Original CrackBerry Mockup Click Here to See the "Original CrackBerry Concept" Full Size Mockup!

The team is up late tonight, working hard to prep the The New CrackBerry. We'll be rolling out our awesome new website later this week and we'll be doing so during a meaningful time in CrackBerry history. As the clock struck midnight tonight, CrackBerry turned six years old!

Every year on our birthday I go back and read the Hello World Press Release we fired off on February 26, 2007. Reading it again today, I'm proud to say we achieved our objective - to establish CrackBerry as the premier resource for anything and everything BlackBerry. It's always a fun trip down memory lane to think about those early days - when I really did not know what the heck I was doing or what the future would hold. I just knew I loved my BlackBerry and that the world needed a place to go called CrackBerry! 

While working on our next generation site on CB's birthday, I started thinking about the original concept for CrackBerry.com. Digging into the archives a few minutes ago, I stumbled upon something I have never shared with the world before... THE ORIGINAL CRACKBERRY WIREFRAME MOCKUPS. Be sure to click on the link under the image above to get a close-up look at it. I hacked this rough mockup together back in November, 2006. This is before James Falconer came up with the CB logo and polished up the site graphics, or Tom Kaminski coded it all up (you can read the CB story here). Ultimately we went live in 2007 with a more traditional blog format on the homepage, but my original vision was more portal-like and all-encompassing of the different BlackBerry-related services we set out to provide. One thing you'll notice from the original mockup that didn't change is our cracky and fun-loving attitudes... just read those fake headlines! :)

It's been a crazy six years and my passion for BlackBerry and CrackBerry is greater than ever as is my excitement for Mobile Nations. It's been a great success story. With over 13 million readers and 60 million page views per month, we have the broadest and deepest footprint in mobile. I consider myself blessed to work with such an amazing team of people every day. The individuals on our editorial, design, tech, e-commerce and forums teams are simply the BEST and I can't wait to see just how much more we'll accomplish over the next six years.

Of course, the real success of CrackBerry lies in the strength of our community. Our loyal and passionate member base has and always will make CrackBerry the go to resource for BlackBerry users that it is. And in true CrackBerry fashion, we'll be doing up a CrackBerry Birthday contest soon as a thank you to our members. Stay tuned for that!! It's coming up later in the day!  

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