August 3, 2010 | Awake & Dreaming

BlackBerry and AT&T have introduced the BlackBerry Torch, a smartphone that AT&T’s President and CEO of Mobility and Consumer Markets Ralph de la Vega calls “the best BlackBerry device ever.”

RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis describes the device as the first “touch qwerty slider” for BlackBerry, meaning it features both a slide out keyboard and a touch screen. It’s also the first smartphone from RIM that uses a webkit browser (which the company got with its acquisition of Torch Mobile).

The device also features a 5 megapixel camera with flash, and is the first BlackBerry to ship with version 6 of the company’s operating system.

We’re at an event live in New York City where AT&T and RIM are unveiling the device. We’ll be updating this post live with the details.

Here are some of the new features the companies showed off and described as “fresh, but familiar”:

Redesigned homescreen

Notification previews: a tap on a notification provides you with more details about it.
Additional content and views: put individual bookmarks and contacts on the homescreen, plus swipe actions that let users navigate between frequently used items.
Universal search: searches all of the content on your device — e-mails, texts, BBMs, calendar appointments, etc. — plus the web.

Media features

View pictures by folder or date.
Ability to select multiple pictures at once via touchscreen: you can then share them with friends or move them to different folders.
Geolocation: camera names pictures based on where you are according to the device’s GPS.
Podcast app: subscribe, download and listen to podcasts
Wi-fi music sync: see your entire library of music on your device
Unified social feeds: an aggregation of feeds from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.

via Mashable

I forgot one more aspect of yesterday. As none of my team members with whom I had dinner last evening drink any sort of alcohol in any form, I had to host the dinner in a place that does not serve said drinks. This is a sad fact of life but one that I had accepted. They also do not like me drinking, even though truth be said, I drink very moderately in the past few months.

So the plan was to have dinner with the team and then head to a bar. However, I had this huge package with me, the big wall hanging thingy which they gifted me, and carrying it into a bar would be funny. So I thought that I’d just go home – but not drink on my birthday? WTF? Don’t worry, I had a backup plan in my mind.

See my dad had got this bottle of Crown Royal Whiskey a few weeks ago and I thought, well I’d steal borrow some. Now, I’m not usually a whiskey drinker although I did like Glenfiddich single malts a couple of times and the occasional Johnny Walker. But there was nothing else and so whiskey it was. I bought a half liter of Pepsi from the store right next to my apartment and came home. Got some ice and poured a 60ml of the stuff into ay glass and then a liberal splashing of Pepsi.

Smooth Canadian rye whiskey goes down well. I liked it a lot. I had two glasses of the stuff at my laptop while listening to tunes. A perfect end to a very nice birthday.