Feeling the urge to check your Blackberry during meetings? Many people find this disruptive and disrespectful. One company, DDB Canada, is now implementing a penalty card system as found in soccer.

“Over the past year, I’ve become increasingly aware of and annoyed by staff who use their BlackBerries during meetings,” says Frank Palmer, chairman and CEO of DDB Canada. “Whether it’s done openly or covertly under the table, using a PDA during a meeting is completely unacceptable, disrespectful and hinders the progress of the meeting. While these devices are considered time-savers, they’re also extremely intrusive.”

Colleagues will show the yellow card to first offenders, followed by a red card for repeat misconduct. Receiving a red card results in the employee footing that month’s mobile services bill.

Technorati Tags: blackberry, etiquette

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Just in case there has been any doubt, here is another example of how all electronic communications can be used in court. This eWeek article covers the recent subpoena issued by New York City, to obtain text-messaging records and recipient information related to protests during the Republican National Convention in July of 2004. The event was orchestrated through the now infamous TXTmob tool, which was created by Tad Hirsch, a doctorial candidate at MIT.

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Coincidently, a couple of days after I had posted the blog entry about spammers now targeting cell phones, I received a couple of unsolicited text messages. I don’t really use texting, since I have a Blackberry and prefer email and IM instead. Consequently I don’t subscribe to any texting plan. I had previously made a mental note to check what anti-spam tools my cell carrier - Verizon - had available to control the inbound text message stream. Now was a good time to follow-up on that.

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It was just a matter of time before spammers would try to exploit the fast growth of text- and email-enabled cell phones. The Washington Post picked up on the issue of text-message spam in this article earlier this week. While many of us are enjoying the benefits and convenience of BlackBerrys, iPhones and other SMS capable devices, scammers are already working hard on ways to get their unsolicited offers for questionable wares to our phones.

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As the readers of this blog already know, email has become business critical for most companies. That means even the slightest disruption or delay in email delivery or problems with employees’ access to their mailboxes have significant impact on worker productivity and a company’s bottom line.

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JetBlue announced last week that it would start offering free Wifi Internet access on selected routes as early as this week. This is welcome news to all email addicts, including me. As part of the Beta, the airline equipped one of its Airbus 320 airplanes so that passengers will be able to connect to the plane’s wireless access points just as they would on the ground.

“The New York-based airline will offer free limited service Tuesday on Flight 641 from JFK International Airport to San Francisco International. The return flight, Flight 644, leaves San Francisco at 12:25 p.m. A spokesman for JetBlue said it had not determined on which route the plane, a 150-passenger Airbus A320, will fly after Tuesday.”

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