CrackBerry.com celebrates its 3rd birthday this week... and all they get is a BlackBerry Slider?!

First, we'd like to wish our sibling site, and best frenemy forever, CrackBerry.com and their fearless leader, CrackBerry Kevin a very happy 3rd birthday! They're the #1 site for BlackBerry users... and abusers! for a reason, and they're giving away a TON of free stuff to celebrate. If you have a BlackBerry in your other pocket, or know someone who rocks the pushy keyboard, get on over there and win you some stuff!

Now what do you get for the CrackBerry fanatic that has everything? How about leaks of a new BlackBerry slider that was once-upon-a-chuckle code-named "Mr. T". Far as we can tell, it's not anywhere close to what anyone would call sexy, but it does show how far RIM will go to try and get the full, touch screen but keep the physical keyboard.

It should ship with BlackBerry OS 6.0, which should include their new WebKit browser (as in the rendering engine behind iPhone Safari, as well as Google Android and Palm webOs).

Anyone wish Apple was making an iPhone slider, or are we thinking mainstream adoption of some 50,000 units shows the era of physical keyboards is over?

Hot on the heels of Verizon pretty much burying the Storm2 in favor of their latest lust, the Droid, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion used their annual developer conference to announce a few improvements for the platform. No, not word one about a next generation BlackBerry OS (hey, Palm spent their time in the desert to get to webOS, and Microsoft is still trudging towards Windows Mobile 7, so RIM needs to pick up that canteen and get to stepping!).

Still, Kevin and the CrackBerry crew have been tearing up the coverage, so check out their DevCon 2009 liveblog, and here are a couple more handy links to help you keep track of all the pushy news:

• Open GL ES Support, Java GUI Builder and Theme Studio to Help BB Developers Generate Dynamic User Experiences
• BlackBerry Application Platform Enhancements to Foster Rich Content Development
• RIM Unveils New Services Platform for BlackBerry Developers
• RIM and Adobe to Simplify Delivery Of Rich Content and Applications for BlackBerry Smartphones
• RIM Announces BlackBerry Academic Program

So, what do you think, in the face of iPhone 3.x, Android 2.0, and webOS 1.x, is RIM doing enough to keep the BlackBerry competitive?

It's with the utmost respect and joy that we get to wish our sibling site, and public frenemies number one over at CrackBerry.com, a wonderful, wacky, cracky second birthday. From 7000 word reviews, to net-breaking first looks at the latest/greatest devices, to forums so big they now scare small nations, CrackBerry Kevin and his team have put together something special -- a real community.

Congrats everyone. For today and today only, in honor of your turning two, we'll say it loud -- we're Cracky and Proud!

And since Kevin and CrackBerry.com don't know from understated, you gotta know they have more birthday contests running than you could shake a Storm at. Go forth and check them out, win some prizes, and party hardy.

Happy birthday!

Our public frenemy number one, Kevin from CrackBerry.com rubbed his nefarious hands, squealed in sinister glee, and shot off this link to a video showing all the jealous, outdated smartphones ganging up on our elegant, perfectly balanced iPhone for a little cartoon chaos. (Also: someone dubbed -- poorly -- some kind of Brooklyn accent on our iPhone hero: everyone knows he really speaks like a chorus of Steve Jobs).

The language is NOT appropriate for children, so stay away if you're not old enough to play.

Also, if anyone has the UNEDITED footage, where the iPhone grabs the BlackBerry in a Wushi finger hold and Skeedoosh's the push out of him, send that link our way ASAP.

Our best frenemy forever, CrackBerry Kevin Michaluk was gracious enough to join us on TiPb's iPhone Live! podcast a while back to talk BlackBerry Storm, so this week I returned the "favor" by invading the CrackBerry.com Podcast to talk all things iPhone (and some Palm Pre):

Here it is folks. Another four-person CrackBerry.com podcast! We had a lot of positive feedback to our last episode, so we went for another humdinger this time around. Joining me and Craig on the crackcast hot seats is Rene Ritchie, Community Editor of our favorite frenemy TheiPhoneBlog.com, along with our Twitter-addicted friend and CB blogger / forums moderator, Adam Zeis.

I had a great time with Kevin, Craig, and Adam, so be sure to check it out for your bonus iPhone fix, and let us know what you think!

TiPb isn't the only Smartphone Experts site working our tails off this week. Our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn is pulling the live-blogging trifecta, going straight from Macworld to cover Steve Ballmer's CES kickoff tonight at 6pm PST for WMExperts AND for the (very much anticipated) debut of Palm's next generation NOVA hardware and OS for TreoCentral -- not to mention everything AndroidCentral. Never to be out done, CrackBerry Kevin (with a full on CrackBerry Crew!) will push any and all BlackBerry news they get their cracky hands on. Check out all our sites throughout the day for the latest, greatest, most Smartphone-geeky coverage.

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Background Reading

• TiPb’s 2008 iPhone Holiday Helper Gift Guide
• Kevin's iPhone Gift Pick: Blueant Supertooth 3 Bluetooth Speakerphone
• CEOh-Snap! RIM Boss: Touchscreens Stink — Let’s iClone One!
• CrackBerry.com BlackBerry Storm coverage
• TiPb's BlackBerry Storm coverage
• Smartphone Experts Round Robin

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat, or sent in questions!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You -- iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

Kevin just finished launching a metric ton of BlackBerry Storm coverage over on Crackberry.com, including the compulsory unboxing pr0n, bumpy typing test, and an iPhone 3G vs. BlackBerry Storm browser battle. If we recall the last time an iPhone 3G met a BlackBerry (Bold) in single web combat, the buggy Bold caused Kevin himself to throw in the towel.

This time?

The Storm still lacks Javascript chops (attn: RIM, see SquirelFish, Tracemonkey, V8, etc.!) so turns it off by default. The iPhone OS 2.1 browser is a tad crash prone. Fair fight? Well, let's not forget the Berry's is likely still itching to brawl over the most recent sales, satisfaction, and reliability figures, b'okay? But it's the fastest fight Kevin had time for... for now.

The results?

iPhone did better when the Storm had Javascript on, but took a beating and crashed and burned twice when the Storm defaulted to Javascript off (and the iPhone still had it on).

How much of a role was played by the difference in network speed between Verizon's EVDO rev A and AT&T's HSDPA we don't know, and since the Storm completely lacks WiFi, a pure browser test may forever elude us. (Early bird Walt Mossberg claims he got different results in different locations where each network had stronger or weaker signals, of course, but that the iPhone on WiFi was consistently the fastest -- we'd add to that WiFi enables all sorts of additional networking features as well, like file exchange and remote control).

In either case, judging by how fast the blogerati have jumped on the Storm wagon, and how often the iPhone is coming up in the coverage, that this rivalry has only just begun!

The. Whole. Screen. Is. A. Flipping. Tic. Tac. Tile. Button.

Seriously. We kid you not (though RIM could be kidding us all?). Sister-site Crackberry.com has all the deets, but...

Seriously? Who's the usability wizard who came up with this one? Who came up with the single-click point of failure concept? The one mechanism to break it all?

We get that haptics are hard, but the iPhone pretty much showed the industry how to do Touch, and rather than just add the Blackberry messaging powerhouse to that buttery goodness, RIM went and grafted on an mechanic straight out of every 1980s playschool game?

Bravo for challenging Apple (they certainly need it). And kudos for being brave enough to push the metaphor, to take the next step, to propel technology forward. But -- seriously? -- we hope the feel is light-years beyond the look on this one, and not just for Crackberry Kevin's sake... Otherwise most annoying gadget innovation of the decade awards beckon...

We guess a certain internet dead-pan funny man was right on the "button" when he said:

THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”

Presuming he was really talking about the ThunderStorm...

Have you checked out our forums lately? The community is growing and the commentary is getting better and better each day. Unconvinced? I'll bring out a thread, a post, a topic, or a comment directly from the forums and post it on TiPb's front page every week to prove it to you. We here at TiPb love the interplay, quid pro quo, repartee with our readers, so step up your creativity and tighten up your diction, you could be next!

We're going to start with Trevor's post detailing reasons why the iPhone replaced his Crackberry. Trevor didn't just blast his Crackberry into outerspace or dump it in the Hudson River, he provided reasons why his iPhone isn't perfect as well. More than a few of his reasons supporting the iPhone have to deal with its role in the Mac ecosystem and I'd have to agree, the 'it just works' feeling is how technology should be.

However, Trevor, being a former Crackberry user, listed durability as a concern. No worries there Trevor! That glass screen is as resilient as it is pretty!

Go check out Trevor's reasons why the iPhone replaced his Crackberry and tell him what you think!

I thought AT&T and the iPhone were living happily ever after? I mean what with Apple making some concessions with the activation process and data plans plus selling a gazillion iPhone 3Gs (more like a million), AT&T should be happy right? Nope!

An AT&T Kiosk at the Moorestown Mall in New Jersey has decidedly gone anti-iPhone 3G. When a customer approached asking about iPhone insurance she was answered with evil laughter and was told by the employees to get a...hide the women and children...Blackberry! (gasp). I guess not AT&T stores don't show a united front. To make matters worse, they gave her anti-iPhone 3G pamphlets using articles from Pocket PC Magazine and Crackberry.com.

You may or may not know, but Crackberry.com is like family to us at TiPb. It's a little more than heartbreaking to see their articles being used against our. most. beautiful. and. fastest. gadget. ever. But hey, family squabbles happen, we get that, but it won't stop us from fighting back!

Read on to see how we'll defend our honor!

Read

We here at TiPb would like to take it to the next level and escalate this "fight" by giving future carrier stores who will carry the Bold (when's that coming out anyways) a one stop shop for possible material in their anti-Blackberry Bold pamphlets. All in good fun, right?

10 Reasons to Ditch Your Blackberry for the iPhone

Why the iPhone is Incomparable

Why the Blackberry compares worse than EVER to the iPhone 3G

So Carrier Stores across the world, feel free to use these articles when customers ask about the iPhone 3G and Blackberry Bold, but don't forget to credit us! One more thing, we ask you to please not mock customers, that's just bad business. Thanks!

Sure, the iPhone 3G launch is tomorrow. Consider this an amuse bouche. Or the opposite of that, an annoy bouche. Whatever. Something salty to make Friday taste all the more sweet!

The subject of today's battle royal? Nope, not iPhone vs. Blackberry. That's old. This time it's Blackberry vs. Blackberry, Blog vs. Blog, over the iClone to end all iClones: the touchscreen Blackberry Thunder!

Says our sister site Crackberry.com, 10th degree Blackberry belts and reigning world champions:

Touchscreen BlackBerry Thunder Keyboard To Utilize Haptic Technology... AMAZING Implementation! [...] Leave it to RIM to CRACK the touchscreen keyboard nut.

Says Boy Genius Report, craftiest of all mobile blogsphere Ninja:

The keyboard is incredibly annoying to type on, and the screen actually shows ripples even when pressed ever-so-lightly. [...] Most of the people who have handled it thinks it’s a joke.

Read on for round 2!

Of course, Crackberry.com ain't going down without a NERD FIGHT:

Screen is glass. YEP, It's Multi-touch!!! [... RIM has] apparently been caught flat-footed by the 3G iPhone and its native support for Exchange and the whole Apple 'aura of goodness', in the sense that they don't have the Bold yet ready for comparisons and show'n'tell sessions, media comparisons, etc, so both as a platform-to-platform and device-to-device stakes RIM is feeling the heat from Apple's iPhone wave, thus they're putting serious effort into accelerating the Thunder.

But it's a quick tag to Mike Lazaridis for the RIM CEOh-Snap 180 turn-around KO:

THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”

D'oh! Guess he had no idea about the Thunder at that point either...

Softball sarcasm aside, what's my take?

Technology is hard. It took Apple a reported 2.5 years to get an iPhone ready to ship (and then, arguably, just barely with firmware that was soon updated), and that's on top of its rumored prior iTablet development efforts. So, my guess is that the truth lies somewhere in between the hype and the hate: RIM's working their apps off to get this thing tasty as soon as possible, but that soon won't be that soon.

Either way, all us smartphone lovers benefit. RIM is making the Thunder precisely because the iPhone has put the pressure on, and if the Thunder is a home run, that pressure shifts to Apple to make something even more astounding for the iPhone v3.

Prior to the iPhone, the industry was complacent. Now its moving again. And that's a good thing. (Even if it would be a better thing to see less iCloning and more differentiation and innovation from the other manufacturers, b'okay RIM?)

We already told you that Apple threw a brick-stuffed glove down on RIM's foot with their Enterprise plans during the iPhone Software Roadmap event. So it's only natural that it would be the topic du-jour for the next CrackBerry.com Podcast (iTunes link).

They invited yours-truly on to talk about the SDK and Apple's enterprise plans and it's a pretty comprehensive chat. Fun too -- even though I led us down a couple of somewhat unnecessary forays into Windows Mobile (hey, I still use and love that too).

Anyhow, if you're jonesing to hear what BlackBerry fans are thinking about the iPhone, it's definitely worth a listen. Also worth noting: if you're wanting to get all the Smartphone Experts podcasts (TreoCentral, CrackBerry.com, WMExperts, and Phone different) in a single feed, we have that up on iTunes now as well.

Podcast Episode 003 - RIM's New Enterprise Challenge | CrackBerry.com