GotVMail, a telephony company that offers voicemail for business, rebranded as Grashopper in 2009. I hadn’t given them a single thought when I left them in 2006 and switched to VirtualPBX , … until I received an email from them on Friday.

For the record, in 2005 and 2006, GotVMail couldn’t get their act together and  a number of my clients ALWAYS had problems getting in touch which doesn’t bode well for a company providing phone service for business. To compound the issue, GotVMail admitted to blocking the calls on purpose because the caller ID sent by Skype and Fido, a Canadian mobile phone carrier, wasn’t to their taste.

I can see online that GotVMail has since had a slough of problems relating to outages and poor customer service so I’m glad I did my research before signing up for service or worse yet, referring friends.

Bottom line, do your research before subscribing to any mission critical online service or you might wind up dead, grasshopper.

Okay. We got bike lanes. We got chicken coops. Now, with Vancouver’s City Council’s help, organized labour can prevail over the evil ruling overlords.

‎”We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” –Adolf Hitler

I’m talking about Rocky Mountaineer Railtours (RMR) here. It’s a small, 100 man operation that is one of the gems of BC’s Tourism Sector. In February, the on-board attendants changed their union from the Canadian Auto Workers’ Union to the Teamsters (Local 13 – sidenote: anyone find Jimmy Hoffa yet?), which was mostly seen as a move to muscle more out of RMR for the workers (yay).

That’s fine and said but then fast forward to June, a couple weeks after RMR’s owner, Peter Armstrong, announced that he was going to Chair Vancouver’s Non-Partisan Association (NPA), things really went haywire.

First Teamsters Local 13 advised RMR of their intent to strike (uh oh!). Then RMR locked them out and hired replacement workers (double uh oh!).

Apparently by all reports, things are going alright onboard RMR’s trips right now. Customers are satisfied and RMR is having an okay high season minus the slanderous remarks and fake reviews being posted online regarding the company.

Anyhow, that’s not where things get weird. This is:

(click the image or the link HERE to view the original letter in full or keep reading)

COUNCILLORS’ OFFICE

July 22, 2011

Mr. Peter Armstrong, CEO
Rocky Mountaineer Vacations
Suite 101-369 Terminal Avenue
Vancouver, BC V6A 4C4

Dear Mr. Armstrong:

As elected officials in the City of Vancouver, we’re acutely aware of the importance of tourism to our local economy. The Rocky Mountaineer trains have been a long-standing contributor to the city’s tourism sector, building a global reputation both for the beauty of the scenery they visit, but also for the quality of their on-board service. That customer experience, so critical to your firm’s success, is also crucial to Vancouver’s tourism brand, so much so that we celebrate the exceptional work of frontline tourism sector workers with monthly awards.

That’s why the current lock-out of your employees, members of Teamsters Local 31, is of grave concern to us. These long-service workers, many of whom who have been with Rocky Mountaineer since the firm’s early days, are exactly the kind of skilled, committed frontline employees that help ensure your guests come back, again and again. They are not just your on-board representatives, they are also our city’s representatives in a very real way.

It is our understanding that these workers have not had a negotiated wage increase for several years, but have repeatedly indicated their desire to achieve a negotiated settlement fair to both sides. They have also been clear they do not wish to see longstanding contract conditions taken away, or their right to overtime pay eroded. They have never been on strike, but had taken a strike vote this year to show their commitment to the goals the union was advancing at the bargaining table.

Nonetheless, your firm has not only locked out these loyal employees but immediately replaced them with strikebreakers, an act that would be illegal under provincial law. We do not believe we can build the tourism industry with a strategy that treats customer service reps as little more than disposable people, to be used and discarded.

We urge you to stop using replacement workers immediately and return to the bargaining table to conclude a new agreement to end this lockout.

Apparently Vancouver’s City Councillors David Cadman, Geoff Meggs, George Chow, Andrea Reimer, Heather Deal, Tim Stevenson, Kerry Jang, Ellen Woodsworth and Raymond Louie feel it appropriate to meddle in a private company’s labour dispute.

It’s noted that none of the above are NPA Councillors – they’re actually on the other side, so um… politics?

Again, this is a small company, not a major corporation, not thousands of employees, not public, not government, so the question begs to be asked – why?

Given the (terrible) weather Vancouver’s been having (bad for tourism) and the fact that it’s RMR’s busiest season, I can understand RMR’s need to mitigate any service interruption which is probably why things moved so quickly, but back to the Council…

I personally think they’re all nuts, or maybe there’s something in the Happy Planet they’re drinking.

Well, except for Suzanne Anton who refused to sign the doc.

It’s also an election year so I can understand if they’re buying votes,  but if that’s the prevailing sentiment, maybe Vancouver doesn’t deserve to have such an awesome business housed here.

Go forth in despair as did the people that closed down their businesses after the rapid fire implementation of the bike lanes. Maybe it’s adios. Maybe it’s Alberta.

You voted for ‘em, friends! Congratulate yourselves.

I’ve been a Nokia E-Series fan for some time now. The ability to access and interact with my company’s Microsoft Exchange server has been the most important factor in freeing me from my office and carrying on with a generally balanced life. The fact that the Nokia E-Series phones can interact and receive push mail from two Exchange servers made my life that much easier. This way I don’t have to carry two or three devices with me (depending on which companies I’m consulting for, etc).

I’ve accessing more than one Exchange account via push for several years. In an interesting twist of fate, the iPhone now has this functionality as of iOS4 making iPhone 4 and the upgraded iPhone 3Gs excessively attractive. The newly-released E73, on the other hand, isn’t worthy.

Up until the E71 was released a couple years ago, I was pretty happy with the E-Series product. Then, something changed. Nokia released the E75 and started to ram buggy and slow software down the consumer’s throat. No longer was the top-of-the-line Nokia phone usable. Instead, users were forced to wait several minutes for their phone to respond or worse, they were forced to constantly reboot their phones in order to get access to contacts, calendars and their inbox.

The E75 looked to generally be an upgrade to the E71. It had the latest OS, geotagging of photos from the camera, N-Gage gaming, podcasting, Internet destinations and more. Sadly, it lacked adequate memory to install third party software and was really slow. Another neat feature that surfaced with the E75 was the ability to charge the phone from either the standard Nokia circular charger or from the micro-USB port.

In a baffling move and shortly after the release of the E75, Nokia quietly killed N-Gage, alienated hundreds of thousands, if not millions of users, and started to prepare to sell stuff in their OVI store.

Around that time, I acquired the E72 and was confounded by some of the important features that were missing. Where was the podcasting software? How about the geotagging feature for my photos? The 5 megapixel camera was definitely great to use but it seems like Nokia decided to make the phone less functional than it’s predecessor. The phone, similar to the E75 also charged from the standard Nokia charger or micro-USB and also used the same battery as the E71. Great news, I could use my old accessories, spare batteries and car charger. Another bonus was that the upgraded processor and storage made the phone more usable than the E75.

Then something happened. Nokia pushed out a firmware update to the E72 and made the phone completely unstable and unusable, even when one reverted to factory settings. I tried unsuccessfully to load in an older firmware using Navifirm and some flashing tools. This turned my phone in to a brick and I was forced to go back to my E71 while my E72 made it’s way back to Malaysia for service.

Enter Wind and the E73. My contract with Fido’s been up for some time. The unlimited talk for $45 and unlimited Internet for $50 plus all the taxes (real and imagined by Fido) seemed less attractive than what the new provider Wind was offering, so I bit and bought a few months of service from the company to see if I was missing anything. I then embarked on a journey to Bellingham to purchase a Nokia E73 from T-Mobile which is compatible with Wind’s AWS network.

Unlocking the T-Mobile was a breeze. I’ve been a TMo customer for some time and they graciously provided me with an unlock code within 24 hours of my purchase. Getting it set up on Wind was a bit of a task – it has been years since I’ve entered Internet and MMS settings into my phone and changed the SMS delivery but after that, the phone was good to go. In the E73 I noticed they brought back podcasting but the geotagging feature was still absent.

The E73 is geared towards the T-Mobile network so some of the usability items like Wifi hotspot connectivity is confounding but to be expected.

Then I noticed something really amiss.

Nokia, in their ultimate wisdom, removed the standard Nokia charger port from the phone! The only way to charge the phone is to lift the micro-USB port and use the provided micro-USB charger. Yikes! No backwards compatibility with chargers I’ve acquired along the way. Additionally, the same dreaded software update (new firmware) that Nokia pushed to my E72 appears to have also hit the E73 so the phone now has fits of instability and the threaded SMS program (Nokia Conversations) doesn’t run anymore.

To top it all off, Wind seems to only be delivering EDGE type Internet speeds to the phone making the change feel like a step backwards compared even to my E71 which gets a good dose of HSDPA 3.5G speed.

The Wind network hasn’t hit primetime yet and the E73 is definitely not worth upgrading to. Better off in the bin, it’s no wonder why Nokia is in trouble and looking for a new CEO to give them direction. Not for me, I’m off to get an iPhone 4 and I’ll stick with Fido.

Last week, I got an automated message from the folks at flickr stating that my photostream was too racy for public consumption and was therefore marked as ‘moderate.’

My initial reaction was to call bullshit and shake a few trees to see who I may know at flickr or Yahoo! HQ. After all, I take photos of people, food and cars – all done in a public space, not some sort of bedroom antics.

The original message:

From: Flickr Support <caseXXXXXXX@support.flickr.com>
To: Urban Mixer

Hello Urban Mixer,

We’ve changed the safety level of your photostream to “moderate”.

As per our Community Guidelines, content like that in your account is not considered “safe” for everyone to view. You may or may not be aware that Flickr has a Safe Search system. When people browse or search on Flickr, they can filter what they see based on a safety level that they are comfortable with – either Safe Search is on, set to moderate, or off. In order for Safe Search to work, we relying on *you* to filter your content appropriately. As you upload stuff to Flickr, you need to make sure that you’re applying appropriate filters (safe, moderate or restricted) and telling us what sort of content it is (photos, video, screenshots, art & illustration). If you don’t apply filters correctly, there’s a very good chance another member will let us know – in fact that’s why we’ve taken action today. (No need to be upset – it’s every member’s right to let us know if they ever feel uncomfortable. Yours too.)

We want Flickr to be a place that everyone can enjoy. That means making sure that potentially offensive content is filtered from public, safe areas of the site. If you read our Community Guidelines, you’ll see the key points are:

play nice, upload things that you have created yourself, and respect the fact that there are millions of people visiting Flickr who may not see the world the same way you do. Use your common sense about whether or not your content is suitable for a global, public audience. If the answer is no, you need to filter it from public view. <br><br>You should also know that if we receive another report about your content or conduct, it’s very likely we’ll terminate your account.

So, please take a moment to find out how to work with safety levels, use ‘em, and everybody’s happy!

Regards,

Flickr Staff

What was most irritating about this message was that firstly, I wasn’t really aware of the ramifications of being marked as moderate; secondly, I wasn’t aware of how to remedy the situation. It felt like some idiot at flickr decided to flip a switch and forever cast my profile into the abyss.

In the original note, there wasn’t any mention on how to remedy the issue nor was there any indication as to what was considered ‘not kosher’ by the flickr folks. Talk about frustrating. What’s worse is that after a couple of replies to the original email, I received no response.

What’s worse is that people started to email me, telling me that they had to log into flickr to see my photos and the viewership counts on my photos were severely affected. Others told me they couldn’t see my photos (unbeknownst to them, they had their safety filters set to the default – high) and the straw that broke the camel’s back was that I missed a photo publish opportunity with 24hrs news. Talk about a smack in the face.

After that, I decided I needed to call upon someone but first I did my research. After some digging and serendipitously, I got a reply to my original message (only five days late).

From: Flickr Support <caseXXXXXXX@support.flickr.com>
To: Urban Mixer

Hello,

Thong bikini images need to be classified as “moderate”.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/me/popular-interesting/

Female breasts, bare/thong bottom, see through topless nudity, pasties, etc.. images need to be marked as “moderate”.

Genitalia/pubic hair images need to be marked as “restricted”.

(marking the content as private is different then moderating the content as “moderate”/”restricted”)

You can bulk moderate your “moderate”/”restricted” content using the organizr tool.

(Do not worry about moderating your “safe” content)

www.flickr.com/photos/organize/

Load your images into the organizr tool, pull all(public, private, and friends/family) images that need to be marked as Moderate”/”restricted” into the main window, choose the “moderate”/”restricted” option from the “permissions/set safety filter” pulldown on top, click save and you’re done.

Because your account status is set to “moderate”, all of the images will appear as “moderate”/”restricted” in the organizr tool. This may seem a little confusing at first but if you take the required action of moderating your content as “moderate”/”restricted” where appropriate, that will show on our side when you request a re-review of your account status.

Regards,

-Terrence

Okay, it wass a hint but not a really firm answer on what but at least I had direction so I got to work, found every swimsuit, pasty, lingerie and other similar type of event that I’ve shot (out of my almost 40,000 photos) and marked them all as moderate. Since I haven’t shot any nudity, I knew I didn’t have to worry about marking things are restricted. An hour later I was done. I then requested (under a new case) a review of my flickr photostream and something miraculous happened, they came back in a little over an hour and opened up the floodgates on my flickr account again.

Hello Urban Mixer,

We appreciate you taking the time to bring your account in line with the Flickr Community Guidelines. Your account has been classified as “public”/”safe”. Please keep the Flickr Community Guidelines in mind in the future.

http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

http://www.flickr.com/help/filters/

Thank you again for contacting us. If you have any other questions, please feel free to reply to this email.

Regards,

Terrence

Hindsight? The flickr uploadr allows you to set the ‘scariness’ level of your photos. I suggest you use it.

Up until Monday, the restaurant industry in Vancouver was up in arms. Why, you ask? Because the freaking city was trying to hide some really nasty business in the recent clauses to extend liquor licenses for food primary establishments. One step forward, two steps back.

I smell a conspiracy… or maybe it’s just ‘the machinery’ rearing it’s ugly head. The same machinery which once came into my restaurant and told me that they run the city, not the elected officials. The same machinery that still thinks it’s cool to keep our liquor laws in the 1930s. The same machinery that talks about equality, equity, etc. but says you can’t open a bar because you have to go buy an existing license that doesn’t exist. Yes that machinery. Only now they have a face – it’s called Raymond Louie.

Well, the restaurant industry, thanks to James Iranizad from Hell’s Kitchen, spoke up.

Now the City’s backtracked… until someone brews an even more insidious plan. Or, maybe they’ll make it all hunky-dory and use this as a publicity stunt, because they ‘saved’ the restaurant industry – either way, the fine people that feed us ain’t pleased.

The By-Law No. 4450 amendments regarding the restaurant liquor service that were scheduled to be approved during the city council meeting on Tuesday, November 3^rd has been withdrawn. I did ask the city clerk why the decision to withdraw the By-Law was made and by who and wasn’t provided with further information.

You want details? Get if from the Straight, Hours-of-service bylaw rankles restaurateur, or from the Courier, No-fun city makes a comeback, or perhaps the Sun, City to take a second look at anti-wine bylaw… and watch your back, those ‘No fun City’ types could be lurking in your bushes.

Actually, well, more like iDTGV hates us and by us, I mean Canadians.

For those that don’t know, iDTGV (not affiliated with TGV) is a train service in France that I keep calling iDTVG for some reason. Seriously, though, iDTGV is an interesting train service because it caters to my demographic – you know, the one that doesn’t appreciate screaming freaking kids running amok while you’re trying to enjoy some quiet time, a baguette and maybe a bottle of wine en route to Nice from Paris. They have train cars that cater to a number of needs – iDzen for the traveller who may want to chill out or sleep, iDzap which has a jovial and engaging atmosphere, a bar that feels more like a real bar / cafe and iDNiGHT which is the overnight dance party train with DJ and liquor service.

Pretty cool huh?

Sadly, on a recent trip to France, I wasn’t able to actually experience iDTGV. You see, despite booking some reasonable tickets online and being assured everything is copasetic, hours later, the system would tell me that my credit card has been refused. After what seemed like hours on the phone to my credit card company, they noted that no authorization was attempted, so I was like WTF?!

After trying to reach the company, pacing around, trying every credit card in my arsenal, losing my reservation and the likes, I took it upon myself to visit a train station that purports to have an iDTGV booth. Guess what…. it was a freaking Internet kiosk with no people in sight! After making several enquiries, I was told that in most cases, there are no iDTGV staff at train stations except to manage departures. GREAT!

BTW – while I was out on my escapade, and thanks to SFR’s 3G+ internet service, I received the following reply from iDTGV:

From: Service Clients iDTGV [mailto:reclamation@idtgv.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 5:51 AM
To: Rajesh Taneja
Subject: <Ref3688321> Question sur le paiement

Dear Sir Taneja,

We acknowledge receipt of your message on the payment of your order.

Please note that for security reasons you can only pay by credit card French, European or American.

We remain at your disposal for any additional information you consider useful.

Best regards
Nadège
Service Clients
Une question sur iDTGV ? Consultez la rubrique « Besoin d’aide » de notre site !
www.idtgv.com
Du lundi au vendredi
de 09H00 à 18h00
(sauf jours fériés)

<rant>So what? In France, Canadians are chopped liver? What about Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach, Operation Overlord and the Battle of Normandy? Haven’t we paid our dues? If it weren’t for the Canadians’ presence in France, I suspect that Nadège might’ve been Wilhelm and French would be an elective in secondary school.</rant>

After the whole excercise, we wound up at the SNCF booth and booked to be on a TGV train to Cannes the following day, screaming children in tow *sigh*.

Want free business advice? Listen to your customers! – or at least that’s what Richard Branson says.

Wish Nokia had done the same in the release of their most recent E-Series flagship, after all, isn’t the E-Series set of phones supposed to be made for efficiency? They did drop the ‘enterprise’ label for ‘efficiency’ recently but with the E75, they fall squarely on their face.

So, I’m three phones in now… the first E75 was smashed in frustration, the second and third, gifts from contacts that live in the dark underworld of mobile phones. Third time’s a charm, right? Well, I’ve certainly learned to cope, that’s for sure. (more after the jump)

For the many that may be reading this for the first time, I’m not necessarily the average user – I rely heavily on two seperate Microsoft Exchange Servers on different networks to do what I need to do. I prefer push mail and have found that through the years, the Nokia E61, E61i, E51 and E71 have all given me exactly what I need – fast and productive access to two Exchange mailboxes via push.

How, on earth, do I do it? Well, simply put, both Nokia and DataViz have published Exchange connectivity software (Mail for Exchange and RoadSync respectively) for Nokia’s S60v3 phones including the E-Series, N-Series and Communicators. Both programs coexist to a certain extent (I only sync one calendar, tasks, contacts – the other Exchange client is specifically for mail and that’s it) and as a result, I’m a happy camper.

So, back to the E75.

The specs are great – E-Series phone, slider with full keyboard, runs N-Gage, Nokia’s gaming platform, S60v3 feature pack 2 and all the bells and whistles.

I truly think there’s a couple of great features that feature pack 2 phones offer – destinations instead of access points allows you to switch between Wi-Fi and 3G seamlessly for apps that support it (like Nokia Mail and the built in browser), location tagging built into the camera application, user data preservation on firmware updates (not totally stable) and a suite of cool ringtones.

…. but there’s the other side too – the Nokia Mail (which replaces the standard mail app and Mail for Exchange) is slick but it’s slower than molasses running uphill and downright frustrating. The amount of RAM memory to install software is extremely limited and in two cases, I’ve filled the memory of the phone up to the point where mail and SMSes ceased to be received – not cool! The phone isn’t ever eager to respond and the form factor is better fit for a purse than a suit jacket or front pocket on the jeans.

I’ve had much to say about Nokia Mail … simply put, it’s slow, clunky and stinks… more on that, HERE.

In the end, I’ve been far more productive with the E71. It fits better in your pocket, the feature pack 1 software isn’t buggy and there’s plenty of room in the phone’s local memory to install applications.

For that, I give the E75 a 0 out of 10.

Now, since I’ve been stuck with the phone for reviewing purposes, I’ve had to cope – so here’s what I’ve done:

1 – formatted the phone and got rid of N-Gage

2 – installed every possible application to the phone’s external memory – in my case, a reputable 16GB SDHC micro card

3 – installed RoadSync v4 as my primary mail client – even though it has it’s shortcomings, it’s still better than Nokia Mail

4 – used Nokia Mail for my secondary mail client – I don’t have to be as responsive on the phone

5 – upgraded to Ovi Maps and Quickoffice v6

6 – moved the message store of the phone to the external memory

That’s it…  trim the fat and bear with the slowness… and try not to smash yet another phone.

In upcoming Nokia phones, I’ll be sure to be weary of the Nokia Mail application – it’s a piece of garbage. Failing that, I might have to actually carry two phones again, a quick and responsive BlackBerry and maybe something else. As for Nokia, f#%k that!

Is it me, or are we seeing martial law starting to taking shape in Canada? Two of the most irksome activities I see on the rise are:

(a) the selective disrespect and disregard of the laws of the land by those whom we trust to enforce the laws (ie the cops)

(b) the ill treatment of journalists in the field, especially photojournalists – the people who help tell us the story and keep our country free

Well, here we go again.. the folks at VPD (Vancouver Police Department) have done a good job in letting the public down by seizing a journalist’s camera at the scene of a police incident. This is after a previous incident in March where the Police are alleged to have seized a person’s camera and erased video – pertinent evidence relating to the incident that was recorded.

For those unclear on the concept, here’s the scoop: any citizen may photograph in a public place – Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarnatees this.

Fuddle duddle to anyone who thinks otherwise.

Here’s a recent release from the Canadian Association of Journalists:

For Immediate Release

CAJ condemns police seizure of Vancouver photographer’s camera

(OTTAWA)  April 8, 2009–Police had no right to seize a Vancouver Province photojournalist’s camera on the weekend, says the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Jason Payne had his camera confiscated April 5, after he photographed a Vancouver Police officer who had shot a suspect. Payne was threatened with arrest if he didn’t relinquish his equipment. Payne said he told police he worked for The Province but they persisted in threatening to arrest him. According to Wayne Moriarty, editor-in-chief of The Province, police officers ordered Payne to stop shooting and claimed his actions were “obstructing justice.”

“When police interfere with a journalist’s ability to do their job, it prevents them from informing the public, violating a fundamental right enshrined in the Canadian constitution,” said Mary Agnes Welch, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists. “Vancouver Police evidently need a refresher course in this important legal document.”

“The police’s later excuse, that they were unaware Jason was a member of the media, is as pathetic as it is misleading,” added Welch. “Any citizen may photograph in a public place.”

The CAJ, Canada’s largest professional organization for journalists from all media, and many of its 1,300 members from across Canada, will attend its National Conference in Vancouver, May 22-24. The CAJ’s primary roles are to provide high-quality professional development for its members and public-interest advocacy.

For Information:

Mary Agnes Welch, CAJ president (204) 697-7590, (204) 470-8862
John Dickins, CAJ executive director (613) 526-8061
En francais: Robert Frank, directeur, ACJ, (514) 248-1928

After hours cell (613) 868-5442

Thankfully for alot of people out there, there’s a new service available called Qik.com which lets you stream to the internet live from your cellphone. Check out some of the videos I’ve already taken, HERE.

One thing you learn over the years of running a business is to know your competitors as well as you know your own business. In this case, I think Nokia’s off their rocker. Their latest campaign is geared at the BlackBerry user, so let’s compare, shall we?

Now, in all fairness to Nokia, I am a Nokia E71 user – it’s a sexy, versatile phone. I monitor two Exchange accounts using Mail for Exchange and Roadsync. I use the VOIP client frequently, the podcasting application is a lifesaver, Widsets keep me up to date and I like viewing rich media with Skyfire.

… but to have Nokia purport that there are no hidden costs, I think they may have misunderstood the ultimate cost – people’s time. Some comparisons, after the jump.

For the purpose of this test, we’ll talk about connecting the mobile to Microsoft Exchange Server.

Software installation test:

Nokia E71 – you must install either Mail for Exchange or RoadSync
BlackBerry Handheld – software is included on the server

Server configuration test:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange and RoadSync connect to Exchange natively
BlackBerry Handheld – BlackBerry Enterprise Server is required

Cost per unit test:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange, free. RoadSync, $40
BlackBerry Handheld – Built in client, free. BES license, $99

Activation test:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange and RoadSync, must know all the details of your Exchange server, at least five different settings have to be entered into the device
BlackBerry Handheld – User only needs to know their email and activation password

Automatic retrieval test:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange, will automatically retrieve the rest of a message. RoadSync, must manually download the rest of a message
BlackBerry Handheld – Messages automatically retrieve

Server side management test:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange and RoadSync, limited configuration and management of the device from the server
BlackBerry Handheld – dozens of configuration options from access rules to signatures on the server

Subfolder test:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange, no subfolders. RoadSync, only folders below the Inbox
BlackBerry Handheld – Subfolders anywhere and everywhere

Note: when I queries the RoadSync people about this issue, they stated that this is a limitation of the ActiveSync protocol. With the release of the iPhone and it’s ability to connect with subfolders regardless of where they may be (same level as Inbox, for example), I’m calling bullshit.

Search test:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange, built in plugin for internal search. RoadSync, server-based search works only with Exchange 2007
BlackBerry – fast handheld search

Name resolution test:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange, will resolve names in the device’s addressbook, you can use a tool to find names on the server. Roadsync, no automatic resolution, you can use a tool to find names in the device’s addressbook or on the server
BlackBerry – will resolve accounts on the server and the device automatically

Flags, followup, reminders:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange, no dice. RoadSync, flagging and reminders on messages for Exchange 2007 only
BlackBerry – no dice

One button composition:

Nokia E71 – Mail for Exchange, hold down the e-mail key. RoadSync, one button composition broken, you have to go through several menus to compose an email
BlackBerry – Quick composition from the home screen

So in the end, both devices read email, once you get to know your device, you’ll probably get along well with it. The most confounding aspect of the Nokia device is the configuration and management of the device. Not as smooth as the BlackBerry yet and costly as a result. If you count your labour as free, then maybe there’s an ROI justification to look at it. If not, then it’s gotta be BlackBerry.

In all fairness, I haven’t mentioned Nokia’s Intellisync which is supposedly a contender for the BlackBerry Enterprise space. The client which is also the same client used for the free Nokia Email service (similar to BlackBerry’s BIS) is a piece of junk. Slow, clunky and poorly laid out at best.

Apparently someone at Nokia had the brilliance to decide that the partnership between Blackberry and Nokia was not worthwhile.

According to Mobile Industry Review, Nokia’s UK MD, Simon Ainslie, said:

RIM are a competitor and have done a reasonable job in a space that is traditionally ours, so it’s no great surprise that we see this as an opportunity to give consumers a proper choice on what email solution they want.

‘Our approach is to make email a mass-market proposition for everybody, not just for the corporate boardroom group of individuals where BlackBerry has established itself.’

I’ve got a perfectly good E61i connected to a Blackberry Enterprise on Exchange server via Blackberry Connect – I can see subfolders and take advantage of the features and functionality of BES which is pretty extensive. It runs smoothly and outside of not being able to send PIN messages to others or being able to use BB Messenger, it’s pretty robust. In short, it’s a pretty good push email solution for a hardcore roadwarrior (like me). With the features of the E61i, I can have a couple of Exchange accounts, a BlackBerry BES account, WIFI connectivity, VOIP telephony and even Push to Talk.

With my shiny new E71, I can have almost every feature listed above but I can’t download Blackberry Connect. It won’t install and as per the above, there’s no planned support. The current prescribed alternatives to BlackBerry Connect (without throwing the baby out with the bathwater) include Mail for Exchange 2.7 and RoadSync 4. Neither appear to let me file messages the way I would want to and both are licensed ActiveSync (inferior) clients. ActiveSync ain’t bad except for the fact that Microsoft appears to have kept the good stuff to themselves which is evidenced by how Microsoft Smartphones and Nokia Smartphones (with either MFE or RoadSync) perform differently. The Nokia solution is simply OK for the job. Meanwhile, I’m either better off owning Windows Mobile or getting a BlackBerry Handheld.

Oh.. and then there’s Nokia Mail – it’s supposed to be some form of BlackBerry BIS alternative. I’ve got the latest and greatest from Nokia – the E71 yet the mail application runs like shit. It’s slow, it sometimes doesn’t work (usually due to an outage on the Nokia network) and it’s basically a glorified Nokia Intellisync client. Speaking of Intellisync, Nokia likely wants you to throw out your BES and install the Intellisync server to get ‘BlackBerry like’ functionality.

So, if EVERYBODY is able to throw out current infrastructure, perhaps Nokia will be able to ‘make email a mass-market proposition for everybody’. While you’re at it, murder your family too since the prescribed Nokia solution will replace them. It’s the Nokia way. Yay Nokia.