Blackberry

The patent battle between the maker of the BlackBerry device and a small Virginia-based patent-holding company called NTP got us looking for Web sites for BlackBerry users, as well as those meant to shed light on the world of patents. ibbug.org Here is the International BlackBerry User Group, or IBBUG. For the BlackBerry's 3.65 million users around the world, the user group site has links to news and other sites, such as bbhub.com, a BlackBerry blog, where users were reporting BlackBerry sightings in the movie Syriana.

The great news for Baltimore and Maryland is that the University of Maryland Baltimore County's president, Freeman A. Hrabowski III, was named to Time's annual Top 100 influential people today. Another person on the list : Walter Isaacson, known recently and most famously as the official biographer of Steve Jobs. Mr. Isaacson was in Baltimore on Saturday, where he was a featured speaker at the CityLit Festival. I had the pleasure of introducing him to a crowd of hundreds.

A high school junior in Howard County, Serena Fasano, made news this week for earning a patent on a protein she discovered, a yogurt component that kills diarrhea-causing bacteria. In Washington, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide if a Gaithersburg drugmaker, MedImmune, can sue a California company - to prevent it from charging royalties on what MedImmune claims is a flawed patent on a biotech technique. And today in Maryland and across the nation, about 4 million BlackBerry users are on edge over a federal appeals court hearing on whether the phone-e-mail service - dubbed "Crackberry" because users are so dependent - violates a Canadian company's patent and thus should be shut down.

Call me a throwback, but I still like these big zins that are so oafish to those afflicted with sensitive Euro-palates. At least when, like this well-crafted wine from Edmeades, a high alcohol level (15.5 percent) is concealed behind gobs of fruit. This full-bodied red boasts intense flavors of blackberry, cassis and chocolate that combine to give it a Porto-like character without the sweetness. Somehow its manages to be burly and smooth at the same time. Serve it with food with the muscle to wrestle with it. From: Mendocino County, Calif.

The second BlackBerry outage in less than a week disrupted service for millions of users on two continents Tuesday and Wednesday. The company behind the service, Canada's Research in Motion Ltd., blamed a software upgrade for the problem, which it said was confined to North and South America. RIM said BlackBerry users were unable to send or receive e-mails and instant messages but did not lose phone service. Many users also found the Internet inaccessible. RIM said the disruptions began around 1:45 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, worsened around 6:30 p.m. and began to be fixed around 11:30 p.m. Service appeared restored by Wednesday afternoon.

The great news for Baltimore and Maryland is that the University of Maryland Baltimore County's president, Freeman A. Hrabowski III, was named to Time's annual Top 100 influential people today. Another person on the list : Walter Isaacson, known recently and most famously as the official biographer of Steve Jobs. Mr. Isaacson was in Baltimore on Saturday, where he was a featured speaker at the CityLit Festival. I had the pleasure of introducing him to a crowd of hundreds.

The BlackBerry, with its ability to send and receive e-mails on the go, is the coolest of the smart phones. Until you actually have to use it as a telephone. It is then that the wide-bodied BlackBerry, shaped to accommodate a full keyboard, becomes a bit less cool. A BlackBerry-toting lawyer friend of mine said it's like slapping a frozen waffle against your ear. The wide shape is great for thumb typing, but it's bulky to carry, and when you're on the run it can be hard to line up the ear holes with your ear. What's more, the standard BlackBerry has a dim screen and a relatively slow Internet connection.

For as long as 14 hours, belts across America didn't vibrate. Thumbs stopped clacking on tiny keyboards. People were transported to a more innocent age, a time when sitcoms could be watched uninterrupted and breakfast meetings had to be arranged by - gasp! - phone. The BlackBerry e-mail network went down about 8 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, and David Hyman, an online music executive, suddenly knew how it felt to be an addict. He was trying to retrieve electronic messages as he drove across the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.

After such an action-packed, eventful week, I think this ranks as my favorite news item: After satisfying all the security concerns, such as the potential for the device to leak classified information or his GPS coordinates, President Barack Obama is getting to keep his BlackBerry. I'm not actually a full citizen of CrackBerry Nation, whose ranks famously include the new geek-in-chief. Yet. I only got mine a month ago, as a Christmas present, and still haven't gotten all the applications fired up. But already, fiddling around with it when I'm in a WiFi spot, I can totally understand why Obama was loath to give up having this connection to the rest of the world in the palm of his hands.

Seven months after a jury awarded it more than $12 million in a patent infringement lawsuit, Annapolis-based TeleCommunication Systems Inc. has filed a similar suit - this time against the makers of the addictive BlackBerry. The suit, which TeleCommunication said it filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges that BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. is infringing upon a patent that governs the way wireless users access e-mail applications. It asks the court to award damages and issue an injunction to prevent RIM from further infringement.

From : California Pice : $14 Serve with : Red meat, pasta This imaginitive California blend delivers excellent value at an attractive price. It's a medium-bodied red wiith gripping flavors of blackberry, blueberry and herbs — not complex but very satisyfing. It's not meant for extended cellaring so the use of a screwcap shows wisdom on the part of the winery.

A question for people who've been around a little longer than I have - those of you who remember when Young Tommy was mayor and the Orioles were worth watching in August: At classic Maryland crab feasts, were there always a couple of grumbling, impatient people who'd just rather have a hamburger? I'm trying to determine if what I perceived at a recent feast of steamed hard crabs is a modern trend - people made a little edgy, even a little ornery, by getting too much spice on their fingers and not being able to use their smart phones while dining.

This medium- to full-bodied red wine has a touch of earthiness — not at all unpleasant — that distinguishes it from a Napa cabernet. It's a bit more rustic, leaning more to blackberry than black cherry, and adds elements of smoked meat, chocolate and pepper. It's quite drinkable now and probably wouldn't gain much with age. All in all, a hearty, flavorful cabernet that goes down easy. Wine Find: 2007 St. Francis Cabernet Sauvignon From: Sonoma County, Calif. Price: $17 Serve with: Steak, lamb

For whatever reason, the best grilled cheese sandwiches I’ve ever had have been in the South. While I was living in Birmingham, Ala., I developed a soft-spot for pimiento cheese sandwiches glazed with just the right amount of butter. A lovely woman whom I used to sublet from made them perfectly. I also used to frequent with my friend and co-worker, a great coffee and lunch spot called Urban Standard located in Downtown Birmingham. They served up amazing coffee and a very simple, but delicious grilled cheese sandwich with balsamic jam. It always made me feel like a little kid again, especially accompanied by one of their strawberry cupcakes.

This is a wine for those who enjoy full-flavored, New World-style red wines. The malbec grape's ancestry may be French but this is a very Argentine wine from the exceptional Catena winery. It's a full-bodied, creamy-textured wine with enormous blackberry fruit and a distinct but pleasant gamy quality and hints of coffee and chocolate. It's fully dry, but there are echoes of the flavor of a good vintage Porto. Wine Find: 2008 Alamos Seleccion Malbec From: Mendoza, Argentina Price: $20 Serve with: Hearty stews, game, beef

Just in time for the cold weather comes this lush, textured cashmere blanket of a dry red wine. A masterful blend of syrah, zinfandel and merlot, it hits all the right notes of roundness, complexity and length. It offers full-bodied blackberry fruit seasoned with herbs, black pepper, coffee and chocolate. It's ready to drink but should have up to five years of staying power. At $14, it's an insanely fine value — worth buying by the case. Wine Find: 2008 Apothic Red "Winemakers Blend" From: California Price: $14 Serve with: Hearty roasts, stew, game

SAN FRANCISCO - Taking huge steps to expand its cell phone business, Apple Inc. is introducing a faster version of its industry-changing iPhone, revamping its software to add more features for business users - and substantially slashing prices. When it hits the stores July 11, the 8-gigabyte version of Apple's new 3G (third-generation cellular) iPhone will start at $199, about a third the price of the original iPhone just a year ago. Apple promises the new model will download Web sites and Internet data about twice as fast as older versions.

The new RIM BlackBerry 7280 series ($400) is a solidly performing pager, personal digital assistant and tri-band phone that works in more than 100 countries. Tri-band telephones work across the bandwidths or networks of the United States, Europe and the Far East without requiring the user to change the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card in the phone. Besides its global reach, the 4.8-ounce handheld unit has an online calendar and e-mail service that can be synchronized with the popular e-mail programs such as Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes.

Millennial Media, the Canton-based mobile advertising firm, was reportedly in talks to be acquired by Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, but negotiations stalled over pricing for the Baltimore company. Millennial has said in the past that it is considering a public stock offering as an independent company. The private company ranks as one of the largest mobile ad firms in the nation. Citing anonymous sources, The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that Canada-based Research in Motion, or RIM, had been in talks with Millennial in recent months.

The second BlackBerry outage in less than a week disrupted service for millions of users on two continents Tuesday and Wednesday. The company behind the service, Canada's Research in Motion Ltd., blamed a software upgrade for the problem, which it said was confined to North and South America. RIM said BlackBerry users were unable to send or receive e-mails and instant messages but did not lose phone service. Many users also found the Internet inaccessible. RIM said the disruptions began around 1:45 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, worsened around 6:30 p.m. and began to be fixed around 11:30 p.m. Service appeared restored by Wednesday afternoon.