So, a "Bold," an "iPhone 3GS" and a "Pre" all walked into a bar......

OK, so let's try to envision this. It is a Friday night after a long week. Three "Amigos" decide to get together for an after work evening of drinks and catching up. Now, these three friends have a long history with one another - a history of trying to one-up each other about pretty much everything. Our night begins with the arrival of the first "friend."

A car pulls up to the bar - not just any car, but a beautiful, slick Porsche 911 Turbo. Out steps the iPhone 3GS. He looks quite dapper in his new non-smudge coating. He is wearing a beautiful Argentinean Vaja iVolution suit - must have set him back close to $150 for that - but he is wearing the colors of Italy and he looks smashing.

Next to arrive is the Palm Pre. He steps out of his Hybrid "Pre-us" and walks towards the bar. He isn't wearing any suit at all - I guess it was hard to find one that could cover him up and still allow him to slide out that tiny little keyboard of his. He waddles inside - his stout, rounded shape making it a bit difficult for him to walk upright.

The last to arrive is the BlackBerry Bold. He shows up on his Harley. When the rumble of the engine stops, he hops off the bike - still wearing his Otterbox suit after a hard day at work. He realized (because of the multiple alarms going off) that he is late to meet his friends, so he runs inside.

The applications pictured above all have one thing in common except one. They all have desktop applications available for install. So, I have to ask, how many of you all out there would like to see an application developed for your desktop that would allow you to use your BlackBerry Messenger on your desktop? Think about it. There have been a lot of times while sitting at my PC where I have spent more time talking on my BlackBerry Messenger then actually utilizing my PC, which is right there in front of me.

Now I know I am not the only one out there that would like to see this, I actually asked the question on Twitter and many responded that yes, they indeed would also love to see this happen. Implementation issues aside, I'm positive that it can be done. In fact I'm 100% percent certain it can be as there have been many rumblings in the past that the application already exists and is currently available to RIM insiders and has been for over a year now.

So I guess the real question is when will RIM release it -- or will they? So as users would you like to see this application released? What if it came at an additional cost? Would you pay a monthly fee to RIM for it or a one time fee to be abale to have that functionality? Let us know if the comments how you would feel about it, maybe we can let RIM know that this application is indeed wanted.

Twitter fever has taken over, and it seems to get bigger everyday. As many of you know, there are a bunch of celebrities that use Twitter, but what you may not know is that a bunch of them use BlackBerry Twitter clients as well. We thought it would be fun to track them all down and see what their app of choice is. It looks like TwitterBerry is the clear winner with UberTwitter a close second. A few have chose the premium TweetGenius client, and a huge shoutout to Joy Behar who is the only celeb that uses Tiny Twitter. If you're curious to know which of your fav celebs are Crack'n on Twitter, hit the jump to see the list. If we missed any celebrity BlackBerry / Twitter users that you're following, you can add them to the comments. And if you're looking to get a twitter client on your BlackBerry, be sure to check our our Twitter App Roundup and Twitter App Round Up Part Deux.

"To Pre or not to Pre" - that seems to be the big question in the Smartphone world this week. Here, I will give you a diehard "CrackBerry" user perspective of this new device - does it live up to the hype? Can it every replace your "beloved Berry?" Let's take a look.

The Pre is here; Palm recently released the much-anticipated Pre smartphone to the world-and the fate of the company very much depends on whether or not the device is a hit. Palm, former king of the PDA market, is attempting to pull itself back to the forefront of the smartphone game with the likes of RIM and Apple, and the Pre will no doubt be instrumental to its success...or lack thereof.

A while back, I penned a piece for CrackBerry called "Top 10 Reasons Why the iPhone Is NO BlackBerry," in which I pointed out why Apple's iPhone might be fine for your kid brother or all the Mac-heads at school or work, even your mom, but it doesn't hold a candle to BlackBerry when the two are stacked up next to each other (I'll be weighing in on the state of this ongoing debate soon now that the iPhone 3G S has been announced).

While the Pre is certainly exciting and I look forward to some quality thumbs-on time with it, I didn't rush out to pick one up this week, nor will I be trading in my beloved ‘Berry for a Palm device anytime soon; the Palm Pre's simply no BlackBerry.

How can I be so sure? Well, I've spent some time with the Pre, read all the reviews and studiously studied that spec sheet. While it would've been ideal to spend a couple of weeks with the Pre before deeming it a second-class option when compared to BlackBerry, I honestly didn't need to.

Pop on that there jump for my reasons why.

Yesterday's blog post on the official release of SmrtGuard jogged my memory on something I've been wanting to make mention of here on the blogs for a while... the explosive growth we're beginning to see of BlackBerry in Indonesia. If you listened to our WES 2009 Wrap Up Podcast, you'll remember one of the coolest things Bla1ze and I had a chance to attend at this year's WES was the signing ceremony between Indosat and SmrtGuard. After the business dealings were done, we had a great chat with the Indosat team members present and learned A LOT about the uptake of BlackBerry in the Indonesian market.

RIM has done quite well with some of its internal applications as of late. Sure they kind of screwed delayed the launch of Facebook 1.5 but now that is here and all the bugs have for the most part been worked out, most users seem overall happy with the application. They have also done a great job with the IM clients. Albeit not perfect solutions all around, lets be honest, some of the RIM in-house bulit applications are among the best ones out there, as until just recently they had an unfair advantage with keeping their API's internal.

With a lot of the RIM-built applications, social networking seems to be the draw for most BlackBerry users and I myself use them on a daily basis. So I'm really left to wonder at this point with the expansion of Twitter growing rapidly on a daily basis and the flood of Twitter applications being developed and seemingly updated on a daily basis, will RIM themselves ever dive into the Twitter world and give their attempt at a great application or will they leave it up to the third party developers who have been doing a solid job so far?

So what do you all out there think? Will RIM decide to create their own Twitter application? Or at this point, with their huge push for developers and the opening of a lot of their once-internal API's will they leave this one fully up to the developers to take on. Let us know what you want to see in the comments. In the meantime, you can follow the links below to learn more about current Twitter clients available for your BlackBerry. We'd better get to work on an updated Twitter Roundup!

• Twitter App Roundup Part I (Jan. 27th/2009) >>
• New Clients Since Roundup: Yatca | Ubertwitter | TweetGenius

It was pop icon Andy Warhol who is credited as first saying that we all get "15 Minutes" of fame in this world. Now, some of us get a little more than our allotted "15 Minutes" and some of us get a little less.

Very recently, my friend and colleague, (our beloved CrackBerry Kevin) met me in New York City for what turned out to be our "15 Minutes." Now, Kevin is pretty famous and has gotten more than 15 minutes of fame - but this was a pretty cool thing we did for CrackBerry Nation - so watch the video above for the end result and read on for the details behind it all after the jump!!

It is an age old debate; form over function or function over form? Why can't we have both? Well, sometimes we can - but usually we gravitate towards one or the other. There are lots of classic examples of this debate; BMW or Honda? Armani or Levis? Timex or Rolex? You get the idea. Now, the tough question is: "Which are you - a form first or function first kind of person?"

I like to believe that I sort of straddle that line between form (style, panache and coolness) and function (usability, dependability and value.) In the great Smartphone debate, it was always a "no brainer" for me - function trumps form - after all, BlackBerry does trump the iPhone, right? The iPhone is sexy, flashy, "fun" and full or form over function. The BlackBerry is solid, reliable, predictable (some might even say - dull.)

When last we spoke, I was trying to choose my "device of choice" among my many BlackBerrys. I have settled (at least for now) on my Storm. It does pretty much everything I would want a device to do. So much so, that I posed a challenge to myself - "what if I didn't use anything that was electronic for an entire day - except my BlackBerry Storm?"

Now, this was intriguing - I would have to find a way to do everything that I needed with my Storm - or not do that particular task for a day. Could I do it? How much could I do? How many things could I give up? This was a good challenge for my new "do everything" device. How would it hold up? How would I hold up? Read on to find out!

The modern world of smartphones is rapidly evolving, to say the least. And this fact has never been clearer to me than when CrackBerry Kevin and the other SPE folks recently undertook their yearly Smartphone Round Robin which is now winding down -- so many great devices, each with its own cutting-edge features and functionality, some of which didn't even exist just a year ago (fyi - Kevin tells me his Back on the Bold final review is coming tomorrow and the grand prize winners will be announced Thursday!). The SPE boys (and girl!) and their toys really got me thinking that it's time for RIM to not only step up to the plate with regards to the BlackBerry OS, but to hit one (way) out of the park -- at least if the company wants to continue competing with Apple, Microsoft, Palm, Google and the other handset heavies.

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We're half way through January which means 2009 is well underway. But before we get too much further into the new year it's time to hand out out some Best of 2008 Cracky Awards in a variety of BlackBerry & CrackBerry-related categories.

Readers' Choice Awards voting came to a close in the forums this past Sunday, so after the jump you can check out the final results and see who gets bragging rights for the next 11.5 months as crowned by the CrackBerry.com community.

And the winners of the Best of 2008 Crackies go to....

Eenie, Meenie, Miney Berry... Which Should I Choose?

What a year! 2008 will definitely go down as the "Year of the Berry" for me. My little SIM Card found a home in no less than 7 different BlackBerrys this past year! While much of the use could be classified as "professional," there was certainly a "searching" for the perfect Berry as well. So, let's take a look at the year that was and maybe you can help me choose amongst my Berrys and I can keep my SIM Card parked in one device for at least a few months in 2009.

My Christmas Present - iPhone Smash!!!

What did you want for Christmas? A new BlackBerry? Maybe a Wii or some new Xbox games? World peace? Your two front teeth?? All I wanted for Christmas was a picture of me as the Incredible Hulk ripping an iPhone 3G in half!! I figured it would make the perfect desktop wallpaper for myself... a little CrackBerry Kevin goes iPhone Smash! to keep me on my toes for 2009 (maybe RIM employees should adopt the same approach!).

As you can tell from the image above, I got what I wanted. But it didn't come from Santa or even CrackBerry Santa for that matter... it was delivered to me by none other than our sister site TheiPhoneBlog's editor, Rene Ritchie. As you guy's know, the Ahh Frak Phone is my favorite Frenemy as is the BlackBerry to Rene. I make fun of iPhones and he makes fun of BlackBerrys. We have some entertaining conversations to say the least.

And as you might guess, with the launch of the BlackBerry Storm and the slew of not-so-nice reviews that surfaced with its release, I have had to take an earful from Rene over the past month. Up until last week Rene's pokes were all second hand - he had never actually even held a BlackBerry Storm before. But with its introduction into Canada via Bell and Telus, he finally got his hands on the Storm and on Christmas Eve posted up his TiPb vs. Storm Initial Impressions. For the sake of editorial integrity, it's only fair that I point it out to those of you are interested. Enjoy the read and be sure to let Rene know in the comments what you think of his take on the Storm.

ALSO...one last thing... I noticed in a CrackBerry blog post comment yesterday to my Fuze review that someone was wondering where my updated BlackBerry Storm review was. In case you missed it when I first posted, you can find it here. I followed up my monster of a pre-release review with a 90 minute Special Edition BlackBerry Storm CrackBerry Podcast. If you want to hear my thoughts on the Storm (the good, the bad and the ugly) this is probably the most comprehensive review you'll find anywhere. Once my fingers recover from all the Round Robin writing I'll get it summarized into text form, but in the meantime it's already all out there in verbal form for those who want to know my thoughts on it!

• Read Rene's TheiPhoneBlog vs. BlackBerry Storm Review >>
• Listen to the BlackBerry Storm Review Podcast >> 
• Visit CrackBerry.com's BlackBerry Storm Forum >>
  

Of all the other site editors taking part in the Smartphone Round Robin, I'd have to say Rene gave the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry "lifestyle" the best shot, going so far as to even load up BlackBerry Messenger with every friend/colleague he knew or could track down that had a BB. He liked it. But as he pointed out in his final review, he was also scared of it in that constant connection/looking over your shoulder kind of way.

On our second Smartphone Round Robin Roundtable podcast, Rene relayed his "like" for BlackBerry Messenger to the crew, but our pal Dieter had a different take on it. While he had nothing against BBM per say, he raised a very valid argument that what he has something against are platform specific messenger/communication apps. To him, the best way to stay in touch with people is to communicate via a platform that is available to all. Enter Twitter. We've talked about Twitter and BlackBerry Twitter apps on the blogs before (heck - TwitterBerry just got reviewed yesterday), so I wanted to point out the awesome follow-up editorial Dieter wrote on this subject. He's writing from a Windows Mobile perspective (no BlackBerry Messenger for those folks!), so he compares Twitter to SMS and gives 5 compelling reasons why Twitter is better than SMS. He also provides the counter argument, but I've gotta say, I think his Twitter reasoning has merit. Check it out and post your reactions!

• Read Top 5 Reasons Twitter Beats SMS (and Vice Versa) >>