Dear Research in Motion,

In the coming year, please take the SDK for Google’s Open Handset Alliance and iPhone SDK and create a BlackBerry Connect for those respective platforms. I realize that you have solutions out there now [link] and may have plans for this in the future [link] and I don’t want to sound too presumptuous or impetuous but I’m tired of shocking headlines about your products you have yet to make.

Run on all platforms and shut pundits up. I don’t want to read another nearly-fired-due-to-lack-of-productivity-wallstreet-analysts cum blogging-fud-and-buzz-rakers‘ cobbled together ideas of what would spark growth. Nor do I want to read how RIM’s [insert product name] is going to be the next [insert hot handset, business device, software]-killer. I know you see the potential of everyone in the business world connecting to their corporate BES with or without a genuine BlackBerry device. If you made connections to BIS cheap and available to everyone – you could become the de-facto standard for email; in fact email 2.0.

Keep making your handsets, make them sexy and irresistible to appease your current fan base; but make your service sexy and irresistible. Your biggest market isn’t the people who want Blackberry devices, it’s the people that don’t have Blackberry devices. If you don’t kill the iPhone or HTC’s touch devices, you could live happily knowing that you’re cashing in on their connectivity.

kthnxbai,
pb

ps: could you open up a datacenter in michigan? we kinda need the jobs…

(sorry to all John Keates fans out there)

I’m looking out my window, sipping coffee out of mug sporting an expressionless snowman – save for its forced merriment indicated by its outstretched arms drawn on by its creator. Other times of the year, this isn’t considered; the mug is strictly utilitarian – tall, ceramic, and connected to a large handle for mornings where the pall of last night’s drinking has rendered your hands and brain useless. There is no point for me to ponder the grim grey of morning living an average first world life but they are all just hanging above my head.

– Work has been a bother with all the executives scrambling to get their yearly goals done. Everyone is rushing and project managers are setting unrealistic time lines. I should be grateful for having a job in such a depressed state economy.

– Money, a product from all that work that I’ve been doing. I work to fill my house with soul-less decorations and hollow gifts to put into peoples hands.

– Death. I’ve been spending my quiet time pondering my birthday and why I’m not going to die underneath my own self-diagnosed brilliance like Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, or Kurt Cobain. Amrozi told me that “After 28 it’s all down hill”, I know it was said in jest but the ring of truth just resonates.

– Holidays… despite my discreetness I am expected to make appearances at holiday parties. I haven’t been diagnosed with social anxiety disorder but if I was I’d pin that to a sweater or a jacket as my holiday outfit. Like the snowman on my mug, I just want to get this over this season so I can go back to being a regular vessel for coffee.

Sitting and chatting in my living room

niece #1: I heard a colonic takes a few days

me: Nah, you can knock it out in a few hours. It’s a fill and flush three times. Your sister has had one and said she felt slimmer for days.

niece #1: No shit

me: exactly

Picking up a niece at the airport

me: Sorry I was late. Are you cold?

niece #2: No, I’m fine

me: I was expecting to see you in a white pashmina and jeans

niece #2: Oh, that’s so 5 years ago

me: Please, if it were a renewable fabric or if you could turn the garment back to the manufacturer so it could be turned into another garment, it would be en vogue. Green is the new black.

niece #2: Hmm good to know

Kitchen

snuff: Hon, can you get that large bowl from the basement.

me: Why? This is your people’s holiday.

snuff: Just get it.

me: No, this is your people’s holiday (making my way to the basement door).

snuff mom: Are you going to eat with us?

me: Yes! (from the stairwell)

Another year, another title, another seemingly bodged report based on FBI facts, another sucker punch to Detroit. After losing to St. Louis last year, CQ Press a unit of Congressional Quarterly Inc, used FBI crime statistics and elevated my home town to No. 1 – “Most Dangerous US City”. This dubious “score” of 407 to St. Louis’ 406 must be irritating to mayors and crime officials alike, as this has been touted as a gross misuse and inaccurate interpretation of data.

Since moving further into the suburbs, I am no longer toting this crypto-facto-brication with pride. When I went to school and regularly attended events downtown, I fancied myself as a hardened city-dweller. I rarely ever find myself in Detroit proper, save for the two miles that I drive through to get to my home. Now that I live in the bubble of suburbia (granted 500 yards from the border) I wait until people question their own city’s safety. They talk of their crime, and in some cases they have more dangerous cities, but I have aggregated crime data forged into a number on an unregulated scale calling me… a badass in a dangerous town.

The Associated Press: Detroit Declared Most Dangerous US City [link]