Blackberries and unobtrusive Facebook status updates

One nice feature of my Blackberry Pearl is that it has downloadable applications.

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Of course, one of them is the Facebook app. It's nice, because you don't have to go onto a website to use facebook. For example, with three key presses I get a list of all my friends' Facebook status updates.

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Because of the convenience, the concept Facebook status updates takes on a new meaning.

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The problem with current facebook "status updates" is that every time you update your status it broadcasts a message to all your friends' newsfeeds. So I'm not likely to blackberry-update my status every time I head to my office, the library, MIT, the swimming pool, poker games, ect.

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I'd prefer it if there was a way for me to update my status passively. Then, for example, my friends could unobtrusively check who's going to lunch soon, who's off at a talk at MIT, or who's asleep, ect. It would be more convenient than, for example, taking a peak in someone's office to see if they're around or interrupting everyone to see if they're hungry for lunch. (The privacy issues are taken care of by my facebook privacy settings, and hopefully it will become more customizable so that some friends can see some kinds of status updates.)

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I also wouldn't mind if my family and some of my friends could see a GPS map of where my cellphone was. (This would be very useful, actually. I might even be able to hunt down an unwitting Blackberry thief that way.)

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Hopefully, this sort of use of multiple daily small status updates will be common when everyone carries around some sort of portable computer that looks like a cellphone. Maybe somebody should write a new facebook app for unobtrusive status updates.

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BTW, I got my Blackberry for free with my two-year T-mobile contract, but I had to do some searching to find the offer. (T-mobile wanted me to pay a few hundred dollars for the phone, but I checked all the third-party offers in the GOOGLE sponsored adds until I found the free phone, a rebate, and exactly the same monthly charges.)