A lot has happened during these last few weeks between posts. Mostly, I’ve been busy with Metalab, helping develop the website for the new start-up, Mogulus, that lets users create “TV Channels” online using their own content and content from YouTube. I recommend applying for access to the Beta1 site.

Also, during these past few weeks, I replaced my two-year-old cellphone with the very new and very sleek, BlackBerry Pearl, which I found for a very very good price ($99cad).

I’ve never owned a smart phone before. I’ve always wanted to but I’ve been saving myself for the infamous iPhone, which I plan on scooping up the second it’s released in the ever-neglected country, Canada.

The Pearl has a very interesting UI. I say UI and not GUI because the UI is hardly graphical, save the Applications menu and Home Screen. Though I would prefer the graphic-heavy GUI of the iPhone, the Pearl’s UI is a refreshing change of pace from my past phone experiences.

On the Pearl, as soon as you leave the colourful, icon-based Home Screen or Application menu, you are presented with black text on a white background; that’s it. It is the most simplified UI I have ever seen on a phone. It’s like removing the stlyesheet from this page. In fact, WAP browsers are more colourful than the Pearl UI.

This isn’t a bad thing though. My last phone had this desire to always dazzle me with slow-paced animations of animals and trees in an attempt to distract me from its lacking functionality and useless attempts at being my Camera, Phone, Gameboy, and iPod.

There was no way for me to NOT see a butterfly flapping its wings or autumn leaves gliding through the air while traversing the main menu, it just couldn’t be done. The whole time I was thinking, “I better enjoy this National Geographic animation while my battery lasts”; the animations were actually sponsored by National Geographic, by the way.

The Pearl’s UI, however, is for the business person. It’s for a person comfortable with the dreariness of a grey Windows 98′ VB interface. It’s for the person who has to use a computer, who has to use a cellphone.

The developers behind this UI seem to have decided that battery life and speed are more important than flowery images and animations. My hat goes off to them. The Pearl’s battery life is incredible and there is no such thing as “loading…” in this world, save the WAP browser.