Jeffrey Mann

A few weeks ago, I blogged about my first month of Blackberry use, and the drawbacks I found. One of the reasons I held off on getting a Blackberry was that I was afraid of the messages I would send while on the move. When I’m in a rush, I don’t give good email. Like most people, I’ve been guilty of pissy, sarcastic communications when there was little or no justification for it. Almost all of these happened when I was in a hurry, leading to groveling and embarrassing apologies.

I was afraid that being able to send messages from just about anywhere would make that worse. Recovering snatches of otherwise unproductive time is one of the advantages of having one of these things, even if the snatches are brief. Small amounts of time can lead to boo-boos, however.

Today I did it. I was catching up on messages from other analysts while waiting in an airport security line. I had what I thought was a salient comment to add and just saw enough time to squeeze it out before I had to walk through that portal. Fifteen minutes later I was trying to remember what I said, and smacked my forehead. This is what came out:

If the vendor sells an unlimited plan, they cannot complain when people use a lot. They can’t get the marketing cake of using the term AND the cake of capping or punishing users who take them at their word.

There was a real thought buried in there about having your cake and eating it too, but it didn’t survive the transition from head to thumbs to message.

Maybe Blackberry needs something like mail goggles.