Nerd News: BBM VOIP WiFi Only Beta

Press Release from RIM:  http://press.rim.com/newsroom/press/2012/bbm-now-lets-you-have-voice-chats-for-free-over-wi-fi.html

RIM has released a Beta of BBM (Blackberry Messenger) that supports VOIP between BBM users over WiFi.

The Beta is available here https://beta.webapps.blackberry.com/login/

From the press release "BBM version 7 with the new BBM Voice feature is currently available in Beta for BlackBerry smartphones running the BlackBerry® 6 OS or higher."

I have a Blackberry Bold 9780, though I am planning on switching to a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 this Christmas, in large part because I don't have a lot of hope that Blackberry will survive their business mistakes.

I would be happy to be wrong about this, because I really like several features that Blackberry phones have, that no one else does.

Their security is a big one, though newer iPhones (iPhone 4S or newer) have good enough security to replace that functionality.

I also really like the optical track pad of newer Blackberry's, for me that works a lot better than touchscreens, this is a big part of the reason I am going to the Galaxy Note II, the Stylus will provide precision, that I can't get otherwise with touchscreens.

BBM is the third big thing I will miss about Blackberry, if your not familiar with it, it works like Skype Chat, though probably a bit more secure than Microsoft's Skype, considering the news about Skype's password reset hack.

I have been looking at PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) to replace that element.

Nerd Gear: NSA builds Android phone for top secret calls & so can you?

I saw this article from SC Magazine,  about the US Government building secure phones with off the shelf Android components.

The NSA page about the secure phones with Secure VoIP is here http://www.nsa.gov/ia/programs/mobility_program/index.shtml

While this PDF spells out the requirements http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/Mobility_Capability_Pkg_%28Version_1.1U%29.pdf

Supposedly anyone could build something similar from these specifications, though I think it would take a bit of work, a certain minimum skill level, not to mention some specific knowledge and funds.

Also a key part to this working with Android phones is a clean vetted app store, not sure how many people would have one of those in their basement.

But I am sure some computer, Ham, & cryptography geeks will try their hands at this.