All kidding aside, it has been a long time coming, but I have hit my breaking point with Research in Motion (RIM) and the Blackberry. I thought when the touch-screen Storm came out that Blackberry would start finding the sweet spot between the business and casual/social smartphone. As we all know I was extremely wrong. I gave Blackberry (RIM) the benefit of the doubt that rolling out things like the Blackberry App World were a sign that they were at least making some effort in righting their wrong. Again, I was wrong. This post would become a novel if I wanted to go into the flaws of the Blackberry products, especially the Storm, so I’ll leave that for another time. Instead, I’ll finally get to my point, and my takeaway, from tonight’s Triangle Tweetup at Bronto.

For anyone who has ever attended a Tweetup, or a social media event/gathering of any kind, you can’t help but notice the number of iPhones, and now iPads, that are in constant use throughout the event (Or maybe you are in this club and fail to see us outsiders wallowing in the background). At quick count, I saw 6 or 7 iPads at tonight’s event, which does not account for the numerous people who were in attendance that left theirs at home. That’s impressive for a product this new to the market, but what I noticed tonight was that the allure of the iPad in public has somewhat fizzled. They are not the new shiny revolutionary item they were a few months back.

Instead, tonight I found myself more drawn to my other fellow Blackberry suffers. We do a good job of keeping our phone-shortcomings to ourselves, but I have to assume, by the number of Blackberrys I saw, that there were roughly a dozen at the event. I wondered if they felt as out of place as I did during the application demos that continue to alienate us by focusing their builds only one the one platform. Do we band together and make a stand? Does the day come where Blackberrys are the new cool retro item like mustaches, horn-rimmed glasses, or vinyl records? (Not likely)

So what do I do? Can I be a truly successful Electronic Marketing Manager if I’m not in tune with this community and remain an outsider? Droid is showing potential. I live and die in my day-to-day on Chrome and Google Apps as it is. Do I wait for the new iPhone, or even the iPhone on Verizon (wow its late)? Use the iPad as my e-reader and super-sized iPhone? Some combination of both?

Thoughts?

It was an adventure today trying to find a new place to scan 35mm negatives at 120mm, and after trying South Eastern Camera, Peace Camera, and JW Photolabs, I ended up back at Wolf Camera in Cameron Village. There was either Mac compatibility issues, outrageous prices ($105 to scan 1 sheet of negatives –> $5/frame), or just plain inability to do what I needed. Once again, today showed me that I need to find a good negative scanner/printer to just do this myself.

Well regardless…these are done, and when I can afford it  I will scan another roll from the trip. Hope you enjoy, and let me know what you think.

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