iPhone-ish Blackberry revealed prematuraly ... in a bad way

Arguably the most anticipated phone after the iPhone is the Blackberry version of a full screen phone. Do a Google search on "Blackberry Thunder" and you'll see rumours back to April or so.

Today the first ever Blackberry Thunder video was leaked on youtube, showing how it works. It is indeed very "iPhone-ish". Some guy with a really annoying voice has a turtle neck pulled up around his face to conceal his identity (poorly). Skip directly to minute 2:55 to see the Blackberry Thunder portion of the video.



Normally, this kind of pre-exposure can actually fuel the hunger for this type of device as it circulates wildly around the internet.

However, this problem is, the introducation of this phone comes not with excitement and praise, but with the words: "I don't like it".

Ouch, RIM has to find some way to counter this bad PR and fast. The intro to the iPhone was like a shock and awe campaign, while RIM gets "I don't like it".

Listen up RIM, your phone may not be ready yet, but you've got to hold a press conference on this thing pronto with a bit of fanfare before the words "I don't like it" become the primary marketing slogan for your phone!

I found a Facebook security hole... sort of

I think I just stumbled upon a fairly big security hole in Facebook.

The other day I mysteriously started receiving these really bizarre text messages on my phone along the lines of the following:

Facebook msg from Jimmy-Joe Bobkins
(Espanola High School)
Subj: hey

"yo homeslice
tried calling you
maybe your out with the boy :D
haha"

"Wierd" I thought. I chalked it up to some dude in Mexico trying to send out mass txt messages to see who would reply so he could scam them. I ignored it.

The next day the messages continued with content like:

"sooo anyways preetty bored , wondering what you were up to, anywayss call
me, lover"
"Umm not that i no of"
"Umm perhaps"
"Lmao"
"sorry"
"Haha no"

Clearly there was some sort of conversation going on there that I was not a part of... but somehow was landing on my phone. What the heck was going on?

I looked up Espanola high school and lo and behold, it wasn't in Mexico at all but rather in a nearby little town. Why would a mass txt message spammer/phisher be based out of Espanola?

Then it hit me, I moved recently and had signed up for a new phone number. I must be getting these facebook messages from whomever had this phone number before me!

Then I realized that if somebody got MY old cell phone number, they would be receiving MY facebook messages!

I quickly logged onto facebook, and changed my profile to update my cell phone number for forwarding txt messages. That should stop somebody else from getting my txt messages. I think it will also stop me from getting these mystery text messages, because I could no longer get the second half of messages when I replied with 'n' to get the remainder of truncated messages.

So, if you use facebook and you change cell numbers, lookout, somebody might be reading your mail!