Author: Joe

Earlier this month we posted a quick tip on how to insert a symbol into your BlackBerry Messenger name, or anywhere else on your BlackBerry. The process can be a bit of a pain. You have to get a text file onto your BlackBerry and then copy and paste the symbol. Some of the characters don’t render properly, and it’s no certainty that you’ll get the character you seek. I was browsing our store today and I came across an application that can take care of your symbol insertion needs. Check out Fancy Characters. It costs money, but it probably does what you want to do better than the text file method.

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I wish to lodge a complaint about the article “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim” by Jonathan Leake, published in the Sunday Times, across pages 8 and 9 on 31 January 2010. I consider it in breach of PCC Editors Code of Practice point 1) Accuracy, i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.

So begins tropical forest researcher Simon Lewis in his official complaint to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission.  The PCC is “an independent body which deals with complaints from members of the public about the editorial content of newspapers and magazines.”

Finally, we have someone who understands, as Nature editorialized, “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.”

The full 31-page complaint — a CP exclusive (click here, big PDF) — is a must-read for anyone who wants to see just how Leake and the Times operate.  I excerpt it below, but first some background.

The IPCC famously wrote:

Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation.

This statement in the 2007 IPCC is “basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced,” as Lewis told the BBC in January.  Indeed, the underlying science is quite strong, as made clear in a recent statement by 19 top U.S., U.K., and Brazilian scientists, including Lewis, who point out “there are multiple, consistent lines of evidence from ground-based studies published in the peer-reviewed literature that Amazon forests are, indeed, very susceptible to drought stress.”

That didn’t stop the anti-science blogosphere and media from spinning this into another phony “gate,” as ClimateSafety explained in an excellent post, “AmazonGate: how the denial lobby and a dishonest journalist created a fake scandal.”  Anti-science Blogger Richard North spun up the story, and it was turned into “news” by anti-science reporters James Delingpole of the Telegraph and Jonathan Leake of the Times.  The Leake story explicitly ends, “Research by Richard North.“  Deltoid (aka Tim Lambert) has also done an excellent job writing about “Jonathan Leake’s dishonest reporting on the Amazon rainforests.”

The Times finally changed the headline online to the more innocuous, “The UN climate panel and the rainforest claim,” but it still opens, absurdly,

A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.

That is “extremely misleading,” as Lewis shows that Leake and the Times knew it was basically false when they made it.

Lewis finally had enough, telling the Guardian:

There is currently a war of disinformation about climate change-related science, and my complaint can hopefully let journalists in the front line of this war know that there are potential repercussions if they publish misleading stories. The public deserve careful and accurate science reporting….

As a professional scientist I have to clear this mess up, it’s important to protect my reputation in terms of providing accurate scientific information to the public.

And so he filed an official complaint, which continues:

Specifically, I consider this article to be materially misleading. I am the scientific expert cited in the article who was asked about the alleged “bogus rainforest claim”. In short, there is no “bogus rainforest claim”, the claim made by the UN panel was (and is) well-known, mainstream and defensible science, as myself and two other professional world-class rainforest experts (Professor Oliver Phillips and Professor Dan Nepstad) each told Jonathan Leake.

The Sunday Times knew that the UN panel report contained an incorrect reference relating to a sentence about the potential impacts of climate change on the Amazon rainforest, and not an error of science. Yet, the Sunday Times published inaccurate, misleading and distorted information which would lead any reasonable person to assume that the UN report had included information that was not backed by the best scientific information available at the time. Furthermore, they used highly selective reporting to imply, by omission, that a leading expert – myself – concurred with them that the IPCC had published an incorrect scientific claim. This is not the truth, and not what I told the Sunday Times, and therefore I consider the article materially misleading.

I suspect that the Sunday Times may claim that it did not state in the main body of the article that the statement in the UN report was scientifically correct or not, and that the article was about the IPCC making a mistake. Yet, according to the Editor’s code this is immaterial: “Stories that are technically accurate can still be misleading or distorted leaving the reader with a false impression. Sometimes the problem is more because of what they don’t say than what they do, and that —whether intentional or not —can breach the Code.”

The Sunday Times contention that the IPCC had made a mistake in the reporting of scientifically credible statements was then widely re-reported, in part because the Sunday Times used my expertise to lend credibility to the assertion, due in part to the concealment of my views that the statement in question was fully in line with scientific knowledge at the time the IPCC report was written.

Following publication, I posted a very short comment on the Sunday Times website, below the article, on the afternoon of Sunday 31 January, stating that I was the expert cited in Jonathan Leake’s article, that the article was misleading, as there was no ‘bogus rainforest claim’, and posted a link to the BBC whom I also gave an interview with, to which I gave broadly similar information as to the Sunday Times, but was accurately reported (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8488395.stm, reproduced as Appendix 4). My posted comment was deleted from the Sunday Times website.

I also wrote a letter to the Sunday Times, emailed on Tuesday 2 February, to explain the distortion and errors in the article, for publication the following Sunday, copying in the lead author of the article, Jonathan Leake, which was neither acknowledged, nor published (see
Appendix 2 for a copy of the letter).

The deletion of my comment on the website, and failure to publish my letter would appear to be in breach of point 1) Accuracy, ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and – where appropriate – an apology published.

As I have tried to correct the record in the Sunday Times, and the Sunday Times has not cooperated, and would like the public record to be correct in this matter, (reluctantly) I ask that the PCC fully investigate the case, and the Commission then make a ruling. I hope that in the course of the investigation the Sunday Times will adhere to the highest standards of accuracy, openness and clarity in their submissions to the PCC, as the article, and accompanying editorial related to the article (‘Bad science needs good scrutiny’) are themselves about the importance of taking the utmost care in reporting science.

I detail the misleading claims in the article in a series of sections below.

Hear!  Hear!

The whole statement has many substantive parts, including a lengthy discussion of the role of blogger Richard North.  Please post any parts you think are particularly salient in the comments.  I was struck by this:

5.1 The article re-write

I spoke to Jonathan Leake on the afternoon of Saturday 30, a few hours before the article went to press, as he wanted to check the quotes he was using by me (checking quotes was agreed between ourselves on Friday 29 January). The entire article was read to me, and quotes by me agreed, including a statement that the science in the IPCC report was and is correct. The article was reasonable, and quotes were not out of context. Indeed I was happy enough that I agreed to assist in checking the facts for the graphic to accompany the article (I can supply the emails if necessary). Yet, following this telephone call the article was entirely and completely re-written with an entirely new focus, new quotes from me included and new (incorrect) assertions of my views. I ask the Sunday Times to disclose the version of article that was read out to me, and provide an explanation as to why the agreed correct, undistorted, un-misleading article, and specifically the quotes from me, was not published, and an entirely new version produced.

Wow!

I hope the Press Complaints Commission will get to the bottom of that staggering accusation.

We’ve gone from the IPCC to the PCC.  The Leake piece is not the way journalism is supposed to operate, not the way science is supposed to be communicated to the public.  Kudos to Dr. Lewis for fighting back.

The new thing in theme design, it seems, is to include a number of static icons on the home screen, alongside customizable ones. This is a result of the new theme environment. The addition of the Today preview means more and more people want the messages and calendar apps easily accessible from the home screen. There are also a number of other heavily used applications, like phone log and address book, that most people keep on the home screen anyway. So why not put it on there for everyone, and then allow them to put their six or seven favorite applications on the home screen as well? I’m in favor of this, as you’ll see with this week’s batch of themes.

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Do you text and drive? Come on, you don’t have to be shy. Many, many people are guilty of this, even if they’re against doing it. Clearly, something needs to be done about this, as it makes the road unsafe for not only the texter, but those around him or her. While many states have passed legislation outlawing the practice, enforcement can prove difficult. So what can you do to curb a texting and driving habit? Vlingo has an idea. They’ve included a feature in the new version of Vlingo, 4.5, which reads your emails and text messages while you drive, so you don’t have to take your eyes off the road. The program, dubbed SafeReader, perfectly complements Vlingo’s primary function, allowing you to speak a message rather than type it.

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Normally when I write about a BlackBerry application I open by describing a familiar situation. After all, apps are only good if you have an immediate need, and needs are dictated by your current circumstances. This one, though, I feel like we’ve all experienced multiple times — too many for sure. You’re at a restaurant and the bill comes. Your task: split it among your party of five. There are so many social nuances going on here. Some people want to pay only for what they ate, while others are fine splitting it evenly. But then those who want to pay for what they ate might undercalculate and leave the bill short (from my experience, this is due to completely neglecting tax and undertipping). Short of the restaurant having this kind of machine, you’re stuck doing the calculations however possible. Your BlackBerry can do this, but there is now a free application that can help.

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Were you ever on a phone call and wanted to write something down, but didn’t have a pen and paper handy? It happened all the time to me, though my BlackBerry has done a great job so far of replacing the pen and paper in my life. I often use the memo pad application to write down things so I don’t forget them, syncing it to my computer for easy finding and execution. Sometimes, though, I don’t want to go into the notes application, especially if I’m on a phone call. There is a neat way, though, that you can make notes about a conversation which you can find and view later on.

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It’s always a pleasant show when we get news on upcoming BlackBerry devices. It’s always doubly pleasant when we get news on two of them. That’s what we’ve go on tap this week, as we’ve heard information about the BlackBerry slider and the BlackBerry Tour2…the new CDMA BlackBerry. Which, by the way, seemingly has a name now.

So click on over here to hear the BBGeekcast (10 min, 33 sec)

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss future episodes!

You can also subscribe to the BBGeekcast in iTunes.

Highlights include:
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If you use a BlackBerry, I’m sure that at one point or another you’ve sent group emails. Many of you probably send them regularly. I’m on a few group emails, and I know there have been times when I’ve wanted to type an addendum to a group reply, but only for one or two of the group members. Usually this entails sending a whole new email. A new BlackBerry application, Bccthis, can make those exclusive comments a bit easier to send. It was previously an Outlook plugin, which I wouldn’t have known, being a Mac user and all. Now it’s available for the BlackBerry, so you can make all the behind-their-back comments you want.

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Some weeks we’re lucky enough to get news updates on multiple new BlackBerry devices. This time around we have word on the BlackBerry slider, a hot topic of late, and the BlackBerry…well, the new CDMA device that is an update to the Tour. Until now we had no idea what to call it. At first it was the Tour2 9650, then they wanted to drop the Tour2 part, and now, well, now it appears to be a Bold. Odd transformation it’s undergone. Anyway, there’s plenty of new BlackBerry goodness to go around.

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Keep your inbox automated and tidy with BerryMail
Yesterday we talked about Xobni, an application that gives you more control over your address book. Today we take a look at BerryMail which, while not quite as comprehensive as Xobni, still give you more control over your email inbox. If you have BIS you can control the flow of your inbox with filters, but BerryMail seems to do this a bit better. It certainly gives you more options, allowing you to set email rules based on a number of different criteria, and allowing you to perform far more actions once the application identifies said emails. It’s from the same company, by the way, as BerryBuzz, which just got an update.

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Back in the day, when I still had a crappy flip phone, I used to take advantage of the multiple alarms it offered. When I used an actual alarm clock, rather than my cell phone, I was apt to shut the thing off rather than hit snooze. This did not please my bosses at the time. My old phone, however, offered three different alarms, and I took advantage by setting all of them. So even when I silenced the first alarm, the second and third were waiting to go. When I got a BlackBerry I lost this functionality, at least natively. There are tons of alarm applications, but who wants to spend money on such a simple function?

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Remember last week when I talked about Swoosh Contact and wished it came with more features for that price? Turns out I should have waited a week or so. Via CrackBerry, we learn of an address book application called Xobni. It does the same thing as Swoosh Contact, ranking your contacts by your communication frequency. But it does even more — it even rebuilds your entire address book into a more complete directory.

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How much time do you spend in your car? Before I up and moved to New York City, I spent probably more than 10 hours a week in my car, whether commuting to work, running errands, or heading to a social event. This presented me with an opportunity not only to catch up on podcasts, but also to charge my electronics. Why let that cigarette lighter go to waste? For years I never had a discharged iPod. The thing was almost always running on full battery, because I had it plugged in whenever possible. Ditto my BlackBerry. If you spend more than five hours per week in your car, I highly recommend picking up a BlackBerry car charger. The only question that remains is of which you will choose.

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It wasn’t long ago that Fandango release a BlackBerry app. It covered the basics, allowing you to browse movies and purchase tickets for pickup at the theater. With more and more theaters having digital kiosks for purchase and pick-up, this was an excellent feature. The next step, then, was to turn your BlackBerry into your actual ticket. Fandango is all over that, rolling out the first phase this week. You can still purchase your tickets through the Fandango app, but if you go to one of the select theaters across the country, you can just show your Berry to the ticket attendant, who will scan it with a special machine. Then you’re in, and with no paper to speak of.

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We’ve been taking some time to go over the more common BlackBerry error messages and what you can do to fix them without too much of a headache. Today we’re going to run down error 523, one that destroyed my BlackBerry Curve 8330 — twice. Unfortunately, this workaround wouldn’t have helped me much. It requires booting in safe mode, which is available only on devices running OS 4.6 and up (I had 4.5 on my 8330). But if you’re using a newer BlackBerry and run into this, you can try to work around the error and get your device back up and running.

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Every once in a while we like to mix things up on the Geekcast and bring on a guest. Things usually run long, but hey, you get more than just windbag discussing all things BlackBerry. Brad from Berry Reporter joins me today to talk about this week’s happenings.

So click on over here to hear the BBGeekcast (19 min, 26 sec)

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss future episodes!

You can also subscribe to the BBGeekcast in iTunes.

Highlights include:
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It’s just about that time of year again, when the sports-loving population checks out of work and tries, for a few Thursdays and Fridays, to follow the NCAA basketball tournament without their boss finding out. The boss knows, of course. But I’m sure that won’t stop most people from enjoying the five rounds of tournament action. For fans, the tourney centers on brackets, our blind predictions that are, for the most part, based on how each school fared while we were in college. Yahoo! has a bracket management application, and it’s available now for your BlackBerry

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Every once in a while a media outlet comes up with reasons why the iPhone will surpass BlackBerry in cell phone market share. The latest is Forbes magazine, though the analysis comes from company called Trefis. They break down the trends of each company, and have determined that the iPhone will overtake BlackBerry in early 2011. As in, a year from now. The main evidence is that Apple has grown a bit faster, going from .3 percent market share in 2007 to 2 percent in 2009, while RIM went from 1 to 3 in that period. Further, they expect RIm to have an 8 percent cell phone market share by 2016, with Apple ahead of them at 11 percent.

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I never quite understood the purpose of standby mode. I did use the function regularly, though not intentionally. This actually happens a lot with my Tour, since it’s easy to press the mute button while shoving the device into my pocket. I suppose it saves battery, and it’s not really that big a pain if I do accidentally hit it. I’m sure many of you use the function — or used it, depending on your OS version. As Bla1ze reports, RIM has disabled standby mode in recent OS builds, starting with version 5.0. It appears that this isn’t just the mute key that’s changed, but rather the entire feature being disabled. If anyone has a workaround, leave it in the comments.

This post originated at BBGeeks.com – home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

No more standby mode on your BlackBerry

This post originated at BBGeeks.com – home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.

No more standby mode on your BlackBerry

It’s time again for your bi-weekly helping of premium BlackBerry themes. This week we’ve got new designs from two of our favorite theme developers, Hedone Design and Elecite. They both brought the goods, releasing two excellent, standout themes. I go through a lot of these in order to write this feature, and it seems that while there are a lot of developers that do go out of their ways to create something new and fresh, these two accomplish it regularly. And now I’ll stop gushing and get to the themes.

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