RIM's Blackberry Connections Client - First Impressions

05/19/2008 02:49 PM by Chris Toohey

As I use both BleedYellow.com, Lotus911's community implementation of IBM Lotus Connections, and a Blackberry 8820, you can imagine my joy when I found out that there was a Connections client from RIM! I immediately stopped what I was doing and went to work trying to get some Connections goodness on my preferred mobile device.

Having Desktop Manager, I thought that I'd download the installer and go from there. Pretty reasonable right? Well, apparently I assume a lot in life. With my devices.xml fully-updated, post registration on RIMs site, and installer package downloaded, I set forth to install the client on my 8820 - only to have Desktop Manager tell me it couldn't find any new applications for my devce:

Unphased by this setback, I moved onward...

I grabbed my device and starting looking to Blackberry for an OTA (Over The Air) installation that would remove any issues with my apparently wonky Desktop Manager.

Now, a little sidebar here - RIM creates these devices. They know what they can do and what they cannot do. More importantly, they know exactly what my device is (they friggin made it). So...

I find what I assume (there I go again) is the OTA installation, which requires that I yet-again register. The only problem, the RIM registration form runs script that doesn't work on even the latest devices. So, unable to proceed with the registration, I turn away defeated.

The good news? We have an amazing community! Chris Whisonant replied to this post telling me to check out his blog, where he hosts an OTA installation. Sweet! About 10 minutes later I was using the RIM Blackberry Connections Client to access the BleedYellow Connections environment.

RIM's Blackberry Connections Client - First Impressions - Part 2