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I’ll be the first to admit I’m a terrible mobile phone user. I have hardly any numbers at all stored in my address book and therefore always struggle to ring my colleagues if I’m out and about. So, even before I’ve really tried out any of the other aspects of IBM Lotus Connections on the BlackBerry, the Profiles feature is an absolute revelation. All I have to do is go to the Profiles search page, type in the name, search, and then I can call their number or e-mail that person directly from the results.

This being Connections you can also look up a person’s about-me information and background. And as well as looking them up purely by name you can also perform a search on their information and tags.

Dogear (not pictured here) is also worth a mention - you can search for bookmarks, add new bookmarks, view the most popular, view your own, and view the bookmarks of your watchlist (those people you think are interesting).

I have to confess I don’t when this is scheduled to ship, but you can get some more info at the BlackBerry web site. By the way, the features of future products may be subject to change, etc etc.

BlackBerry screenshots made possible by the Rove Mobile Viewer for BlackBerry.

A couple of days ago my ‘frolleague’ (a term coined by Andy ‘Ports’ Porter meaning ‘friend and colleague’) Steve Cogan alerted me to an article on The Register web site which discussed the relative merits of BlackBerry versus Windows Mobile solutions. The article closed with a readers’ poll.

The results are now in, and it would seem that Microsoft have taken a bit of a pounding. One of their worst perceived aspects is that of security. Now there’s a big surprise.

So now I know why it’s known as a ‘CrackBerry’.

Last year, Lizzie from RIM sneered at the mobile phone I had at the time. Perhaps “sneered” is too harsh a word as she meant no malice, but we recognised the fact that there were better devices available. Now I appreciate that. Better looking, better screen, better battery life… but more importantly, access to e-mail, calendar and Sametime. Despite this being one of the busiest times of my working life, I’ve managed to maintain my no-scroll-bar inbox. Precious minutes in taxis, the bus to the airport terminal, standing in customers’ receptions are opportunities to deal with e-mail. So when I finally get to sit down and do some work, the e-mail workload is diminished.

If I were to go to another employer tomorrow, I’d have an extra question to add… will I earn more, what car will I get, do you use Lotus Notes (or are you lacking enlightenment), and finally… will I get a BlackBerry? Or to be more precise, will I get a BlackBerry 8800? I’ve swapped the 8100 for an 8800 and I’m loving the bigger keyboard and bigger display. Number of times I’ve missed the camera? Roughly zero.

I am officially addicted.

By the way, in the interests of being fair and balanced, other mobile solutions for Domino are available from CommonTime and Nokia.

I won’t go into all the details, but I’ve had a Blackberry Pearl sitting in my desk drawer since my friends at RIM gave me the beautiful device in December. Last week the process of getting it connected to e-mail and the world-at-large suddenly gathered pace, and then today my SIM was updated and I got the news that I was registered on the Blackberry Enterprise Server. An e-mail followed containing my enterprise activation password.

Having been a Palm user for a number of years (and briefly, I’m sorry to say, a Pocket PC user), I had an expectation that getting the Blackberry to receive e-mail and connect to Sametime was going to take a few configuration steps. How wrong I was… it couldn’t have been easier. I clicked on the enterprise activation icon, I entered my e-mail address and the supplied password, I selected ‘Activate’ from the menu… and that was it. The Blackberry told me it was going through the necessary steps, and when it reached 100% there was my e-mail (identical to what I could see sitting in my Notes 8 inbox) and there was my fully up-to-date calendar. It was too easy - having a technical background I could almost say I’d rather go through some pain to set things up because that’s how you learn how things work. But imagine supplying Blackberries to hundreds of users and it being that simple (because it has to be).

Now for Sametime 7.5.1 Mobile Edition… I used the Blackberry’s browser to visit the ‘OverTheAir’ install page, selected the right install option, and off it went. When the install finished I entered my Sametime user name and password, and my Sametime contact list appeared (same as the one that’s now integrated into Notes 8). Again, too easy… which is fine, businesses like easy because it saves them money and improves productivity (that sounds a bit marketing-like, but it’s true).