Emacs vs Vi for the hip-hop and jetset

From: Strata Rose Chalup (strata@virtual.net)
Date: Tue Jan 16 2001 - 18:32:19 PST


What a great time to have years of email expertise. :-)
                                                                                         
January 14, 2001

          NOTICED

          A World Divided Into Two-Way-Pager
          Camps

          By DOUGLAS CENTURY

               STAR JONES was camped
               out in her usual seat in
          celebrity row, courtside at a New
          York Knicks game in Madison
          Square Garden. Even as the
          contest between the Knicks and
          the Milwaukee Bucks went into
          nail- biting overtime, Ms. Jones, a
          host of "The View" on ABC, was
          busily multitasking, flipping open
          the silver Motorola Timeport
          two-way pager in her lap and
          tapping away with both thumbs.
          Cheering boisterously for the home
          team, she also conducted
          simultaneous wireless
          conversations. She read an e- mail
          message from Puffy Combs, checking to see whether she could make it
          to his party that night. Then came a message from Derek Jeter, asking
for
          the game's score.

          Motorola's two-way pagers, which have boomed in the last year, have
          about a million users, who busily thumb-type e-mail messages on the
tiny
          keyboards of the clamshell device. Some of the most passionate are
          members of the African-American elite in entertainment and sports. For
          them, the cell phone is so last millennium.

          "I'm much more effective than I was with a cell phone," said Russell
          Simmons, once an infamous Manhattan cell-phone buff, now a convert to
          the two-way pager. "E-mails are great, but walking e-mails are
greater."

          Shaquille O'Neal, Ananda Lewis and Carson Daly of MTV and the
          rappers Jay-Z and Eve are also Motorola pager devotees. Jay-Z even
          includes an ode to his in his latest single:

          Only way to roll

          Jigga and two ladies

          I'm too cold,

          Motorola two-way page me.

          Motorola's archrival is the BlackBerry, on which Vice President Al
Gore
          was reported to have spent part of election night tapping and reading
          messages, including one from Donna Brazile, his campaign manager,
          urging: "Never surrender. It's not over yet." Mr. Gore, the nation's
          unofficial technologist in chief, even in defeat, is the ideal
embodiment of
          BlackBerry users, who are cultlike in their devotion, just as Mr.
Simmons
          represents the rival cult of the Motorola.

          Two wireless systems, two passionate camps. The rectangular, rigid
          BlackBerry is the choice of a high-tech and financial elite, including
Bill
          Gates, Michael Dell and the investment bankers at Goldman, Sachs.
          They would not be caught dead carrying a fire-engine-red or
cobalt-blue
          Motorola Talkabout, which the company markets to young adults —
          even teenagers passing e-notes in class.

          "You have to understand that white-collar workers and politicians
don't
          want sexiness or cuteness — they don't want fashion," said James
          Balsillie, the chairman and a chief executive of Research in Motion,
which
          makes the BlackBerry. "Why does Al Gore live on his BlackBerry? He
          needs something that's reliable, and he needs something that's
secure."

          BlackBerry devotees insist they go for substance over style. "I use
          BlackBerry over Motorola for the functionality," said James Andrews,
an
          Internet entrepreneur. "For a lot of people who have Motorola, it's
their
          first entry to an e-mail address. But I'm a techie. Motorola sort of
feels
          like a toy."

          The Motorola cult has spawned a new urban lexicon. Hip-hop heavies
          these days rarely say, "Give me a call." That's been replaced by, "Yo,
          two-way me." Gone, too, is the exchange of business cards or scribbled
          phone numbers, replaced by "Star Trek"-like talk of "beaming." Mr.
          Simmons described a nightclub encounter with the actress and singer
          Brandy. "Brandy walked up to me, put her pager next to mine, said,
          `Good, now I have your digits, and you have mine,' " he said. "She
          beamed it straight into my Motorola pager."

          Leah Wilcox, vice president of player and talent relations for the
National
          Basketball Association, said of the Motorola: "It's the device of the
          league right now. Shaq has one, Chris Webber, Kevin Garnett. It's not
          like a cell phone, where the service interrupts and you run into those
          dead zones."

          But Ms. Wilcox acknowledged that more serious techies in the N.B.A.
          favored the BlackBerry. "It's whatever floats your boat," she said.
"Like
          Dikembe Mutombo is a gadget fanatic, and he uses a BlackBerry. He
          actually told me, `The BlackBerry's the better one.' "

          Some of this division is the result of savvy marketing by the two
          companies. Last month, Motorola and the Britto Agency sponsored a
          Christmas party at Jimmy's Uptown, a new Harlem nightclub, where toys
          were donated to the charity Catalog for Giving. Ms. Lewis of MTV, Eve,
          Samuel Jackson, Puff Daddy, Latrell Sprewell and Al Sharpton mingled
          over the Moët. The party was also meant to promote the new line of
          T900 Talkabouts, a more mass-market unit sold for $199 (as opposed
          to the older, more robust Timeport 935 at $399; both require monthly
          service starting at $14.95).

          Trend trackers like Mr. Simmons say that African-Americans have a
          longstanding brand loyalty to Motorola, maker of the popular Star-Tac
          cell phone. "As a brand-building community, hip-hop is so strong," he
          said. "They built this brand. If Motorola denied it, watch how quickly
it
          would change."

          Rachelle Franklin, the director of corporate brand communications at
          Motorola, said, "We certainly recognize and appreciate how brand-loyal
          that particular segment is to Motorola," referring to hip-hop artists
and
          their fans. "The entire Fubu organization, for example, uses our
devices."

          She added, "What we've been able to do with this particular product is
          see the trend and then leverage it."

          Research in Motion has pushed no less aggressively to press the
          BlackBerry into the palms of trendsetters in its perceived camp. The
          company has contracts to supply its pagers ($399 to $499, plus a
          monthly service fee starting at $40) to blue-chip companies like
Merrill
          Lynch and Goldman, Sachs.

          "The corporate people are flocking to the BlackBerry," said Rikki Lee,
          the editor of Wireless Week, a trade publication. "The BlackBerry
tends
          to be more heavy-duty e-mail applications than the Motorola pager. It
          allows one to receive one's e-mail from the office, to interface with
office
          software systems. It's more powerful and comparable to the Palm Pilot.
          The Motorola is a simpler device, made for messaging on the go."

          Don Longueuil, an analyst of wireless mobile services at the Yankee
          Group, a consulting firm, said the BlackBerry scores higher for
          encryption features to protect the privacy of messages, but Motorola
has
          the bigger market share.

          "In the United States, Motorola has 980,000 active subscribers for its
          two-way messaging devices," Mr. Longueuil said. "The RIM devices
          have 380,000. But that's just because Motorola's came out earlier.
          RIM's catching up fast."

          And the BlackBerry is not without its own glamour factor. Pamela
          Anderson, in "VIP," her comedy action show, can be seen tapping on a
          BlackBerry between karate kicks. Hollywood heavyweights like Matt
          Damon and Ben Affleck also use the BlackBerry.

          Some in the hip-hop world, meanwhile, find the BlackBerry too stuffy.
"I
          remember when Guy Oseary in L.A. gave all these executives
          BlackBerrys and we used to laughingly refer to them as the white man's
          pager," Mr. Simmons said. "He was giving them to Brad Grey and Bernie
          Brillstein and those people." (Mr. Oseary is a record executive. Mr.
Grey
          and Mr. Brillstein are the producers of "The Sopranos.")

          Both devices appeal to gadget-crazy consumers who want their e-mail
          anytime, anywhere, despite the awkwardness of tiny screens and tiny
          keys. At least they both beat cell- phone e-mail, which is also
available.

          "It's completely changed the way folks communicate," Ms. Jones said.
          "You have to make so much small talk on a phone call and go through
          personal assistants. With the two- way it's an instant one-on-one
          connection."

          Motorola pagers are also having an impact in nightclubs. Jive Jones
(no
          relation to Star Jones), a record producer and recording artist from
          Miami, swears by his Motorola 935 pager. He said: "If you want to hit
          somebody in a club, you can't do it with your cell phone, because the
          signal's not good. But what I like about them best — since everybody
in
          my camp has them — if I'm talking to somebody that I don't want to
talk
          to, I can just page my boy sitting right across from me like, `Yo, get
me
          out of this.' "

          Mr. Simmons, while approving ads for the latest line of skimpy Baby
          Phat denim shorts in his Phat Farm office, sat scrolling through the
list of
          2,000 e-mail addresses in his Motorola Timeport. "Your pager's only as
          good as the numbers in it," he said. "How many numbers do you have in
          your pager? And what are the quality of those numbers? I have
          everybody from Minister Farrakhan to Pamela Anderson, from Anna
          Wintour to Arnold Schwarzenegger."

          Scrolling from the top, he read aloud: "Abel Ferrara, Ahmad Rashad, Al
          Sharpton, Alan Edwards, Alan Finkelstein, Allen Grubman, Allan
          Houston, Alan Patricof . . . " He paused at Mr. Patricof, a venture
          capitalist, remembering he had to send him a greeting. "Alan, happy
New
          Year," he typed. "Sorry I missed you in St. Barts."

          Though he is a Motorola devotee, Mr. Simmons announced last week at
          the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that he was going into
          partnership with VTech Connect Ltd. and Shared Technologies Cellular
          to produce telecommunications products, including phones and two-way
          messaging devices. "Our two-way's going to be called the Rush
          Communicator," he said, predicting it would be on sale by June.

          Will rap kids switch brand loyalty from Motorola to Mr. Simmons's new
          gadget?

          "The thing about hip-hop is that they love great products," he said.
"The
          Rush Communicator must simply be better and more efficient, with
          details that make it special for the hip-hop community."

          Some who have sampled both Motorola and BlackBerry say that each
          has its strengths and weaknesses. John Borek, managing attorney at the
          law firm of Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson, is an anomaly,
          carrying both. "I tried not to carry two things — I feel nerdy
enough,"
          Mr. Borek said. But he decided he needed the BlackBerry for its e-mail
          capability and its "antivirus firewalls and security," which safeguard
legal
          communiqués.

          "But the problem is the service with the BlackBerry," he said. "There
are
          a lot of annoying outages in the system. The Motorola is a more
reliable
          paging device. I have a staff of 10 litigation people, often running
around
          town serving subpoenas and digging up court records, who don't need
          these more powerful BlackBerry features."

          Instead, he said, their hips are adorned with Motorola's Talkabout
T900
          pagers, less robust in features and less expensive.

          "Mine is in sexy, elegant black," Mr. Borek said, laughing. "It's very
tiny
          and neat, and listen — it makes this nice authoritative pop when I
close
          it."

-- 
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Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ]                      strata "@" virtual.net
VirtualNet Consulting                            http://www.virtual.net/
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