Did you know that BlackBerry Pearls can be possessed?

I can mostly blame my recent lack of blogging and tweeting- and even my lighter emailing- on my recent issues with my BlackBerry Pearl. If you google "possessed blackberry pearl" that is what I had to deal with. --The worst was the night my phone resent the same text message 40 times in 4 hours to my friend. Seriously, it selected the required menu options repeatedly, I watched it when I noticed the unexpectedly lit screen. [open message window > open last message sent > open menu > select resend > exit > repeat in 1-3 mins] Kind of creepy, really. This experience was varied over tasks and times.

I took it apart a couple of times and cleaned off everything. The next time I tried scraping off the corrosion on the motherboard.

Yes, corrosion means I got it wet. I think it was a mistake to take my BlackBerry into the cloud forest at the top of a volcano in Costa Rica. For some reason I didn't think about the moisture and the potential damage to my trusty device at the time. But in my defense, it turns out that Pearls are extra sensitive to moisture.

Despite my best repair efforts, the possession persists. So, I bought a new one. And I am falling comfortably back into my normal habits.

(Let me know if anyone has any suggestions for what to do with my possessed Pearl...)

I wish I could try Zenbe

In the past I have blogged about my frustrations with and ideas about improvements to email. I just now saw the TechCrunch post on Zenbe. I missed out on an invite but it sounds like great progress towards the next generation of email. This makes me very very happy. Whether or not Zenbe is the answer, I think it is great that they are at least challenging the status quo for email management. Hopefully this will lead to even better opportunities.