Ariel Segall.com by berryFORMS.com

For the first half-hour of the meeting, it was hardly surprising to see a potential client fiddling with his iPhone, said Rowland Hobbs, the chief executive of a marketing firm in Manhattan.

At an hour, it seemed a bit much. And after an hour and a half, Mr. Hobbs and his colleagues wondered what the man could possibly be doing with his phone for the length of a summer blockbuster.

Someone peeked over his shoulder. “He was playing a racing game,” Mr. Hobbs said. “He did ask questions, though, peering occasionally over his iPhone.”

But, Mr. Hobbs added, “we didn’t say anything. We still wanted the business.”

As Web-enabled smartphones have become standard on the belts and in the totes of executives, people in meetings are increasingly caving in to temptation to check e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, even (shhh!) ESPN.com.

But a spirited debate about etiquette has broken out. Traditionalists say the use of BlackBerrys and iPhones in meetings is as gauche as ordering out for pizza. Techno-evangelists insist that to ignore real-time text messages in a need-it-yesterday world is to invite peril.

In Hollywood, both the Creative Artists Agency and United Talent Agency ban BlackBerry use at meetings. Tom Golisano, a billionaire and power broker in New York State politics, said last week that he pushed to remove Malcolm A. Smith as the State Senate majority leader after the senator met with him on budget matters in April and spent the time reading e-mail on his BlackBerry.

The phone use has become routine in the corporate and political worlds — and grating to many. A third of more than 5,300 workers polled in May by Yahoo HotJobs, a career research and job listings Web site, said they frequently checked e-mail in meetings. Nearly 20 percent said they had been castigated for poor manners regarding wireless devices.

Despite resistance, the etiquette debate seems to be tilting in the favor of smartphone use, many executives said. Managing directors do it. Summer associates do it. It spans gender and generation, private and public sectors.

A few years ago, only “the investment banker types” would use BlackBerrys in meetings, said Frank Kneller, the chief executive of a company in Elk Grove Village, Ill., that makes water-treatment systems. “Now it’s everybody.” He said that if he spotted 6 of 10 colleagues tapping away, he knew he had to speed up his presentation.

It is routine for Washington officials to bow heads silently around a conference table — not praying — while others are speaking, said Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Although BlackBerrys are banned in certain areas of the State Department headquarters for security reasons, their use is epidemic where they are allowed.

“You’ll have half the participants BlackBerrying each other as a submeeting, with a running commentary on the primary meeting,” Mr. Reines said. “BlackBerrys have become like cartoon thought bubbles.”

Some professionals admitted that they occasionally sent mocking commentary about the proceedings, but most insisted that they used smartphones for legitimate reasons: responding to deadline requests, plumbing the Web for data to illuminate an issue under discussion or simply taking notes.

Still, the practice retains the potential to annoy. Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, has gained such a reputation for checking his BlackBerry during public meetings that some parents joke that they might as well send him an e-mail message. Few companies have formal policies about smartphone use in meetings, according to Nancy Flynn, the executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a consulting group in Columbus, Ohio. Ms. Flynn tells clients to encourage employees to turn off all devices.

“People mistakenly think that tapping is not as distracting as talking,” she said. “In fact, it can be every bit as much if not more distracting. And it’s pretty insulting to the speaker.”

Still, business can be won or lost, executives say, depending on how responsive you are to an e-mail message. “Clients assume they can get you anytime, anywhere,” said David Brotherton, a media consultant in Seattle. “Consultants who aren’t readily available 24/7 tend to languish.”

Playful electronic bantering can stimulate creativity in meetings, in the view of Josh Rabinowitz, the director of music at Grey Group in New York, an advertising agency. In pitch meetings, Mr. Rabinowitz said, he often traded messages on his Palm Treo — jokes, ideas, questions — with colleagues, “things that you might not say out loud.”

The chatter tends to loosen the proceedings. “It just seems to add to the productive energy,” he said.

But business relationships can be jeopardized. Lori Levine, the founder of Flying Television, a talent-booking agency in Manhattan, said that in an effort to be environmentally sensitive she instructed employees to take notes on BlackBerrys instead of paper during client meetings.

“Then I got a call from a client screaming that our vice president spent an hour on his BlackBerry during a huge meeting,” Ms. Levine recalled. To soothe the client, Ms. Levine read aloud the notes the vice president had taken.

In Dallas, a college student sunk his chance to have an internship at a hedge fund last summer when he pulled out a BlackBerry to look up a fact to help him make a point during his interview, then lingered — momentarily, but perceptibly — to check a text message a friend had sent, said Trevor Hanger, the head of equity trading at the hedge fund, who was helping conduct the interview.

Very few companies have policies on smartphone use in meetings, which leaves it up to employees to feel their way across uncertain terrain.

To Jason Chan, a digital-strategy consultant in Manhattan, different rules apply for in-house meetings (where checking BlackBerrys seems an expression of informal collegiality) and those with clients, where the habit is likely to offend. There is safety in numbers, he added in an e-mail message: “The acceptability of checking devices is proportional to the number of people attending the meeting. The more people there are, the less noticeable your typing will be.”

Beyond practical considerations, there is also the issue of image. In many professional circles, where connections are power, making a show of reaching out to those connections even as co-workers are presenting a spreadsheet presentation seems to have become a kind of workplace boast.

Mr. Brotherton, the consultant, wrote in an e-mail message that it was customary now for professionals to lay BlackBerrys or iPhones on a conference table before a meeting — like gunfighters placing their Colt revolvers on the card tables in a saloon. “It’s a not-so-subtle way of signaling ‘I’m connected. I’m busy. I’m important. And if this meeting doesn’t hold my interest, I’ve got 10 other things I can do instead.’ ”

By MARTIN PEERS

It may be time to put down the BlackBerry.

Even after a selloff Friday, shares of the ubiquitous device maker, Research In Motion, are trading at around 18 times projected fiscal 2010 earnings. That is a little rich for a company whose prospects for red-hot growth may be wearing out.

The company’s fiscal first-quarter results, released late Thursday, showed just how uncertain the future is. The number of net new BlackBerry accounts was down a little from the fourth quarter. And 80% of the additions came on the consumer side, up from 70% in the fourth quarter. Consumers now account for more than half of BlackBerry customers.

That is a mixed blessing. BlackBerry can’t afford to be solely a business device, particularly as the consumer market for smartphones takes off. But whereas corporate users appreciate BlackBerry for the efficiency and security of its email, consumers are more responsive to the latest fashion and to price.

An array of new smartphones hitting the market from Apple, Palm and others, arguably better at Web browsing than the BlackBerry, suggests likely erosion of RIM’s U.S. smartphone market share, which IDC estimates was 55% in the first quarter.

Also at issue is how much RIM needs to spend to maintain that market share. Last fiscal year, RIM’s capital spending more than doubled to $834 million. When increased spending on intellectual property of $688 million is taken into account, RIM generated no free cash flow. Capex rose again in the first quarter, although free cash flow was positive.

RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie says he doesn’t “fret” about competition. But at current valuations, investors may want to.

Write to Martin Peers at martin.peers@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B10

berryFORMS.com today introduces a new website with better navigation and new features.

berryFORMS.com is committed to being more transparent and accessible

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With you in mind, in order to facilitate communication and information sharing of all our Pages with your peers and social-networks, we have developed the design of this website by making every single Page a Blog posting allowing you to do more than just retrieve information.

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Ask questions, post comments, share with others, or post it to your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Posted in http://crackberry.com/new-blackberry-messenger-coming-all-devices-running-5-0

On the heels of the long awaited announcement of the BlackBerry Tour, BGR has posted that the revamped BlackBerry Messenger we recently got a peak at will be rolling out on all devices with OS 5.0. Michael gave us a short run down of some of the finer improvements we will be seeing and has a great gallery of screenshots for everyone to drool over. Some of the highlights of the new BlackBerry messenger in addition to the ones already covered previously include:

• SMS support — Long awaited on BlackBerry devices, threaded SMS soon available.
• PIN barcode scanning — Forget a PIN? Not wanting to type out email addresses? Scan and save your friends “barcode” instead using integrated camera.
• Backup/Restore Messenger list to microSD card — It’s not running apps off the SD Card but we’ll take it.

We got a few screenshots of our own after the jump be sure to check them out as well as the ones posted on BGR for all the new messenger goodness. Check out the new data usage tracker, I like that.

Just found out this cool app that lets you transfer files from and to your BlackBerry Bold (other BB are going to be supported soon) through a Wifi network.

I personally find it very useful, despite (when it works) a bluetooth connection could do the job well (not ideal for big files though) and the available features on this app are much more.

The app is called Wifi File Transfer (original name!) and it basically lets you browse your BB files through your computer’s browser. Then you can move, copy, paste and rename files without needing any other software app installed on your computer.

Here is a list of features:

• View the BlackBerry file system from the browser and transfer any files to and from device internal memory (900Mb for BOLD) or SD card. Turn your BlackBerry into a memory stick!

• Upload movies, pictures and music directly to your BlackBerry and view them with the BlackBerry device Media Player.

Courtesy of : http://www.lucafiligheddu.com/2009/06/how-to-transfer-files-from-and-to-your-blackberry-bold-over-wifi.html