---
date: "2007-09-19T07:27:30Z"
title: Blackberry Links and a Rant About Thieving Bastards
---

<img src='http://pablotron.org/gallery/misc/bb_pig-tiny.png' 
  width='176' height='176' align='right'/>

<p>
I just got a Blackberry for work, and I've been looking around for
some simple applications.  The entire experience reminds me of looking
for Windows Mobile software; a bunch of small, money grubbing companies trying to nickel
and dime people for things they have no business charging for.  $5 for
a crappy theme that you obviously spent 15 minutes on?  No thanks, I'll
make my own.  $15 for your E-Book reader?  I already made a mistake when
I bought your shitty software for my 
<acronym title='Personal Digital Assistant'>PDA</acronym> 
two years ago; I won't be fooled again.  What a bunch of thieving bastards.
</p>

<p>
The good news is that I did manage to find a couple of decent
applications.  Here they are:
</p>

<ul>
<li><a href='http://www.xk72.com/midpssh/'>MidpSSH</a>: Mobile SSH
client.  <a href='http://tynian.net/'>Brian</a> dug this one up.  The
source is also a pretty good reference for MIDP development.
</li>
<li><a href='http://www.operamini.com/beta/'>Opera Mini</a>: The
crackberry comes with a half-assed built-in browser.  Opera Mini makes
up the other half by resizing images and scaling the page so it fits
nicely on your screen.
</li>
<li><a
href='http://jmirc.sourceforge.net/'>jmIrc</a>: Decent mobile IRC
client.  
</li>
</ul>

<p>
Also, <a href='http://www.blackberryfreaks.com/'>Blackberry Freaks</a> 
and <a href='http://getjar.com/'>GetJar</a> both have lists of free
software for the Blackberry.  Actually, GetJar is useful for any 
<acronym title='Java 2, Mobile Edition / Mobile Information Device Profile'>J2ME/MIDP</acronym>-capable
device; that's where I got most of the software for my Samsung t809.  
There's also <a href='http://midlet.org/index2.jsp'>midlet.org</a>,
although everything there seems to be straight out of 2002.
</p>

<p>
The best overall Blackberry forum I've found so far seems to be 
<a href='http://blackberryforums.com/'>Blackberry Forums</a>.  I particularly like the <a href='http://www.blackberryforums.com/developer-forum/'>developer forum</a>.
</p>

<p>
I also managed to get the <a
href='http://java.sun.com/products/midp/'>MIDP SDK</a> up and running
without too much effort.  You basically just uncompress the archive
wherever, then add the <code>$MIDP_DIR/classes</code> directory to your
classpath when compiling your <code>.java</code> files.  It includes an
MIDP emulator which works fine for several applications I've tried, and
also seems to hate the JAD files I'm generating for no apparent reason.
Oh well.  Here are the interesting MIDP and Blackberry development links
I've dug up:
</p>

<ul>
<li><a href='http://java.sun.com/javame/reference/apis/jsr118/'>Sun J2ME
MIDP 2.0 API Reference</a>.
</li>
<li><a href='http://www.theilya.com/info/bbjde.shtml'>Blackberry JDE on
Linux</a>: The information here looks a bit dated, but it still might be
useful.</li>
<li><a
href='http://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/midp2network/'>J2ME
Low-Level Network Programming with MIDP 2.0</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.billday.com/j2me/'>Bill Day's java ME
Archive</a>.</li>
<li><a
href='http://www.spindriftpages.net/blog/dave/2006/06/18/midlet-jar-signing-a-tutorial-revised/'>MIDlet
JAR Signing</a>.</li>
<li><a
href='http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-2001/jw-0105-midp.html'>Device programming with MIDP</a>: Great three-part series
on the MIDP API.  The articles pre-date MIDP 2.0 but they include plenty
of examples and links for additional information.  Be sure to click the
Print link at the bottom to view all the pages concatenated together.</li>
</ul>

<p>
Fire an email or comment my way if you've got any more useful links.
</p>