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Did You Know RIM Won An Oscar?

That's right, the maker of BlackBerry won an Academy Award in 1998 for a digital film bar-code reader. This was just one of the many facts I didn't know about Research In Motion, but an upcoming book is chock-full of so much BlackBerry goodness that it should satisfy the most ardent CrackBerry addict.

Alastair Sweeny is working on a comprehensive history of the company behind the BlackBerry, and he's created a wiki to promote the upcoming book. From the sample chapter that's online right now, it looks like it will be an interesting read as it covers how the company formed, product design, funding, how the devices were used during Sept. 11, and even the genesis of the BlackBerry name. Here's a portion of the sample chapter:

Mike Lazaridis had a hunch his new baby needed a proper name, instead of calling it the RIM 950, RIM 960, RIM 970 ... and so on. In 1998 he contacted Lexicon Branding, the Sausalito, Calif., marketing firm that had crafted such brands as the Apple PowerBook laptop and Intel Pentium processor.

Lexicon President David Placek remembers being very impressed with the device. He told Mike that the 950 device deserved a name and personality of its own. "We wanted to give them a great name, which could really help them. At that time, they were going up against the pagers, and everybody had a pager ... You need to have a really distinctive name. And let the operating companies, like AT&T, let them have the more conservative and descriptive names. But I had a sense that this was going to be a really good product."[27]

"We looked at the form," says Placek, "and, with all the little buttons on there, began to create metaphors. We looked at the world of fruit because it does, from a distance, look like it could be some kind of fruit. Also, BlackBerry is a very friendly, approachable name. And it must have worked for RIM, because I keep seeing these things everywhere."

Feel free to read the rest of the chapter here, and travel back to a time when we didn't have our e-mail always at our fingertips. I'll be sure to get an advance copy of the book before its 2009 release, and hopefully will interview the author.

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