Yammer on my Blackberry

I have owned my current Blackberry for a little over a year.  I love the email, calendar and contact list integration with Microsoft Outlook.  I have only installed two apps that I use fairly frequently: the Wall Street Journal reader and Google Maps. 

Some folks at my employer Foliage Software Systems have been experimenting with some social networking applications.  First we tried Twitter and now we are trying out Yammer.  Yammer seems to offer some privacy features over Twitter that make Yammer more appealing.

Setting up my Yammer account and profile was a straightforward process.  Of course I wonder how many minutes of my life I have lost to typing out my work history and educational background.  It’s great that technology has allowed us to live longer but what good is it if we spend all our time filling out profiles.

I decided to try the Yammer application for my Blackberry.  The install was simple but when I ran the application is kept crashing.  It turns out the Yammer app will only run on a newer version of the Blackberry firmware (version 4.2 or higher).  I went to the Blackberry desktop manager to perform a firmware update but the Desktop Manager kept saying that there were no updates available implying that I had the latest firmware.  I knew this was not true as I had gone to the Blackberry site and found out that the latest version is 4.5.  Then I tried to run an update from the Blackberry site.  During the process I was told that the Desktop Manager would have to be upgraded so I let the process continue.  It appeared as though the process was starting with the downloading of the newer version.  I expected that upon completion of the download that the install would automatically start but this did not happen and I was at a loss for where the downloaded image was located.  I went back to the Blackberry site and downloaded the install myself and ran the update manually.

I thought I would be all set now but when I tried to have the Desktop Manager upgrade the Blackberry FW I received the same message indicating that the FW was already up to date.  I did a search to see if others had similar issues and discovered that I really needed to be working from my wireless carrier’s website for these types of upgrades.  This led me to the Verizon website where I was finally able to upgrade my Blackberry FW.  The process was fairly straightforward from this point but it did take 45 minutes and it only upgraded me to 4.2.1.110.  Apparently Verizon does not support revisions beyond this. 

Once the upgrade completed I was finally able to run Yammer on my Blackberry.  The experience was a bit of a letdown because the Yammer app does not keep up to date with the feed in real time.  This seems extremely lame as other apps seem to be able to keep up with real time information.  The Blackberry upgrade also reset all my Blackberry preferences and changed the look of my display.  I manage to get things back pretty much to the way I had them before but I still would prefer my previous interface.  One thing they changed that is a real pain is that with the old FW I could set my Blackberry to lock the keys upon holstering the phone.  When I took my phone out I could unlock it with one keypress.  Now I have to use a two key process which is much more tedious.  My last gripe is that the upgraded FW is slower.  On the old FW I could select a button to change the volume settings to any of a number of different profiles.  I basically only ever used there of them.  Normal, Vibrate and Quiet.  This list use to come up instantly when I pressed the button.  Now it takes three seconds for the list to come up.  I guess the Blackberry FW guys tore a page from the Vista developers handbook.