In the new, highly competitive world of Smart Phones, staying on your game and ahead of the competition is everything. Not doing this can result in disaster. Look at Palm for example, the company that led the way to PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and Smart Phones but could not keep up with rapidly changing landscape around it. Even after coming out the Palm Pre, which is actually a nice Smart Phone, it was too late to make a dent in the marketplace.

What? I Can’t Sync with Outlook Anymore?

Now RIM, the maker of the popular Blackberry’s, is showing signs of fatigue. How? Blackberry is mostly popular with business users primarily due to its “push email” feature (more on that later). These same business users are also heavy users of Microsoft Outlook. But any Outlook users who have upgraded to the latest version, 2010, are not very happy. In fact they are angry. Why? Because the synchronization software that allows them to sync their contact, calendars and more between Outlook and the Blackberry does not work with Outlook 2010. Now, the important data you rely on daily is no longer available in your Blackberry. Suddenly your expensive and powerful Blackberry phone is no more powerful than a free phone. The iPhone can sync with Outlook 2010 as well as the Android devices (Android is the newer and popular OS for Smart Phones developed by Google). So why is my Blackberry now unable to do this necessary function?

RIM is not a stupid company and they had access to beta versions of Outlook for quite a long time before it was released to the public. So why were they unable to provide synchronization capability to Outlook by the time it was released? Well you can safely assume it was not because they wanted to aggravate and alienate their customers. So why?

Anyone in Charge?

One possible reason is fatigue and a lack of internal leadership. Someone is not performing and it is beginning to show. To allow a new release of Microsoft Outlook to hit the shelves and not provide customers a way to synchronize their phones to their Outlook data is sort of like going to sleep at the wheel while driving down a crowded interstate highway at top speed…the outcome cannot be a good one and shows significant irresponsibility.

Now RIM will get a their software upgraded for Outlook 2010 compatibility. But the fact they missed the date means things are getting worse for them, not better. Some customers, like myself, will simply take this as a queue to begin looking again at the new Android phones. I simply cannot trust my Blackberry to help me run my business anymore. I need to be able to upgrade to the newest “released” versions of mainstream software and know my Blackberry will continue to function. That is no longer the case. And with the new Android phones reaching maturity and the fact that the iPhone might someday be on Verizon offers lots of viable choices.

But I Need my “Push Email”

One reason for the popularity of owning a Blackberry has been the concept of “push email”. This is where your email arrives to your Blackberry in real-time rather than the device having to poll the email server every few minutes. However, this capability is actually limited to corporate users where a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) is employed and is still not much an advantage and in fact can be worse.
Why? First of all, for non-corporate users, the Blackberry servers simply poll your personal email server every few minutes looking for new mail that has arrived. It then forwards that email to your Blackberry device. But any phone with an internet enabled mail client can do the same thing. That how most mail clients work…they periodically poll the server and download any new messages. Just be sure your email client is polling your email server as often as possible and your email will arrive about the same time as if using a Blackberry.

In addition, the Blackberry servers are know to go down and often for hours at a time. They represent another layer of technology that when fails, your email stops. Having your own email client poll your email server directly eliminates a whole layer of technology and thus reduces your chance of problems getting your email. The point is simply that “push-email” is not all that great and can even hurt you when the system is down.

Blackberry Alternatives

Many Verizon users have been waiting for the iPhone to come to their network and will leave RIM for Apple when that occurs. Like myself, they used to be AT&T customers and after switching to Verizon, would rather use a paper cup and string than switch back to AT&T. But to the detriment of Apple, they have been slow to make this happen and now Verizon customers are realizing that the Android phones are not only mature but quickly surpassing the iPhone in features and speed. The application market for the Android phones is quickly gaining ground on the iPhone and nearly all of the more popular iPhone applications are already available for the Android phones.

Why is this important? The iPhone is an awesome phone but now has antenna issues and when your battery goes bad…oh well no need to rehash that one. And now that Blackberry is beginning to struggle to keep up with its own software development to support their “existing” phones, (can you say Palm), the Android phones will continue to grow in popularity and market share. I know this is true because I was a very happy Blackberry user who now needs to find a platform that can keep up with me and not suddenly become useless. 

This is my opinion. What’s yours?

Well Garmin and Magellan had better be looking ahead or they might just get left behind. Why? Because smart-phone navigation is quickly accelerating past conventional GPS navigation units. Google is one such company pushing this new wave of capabilities.

Static Databases – What There is now is all you Have

Most GPS units today from Garmin and Magellan (two major GPS manufacturers for GPS for automobiles) use a static map database along with a static Points of Interest (POI) database. The POIs are all the addresses, business locations, restaurants etc that you can locate using the unit. New maps along with an updated POI database are released annually and often with a charge to update. I have paid up to $75 just to update the map for a single unit. If you have more than one unit in the family, prepare to pay more.

Smart Phones with GPS

However, many smart phones can now download applications such as Google Maps that will lookup locations and obtain directions that use current information and full power of the Google databases. Many phones are now coming with built-in GPS reception too so combining this with the power of the Internet opens up a much more powerful navigation solution. Using the power of Google’s database means that you can find almost any location including all those that are not listed in the POI database of your expensive GPS unit. While this is really great, the problem up to this point has been that your dedicated GPS device could provide visual and audible navigation directions, a must for navigating while driving. However, Google is about to change that.

Navigate to Anywhere Anytime with just your Phone

Imagine if your smart-phone could provide audible, turn-by-turn navigation instructions, turn-by-turn directions on the visual, graphical map, just like your current GPS unit but also had the power of real-time Google Maps lookup. What if you could use your smart-phone to…

Well Google is about to bring this to the Android based smart phones. This means these phones will not only work like your expensive GPS units but will make finding and navigating to your destination even easier due to real-time access to Google’s massive information. And best of all its all free assuming you have an unlimited data plan on your phone which of course you do.

Watch this informative clip from the Google developers.

More Mobile Technologies from Google may be found here:
http://www.google.com/mobile/maps/

Well if you like to tweet and or keep up with all those you are following while on the go, then it just got easier if you are a Blackberry user. Let’s face it, many of us are using the Blackberry for business needs or because we won’t give up our great call quality with Verizon to get an iPhone with AT&T. But Blackberry users need applications too and while Facebook (also available) and Twitter are not necessarily business applications, they do allow us to track our friends on the social networks from anywhere.

Features include:

1. automatic URL-shortening
2. easy photo-sharing
3. push and message list integration
4. search filtered by geolocation

You can learn more about the new Twitter application for Blackberry from this article at Mashable.com. Happy tweeting!