Josh Bancroft’s TinyScreenfuls.com

BlackBerry 8700c "Electron"
Originally uploaded by JoshB.

Ran into a coworker and fellow gadget geek today that picked up the new Intel-powered (XScale CPU) BlackBerry 8700c, codenamed “Electron”.

I really like the form factor - wider than the 7100 series, but smaller than previous full size BlackBerries. It’s a Cingular device, and has EDGE, so it’s speedier than GPRS, but not up there with EVDO. The screen seems to be the same 220×176 pixel screen from the 7100 series, though in a landscape (instead of portrait) orientation.

If Verizon ever comes out with an EVDO version of this, I’ll be seriously tempted to switch from my Samsung i730. Nobody does email like RIM’s BlackBerry.

I hate it when I read about stuff like this. TSF pal Thomas Hawk is having an absolutely outrageous time taking abuse from online camera retailer PriceRitePhoto:

“I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again.” “I’m an attorney, I will sue you.” “I will call the CEO of your company and play him the tape of this phone call.” “I’m going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you.” “You’d better get this through your thick skull.” “You have no idea who you are dealing with.”

These are all direct threats that I received today from an individual who identified himself as Steve Phillips, the manager of PriceRitePhoto in Brooklyn, New York when I called to inquire about my order with them. My crime? Telling him that I planned to write an article about my unfortunate experience with his company regarding the camera order I had placed with him yesterday.

How are these people able to stay in business?

The story has already appeard on digg.com and elsewhere in the blogosphere. Just doing my part to make sure people read and know about businesses trying to pull crap like this.

There’s also an interesting angle on the topic of companies trying to control the conversation about them. This guy, who’s trying to rip off Thomas, tried to keep him from publishing this story on his blog. Was he successful? Of course not! This is an extreme example of how a company can’t control what’s being said about them on the web, no matter how hard they try.

If this was an honest mistake, Phillips could respond via his blog, and try to present his side of the story. If it’s dishonest (which it has all signs of being), well, he gets what he deserves. That’s how the blogosphere works.

Technorati tags: fraud

I’ve been having an interesting conversation internally at Intel about whether or not to allow comments on a corporate blog. The term “one way blog” makes me cringe.

Scoble gets right at the heart of the matter in this post - it’s not realistic anymore for a company to try to control what people say about it:

One question I got was telling “how does Microsoft control your message?”

Let go of the idea that you’re gonna control anything anymore. I told them how anyone in the world can write about how their Xbox is crashing. Any idea that you can control what people are saying about you or your company is totally out the window. The only choice you have now is whether or not to join in the conversation.

All you can do is join the conversation. That’s what I and others like me at Intel have been trying to do - get Intel to join the conversation.

OK, if even the Microsoft-centric Official Xbox Magazine Video Podcast is making their videos available in M4V format, so they’ll play on an iPod with video, I hereby declare the pair of iPod compatible M4V and H.264 codecs the winners in the format wars when it comes to video automatically downloaded via an RSS feed.

If even OXM is targeting the iPod, who is going to put something out in an incompatible format? To compete, video capable devices are going to have to support the same video formats the iPod does. And next time I make a TinyPodcast Video Edition available, guess what format it’s going to be in?

Bloglines user JoshBancroft (jabancroft@gmail.com) has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:

Steve Rubel’s “10 Hacks” posts lately have been really, really good. This one covers my favorite RSS aggregator, Bloglines.

I thought I was a Bloglines wizard - I use the Firefox extensions, I use the mobile version on my phone, etc. But Steve mentioned a few hacks that I hadn’t really tried, or just plain hadn’t heard of. Great stuff.

In fact, I’m using one of the hacks (2. Blog Directly from Bloglines) to do this post!

Micro Persuasion Steve Rubel explores how new technologies are transforming marketing, media and public relations.

Ten Bloglines Hacks By noemail@noemail.org (Steve Rubel) on Weblogs In continuing with my social media “hacks” series (RSS, Technorati, blogging and Wikipedia), here are ten of my favorite hacks that work with Bloglines, the most popular RSS news reader. 1) Put Bloglines on Your Blackberry I don’t have a Blackberry, but there are certainly many who do. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could access Bloglines from your device? Well, you can thanks to Berry Bloglines. This free, open source RSS reader is optimized for reading news feeds and blogs on the Blackberry. Even better, Berry Bloglines allows you to read full articles, not just summaries, and even links to external content. Treo, Pocket PC, PSP and mobile phone users don’t need a special app to access Bloglines on the go. Bloglines Mobile does it all. 2) Blog Right From Bloglines Blogger allows you to set up a special email address that you can use to blog via email. Bloglines includes a feature that lets you send articles to others via email. Well, if you combine these you can blog to Blogger from inside Bloglines! Just click the link that says “email this”, enter your special Blogger email address and boom - you’re live! Below is a screen grab from a test I ran on Blogger. This may work with TypePad and other services that let you post by email. I haven’t tested this hack with these platforms. 3) Sync or Swim I am a Web kind of guy. Call me crazy, but sometimes prefer to use Web apps rather than run another desktop program. Most people, however, like to run apps - especially when it comes to RSS readers. The good news is that you can sync your feeds between several major RSS readers and Bloglines. This way, whatever you read at work will be marked as read at home and vice versa. Syncing readers include FeedDemon, GreatNews and Onfolio on Windows, Egress on the Pocket PC and NetNewsWire on the Mac. Oh yeah, and you can read your Bloglines feeds in Outlook as well - without Newsgator. 4) Get Bloglines Notifications via IM Bloglines has a feature that can alert you when a certain feed is updated. There are many different ways to be alerted, including via Firefox, on the Mac OS X Dashboard or even in your Windows Taskbar. However, did you also know you can get pinged with an IM? 5) Get Notified When Pages Without Feeds Change Don’t you hate it when your favorite frequently updating sites don’t have RSS feeds? Well, stress no more. M-E-L has developed a hack to track sites in Bloglines using Watch That Page. 6) Tonight on TiVo - It’s the Bloglines Channel Yes, someone has developed a way to read your Bloglines feeds on your TiVo. Wait, it gets worse. You can also read your Bloglines feeds on your iPod if you’re a bit more adventurous. 7) Put Bloglines Inside Your Desktop Blogging Tool In a recent post I praised ecto - a desktop blogging tool. This isn’t the only tool out there. In fact, there’s a similar app for Windows called Ellicit that you can use to access your Bloglines feeds without having to leave the Entry Editor. Create a Blogroll Using Bloglines While there’ s a lot of debate if they’re still relevant anymore, there are many bloggers who like to maintain and publish a blogroll - a list of the blogs they read. This can be a tedious exercise as you add blogs and remove others. If you manage your feeds on Bloglines, then you’re done. Follow these instructions to add a list of your feeds to your blog. 9) Add a Feed to Multiple Readers at the Same Time Using Firefox First, if you’re not using Firefox, stop and go download it. Next, install the LiveLines Firefox extension. This tool creates a Firefox Live Bookmark and a Bloglines subscription with one click. You can also simultaneously throw the feed into the Sage RSS reader or even a third party app. that uses the feed:// protocol into the mix too. 10) Post Read Bloglines Items to del.icio.us One feature that Bloglines is missing is any kind of social tagging. However, you can - if you wanted to - offload your favorite Bloglines items to del.icio.us and tag them. Over time you will get a tag cloud of your reading habits. This advanced hack requires Greasemonkey. Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Firefox, Hacks