I agonized over various choices for my next phone, and finally decided on the Blackberry Curve based on some advice from Christian.

After a few weeks, I’m pleased with my decision. The Curve is significantly smaller and lighter than the Blackberry 8800 it replaces, yet the keyboard is actually more usable. While light, the phone feels solid and well built. Voice quality is excellent.

A few random notes:

Gmail: I found it painless to link my Blackberry with my Gmail account; I just entered my credentials and I was good to go.  The experience of sending and receiving email doesn’t feel like a step down from BES and Exchange.

Contacts: What is a step down is handling of contacts– the Blackberry doesn’t sync with my Gmail contacts. I did a one-time import of contacts, and so forth from my old Blackberry using RIM’s handy device migration wizard, but my contacts are growing progressively more stale.

Notifications: Notification icons on the home page can be extended by applications, which is really useful–  when I installed the Facebook app and received a Facebook message, I saw a Facebook-branded new message indicator on the home page.

Instant Messaging: Instant messaging is as a first-class action in the UI– anywhere I can call or SMS someone, I can also IM them.  (Not that this has made me a rampant user of phone IM, by the way.)

Wifi: This phone supports wifi, and can place voice calls over wifi.  If your cell reception at home is bad (as mine is), you will notice better quality in voice calls  and faster/more reliable data connections. 

Unlike with the IPhone you won’t see a meaningful increase in browsing speed when a strong cell signal is available; hopefully this is something Blackberry will improve in later releases.

My first personal experience with Facebook Beacon was viscerally negative.

After playing the flash game Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 2 on Kongregate, I was surprised to see that my secret longing for guitar superstardom was splashed across my Facebook homepage.

That’s none of Facebook’s business! The information was shared with Facebook without asking my permission or even telling me that it was going to happen. Does Facebook get to use this information to tailor their marketing to me?

What’s worse, Facebook was about to tell all of my friends, with a convoluted opt-out UI. Where’s the No thanks button?!! (Note that this is Facebook’s improved UI in reaction to user complaints; I’m glad I didn’t see the first one.)

I’m not a designer, but I’d like to propose the following alternate UI which might better accomplish Facebook’s goals for Beacon (with apologies to Mike Collins.)

Contrast Facebook with Google. 

Sure Google gathers and aggregates your searching, browsing, and purchasing behavior across the internet.

But they don’t tell other sites about it, and they don’t your friends about it. That significantly better than Facebook (so long as Google’s hacker and anti-government defenses remain strong!) And in case you might have any lingering privacy concerns, Google also doesn’t share their knowledge about you with you, granting us all the refuge of blissful ignorance.