Did you know that the most important thing about Barack Obama's election is the fact that he's giving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free publicity to the makers of Blackberry? It's true.

Oh, the poor, sad McCain campaign just sold all of their leftover campaign crap, for pennies. And of course some reporter bought some used Blackberries and guess who didn't delete anything off it?

Before he comes to office, a president has to give up his e-mail account. For the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, that wasn't much of an issue, but for our recent presidents, it's an anguishing and terrible thought. As president-elect Obama parts with his BlackBerry, he'll have to learn how to deal with not being able to rag on other players in his fantasy basketball league. Jeff Zeleny's NYT story about president e-mail e-mail today also contains George W. Bush's sad 2000 shout-out to his electronic homeboys.

Click to viewBoomp3.com 90210 & Degrassi: The Next Generation star Shenae Grimes was surprised by the attention she received after leaving the Blackberry Bold party on Thursday night. Stepping into a sea of flash bulbs, Grimes paused and said, “Really? All this for me? It’s flattering, but I assure there’s somebody more famous coming out of that party real soon.” A lone snapper stepped forward and explained that they’re actually Blackberry super fans and they just wanted to get a snapshot of the new phone for their respective tech blogs. Another added, “Yeah, we got this really cool shot of Heidi and Spencer licking a Blackberry Storm like an ice cream sandwich. So could you do something equally as wacky?” Grimes retrieved the phone from the gift bag and pretended to take a bite out of it while rubbing her stomach. [Photo Credit: Splash Pics] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Shares of Research In Motion have declined from $148 to $60 in four months, falling along with most tech stocks. The difference between RIM and, say, Yahoo? Microsoft still wants to buy RIM, say some analysts cited by Reuters. Forget Google's still-not-on-the-market Android phones; RIM's BlackBerry is the only real competition for Apple's iPhone.Like Apple, RIM offers not just the hardware but the software and services that run on top of it; RIM does Apple one better by also selling back-end servers that companies install to manage their workers' email. Microsoft is in that same business, but it's not as good as tying everything together as RIM is. The speculation is that RIM shares would have to drop to $40 or so, at which point Microsoft might bid $50 a share, or $28 billion for the company. This much is not speculation: RIM would be a better buy than Yahoo.

Research In Motion's iPhone substitute, the touchscreen-equipped BlackBerry Storm, has debuted. Perhaps a bit hastily. In the U.K., it's sold by Vodafone, which has displayed a page of specifications. The screenshots show the Storm displaying the iPhone's characteristic icons and Apple's Safari Web browser. Has Apple licensed the iPhone's operating system to RIM? No, what this looks like is a rushed-out product launch, and an overeager Web designer. Another shot:

Various agencies in the Indian government — including its intelligence bureau — together have managed to crack Blackberry's encryption to monitor and track the ubiquitous mobile devices. Blackberry users communicating with each other or other devices on most of India's phone networks — though currently not with its state-owned telcos — can be monitored. Research in Motion did not contribute any technical data to the Indian government and has not yet commented. [IT Examiner] (Photo by Editor B)

"You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create," said McCainiac economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, waving a shiny iPhone-like device at reporters. His premise was that McCain's work on the Senate Commerce Committee helped paved the way for breakthroughs in telecommunications. But really, what was he thinking? The AP, pouncing on the obvious comparison to Al Gore's Internet boast, had Holtz-Eakin's quote out on the wires faster than you could thumb-type OMG NO DOUG NO. (Image by Research in Motion)

Now that the McCain campaign has decided on its "all easily disproved lies, all the time" strategy (with, so far, great returns!), they are finding it hard to even come up with relevant or convincing things to lie about. Which is why McCain policy advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin today held aloft his BlackBerry and announced to confused reporters, "you're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create." Wait, what? The AP is already comparing this to Al Gore's "I invented the internet" claim, which as everyone but Maureen Dowd hopefully now knows, was actually mostly true, in that Gore actually said he "took the initiative to create the Internet," in the context of his being the only Senator in the 1980s who kept babbling about the importance of national computer networking initiatives. So by that measure, how true is this? What is the supporting evidence? Ha ha it still seems like crazy bullshit.

Research in Motion — makers of those ubiquitous BlackBerry thumbtypers — is teaming up with TiVo to make applications that lets you schedule TV shows with just your phone. An application to let you access video content saved on your TiVo is also in the works. It's yet another in a wave of "lifestyle" applications recently released by the Canadian mobile device maker, likely an effort to stem corporate users from buying the more flexible, and consumer-friendly, Apple iPhone or new devices with Google's Android mobile operating system. [News.com] (Photo by Marlon E)

You'll be able to hit Tila Tequila from your Bold starting next month, says BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. I found this one-paragraph writeup hiding in a long News.com post on today's doings at CTIA in San Francisco:

Microsoft's new Seinfeld ad campaign proves you can't predict success. Here are five goofy ads that worked — plus the clip that probably sold Microsoft on Seinfeld. Above: A parody of Jacques Cousteau's undersea documentaries for Sun Microsystems.

In between filming scenes for Entourage, Jeremy Piven warned beloved character actor Gary Cole to keep his flirting with female extras to a minimum unless he enjoyed being talked about the Howard Stern show and morning zoo radio shows. Piven said, "There's nothing quite like waking up to a Blackberry full of messages from your buddies on the East Coast talking about how some girl dragged your good name in the mud before getting on the Sybian or letting Beetlejuice throw lunch meat at her ass on the Stern show." Cole thanked Piven for the advice and told him that it wouldn't be an issue, seeing as how he's married.

"BlackBerry is the only way to go ... the rest are for kids," says one of the 400 comments to Web Worker Daily's thorough comparison of iPhone 3G's pros and cons versus a BlackBerry for use on the job. iPhone crazies are everywhere, so in response I've summarized Web Worker's pro-BlackBerry argument for those of us who pay the mortgage with a road-battered 8703e.

An interesting philosophical question: Should employees get paid overtime for checking their BlackBerries outside work hours? Money-grubbing writers at ABC News say "Yes." Money-grubbing executives at ABC say "No." We say: throw away your BlackBerry and it becomes a moot point.

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

Canadian smartphone maker Research in Motion (RIM) announced a new $150 million Blackberry Partners Fund which includes private Canadian investors, RBC and Thomson Reuters. The fund will focus on companies building technology that works with RIM's popular BlackBerry mobile devices. And it raises the question: Why isn't the large installed base of BlackBerry devices motivation enough for developers? [PEHub]

Drew Barrymore recently complained to friends over her dissatisfaction with her iPhone. The Charlie's Angels star doesn't have the heart to tell her boyfriend, Mac Spokesperson Justin Long, that she wants to go back to her old phone. Barrymore explained that she enjoys watching YouTube videos like the sneezing panda whenever she feels blue its just that her Blackberry is her Blackberry and she needs it back. One of Barrymore's friend thought that the iPhone and the Blackberry pretty much did the same thing to which an angry Barrymore replied, "The iPhone is good and all, but the Blackberry is like the phone that God would use if God ever had to make a conference call."

Visto CEO Brian Bogosian likes to tell reporters to expect an IPO soon. But first: layoffs. The mobile email company will cut its London workforce by a third, laying off "senior IT staff, development, product services and pre-sales workers," reports the Register.

Yahoo News has a lot of stories on its tech page. There's a link to the Microsoft-Yahoo "standoff" and a story about Nokia adding Google to its mobile phones, but Yahoo's top-of-the-fold most-important tech story of the day? Yesterday's BlackBerry outage. We wonder if a producer at Yahoo News was still peeved, a day later, that he couldn't see if Elise Vanderhof had emailed him back yet.