by Pete Wright
I don’t use a Blackberry. In spite of the cult of Blackberry, I’ve always found the device difficult to navigate. Even the new Pearl, with the cute scroll-wheel, is marred by the funky keyboard layout. I just can’t get used to typing on keys that have more than one character each.
Of course, as a new iPhone user, the Blackberry has drifted even further from my sphere of potential use. Today, I got an email from a good friend who happens to work at T-Mobile. It was an invitation to join his Blackberry Messenger contacts list (Messenger is the software application that provides chat between Blackberry users).
First, I can’t use the software because I don’t have the device. To my knowledge, I can’t use the software on my desktop machine either. Of course, I wouldn’t know the answer to that, thanks to my second problem.
Second, when you visit the Blackberry Messenger download page, you’re greeted with this:
Notice
This web page uses ActiveX controls that work only in Microsoft Internet Explorer. To ensure that BlackBerry Messenger is correctly downloaded to your BlackBerry, this site is not designed to work with any other Internet browsers. If you cannot use Internet Explorer, you may be able to download the software directly to your BlackBerry smartphone.
ActiveX? Seriously? I’m certainly not a wizard or code monkey at the level of enterprise developers, but I have a really hard time believing that an organization the likes of Research In Motion can’t figure out a way for users to download their software in, say, Mozilla Firefox.
In this case, we have a lesson in interoperability of technologies. There is a growing expectation for users to have universal access to content, and fewer excuses for developers to deliver such. From a media perspective, the same holds: your viewers, readers, listeners, all expect to be able to consume your content in a fashion that suites them, not you.
The answer to this is getting easer, and more complicated. For my clients, I tend to urge for the iTunes solution for delivering syndicated content, podcasts, etc. It’s universal, cross-platform, and certainly the biggest player in this nascent market. However, it’s not that easy. There are dozens of smaller applications, many even more feature-rich than iTunes, not to mention web-based services delivering the same functionality. How much more difficult will this decision be when Apple no longer owns this market?
The Blackberry solution is a victim of legacy, likely made in the heyday of ActiveX. The result today is a site out-of-date, a victim of top-shelfing.
It’s iPhone time, folks, and it will come to an end. How soon that will be depends on two factors:
Forgetting to put old technology in the bone yard is a sure fire way to relegate your solution to second rate.
