arabic, but that is hopefully changing with Ice Cream Sandwich. In addition to language support, I find the notification LED to be a very effective yet discreet reminder that my attention is required, and the user-assignable Convenience Key has spoiled me to no end. In all simplicity, I prefer the BlackBerry smartphone because it brings qualities to the table that are unmatched by other mobile phones.

Where the BlackBerry smartphone falls short, however, is the deep dependency on BlackBerry Internet Service, or BIS. In other words, I am only able to initiate and answer phone calls, send and receive text messages and use offline PIM functionality – no data connection, no social networking or anything similar, as Finnish carriers do not support BIS. Effectively, this makes my BlackBerry “smartphone” a plain old feature phone. To workaround this problem, I took it as a challenge to develop my own applications that would help overcome the limitations of this problematic affair. Well, what can I say? I succeeded. In essence, I imported an unsupported platform and created my own applications built upon it to make it friendly with its new local surroundings. Few people can claim they did that, so I set out to become a BlackBerry developer.

At some point, I sensed a significant change coming to the BlackBerry platform. After countless rumors and stories of a mystical “BlackPad”, RIM finally announced a completely different kind of a BlackBerry device; the BlackBerry PlayBook. I was excited from head to toe when I first heard about it and the free tablet offer really made me push myself beyond my limits. In the span of only one month, I learned Adobe ActionScript 3.0, built my own Adobe Air application and submitted it to BlackBerry App World. Of course, first going through the hassle of finding a notary public to prove my identity for the registration, which I found to be quite adventurous as I’ve never dealt with a notary public or official documents like this before. (RIM later revised the registration policy and has since dropped this requirement.) On April 26th, my submission was approved and my application posted for sale on BlackBerry App World. A few days later, FedEx contacted me to submit documents for customs clearance and in less than a week I became the happy owner of a brand new BlackBerry PlayBook!

I recall the excitement from opening the FedEx package to powering up the tablet for the first time. I proceeded to explore every possible feature on the BlackBerry PlayBook, but the most exciting part about it is that it has no 3G support whatsoever – it’s Wi-Fi only. This is exciting to me because it opens doors to the possibility of a BlackBerry smartphone in the future that does not require BIS for its data functions. (I wrote more about this in a CrackBerry.com article on open source and proprietary software.) Patiently waiting for the native PIM applications to come for the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM had me excited one more time with the release of the BlackBerry PlayBook OS v2.0 beta for developers. Unfortunately, the beta does not come with the applications many have been waiting for, but it does provide a step forward in bringing Android applications to the platform. Aside from the updated Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Air components and a few changes in the user interface, the new beta is not very different from the previous incarnation of the OS. But there was talk about something else at BlackBerry DevCon as well; BlackBerry BBX.

With the announcement of the forthcoming BlackBerry BBX platform, RIM chose an approach that may sound similar to what a certain Californian company did back in 2005–the new platform will not support BlackBerry Java, marking the end of a decade-long relationship with the Java platform. Ahead is a tough journey for RIM, as they will slowly transition from a familiar environment to a very different architecture, something that reminds me heavily of Apple’s transition from IBM’s PowerPC architecture to Intel’s x86. But these kinds of transitions are “where tech companies go to die”, as Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM, said. Although developers were assured that BlackBerry 7 is here to stay for many years to come, we must not forget that even Apple said something similar in 2003 with the launch of the Power Mac G5. And three years later, Apple had all but kept that promise, completing its transition to Intel processors with the release of the Intel-based Mac Pro in August 2006. The same may not be true for RIM, but Apple is one of a kind and the only company to undertake such a decision and be successful in it.

Not losing my faith in RIM and keeping up with the struggle of having a BlackBerry smartphone in Finland, I decided to fire up a tweet to Alec Saunders, who joined RIM last month as the new Vice President of Developer Relations and Ecosystem Development. Mr. Saunders has recently become known for responding to people’s queries on Twitter, giving me some hope in receiving an answer, as I had previously sent dozens if not hundreds of tweets to the official @BlackBerry account regarding the availability of BlackBerry smartphones and BIS in Finland. To keep it short, the following entails the whole conversation I had with Mr. Saunders:

And so, the dreams of a 19-year-old were shattered by nothing but one tweet.

Pahoittelut viime viikon raportin puutteesta. Kamerani muistikortti ei syystä tai toisesta suostunut toimimaan lukijassa ja otokset tuli kopioida tietokoneelle USB:n kautta. Valitettavasti yhteensopivuusongelman takia puolet tiedostoista olivat korruptoituneita, eikä kamera suostu lukemaan korttia enää. Sellaista tämä teknologia on, aika ajoin haavoittuvaa ja epävakaata.

Tästä huolimatta ehdin viime viikon alkupuolella kerätä materiaalia kylliksi, mutta projektin pituutta joudun hiukan vähentämään. Pieni kompastuminen ei saa haittaa ammattilaisen työtä ja siksi tulee varmuuskopiot olla kaikesta. Valitettavasti en tässä tilanteessa voinut varmuuskopioita tehdä alkuunkaan, sillä tiedostot menivät pilalle jo kamerassa. Siitä olen kuitenkin varma, että syypää on joko muistikortti tai kamera. Huomasin myös, että juuri tälle omalle mallilleni oli viikko sitten tullut uusi ohjelmistopäivitys–liian myöhäistä minun kohdallani, eli projektia on jatkettava sillä, mitä ehdin tietokoneelle aiemmin siirtää.

Projekti on muuten sujunut hyvin. Kaikki valokuvat on muokattu ja/tai korjattu tarpeen mukaisesti, musiikkikappale on loistavassa kunnossa ja enää puuttuu videoiden leikkaaminen, sitten on diplomityö miltei valmis! Teknistä puolta ajatellen tulen leikkaamaan videot käyttäen Apple Final Cut Pro X –ohjelmistoa sekä Blackmagic Designin DaVinci Resolve Lite –värinkorjausta. Tästä tulee diplomityön valmistuessa tarkempi seloste verkkosivuilleni, mutta nyt, (diplomi)työ kutsuu!

A true visionary has left us. I will, for as long as I remember the first iMac, be grateful for the brilliant work he did, for motivating the world and for allowing us a better future we have never even dreamed of before. I swear he hung to life to teach us, to inspire us and to give us the gift of loving computers, loving technology and loving the care for the tiniest detail.

I now have lit up a candle to commemorate this event, the loss of a person I looked up to, a person I wanted to learn from and a person I could look at and say, “I want to become like him.” For he has changed the way we look at things, the way we approach computers and the way we think, thank you for making the world a better place. To my hero, Steve Jobs.

~ Yousif Abdullah

(This blog post is written in Finnish as part of an extracurricular activity for my high school diploma. It is the first in a series of posts to realize and visualize my progress with regard to my school project. The final work, in English, will be published on my website in late October.)

Lukio-opintojeni lisäksi olen suorittamassa median lukiodiplomin osoittaakseni erilaisten viestintätaitojeni hallintaa. Tämän ja tulevien blogikirjoitusten kautta pääset tarkkailemaan diplomityöni kehitystä sekä vilkaisemaan kulissien taakse, kun käsittelen ja hyödynnän eri välineitä. Diplomityöksi valitsin mediakollaasin, jonka tarkoituksena on osoittaa monipuolista osaamistani eri ilmaisukeinojen lomassa. Työ on hyvin vapaamuotoinen, tavoitteena on kuitenkin toteuttaa yhtenäinen ja sulava kokonaisuus. Mediakollaasin nimeksi valitsin “30 päivää”, sillä varsinainen työskentely alkaa tästä päivästä aina tämän kuun viimeiseen päivään asti. Niin ikään diplomityön suunnittelu kuin toteutus tapahtuu näiden 30 päivän aikana. Kuukauden jokaisena viikkona tulen julkaisemaan raportin, jossa käyn dipomityöni etenemisen tarkoin läpi.

Mediakollaasi rakentuu musiikkivideon ympärille, joka on diplomityön keskeisin osa. Videon teema on slice of life, eli vilaus tosielämän tilanteesta ilman suoranaista juonta tai tapahtumien kulkua. Videokuvaa täydentämässä on taustalle sijoittuva musiikkikappale. Sekä videon leikkaus että musiikin säveltäminen onnistuu tietokoneella, tästä tarkemmin myöhemmässä vaiheessa. Musiikkivideolle suunnittelen myös verkkosivun, joka toimii diplomityön väylänä Internet-maailmaan. Verkkosivun tarkoituksena on herättää huomiota ja kerätä palautetta yhteisöpalvelujen, kuten Facebookin tai Twitterin kautta. Diplomityö tavoittelee sekä monipuolisuutta että taiteellisuutta–määrä ei suinkaan korvaa laatua.

Kirjoitteluni jää valitettavasti tähän, mutta ensi viikolla on lisää. Näkemiin!

(My first blog post, written in Swedish.)

Livet är ju toppen. I morse hade jag ingen aning om vad kommer att hända och nu skriver jag ner saker och ting om livet. Jag tycker att livet består av upplevelser och utmaningar som möts antingen oförhappandes eller av misstag. Då visste jag genast att jag skulle skriva min första bloggpost på svenska när jag hade idéen att ta del i bloggosfären. På detta sätt ställer jag mig själv inför en ny utmaning som är just vad jag vill. Aldrig har jag tänkt på att fatta sådant beslut men som de flesta händelserna i livet, finns det saker som bara sker av en slump.

Jag skulle vilja ta det här tillfället i akt och tacka min lärare i svenska. För ett bra tag sen förstod jag inget på svenska men min lärare var mitt stöd. Jag känner stor tacksamhet mot alla mina lärare men att jag fick möjligheten att lära mig svenska var såväl viktigt för mig som något som hände till min stora lycka.