Maybe time for a Blackberry Storm

I’m not Apple fan boy so I was not crazy over the Apple iphone. It seems like a nice gadget, from what I can tell from playing with it a little. I’m not so sure about the touch screen – maybe it is something that grows on you after a while.

In the past I have been more with the group of users of Research In Motion’s PDAs. RIM’s products seemed more useful as tools while Apple’s seemed like the gadgets people own to try to impress others. You know, if you really are cool you don’t need a gadget to show it, and if you aren’t a gadget won’t help.

So now RIM has come out with the Blackberry Storm, a touch screen version of it’s PDA. Is this an answer to the iphone? I guess so. Is it more useful, or even as good? I can’t say because I have yet to use one. I have just been surfing sites that talk about them and there are two camps again, those who say it is severely lacking and those who love it. I wonder how many Apple fan boys are in the former camp.

I don’t understand the pricing of the Storm. There seem to be some deals on Blackberry Storms but the prices are all over the place, some very high. While the iphone is making an appearance in Thailand I have not seen the Storm here. Is it even here? I don’t know, but I will be looking for it.

Tech – cool; Tech People – not cool

When did technology people start thinking they are cool?

Technology is cool, way cool. Everybody who uses it knows it. And everybody who works with it knows it even more so. I worked in tech for many years – electronics, VLSI design, signal processing systems – technologies that are so cool. But I never suffered from the delusion that working with cool technology made me a cool person. My level of coolness derived from other sources. Looking around me back then I knew there was a reason I didn’t quite fit all the way in. But I was still a geek by association, at least until I finally got out of that environment.

Now I’m seeing the geeks of the world beginning to act as if they think they are actually cool. The delusion seems particular strong where the greatest concentration of geeks gather, Silicon Valley. It is quite evident at places such as Valley Wag which bills itself as “Silicon Valley’s Tech Gossip Rag”. Ok, news about tech and tech people is important to those doing business there. Even personal news and scuttlebutt might be important to making deals. But you folks in the Valley, don’t start getting the idea you are cool.

No matter how cool your technology or how successfully you market it you are still not cool. I think Bill Gates, the richest man in the world thanks to some very cool technology, has definitively proven this. Bill Gates is a great man and a great humanitarian. But “cool” isn’t a label you would hang on him. Those billions of dollars still don’t have the same cachet of coolness that, for example, a newbie Hollywood starlet has who may be dumb as a doorknob and flat broke.

So, reality check for you geeks in the Valley, and elsewhere for that matter. Tech – cool; Tech People – not cool.