This and That
My Most Used Apps On My @BlackBerry 10: @Blaq, @Nemory
I thought i’d write a post on the apps I use on my @BlackBerry on a daily basis. You will quickly understand why I don’t really care for the other ecosystems. It’s fantastic that they offer millions of apps but how many of these apps are quality and how many of these apps does a person really actually use?
I do have apps on my phone that I use from time to time but the following three I use daily.. so here we go from most used to least (daily):
@Blaq
The best native @BlackBerry 10 app for twitter out there. The interface is so clean and up until recently updates were coming in at a pretty good pace and the updates were always great. The ease of which you can switch from account to account is amazing. In general anything u want to do from composing a tweet to re-tweeting to liking etc is a breeze. Just an awesome app. Unfortunately updates to this app have been scarce recently…I should probably say non-existent… my guess is that Jerome has abandoned it.. I recall him tweeting about the uncertainty of BB10 as being the reason. It’s a shame.
#Inst10
This native app created by @Nemory is an instagram client and it too is a pretty awesome app… very clean and smooth. The only thing it’s missing right now is the ability to post videos and also re-gram videos. Neither work. I inquired a few times from the developer if there is an ETA and I never really get a straight answer. Oliver says instagram changed the APIS and he’s working on it. The only thing I question is why @iGrann, another native instagram app was able to figure it out. Right now when I want to post a video I use @iGrann instead. It doesn’t make sense to have to do that. I think with Oliver it’s more about the fact that when he moves on to another app he tends to abandon the previous ones. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate all the work he’s done. He is the only one showing continued effort towards BB10. Although I realize he’s a one man shop and there are so many hours in a day at the same time I feel that he needs to be sure to provide what is needed. His apps are not free nor on the cheap end of the spectrum.
A good example is his scope10 for periscope.. $2.99 for an app that I would consider useless in its current state. Nothing new from it since Nov 2015. This is an app I would certainly buy if it offered what it should.. which is a lot more than it does now.
#Face10
This is another app written by @Nemory and as u may have guessed it’s a native facebook app. I don’t spend a lot of time on FB but when I do I opt for this app most times and not the now html5 browser version BlackBerry put out.
The one thing I noticed though about apps written by @Nemory is that initially when u install the apps.. for a period of time after you get the desired notifications sent to the hub but then with time they just stop. Installing his headless stabilizer app does nothing to help the situation. I don’t have that pblm with @Blaq so I have to assume the issue is with his coding and not the OS. Another thing that happens is that with time when u launch his apps they lag and actually lock up the phone for a significant amount of seconds but I noticed that clearing the cache helps this situation.
As for #Android apps I use daily and this just recently… these two games… to keep my mind sharp 🙂
A shout out to these other apps I use but not daily: #QuickPost, Enpass, cloudvert, screen recorder, fancytran, gasbuddy, iShrink, photostudio, dropbox and box.
As you can see though I don’t have nor need much.
IoT-Enabled BlackBerry Radar Will Empower Truck Companies to Cut Theft, Boost Profits
Efficiency and loss-prevention are keys to profitability for trucking companies, which are gaining a new way to boost productivity with the introduction of BlackBerry Radar today at the Mid-America Trucking Show.
Source: IoT-Enabled BlackBerry Radar Will Empower Truck Companies to Cut Theft, Boost Profits
PRIV by BlackBerry Wins Red Dot Award for Product Design 2016!
A new year, a new design, another win. BlackBerry’s PRIV secure smartphone powered by Android, has hit the ground running with rave reviews from journalists, customers and respected third-party testing agencies highlighting its one-of-a-kind design and security features.
Source: PRIV by BlackBerry Wins Red Dot Award for Product Design 2016!
I am a @BlackBerry 10 fan but I still support!!!
You Know What Really Grinds My Gears? Sage and not the kind you eat.
Well it sure didn’t take long for me to get irked about someone/something… Get a load of the following 2 screen grabs from a site that will remain nameless 😉
full disclosure.. i did not read either posts nor do i know either author personally.. i do know of Simon Sage because at one time he was writing for CrackBerry.com. I don’t necessarily think he was exclusive to @BlackBerry (and that’s ok) but he wrote a significant amount of articles. I have to assume that at that time he was a fan of BB10 and enjoyed the user experience and then at some point things changed and he no longer contributed to @BlackBerry in any form. That’s OK too.. tastes change, people move on, etc etc…I think Simon left around the same time as Kevin Michaluk who’s doing whatever it is he’s doing now. Anyway – what really irks the shit out of me is that “Bye Bye BlackBerry” jab…because it is one.Was that really necessary? I mean compare it to the other article…what did the jab add to the article? Go ahead, write and help people understand how to switch over (for those who want to) but use some professionalism. I really don’t get this “hate on BlackBerry” mentality. I really don’t.
SERENITY NOW, serenity now!!! I need me some #Festivus RIGHT NOW!!
What’s In A Name…
A colleague of mine just recently decided that he wanted to create a blog. He is an avid photographer (and a good one at that) who spends most weekends bird watching and snapping some great pictures. There was a period a few months back where i was toying with the idea of joining him on his treks…i, all of a sudden (and to my dismay) found myself with alot more time on my hands. However, after some thought i realized that although i do like birds (have 10 of my own) i didn’t like them that much! Atleast not enough to wake up early morning on weekends to go take some pictures. I think i will start slow.. start with taking pictures of my birds, in the comfort of my own home.
My colleague called his blog “Calvin’s Ramblings” which got me thinking about my blog title;”Capparelli Family: A whole lot of us, with a sprinkle of this and that“. I spent some time looking over the posts i added over the years (i won’t pretend to say i went all the way back to 2011) and i realized that the blog is more “A whole lot of this and that and a sprinkle of us” instead. In essence, it really is about my ramblings… kinda…So i thought “time for a change”. Of course being the person i am, i didn’t want to steal someone else’s thunder so i will leave it to Calvin to continue to ramble on. At first i wanted to go with “Things that make me go hmm…” (I seem to be on a C+C Music Factory state of mind as of late). However, i soon realized that i would feel too much pressure to constantly look for things that make me go hmm.. i mean, who needs that kind of pressure.I then thought of paying homage to Peter Griffin and calling my blog “You Know What Really Grinds My Gears” but here again the pressure of always finding things that irk me. And do i really want to be a constant Debbie Downer? Then i thought “Scatter Brain” because god knows i have one and over the years i have had plenty of brain farts..of course “Brain Farts” was an option too.. 🙂
In the end, i chose what i chose because it was simple, nothing fancy yet pretty accurate…and whose to say i won’t change it in the future 🙂
No worries though.. from time to time i will post on things that make me go hmm and things that grind my gears.
Things That Make You Go Hmmm: Case of the flip-flops and not the kind you wear.
When you are heavily invested in something or someone it is very difficult to be completely objective.. it’s only normal. Being a @BlackBerry enthusiast I am no different. I love what @BlackBerry 10 offers but there are times when I wish that it did and offered things that it currently doesn’t. I am not oblivious to that. Outside of @BlackBerry I have not had first hand experience with any other mobile OS… atleast extensively. A lot of times we form opinions based on hearsay or 3rd hand information… and I am certainly guilty of that as well. Having written that and not having had extensive hands on with iphones I can still say without any hesitation that my hatred for #Apple runs deep. Well ‘hatred’ is a harsh word. But ya, hatred. It really has nothing to do with their products but more with what they do and who they are as a corporation. In my opinion they’re just bullies… force stuff down your throat as how things should be and when things go wrong (and there’s been plenty) make no mistake it is always the consumers fault.. or the classic spin they put on everything and just sweep stuff under the rug. No doubt having the cash flow allows them that luxury.
Olivia Munn has a great perspective on Apple.. her answer to the second question is spot on..
http://www.cnet.com/special-reports/olivia-munn/interview
So where am I going with this? I’m not sure yet. Lol. As with other areas of my life I believe in loyalty. And from recent personal experience I can tell you that loyalty to some means shit! Loyalty is why I continue to support @BlackBerry, not only because it’s a Canadian company but also because I like what they stand for and last but not least their phones have always been impeccable in design. I am a visual guy. U need to grab my attention that way. Sounds shallow but c’est la vie. As for the BB10 operating system? An amazing, smooth, multitasking, get things done quickly operating system almost noone in the world knows about. A tragedy. When the iPhone first came out, innovation wise, no denying it was a wow!!! But hardware? Ugly and boring as hell… over the years no doubt the look of the iPhone has improved with great strides and dare I say it, a good looking phone…but innovation? What’s that? It’s like #Apple can’t handle both at the same time. It’s so bad that after the recent iphone SE announcement the iphonians and ifanboys are left being excited about the apple band!!! The band!!! Lol. Seriously.
When it comes to having an open mind I try my best to be as open as possible… I don’t always succeed.. have there been times when I re-tweet an article that is anti apple? Of course. Do I get passionate about things I hear that are hypocritical on any side of the OS spectrum? Sure I do. Hypocrisy hit home recently and hard… Does all of the hypocrisy that comes out of #Apple rile me up? Yes it does. Do I lose sleep over it? No I don’t.. am I someone who flip flops like a fish out of water on things? No i’m not. I’m not perfect by any stretch but I try to have convictions. This brings me finally to my point. Through @BlackBerry and its community I have met a significant amount of people through various @BBM groups and @BBM chats. One such character was a huge and I mean huge @BlackBerry advocate and up until very recently would bash #Apple like it was going out of style. From group discussions, to private, to @twitter.. it went on and on and on. Recently things changed; for one his wife works at apple, has for many years but given he owns a business he found himself in a situation where all his vendors transitioned to using iOS only built apps (which is disturbing to say the least) so that ruled out BlackBerry 10 (since it can run android apps). Interestingly enough as he’s been using the iPhone for some time now his tune has changed. He certainly still promotes BlackBerry but not necessarily with that passion he once had but at the same time what has changed is his attitude towards #Apple, to the point that if someone else shits on #Apple he takes offense. Remember this is the guy that was shitting on them not too long ago and would join in on the shitfest when others started the ‘shit on #Apple’ party. Don’t get me wrong, there is no place for shitting on anyone or anything. I try to be objective when I have discussions re apple and android for that matter and the only place I take a dump in is the toilet but stuff like this gets me and it doesn’t go unnoticed. So what’s changed now? Apple hasn’t changed its ways and how it operates and he couldn’t digest that stuff before and now all of a sudden? I don’t get it. Anyway, we’re all entitled to change our minds and attitude towards things. It’s our right. But he should keep in mind that what goes on the Internet stays there forevah!!! Hope he atleast went back to his old tweets and cleaned house.
Maybe down the road that will happen with me; you know, sporting an iphone. Haha. I kid. That will never happen… i’ve said it before if @BlackBerry (God forbid) goes the way of the dodo bird I will begrudgingly go #Android if there isn’t any other option. #Android isn’t any better but they annoy me less. I guess.
I used the word ‘shit’ or a variation quite a bit in this post. Oh well, shit happens! 😉
Brault & Martineau: Never Again
@BM_Promotions has lost a customer in us… not that they give a shit anyway.. Last week we bought mattresses for the entire family and the delivery day was supposed to be last Friday. Bright and early Friday morning we took all the mattresses and prepped them in the plastic bags they provided. The delivery never happened. Apparently they called my wife’s cell and noone picked up or returned their call. Right. The old ‘we called but noone answered’ excuse. We got no call. That excuse is getting pretty old. Anyway the delivery happened today.. one week later and the delivery guy said we needed to pay an extra 50$ because this was considered a re-delivery… uhhhh say whatttttttt??? A re-delivery? How is that since there was never an original delivery to begin with? Anyway needless to say my wife went ballistic.. lol… I shouldn’t laugh but it was pretty entertaining… At one point she was on the phone with both parties at the same time… hilarious stuff. I’ve said it before we need a reality show.. my wife would kill it!
Anyway humor aside the fact is that customer service has gone the way of the dodo bird in many areas of our day to day… when my wife got on the phone with the store manager (speaker phone for my benefit) u could actually hear the disinterest in the man’s voice. They don’t care. They just want your money. Well not anymore. Not from us that’s for sure.
I won’t lie though I am looking forward to trying out the new mattress tonight although it looks like we will need a step ladder to help us get on the bed now.. lol.. we got us some pretty tall mattresses !
Clubbing: Some Twenty Plus Years Later
Do kids nowadays still refer to it as ‘clubbing’? Anyway last Friday we celebrated a friend’s birthday. She wanted to do so at a night club.
The plan was to meet out front at the club for 10pm.. when you haven’t done the club scene for an eternity you tend to forget that clubs don’t open before a certain time. Lol. Anyway needless to say I had to keep myself busy for fear of falling asleep. When I got there a couple of my friends and their better half were already waiting in their car for the birthday girl and her husband to arrive. First comment out of a friend was ‘ma who goes out at 10pm??’ haha… seriously we’re old I guess. And being Italian we must always start a sentence with ‘ma’. It should come as no surprise that we were the first ones at the club and hand it to my buddy to tell the check in lady that we wanted the early bird special !
It’s safe to say that it took about a good 2hrs before the scene started to pick up but u know what? That was ok.. we were able to catch up and talk and not have to yell just to be heard. It’s always a blast to get together and just catch up. Honestly we don’t do it enough.
The scene at the club is mostly an older crowd and the music also followed suit… such great tunes that brought back so many good memories of my speaker dancing days… yes I did that… not often and that soon stopped after I was unceremoniously knocked off one by an overzealous woman many moons ago when I was in my prime. Ego was crushed! Lol. Nowadays we men don’t dance so while our better half kept busy dancing we just talked and talked.. it’s how it should be :). I also drank more than I usually do..translation; I drank because normally I don’t. To no surprise I was sloshed after the first shot!! Sad. Lol. I am a migraine sufferer and drinking booze is a death sentence for me… but I had to give it the old boy scout try as it was a good friends birthday. Toward the end of the night, good boy scout as I was, I just poured on the water and when I got home I popped an aspirin and thankfully on Saturday I woke up with just a small hint of a migraine which was a huge victory for me.
I love to people watch so it was fun to watch the crowd in between conversations… the more things change the more they stay the same.
Anyway our night ended around 230am for some of us (some left earlier).. not too shabby for 40 somethings.. lol. It was really a fun night and brought back those great ‘night at the roxbory, baby don’t hurt me’ days.. the good old days! Lol. I look forward to the next milestone birthday or just birthday at this point.
Amazing How BlackBerry Continues to Polarize
*UPDATED* boy I feel silly… the Dave in my screen grab isn’t Dave from UTB after all because UTB Dave is Dave Mathews.
I don’t really follow other story lines like I do BlackBerry. It’s amazing what this company is able to create in terms of reaction and emotion. We basically have the die hard,loyal,purists that can always find the positive in any news that comes out regarding BlackBerry. You have of course the trolls that just live on bad news.. and finally you have those that support BlackBerry but worry and don’t know who to believe. Right now I am in that last group.
It’s been an interesting week for BlackBerry to say the least. We had some project manager quoted as saying that the future for BlackBerry is Android… and bam… the storm it caused was unreal. Hand it to BlackBerry to quickly put out a post on ‘Inside BlackBerry ‘ to once again reiterate their commitment to BlackBerry 10. Here’s though what I thought could have been done differently. They reiterated their commitment in a post that was dedicated to the release of the Priv in India.. so the article was 99% about the Priv with a few words about their commitment to BlackBerry 10. The better option should have been to separate the two even if it meant that the article about BlackBerry 10 was a repeat of what they wrote a few months back. The other concern I have is that at no time has BlackBerry mentioned that their commitment to BlackBerry 10 will go beyond 2016. I tried to voice this on a channel and I got this from a Dave…. which I assume is Dave from UTBBlogs..
Now don’t get me wrong.. I admire the positive spin these guys put on everything BlackBerry. I listen to their blogcast religiously every Saturday morning. However, I personally could have done without the ‘pssst’.. what are u ‘Pssst’ing me about? I don’t know that I wrote anything that is far fetched and incorrect. Of course I absolutely want to be wrong. Let’s face it if come 2017 BlackBerry pulls the plug on BlackBerry 10 noone can accuse them of lying because they have not shown any roadmap for BlackBerry 10 beyond 2016. Chen can easily fall back on the fact that their commitment was only for 2016. Anyway only time will tell.
Yesterday news came out about layoffs and that Gary Mr BBM himself was leaving BlackBerry as well. One need not imagine what stir that caused. And every time news like yesterday happens u have guys like @JT_Teran putting out his ‘if people can’t realize that BlackBerry 10 is dead I don’t know what else to say’ tweet. Tweet it enough times and I guess JT at some point you will be right… and then you can tell everyone I told you so. Oh brother.
I recently saw a tweet that predicted BlackBerry 10 disappearing in about three years which is the time he thinks will take to get Android enterprise ready. We’ll see… the fact is that we can twist and turn information the way we want to.. spin it.. deny.. whatever… in the end only Mr Chen knows what he has planned. *le sigh*
After A Full Week with my BlackBerry #Passport : The Regret
You see what I did there? My post headline implies my regret over getting the BlackBerry Passport. That’s what you call click bait. Getting someone to click on a link and then the post turns out to be something else altogether. Nowadays anyone can be a ‘journalist’… writing junk… and when it comes to BlackBerry there is so much of this garbage out there but have no fear that’s not the case here. I do in fact have a regret… that I didn’t buy this beast of a machine sooner!
I am a BlackBerry enthusiast and have always had phones with a physical keyboard. From the Bold 9900 to the Q10 to the Classic… I also prefer a small form factor. Or so I thought.
I have been on the Passport for a little over a week now and using it as my daily and only driver… here are my thoughts so far.
The size: being a small form factor guy I was a little concerned. When I first laid eyes on the passport I thought it was such a great idea and so different but couldn’t see myself getting one. I thought it would be too big. I was wrong.
The quality: it’s a BlackBerry. That should be enough. It feels fantastic in the hand and solid as can be. I have never dropped a cell phone in my life (believe it or not) but I know that if this phone would fall I wouldn’t have to worry. It will never happen though. Not on my watch! 🙂
The performance: there is a reason I refer to this phone as a beast. It’s fast. Dang it’s fast. Love my Classic but no contest.
The Battery: what the hell is a charger?
The Display: nice and big. Can’t possibly complain about that…of course I have to be careful what I am viewing 😉
The Keyboard: what can I write about the BlackBerry keyboard that hasn’t already been written. It’s a BlackBerry… again enough said…but i will write this…QUALITY!!! I adore typing on this quality keyboard. The fact it’s touch sensitive. Innovative Genius.
The one speed that is lacking right now is me… I must admit that even after a full week the three row keyboard has affected my typing. I am a ninja on the classic. I do have moments when I am flying but there are times when I studder. As I usually have Blend on at work the plan for next week is to stay off blend and just type, type, type on the Passport. However as I tweeted a few days ago the force is strong with this one so I know that soon I will become the ultimate Jedi working this beast.
Working the phone with one hand is not too bad… but then again it’s really not meant for one handed use anyway.
So has my Passport garnered some attention ? It has.
I had a friend comment ‘what the f@@k’ is that when she first saw it… it might have been ‘what the hell is that’ but no matter. Lol
I love showing what the keyboard can do.
I will be putting this beast to work this season as I am involved with our local semi pro soccer team as assistant coach and social media guy. Should be a blast.
As is the case with all my previous phones I have ordered a screen protector and I opted to get a skin versus a case. I tried a skin on my classic and found it not only to be cool but it allows the sexiness of the BlackBerry phone to exude and not be hidden by a case.
I wrote this post on the Passport.
My Random Thoughts 