It's a Crackberry Now

It's official: my Blackberry is now a Crackberry. What changed? My company set up a Blackberry enterprise server so my "normal" email (Outlook on my PC) is finally integrated with my Blackberry email. Before this I could understand in theory how people like President Obama and millions of others could love their Blackberry's so much, but mine just felt like a clunky cell phone with a keyboard.

It's still clunky compared to the iPod Touch, but the interface is less important than the immediacy and the ability to use odd bits of time (e.g., while stuck in a huge traffic jam in Guangzhou this morning) to deal with simple emails that just require a brief message to ask or answer a question or to hand off to someone else. I save the bigger issues (and attachments) for when I can access the PC. So now I'm one of those people you see turning on their Blackberry the moment the plane touches down, furiously rolling the track ball and thumbing the tiny keyboard. Yeah, it's pretty sick, but believe me, I can quit any time.

I'm in Shanghai for the next few days. Driving through the city after dark with a crazed taxi driver tonight, I was struck by how much this city resembles the movie Blade Runner, though they don't have flying taxis (yet).