Someone Has Finally Said It: New Racing Series?

I'm not going to belabor this too much tonight but there are a couple of interesting articles over at Superbike Planet that have been posted over the last two days. As an astute reader might have guessed it's more information concerning the Daytona Motorsports Group and their takeover of AMA Racing and subsequent proposed debasement and brutalization of the series. Or possibly "emasculation" is a more apt term for what they plan. No, I'm not in the mood to mince words about it tonight. I just finished watching the Superstock and Formula Xtreme races from last weekend's Barber Motorsports Park round and frankly, the only racing that sucks in AMA Roadracing right now is Superbike. The races in the rest of the classes were actually quite entertaining and eventful. And yet this is the series that DMG wants to gut.

Anyway, the first of the articles is an interview with two of the higher-ups with Daytona Motorsports Group, Collin Frasier and Bill Syfan. I'm not going to delve to deeply into an analysis of the interview but suffice to say it provides some insight into why the DMG is doing what it's doing. Some of it sort of makes sense, some of it I don't agree with at all, and some of my major concerns weren't even mentioned. Not that that's really too surprising. All in all it looked like an attempt at spin control as much as anything.

The second of the two articles is an interview with a Senior Vice President with American Honda, Ray Blank. Again, I'm not going to do a line-by-line analysis, but Mr. Blank's interview is very interesting. He seems to feel very much like I do honestly, and he pretty much comes right out and says that the DMG is aiming for a NASCAR-like final picture for AMA Road Racing. Specifically, they have no interest in making a series attractive to enthusiasts, rather they want John Q. Public to show up at the races. I, like Mr. Blank, can understand their reasoning there, but I don't like it. Furthermore, I think the same thing could be accomplished without dumbing down the sport. Either way, the long and short of it is that I am an enthusiast, and I want the sport to be an enthusiast's sport. I don't mind if John Q. Public comes to the races and I certainly hope he has a good time if he does, but I don't want the quality of the experience sacrificed to get him there.

Finally, and probably the most interesting thing to me, is that Mr. Blank seemed to hint very strongly that he might be open to the idea of the manufacturers getting together and starting another, competing, series. He stated that he didn't think it would be that difficult and, at least from the way I read it, practically invited some enterprising promoter to get the wheels rolling. What's more, again from the way I read it, he practically promised his support should those wheels begin moving. I'd wondered how long it would be before talk this very thing started to rear it's head. This kind of coup has been used before, successfully I might add, when some sanctioning body was doing things the racers and/or manufacturers didn't like. King Kenny Roberts himself pulled something very similar in a bid to get changes made in the Motorcycle Grand Prix series years ago.

Things certainly appear to be hotting up and we could all be in for a truly interesting ride. Stay tuned.

BlackBerry 8820, A Few Weeks Later

I've had the BlackBerry 8820 for a few weeks now. I've even managed to subject it to what is, for me at least, the ultimate test of a mobile device's utility: business travel. Several times, in fact. The conclusion at this point? I've seen a few microscopic cracks develop, metaphorically speaking, but all in all the unit's held up my initial opinion of it well and proven to be a very good fit for me.

I continue to love the keyboard and all the other things I wrote about in the 8820 review I posted a few weeks ago. In fact, I've continued to find things that are pretty cool and well designed. As an example, just today (on yet another business trip) I discovered that entering two spaces while typing an email or whatever will result in the software inserting a period after the last non-space character you typed, leaving the two spaces in place, and then turning on the capitalization in preparation for starting a new sentence. For those of us that routinely use two spaces between the period at the end of one sentence and the start of another (most typists I suppose) that's a great feature. Small and simple I know, but as I think I mentioned in my review: the Devil is in the the details.

The truth is that I think at least some, if not all, of the little irritations I've found are probably based more in the service (AT&T, AKA "The Death Star") than in the BlackBerry hardware or software. These annoyances are things like the occasional delays in receiving email. I don't know where that problem lies, honestly. It could be in the BES, it could be AT&T, who knows. I suppose it could in theory be the operating system or messaging client as well, but that seems a bit unlikely. Speaking of the messaging client, one thing it does do better than any other mobile device I've used, especially the Windows Mobile-based 8125, is let you know when an email failed to send. The 8820 makes it very apparent when a send failure occurred, and that's something that was a huge irritation to me on the WinMob device.

Probably the other biggest irritation to me on the BlackBerry at the moment is my complete inability to make any of the mobile Twitter clients work. I've tried TinyTwitter, TwitterBerry, and one other one that I can't remember right now and none of them will connect successfully to the Twitter service from my 8820. I don't know why this is, I've been completely unable to find any information or solutions about it, but my strong suspicion is that it has something to do with AT&T's MEdia Net network structure. A minor annoyance at best, but an annoyance just the same. Fortunately, GoogleTalk takes up a lot of the slack.

All in all, I have to say I'm pretty happy with the 8820.

More Thoughts on AMA Superbike

I was listening to the always excellent Rumblestrip Radio motorcycle road racing podcast this morning on the way to work and one of the topics of discussion was the new proposed class structure for AMA Superbike starting in 2009. I've thought about this and thought about the things the host of Rumblestrip Radio, The Duke, had to say about it all. I have to confess that the more I think about it the more upset I become. I know it sounds like more predictions of doomsday, but I don't think so. I honestly think, and apparently The Duke shares my opinion, that they are going to completely ruin the premier road racing series in the United States.

One of the things that makes me say this is something I honestly hadn't even occurred to me unil The Duke mentioned it on the Rumblestrip Radio episode I listened to today. Namely, what effect does having a horsepower-limited, modification limited, middle-weight "premier" class as the top-level road racing class in AMA Superbike do to the capabilities of the series to function as a feeder series to international series? In The Duke's opinion, and I completely agree, it's going to completely gut the series' usefulness as a feeder class to World Superbike on MotoGP. Given the Daytona Motorsports Group's supposed goal of increasing the entertainment value of AMA road racing, I'm not sure they care. I'm quite sure they would say that the purpose of the series is to provide entertainment for fans, not function as a springboard for riders to use to vault themselves to higher levels of the sport. On the surface I'd agree with that assessment. As usually happens in life, however, the problem isn't that simple.

The problem with AMA Superbike being useless as a feeder class for international road racing is that it's going to cause all the hottest young riders, the stars of tomorrow if you will, to eschew the AMA series in favor of a series that allows more potential for future growth. Can anyone honestly see a hotshot young rider with tons of potential voluntarily joining a series that will stifle pretty much any opportunity for future growth in the sport they've chosen? Of course not. Most or all of the hottest young riders will instead choose to go overseas at the earliest opportunity to compete in British Superbike or one of the many other European national or regional championships, or if possible, straight to one of the international championships' support classes. That means that American fans may very well never get to see the next John Hopkins or Ben Spies compete in they're "local" AMA Superbike round. Ultimately, the AMA series will wind up peopled almost entirely by has-been and never-was riders.

So good job, DMG. Way to screw it up royally. Those who thought (and I include myself in this group) that any future owner of the series would be hard-pressed to screw it up any more than the AMA had have found out that it's apparently much easier than we thought. The DMG seems to have found at least one true path to absolute mediocrity. What's the entertainment value of watching a bunch of riders you don't know and don't care about racing one another on dumbed-down, anemic, uninteresting motorcycles?

The Future of US Superbike Racing

The roar for the last week or so in US road racing has been the subject of the Daytona Motorsports Group's (the new owners of the AMA road racing) proposed changes to the series for 2009. There have been stories upon stories about different aspects of it in the various road racing news outlets and it was apparently the major topic of conversation in the pits at this weekend's Barber Motorsports Park round of the AMA Superbike series.

It all started with visits made to the Japanese "Big Four" manufacturers by DMG's president, Roger Edmundson, last week. The purpose of these visits was purportedly to open a dialog with the manufacturers about what they would like to see and what DMG's vision is for the series. I'm getting all this news second hand, but it seems as though the visits were actually more to tell the manufacturers what was going to happen and at least one of the manufacturers did not take the news well at all. Frankly, I can see why. If I was a manufacturer faced with today's sport motorcycle trends and had DMG's proposal dropped on my plate I think I'd be pretty pissed off too.

DMG's (myopic, in my opinion) "vision" dictates sweeping changes to the series, the class structure, and even the event weekends. The first thing that I as a fan am a bit unhappy about is that right off the bat I'm going to get less time with motorcycles actually on track on a typical race weekend. This is because DMG's plan is that there will only be practices on Friday afternoon of a race weekend instead of all day Friday as happens now. The first half of Friday will be devoted to media and promotional activities it seems.

Next, and probably most major, is the class structure. DMG's proposed, or possibly dictated since it's unclear how much of these changes are set in stone at the moment, headliner class for the US series will be something called "Daytona Superbike." From what I can discern from the information I've read this class sounds like a rehash of the current Formula Xtreme class. The cornerstone of the class as proposed would be 600cc inline fours. There will also be provisions for different engine configurations to allow variations of twin- and three-cylinder machines to compete as well, much like the current FX class. The differences will be that the class will be horsepower and/or power-to-weight-ratio limited, very much like the Moto-ST endurance series that DMG also runs. The class will also be a spec fuel, spec tire, and I think spec ECU class as well as being limited in terms of allowed modifications from what I can see.

In addition to the new premier class, DMG's current Moto-ST series will be merged with the AMA series. The Moto-ST class will apparently be run with all of it's current rules intact and will be one of the races run on Saturday, with 3-hour-maximum endurance race on Saturday afternoon of a typical race weekend.

Last, and probably least from DMG's viewpoint, is the "LiterBike" class that will, to all reports, adopt most of the rule structure that had been decided by the AMA and the major manufacturers for the 2009 Superbike class. I say probably least from DMG's viewpoint because the various things I've read gave me the impression that DMG only relented to having this class because of uproar by the manufacturers and probably race teams.

An astute and knowledgeable reader will probably notice that I mentioned nothing about Supersport and Superstock. That's because both of these classes will go the way of the Dodo under DMG's proposed structure. Superstock was going to be gone anyway, and probably rightly so as it was a point of confusion to have two classes (Superbike and Superstock) that were so similar, differing only in allowed changes and tires, but the deletion of the Supersport class amazes and concerns me.

Supersport is a class that the manufacturers are very fond of. The 600cc sportbikes are the hardest-fought and best selling class of sport motorcycles and from everything I've ever heard Supersport is a class the manufacturers were very keen to compete in and win due to the old "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" adage. Based on that alone it seems like all the manufacturers would be up in arms about the deletion of this class. They go from having a forum where their cutting edge new 600cc weapon can compete on it's own merits with all of the other manufacturer's competing models to having these bikes neutered with weight, tire, and fuel restrictions and then mixed in with other bikes that don't even compete in the same market segment (Buell and BMW, for example). Not to mention that Supersport has often been some of the closest, most exciting racing on the track.

That's only one of the problems I see with the new class structure. For example, one of the major complaints with AMA racing for several years was that the top factory riders were scattered among different classes. The argument was always that the premier class should have the top riders riding the fastest, most aggressive, must cutting-edge bikes. Is that going to be the case here? The Daytona Superbike class will be a class full of mostly middle-weight motorcycles and, to make it even worse, those bikes will be saddled with all kinds of artificial restrictions. Having said that, the proposed 2009 Superbike rules that the LiterBike class is supposedly adopting (although it sounds like DMG's going to add spec tire and fuel rules at the very least) is much more Superstock-like than they have been the last few years. That means the bikes are going to be less heavily modified and closer to stock motorcycles, but they're still going to be much faster and far more trick than the bikes in Daytona Superbike, the so-called premier class.

Another question that pops to mind is the reaction for the riders. It seems to me that many of the top riders might decide another series is the right place to race. After all, what's more of a challenge: riding a neutered 600 in Daytona Superbike or a hotrodded 1000 or 1200cc Superbike in the WSBK series? It's not quite as simple as that from the rider's perspective of course, but if I were a top-level rider I know what I'd be thinking. I'm not a top-level rider so this is all pure speculation on my part, but from the derision Mladin for one heaped upon the decision to run the Daytona 200 as an FX race (he persisted in referring to it as a "mini-bike race" for quite a while a couple of years ago) I suspect I'm correct in my assessment.

Frankly, I'm concerned about the future of the series. I thought at first the DMG takeover was going to be a good thing. Now I'm not so sure. Perhaps I'm just being a doomsday prophet. Perhaps I'm just old and crotchety enough at this point that I don't like change. I don't think so however. I realize the Superbike class in AMA roadracing has been a bit boring for a few years now due to Mladin's, and now Mladin's and Spies', dominance, but I don't think the correct way to address the problem is to dumb down the series or to introduce a bunch of artificial restrictions ala NASCAR. After all, it's quite apparent the Yoshimura domination is a result of the men controlling the throttles, not the bikes themselves. If it was the bikes wouldn't Tommy Hayden be doing much better than he is? I also don't think the proposed Daytona Superbike class has any business at all being billed as the premier class for the series. I'm really pretty indifferent to the inclusion of the Moto-ST class. I'm not sure how well endurance racing will go over to tell the truth, but I won't mind watching it. In fact I'm hoping to go to Virginia International Raceway next weekend to watch a Moto-ST. My only concern is that I don't think endurance racing will be as easy for a neophyte viewer to follow since the guy leading on the track might not necessarily be the guy leading the race. This type of confusion has long been the argument against aggregate time rules in the event of a weather-related interruption to racing, as used by World Superbike for example.

I see major clouds on the horizon but I suppose only time will tell. I'm also hoping that this all still at the proposal stage and that DMG and the manufacturers and race teams can come to some agreement that is better for everyone. I for one will be watching the news to see what the ongoing developments are, and hoping my current sense of trepidation proves to be unfounded.

A list of articles with more information:
Daytona Motorsports Group Debuts New Class Structure
Daytona Motorsports Group Announces 2009 Plans For AMA Pro Road Racing
Daytona MotorSports Group Visits California
Ducati CEO: Ducati Hopes To Re-Join AMA Superbike In '09, Buuuut ...
Interview: Suzuki's Mel Harris
Yamaha: Waiting For More Details

Hacking Competition: Linux is the Winner!

This is slightly dated news, but in the process of catching up on back episodes of Leo LaPorte's The Tech Guy podcast I came across a mention of a hacking competition that pitted hackers against Mac OS X, Windows Vista SP1, and Ubuntu Linux 7.10.

The contest was hosted at a Canadian security conference and the idea was that three laptops loaded with the above operating systems were made available. On the first day of the three day competition hackers tried to gain root access to one or more of the systems using just exploits available through the host OS itself. On day two, the hackers were allowed to attack only the OS or applications installed by default with the OS (the three systems were configured as close to alike as was possible given the disparate operating systems), and on the third day the hackers were allowed to attack the OS, default applications, and any application the judges deemed "popular."

The interesting part of this comes when one looks at the order the machines fell. The hackers were completely unsuccessful in compromising any of the operating systems on day, which to me says good things about the state of computer security. I know computers still aren't as secure as they could or should be, but this seems to indicate that they (especially Windows) are much better than they were a few years ago.

Day two is when things really start getting interesting. A hacker named Charlie Miller walked in the door and in two minutes flat had gained root access to the Mac host machine using a Safari vulnerability. So Mac, the OS that's so frequently preached about by it's often fanatical fans for being so secure, was the first to fall.

Day three finally saw the Windows Vista machine toppled, apparently using some sort of exploit involving Java. The Ubuntu Linux machine was never compromised. One article I read indicates that bugs were found but nobody wanted to "put the work into developing the exploit code that would be required to win the contest," whatever that means.

As I said, interesting stuff. I'll have to be sure to gloat to my dad next time I talk to him about how MacOS was hacked in two minutes flat while even Windows lasted until the third day. Mac fan that he is, he should enjoy that news.

Ducati Racing Tidbits

Finally! There's some racing happening and more in the forecast for the next several weeks. Last weekend saw the third round of the World Superbike Championship from Valencia, Spain. Next weekend (4/11-4/13) is the third round of of the MotoGP Championship from Estoril, Portugal. The weekend after that (4/18-4/20) sees the second round of the AMA Superbike Championship run at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. The last weekend of April has a plethora of roadracing action as that weekend hosts both the third round of the AMA Superbike Championship from Fontana, California and the fourth round of the World Superbike Championship from Assen. A complete and comprehensive schedule for the entire 2008 racing season for AMA and World Superbikes as well as MotoGP can be found over at SuperBike Planet's Racing page.

With all this action having happened or coming up in the near future, it seemed to be a good time to take a brief look at the state of Ducati's racing activities world wide. Reader's beware however: spoilers await.

AMA Superbike
Starting close to home with the AMA, there really isn't too much to report I'm afraid. There were of course several Ducati 848s competing in the Daytona 200 last month, with the front-runner of the bunch being Larry Pegram. Larry finished 4th on the track but was ultimately promoted to 3rd after the disqualification of on-track winner Josh Hayes.

It's also been reported that Boulder Motorsports Ducati, competitors in last year's Formula Xtreme championship, are intending to enter the 2008 Superbike class. There isn't any corroborating evidence at this point though, since the pre-entry lists for the Barber and Fontana rounds don't list them. The only Ducatis entered in the Superbike class at this point is Florida's Barrett Long at the Barber round. We'll still have Ducatis to watch in the FX series but whether there will be any 1098Rs on the field is still up in the air. I'm still hopeful that the guys at BMS will come through.

World Superbike
The WSBK championship is, as usual, a much cheerier front for the Boys from Bologna. The Ducati 1098R/RS/F08 racebikes have put in an impressive string of performances in the first three WSBK rounds. So much so that I was frankly convinced that the FIM would be slapping greater weight and/or restrictor plate penalties on the big twins in an effort to slow them down. Personally, I thought and continue to think that those penalties are not warranted since to me the field looks pretty well even. Yes, Troy Bayliss is leading the championship, but that's because he's Troy Bayliss, not because his bike's so much better than the others. Leave us not forget: he won the 2006 championship decisively on a woefully underpowered 999F06 and fought the 2007 championship fiercely on an even more underpowered (relatively speaking) 999F07.

I haven't had the opportunity to do any research on this, but according to the British Eurosport announcers during yesterday's first Superbike race the FIM agrees with the belief that things are pretty equal. Again, according to the Eurosport guys, there is a formula the FIM intends to employ that does some sort of comparison between the results obtained by the Ducatis and the results obtained by the various four-cylinder manufacturers. The results of the formula determine whether or not the twins get more restrictions and apparently right now the formula is dictating the the FIM leaves things as they are. That's great news if it turns out to be the case.

Another cool piece of news on the WSBK and Ducati front is that Lorenzo Lanzi, a rider I have a soft spot for, won the first race at Valencia round. He actually would have only come in third because in a last lap, go-for-broke move Carlos Checa managed to lose the front of his Ten Kate CBR1000RR while trying to pass long-time race leader Max Neukirchner in the last corner and took both of them out. Lanzi ran in 4th most of the race, often riding right on the back tire of 3rd place Troy Bayliss, but managed to get by Bayliss right at the end and found himself as the race winner for the first time since 2005. Hopefully this signals a return to form form Lanzi, who definitely has what it takes and just needs to find it again.

MotoGP
Last but not least is MotoGP. Most of the news on this front is fairly old, the highlight (lowlight?) being the 11th and 12th place finishes an Jerez for Stoner and Melandri. Melandri was about typical for his tenure at Ducati so far, which is to say mediocre to bad. Stoner had his worst weekend ever while wearing red. Two off-track excursions in the same race and he still managed to finish 11th. The second incident didn't appear to be wholly his fault and he might have finished as high as 5th if that had worked out better. Hopefully this will be the absolute low point of Stoner's 2008 season and he'll be back to his normal ways after this. He's currently sitting 4th in the championship points.

Conclusion
I have yet to watch the second Valencia WSBK or Supersport races but I'll be doing that tonight. Then we have plenty of action over the next few weekends to sooth the racing lust. Now if I could just get some decent weather and do some riding of my own...

Bogged Down Again

I know I was supposed to be trying to get better at posting on a regular basis, and I actually did there for a short period. It's still a goal, unfortunately my time's been split a bunch of ways again. In addition to traveling quite a bit for work in recent weeks, I've been teaching myself PHP and BlackBerry development. I've also spent a lot of what little time I have left over reading the excellent "Hit Man" series by Lawrence Block on my Amazon Kindle as well as playing cool modern, open-source version of a video game I used to love and one of the few I've actually ever purchased: X-Com: UFO Defense. The new version is called UFO: Alien Invasion and while it's not an exact clone of X-Com it's certainly close enough for me.

Riding
I've not gotten much riding in lately because, although we're supposed to be in a drought, it's been raining here for what seems like days. I do have something to look forward to though. Some friends and myself are all going to US Desmo's annual Ducs Along the Blue Ridge rally in Mount Airy, NC on May 2-4. That's always a lot of fun even if the weather sucks (like it did last year) because let's face it: what's more fun than spending a weekend hanging out and shooting the breeze with a bunch of folks that have the exact same addictions and sicknesses I do? The US Desmo folks are, as can be guessed by the name, primarily a bunch of Ducati freaks. There are other brands that show up and no matter what else everyone there is a motorcycle nut just like me. It should be fun.

Racing
Also on the motorcycle front, the racing season has finally gotten underway and is moving ahead under full steam. A couple of weeks ago the second round of the MotoGP season ran, and unfortunately Casey Stoner had his worst weekend ever as a Ducati rider. Here's hoping he has better luck next weekend in Portugal.

This weekend is the 3rd round of the World Superbike Championship from Valencia, Spain. Unfortunately, Speed TV is back to it's usual tricks. They are only showing the first of the two Superbike races today and delaying the airing of the second Superbike race and the Supersport race until Tuesday. I'm currently hunting for other sources in order to obtain a copy of the race so I can see it today or tonight.

Next weekend sees the second round of the AMA Superbike championship from Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. It'll be fun to see the AMA guys back on track, even though the two Superbike races are probably a forgone conclusion. It's almost assured that Spies and Mladin will be first and second, it's just a question of what order they'll finish in. Hopefully the other factories have been working over the last month to get themselves up to speed. I'll be interested in seeing how Neil Hodgeson and Chaz Davies do in their various classes. I think Chaz especially has big things on the horizon.

Tech Stuff
I wrote about my new BlackBerry 8820 a few days ago and I'm happy to report I'm still pretty intrigued with the thing. I like it more and more every day, and I can't wait until I find the time to seriously dig into the software development side of it. I've gotten the development environment set up and I've delved into the example code a bit but I really haven't had time to get down deep into it yet. Hopefully soon.

And finally...
I'm trying to get some other stuff down to manageable levels, and if things work out the way I think they are going to I'll be able to reduce my stress load quite a bit in the coming weeks. Some things on the house front are kind of coming together and things are looking good. Here's hoping that's he case, because the calmer my life is the more time I have available for the things I want to do, like blog, ride, and code.

BlackBerry 8820 Review

I mentioned previously that I was going to do something I didn't think I would ever agree to: switch over to a BlackBerry for my mobile phone and PDA needs. Since I made the move to mobile data and email a couple of years ago I've carried a couple of different Palm OS-based Treos and I've been carrying Cingular 8125/HTC Wizard running first Windows Mobile 5 then Windows Mobile 6 for about the last 6 or 8 months. Based on what I've seen and people have said about the BlackBerries I didn't want one because my feeling was that they were limited and pretty stupid devices.

Ever since moving to the Windows Mobile device I've had access to my company email and exchange server remotely as well (previously all I had access to was personal email) and it was a revelation to me how much easier it made some aspects of my job. That being the case, the company decided recently that it was time for me to go "legit" (my previous devices were all personal, not company, even though I used them as much for work as for myself) and get me a company BlackBerry. I had the choice of a BlackBerry Pearl or a 8820. I chose the 8820 based on it appearing to be a more full-featured device and, primarily, because it had a full QWERTY keyboard instead of that two-letters-per-key arrangement the Pearl has. Also, I don't mind carrying a slightly bigger device and I like having a bigger screen.

I've had my 8820 almost a week now. The start was rather shaky and I was wondering for the first couple of days if I was going to wind up carrying two phones again after all, since it didn't appear that the 8820 was going to do some of the things I'd gotten used to having and didn't want to give up. Namely, I couldn't get Google Maps to work and I had basically no Internet access available for use by third-party software. It turns out that these problems stemmed from poor execution on the part of our company's AT&T representative. Being that it's AT&T, I can't really say that surprises me very much. My experience with AT&T in it's various guises, both wireless and not, is that about the only thing they can be counted on to do is screw things up.

At any rate, late last Sunday evening my network problems mysteriously and spontaneously cleared up and I suddenly had the full data access that I was accustomed to. It made all the difference in the world. I went from thinking I was going to be stuck carrying two PDAs to being very, very happy with my 8820.

What I Like
There are a lot of things to like about the 8820 now that I've gotten used to it. The screen is nice, and with the exception that I wish it was possible to enter a "." character without pressing the "ALT" key, I love the keyboard. The device has a nice screen, does a great job rendering text, and the entire UI feels snappy and responsive.

Physically, the 8820 is a nice device as well. It's fairly wide and tall, but it's also pretty thin. I wasn't sure I was going to like the trackball arrangement that RIM is using on modern BlackBerries to replace the thumbwheel but now that I'm used to it I like it a lot. I'm not sure about the gloss finish and chrome sides, however. It looks and feels nice, but it's always covered in fingerprints and, because of the shininess of the device, they really stand out. The unit looks sleek and modern but I'm teetering on the brink of deciding that a matte finish would have been a better idea.

Another thing I thought I would miss after moving to a BlackBerry was the touchscreen. All of my previous integrated devices have been touchscreen devices and the BlackBerry is not. With the various Treos I probably could have easily dispensed with the touchscreen because they were so well laid out and designed for one-handed operation. The HTC device on the other hand absolutely required a touchscreen and, oddly enough, at the same time didn't make very efficient use of it. I have definitely decided I like the form factor that the Treo and the 8820 share, that is the screen and keyboard right on the front of the device. That makes a huge difference in usability as compared to the HTC, which has a slide-out keyboard.

One of the things that really strikes me about the 8820 is that there was obviously some very serious thought put into usability. There are a lot of small details that cumulatively make a huge difference in how pleasant the device is to live with day in and day out. Two examples of this kind of design that spring to mind immediately have to do with alerts. Most phones and PDAs are limited to working one way or the other. By that I mean they are set to vibrate and they vibrate for every alert of every type or they are set to generate audible alerts and they do that for every type of alert. Or, in many cases they can be configured to do both at the same time. RIM takes it a step further and allows the 8820 (and probably other BlackBerry devices, but I have no experience with them) to be configured with multiple "profiles" that determine how the device will alert the user. That in and of itself isn't that big a deal, what makes it special is that each profile can be configured in a sort of "dual mode" setup where the device will alert differently based on whether it's in or out of it's holster. For example, my "Normal" profile is configured with audible alerts if it's out of the holster and vibration alerts if it's in the holster. My holster is almost always on my hip, and I don't want audible alerts if the phone's on my side. Rather, I want it to vibrate. If I take the phone out of the holster and lay it on my desk or counter top, however, I want it to chime or something so I hear it if I'm across the room. Thanks to RIM's thoughtfulness I don't have to constantly remember to switch profiles to get it to make noise or be quiet. As an extension to this, one of the things I've done for a while is to use my phone for an alarm clock while traveling. That sounds simple enough, but it can present a certain dilemma when said phone also receives email. The problem is that if you have the phone set to audible alerts you get disturbed by email flowing in in the middle of the night but if you set it to vibrate you don't get an audible wake-up alarm the next morning. My Palm Treo (or more specifically, the email client I used for the Treo) solved this problem rather inelegantly by allowing "off hours" where the client would not download email. That works by and large, but what if you have it set to stop receiving email at 10pm but one night you're up late waiting for an email? Now you have to go monkey with the settings. RIM, I'm happy to say, hit upon the elegant and, as most really elegant solutions are, obvious answer: the phone can be set into the "Quiet" profile and it will generate no alerts at all, either vibration or audible, except in the case of an alarm set by the user with the Alarm application. When bed time arrives, whenever that happens to be, I set the 8820 to "Quiet" and then set an alarm. The phone happily collects email, text messages, Google Talk messages, or whatever else all night long with nary a peep to disturb my slumber. But when the time comes for the alarm I set to trigger, I get a nice chime (or whatever sound I choose) to wake me up. Simple, elegant, and beautiful. I know, it's a little thing. But as my Grandmother was fond of saying: the Devil's in the details.

Another quick example of good design detail is the "delete" key. The key changes functions intelligently based on what you're doing. For example, if you are editing an email the key acts like a "backspace" key, allowing you to delete one letter at a time. If you are reading an email however, or looking at your inbox, hitting the "delete" key acts like a "delete" key on a regular keyboard and deletes the entire email. Very cool, and very intuitive.

What I Don't
There are a few things that I don't like or find a little questionable, but really very few. The first is, as I mentioned earlier, that I wish the unit had a dedicated "." (period) key. I use that frequently enough that I don't really care for having to use two keystrokes to enter it. That's a really minor thing, but it's something I notice. Another thing I notice, and this may just being ignorance on my part, is that there doesn't appear to be a way to select and copy or delete a large block of text. If I want to delete a whole sentence, for example, I'm reduced to just removing it one character at a time. That seems terribly inefficient to me. I have a suspicion that there is a way to select a text block and I just haven't found it yet. This seems like too obvious a thing to miss.

On the subject of obvious things that were missed, it's long been a complaint that BlackBerries don't do a good job with email attachments. I haven't experimented with this too much personally, but what little I have seems to indicate that the 8820 follows along in this mold. It seems to do a poor job at best with attachments and that strikes me as a major oversight. Given the target market for these devices my feeling is that they should handle, at a minimum, PDF, MS Word, MS Excel, and possibly MS PowerPoint documents at least as well as a Palm or Windows Mobile device does. Perhaps the much-anticipated BlackBerry OS 4.5 that's due in the near future will address this problem.

Another thing that seems a little strange to me is the way the email clients aggregate mails. My 8820 has three email accounts set up: my company Exchange account, my gmail account, and my account for my side business. When an email comes in to any of the accounts it gets tossed into a single Inbox, along with Google Talk conversations, and text messages, among other things. Also, by default, the inbox shows sent messages as well. For the life of me, I can't figure out why I would want sent messages to show up in my inbox. Perhaps I'm just not thinking about it in the right way. Also, I have some issues with the way the BlackBerry email system deals with my personal email boxes, but I'll go into that another time.

Conclusions
All in all, I'm very pleased with my 8820. In fact, I'm even nudging my fiancee toward one when our family plan comes up for renewal at the end of next month. She's grumbling about parting with her orange Treo 680 but I really think she'd like the usability of the BlackBerry better. And that's saying something, because the Palm OS Treos are extremely usable, if a bit unstable, devices. Plus, if she decided on a Curve, she could have one in her other favorite color, red.

Over the next few weeks I'll probably write a little bit about applications and other things I'm doing with the BlackBerry. I've even downloaded the software development kit and I have a couple of ideas for BlackBerry programs I'd like to write if I have time.

More to come.