Blackberry 8830
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

Before I get to the Blackberry, I’d like to direct your attention to the new blue box over there on the right. I’ve written before about how terrific Last.fm is. It basically records all the music I listen to and spits back charts of all kinds to give me a sense of what I listen to the most. Not only that, but it also will connect you with other people who have the same taste in music, so they have the community angle covered as well. Now, through Last.fm, you can also stream my music from that player on the right. Just hit the big play button in the middle to start listening or click on the little button at the bottom corner of the radio player to launch it as a small pop up that you can keep on even when you’re off this site. Great stuff. It’s no wonder that CBS acquired Last.fm yesterday for $280 million. Good move.

Now, onto my gadget binge. The latest is the brand spanking new Blackberry 8830 from Verizon. This thing is sweet! One of biggest problems I had with my Palm Treo was that I could never get it to work correctly with my email. I even gave it to my IT guy for a couple of days to see if he could get it working and he couldn’t either. I could get my email, but it was a laborious process at best. The Treo would also freeze and crash intermittantly. That said, I still liked the phone. I liked the user interface, I liked a lot about the Treo. But I had to give it up.

The new Blackberry just works. It’s super thin, has a beautiful screen and within minutes of receiving it I had all my email (personal and work) flowing seamlessly. It took me mere minutes to get the first 20 seconds of Band of Horses “The Funeral” as my ringtone. The trackball in the middle means I don’t have to muddy up my screen with fingerprints and grease. The phone sounds terrific. The web browser is significantly faster. Maps & GPS are already on the unit. I could go on and on…..I’m loving it.

I was considering the IPhone, but a few things ended up being too much for me:

– an ALL touch screen interface sounds cool to me but I don’t think it’s my ideal since I’m always cleaning off the screens on my PDA’s.
– I just can’t bring myself to go back to AT&T after the horrific customer service and sporadic coverage when I used them a while back.
– I’m having a hard time justifying $600 for a phone.

That said, if someone gave me one I’d take it in a heartbeat – it does like it’s going to be a cool unit – and a game-changer.