The winner of the smartphone battle between the iPhone, Blackberry, G1, Palm, and others not mentioned will be decided by 2 factors.  The first is ease of use.  As these cellular devices in our pockets have more horsepower than the first lunar lander, they are also becoming harder to use.  Long gone is the reassurance of clickable buttons.  The Blackberry Storm does a good job of simulating clicks on it’s screen with it’s tactile feedback, but this isn’t the norm.  The second deciding factor of the smartphone war is applications, and this is where Blackberry is lacking, badly.

RIM is slated to launch its Application Store for the Blackberry in March, competing directly with the iPhone’s App Store.  I can safely say they are not ready.  After recently buying a Storm, I was initially overwhelmed by the device’s capabilities.  The mysticism for me wasn’t in what it currently does, but what it has the capability to do.  The Storm uses J2ME for its OS.  Having some experience with java, I figured I should play around with writing some apps for the Storm.  So I paid RIM 20 bucks for a development key and started hacking away.  Reading code of examples in the JDE familiarized me with the process.  After a week of playing around, I started trying some real things besides Hello World.  The first thing I tried was programmatically setting my ringer profile from vibrate to normal and vice versa.  A quick search on the Blackberry Forums revealed that this is not possible.  Ok, I thought, maybe not so bad.  The next thing I tried was setting my Storm’s ringer programmatically.  No Dice, this isn’t possible either.  It turns out, a lot isn’t possible to do programmatically on the Storm.  And this is what will be Blackberry’s downfall.

What Does RIM need to do?

RIM needs to give developers access to every setting on the phone.  If I can set it, I should be able to do it programmatically.  As developers, we need unfettered access to our platforms to write great applications.  But John, OMG people will hax my phone!  Yes, I’m aware of the security implications in what I say, but that is the point of the RIM Application Signing Key.  So they can hold someone accountable when someone writes a virus.  Put faith in your developers, so they can write nifty apps for your hardware.  Or be prepared to lose the smartphone war.

Today was my first day with oracle.  I think I got another gray hair.  Being used to sql server, I’m spoiled; My relational database works, the way it’s supposed to.  The first thing I was alarmed by was java files in the installer folder.  At that point I knew I was in for some more grays.  For some reason I tend to associate java with ugly GUIs and an annoying SDK that makes sure I know he didn’t get lost when the power went out in the storm.  Why does Oracle have to have 3 folders in my start menu?  I had an enjoyable afternoon learning all about listeners and schemas and how a schema isn’t really a schema.  And you cant just create a schema, you have to create a user.  I’m sure I sound like a whiny .NET guy, but I shouldn’t have to deal with 5 hours of crap just to create one table.  I’m sure Oracle is very powerful in it’s own right.  It’s just too complex to configure.  You have to be ‘in the club,’ so to speak.  Oracle does lack a good all in one tool.  Speaking of tools, Oracle’s SQL Developer is a great, free tool.  It’s the first time I’ve seen an interface written in java that I actually liked.  It has a slick design and has a great tool for converting SQL into PL/SQL which is instrumental in learning the differences between the two.  Oracle day 1 was a fun day.  Deeper into the database rabbit hole I go, seeking the Oracle.

Heres a few pics of some Adirondack chairs I built over the past few days.  This was my first attempt at woodworking and im pretty proud of how they came out.  I have a burgandy finish that I will be painting them with soon, followed by a weather protectant.  Many thanks to Dewalt for awesome yellow tools, Home Depot for being so close, and Shaw Creek General Store for the plans.

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This is one of those spurts I have where I don’t post anything for awhile.  I have been pretty busy with work and friends right now that I havent had that much time on the computer to myself.  All the time I spend on a computer is to do work.  By the time I get home, the last thing I wanna do is get on the computer.  Haha I know I make a sad excuse for a CS major, but do ya blame me?  But really, I have been working a lot lately.  The 1 to 1.5 hour commute is killing me every day.  I plan on moving to south philly within the next few months.  That should make my daily commute to about 30 minutes tops.  It’s kinda weird not seeing any of the kids I went to college with.  Expecially the ones I live near currently.  Maybe I’ll try to catch up with them soon.

It’s been awhile.  I’ve been out of school for about 3 weeks now. I’ve been working for those three weeks.  The new job is pretty good.  Tonight, I was driving to Tim’s house and I pulled up to a bunch of cop cars and fire trucks.  I stopped at the stoplight of 561 and Evesham Road, to see a power line was sparking and burning the trees on fire.  I think a car hit the pole with the electricity on it.  The electricity was out on all of Tim’s block.  We were in his house with candle light.  Tim’s house was like Jurassic Park.  I swear I saw that t-rex driving down somerdale road.

Graduation went really well.  This last week I was home for job interviews.  I accepted a good job with a local company doing web development.  My Dad and I are driving home on a cross country drive this Saturday morning.  I cant wait.

A few hours ago I felt a shaking.  I brushed it off thinking the neighbors downstairs were doing something.  Although it was a little too loud for them to be doing something.  I just had the news on and found out it was an earthquake.  Neat.

Graduation was Friday.   It was pretty good.  My family was here to cheer me on.  We went to the Olympic park in Park City on Saturday and white water rafting on the Weber river on Sunday.  Sunday night we saw the third Pirates of the Caribbean.  The movie was pretty good.  We went on a huge zipline at the Olympic line, which I took video of that will be uploaded soon.