Crapware by another name is Blackberry Q10

I have nothing to say but that Blackberry Q10 is an absolute piece of crapware.

How did I arrive at this point? Not so hard. Almost everything that  worked in the old BB has changed, almost no backward compatibility. Contact names no longer appear when called but for the most annoying one, the numbers for my contacts now get mixed up with others. Imagine calling Sade and it shows as Sola! When I want to call, I wouldn’t find a contact’s name unless I switch to Blackberry Balance to see the name on the work contact list but yet I can see the same name on text messaging. You can’t call a contact directly from the BBM Chat. The notes folder no longer synchronize to Documents.

Meanwhile, did anyone ever do quality assurance before unleashing this terrible but not cheap phone on the world? For a company like Blackberry, you would imagine that they would put in more than an extra effort to ensure that the basic features work. Maybe that is why they are where they are now. I wonder if the road for them is up or down.

But as for me, can’t wait to dump Blackberry forever.

The Rise of the Bionic Men

I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction, bionic men and even much more by the real science miracles; each day I watch determined scientists and engineers make our wild and sometimes horrific dreams come true.

The advancement in prosthetics is growing in leap and bonds. Many being tested are now getting connected to our neural bus – quite a few can be controlled by thoughts.

So this is where it gets interesting. Each year we get to hear about better and more versatile prosthetics. I assume that at a random time in a not so far future, we would get to a point where these man-made attachments would be as good as any natural appendage.

What happens the day after? Would we stop making them better? Absolutely not! The day after would have prosthetics better than the real-life organs.
Take artificial eyes for example – scientists are using different methods to build. Some have even gotten FDA and CE approvals. Soon they would be mainstream and then some dude would offer an artificial eye that could see infrared and ultraviolet, overlay your sight with additional information streamed over the internet – like when I see a colleague and then a visual tag pops with his name and number on my vision.

Like a Google Glass on steroids.

Or a cochlear implant that could hear sound beyond the normal human range. Or an artificial leg that can’t break or you won’t get tired running because it has hydraulics that could give a range boost. Down the line I imagine people would willingly start giving up their limbs, eyes, ears, etc. to have the artificial ones. I recently started wearing glasses but in the future, I could pop my eyes out and put in something snazzy from Samsung that can see in the dark, overlay navigation map for me or even deliver some delirious porn.

Would it stop there?

One day, mark my words, someone would deliver a complete bionic body and we would all port our consciousness to it. That’s it.

The future is bionic. The future is exciting.

But then let me be gone before we get there.

Blackberry's Lunch Up for Grabs

About 3 years ago, I predicted that Blackberry would eat Nokia’s lunch. It wasn’t a prediction that required too much clairvoyance, it was apparent that Nokia was running down a slippery slope. Too bad, Blackberry ate not only the lunch but also the dinner. As far as Nigeria is concerned, Nokia is going through a time of famine. Nigeria is not the aberration; Nokia is actually next to dead; a permanent lodger at the business ICU for the past few years.

But then the story is going around full circle for Blackberry. You would wonder if this is not stale news considering that Blackberry is now getting unearthed in archeological digs in the US and other places. Well, in Nigeria the story is different.

Blackberry has been on the decline year after year for quite a while but the performance in Nigeria has been different. Because the Blackberry was the easiest and cheapest means of going online for the average folks, the sales was huge. Despite that RIM (before becoming Blackberry) treated Nigeria with contempt. No regional office, no full warranty for devices sold here.

BBM was a nice feature – you could chat all day long without additional cost of SMS. Mobile web, when available, was also nice. Most people access their emails and other things via the BBM only. Some even got a workaround on BB service on Airtel where the BB device becomes a mobile hotspot. MTN’s too mean; they never allowed that.

While I don’t know any Nigerian without a phone, it got to a level where I didn’t know any middle class folk without a Blackberry. There is even a movie about the darn thing; the movie was as crappy as every single Blackberry service.

Then Samsung and others discovered the Nigerian’s love for everything shining. For the last few months, S3 and S4 have been flying off the shelves as quickly as they could be stocked. The telcos also wised up; now there is plethora of data plans every Johnny can sign up for. Unlike the BB service where the data limit is uncapped, the mobile plans have Fedoras on them, you browse hard it finishes fast.

Why are guys dumping Blackberry? Because it is the crappiest phone you could have. It is slow; buggy; dies on you without a care; no local warranty. So you are practically on your own. Try to reboot a BB device and you would see a child grow up into an adult before it comes by. Everyone thought the Z10 would provide redemption, but alas, it didn’t.

So once again, it is swan song for another device. Blackberry would be way of the Dodo by December this year. Mark my word.

Do I feel bad for them? Not at all! I hardly feel bad about anything.

Online Banking is Fractured

It all happened in Nigeria.

I’m a customer. A brand new customer.

I just got a new account because my old bank was pissing the day light out of me. Or maybe I just got a new job that requires that I open my salary account at a bank my workplace sold its soul to.

Enough rambling.

My account has been opened but I don’t want to come to the bank. Why should I? I’m not confirmed yet so I could kiss consumer loan a sweet 6 months good bye. I’m not in the mood to queue up. The tellers are tacky and I desperately yearn for the days when customer service officer was a pretty girl not the ones that could make a Boko Haram cower in fear when she opens her mouth to spew gunshots.

Ok. I need something, anything, that wouldn’t make me ever to come to a banking hall again. I mean, I could get my account officer to bring the mortgage forms to me over a lunch at Yellow Chilli. Some good things come with having a nice job.

I was nicely told I need a suite of e-banking services. Ahem! That’s OK. And what are those?

A separate form for internet banking. OK.

Another for SMS alert.

Another for Email alert.

And yet another for mobile banking.

Now, I’m almost losing my temper.

Why not a single online sign-on and one profile to rule them all? I mean, I see same emails on my browser, in the damned BB my company gave me, on my sexy iPhone, and even with SMS! Same username and password, life is good!

Apparently, most banks coupled these applications together from a basket of vendors. They don’t talk to each other. They don’t share profiles. They don’t even know about each other’s existence. I be damned!

When the banks get it right, let me know. As for me, I’m off to play golf.

A Badass Organism called Tardigrade

Think about an animal that could:

  1. Chill in ice up to -200 °C and then come out like it was just a cold shower
  2. Run around in a kettle of water boiling off at 150 °C and pretend it is a lame sauna
  3. Hang around in space without a space suit and still live to tell the story
  4. Go on hunger strike for 120 years and then break the fast like it was just Lent
  5. Go pheasant hunting in the ruins of Chernobyl and make gamma rays look like wussfess

Sincerely, I didn’t make those up. There is a badass organism no one has ever heard about called the Tardigrade. It does all these and a lot more. If only I can do half of that, my swag would have no equal