I remember the first day I saw a Blackberry. It was love at first sight. Standing in Roger McNamee’s office at Integral, he blew me a way with a demo of a two-lined screen beta unit. About six months later I got my first and don’t think one has left my side since.

That was until about eight weeks ago. Now, I’ve been carrying 2-3 mobile devices for sometime – all with a keen eye to dumping one or more. I just couldn’t imagine abandoning the utility of the Blackberry keyboard. I needed a personal smart phone so I could leave my MP3 player at home and keep by private business affairs separate. We didn’t have an iPhone equivalent so an iPhone it was. Then I got a Dell Streak. So which one to drop into my tech museum?

The Blackberry it is – and its for a simple reason. The Blackberry has just got progressively worse for the past 2-5 years. Worse performance. More crashes. A spinning black dial that just seems to take longer and longer to stop spinning. A lousy App store. A little screen that just never seemed to get bigger.

It is a great technology that hasn’t progressed. Its not going to die a slow death either. This is an industry in which brand loyalty wanes fast (anyone rushing to buy their next Palm?).

There’s lots I love about the Streak. I can live on it all day long. And carry it in my pocket. The screen is gorgeous and perfect for PowerPoint and .pdf files. The keyboard rocks with SlideIt installed. And it bridges my personal and business needs well.

I’ve found that apps ranging from Evernote through DropBox have made the screen matter more and more to me. I’m just reading more rich and dense docs while on the move. With a Streak I get the benefits of an iPhone, amplified, and none of the downside of a Blackberry.

Now we’ve made it official. As a company we’re rolling out Win 7 devices – the Dell Venue Pro — and Streaks powered by Android. It’s going to save us money.

The switch begins next week and will save the company about 25% in mobile communication costs, primarily by eliminating the need for BlackBerry servers, Mr. Gladden said. Dell will begin marketing a service to its business clients within two weeks aimed at helping them make a similar switch.

The company is also talking with T-Mobile USA about purchasing voice minutes and monthly data in bulk, rather than individual employee plans. Minutes and data that go unused by the company would carryover, Mr. Gladden said.

I’m looking forward to taking the Venue for a longer spin having played with one for a bit in Hong Kong last week. It was fast. Really fast. And the interface beautifully simple.

Either way, its bye bye Blackberry.

Xero, a terrific SaaS player in the small business accounting space is hiring for their US expansion. As a small business or start-up, there is probably nothing more important than managing your money.

I got involved with Xero for a simple reason (two actually, but more on that in a minute). Having built a number of my own businesses, nothing frustrated me more than the inefficiency and complexity of Intuit and the other accounting packages out there. They were just too cumbersome and time consuming. Xero is the answer and positioned for incredible growth in the US. They’ve already won thousands of customers with no marketing or sales effort.

They’ve also got an amazing team lead by Rod Dury (New Zealand’s most seasoned Tech entrepreneur) and backed by the likes of Peter Thiel and a stock market listing.

If you are interested, take a look at the first two opportunities here.

Pretty funny… so is this from NetSuite…

I’m really enjoying Kevin Kelly’s new book – What Technology Wants. Here are some of the tenets. Available from Amazon

• Technology is the most powerful force on the planet.
• Technology is an extension of evolutionary life, best thought of as the 7th kingdom of life.
• Humanity is our first technology; We are tools.
• Technology is selfish; as a system it exhibits its own urges and tendencies.
• Technologies cannot be banned, and none go extinct.
• The progression of technologies is inevitable.
• Because technologies are inevitable we can prepare to optimize their benefits.
• Technology is not neutral but serves as an overwhelming positive force in human culture.
• We have a moral obligation to increase technology because it increases opportunities.
• The origins of technology lie in the Big Bang.
• Technology preceded humans and will continue beyond us.
• Among the things technology wants are increased diversity, complexity, and beauty.
• Technology may be as much a reflection of the divine as nature is.
• Technology is an infinite game, a grand story we can align ourselves with for greater meaning.

Interesting to see Microsoft going after OpenOffice. But do they validate it in the process? While a nicely done video – and it makes very real points – surely OpenOffice can’t be getting enough momentum to warrant their attention?

One of the key questions any message needs to answer before it is delivered is “by delivering this message, do I draw attention to exactly what I don’t want attention drawn to?”.