Apparently, the Indian government can’t crack 256-bit encryption to read protected e-mails on Research In Motion BlackBerrys. It appears RIM is willing to lend a hand, by handing over its (your) keys.

According to this story, which ran in The Economic Times, there’s been somewhat of a riff between the Indian Department of Telecom and RIM over BlackBerry’s inherently robust (until now) encryption.

Apparently, the Indian government can only break crypto if it’s 40 bits, or less. So they asked RIM to fork over the keys that make it possible to decrypt the messages or reduce BlackBerry crypto to 49 bits.

From the story:

According to officials close to the development, Canadian High Commissioner David Malone and RIM officials met telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura on May 7. “It was explained by RIM that it should be possible for the government to monitor e-mails to nonbusiness enterprise customers,” sources told ET. “RIM is considering giving access to individual users’ e-mail to the government. Details on this will be provided in two or three weeks,” sources said.

So it appears, for now, that corporate users don’t have as much to be concerned with.

RIM doesn’t have much more to say on the issue:

A RIM spokesperson said: “RIM operates in more than 135 countries around the world and respects the regulatory requirements of governments. RIM does not comment on confidential regulatory matters or speculation on such matters in any given country.”

I hope RIM grows more of a backbone and “respects” the privacy and security needs of its customers.

Once the keys are public, how long before the cryptography scheme is broken? How long before they’re sold to criminals? And where does this stop? Are keys going to be made available to any government that asks?

Google’s only goal: Improve user experience. How does it do that?

According to Udi Manber, VP of engineering at Google, Search Quality, it is a heck of a lot of work. Google improves its search algorithms an average of nine times per week. Here’s why.

Google’s Udi Manber published a massive blog post about what exactly is going on behind Google’s closed doors. It is an interesting read. I invite you to check the entire post out here.

Below are some points I thought were most interesting. Read the rest of this entry…

Yesterday, reports were surfacing that the iPhone had been completely sold out at the U.S. and U.K. online Apple stores. Apple confirmed the reports. No more iPhone for you.

In an un-Apple like announcement, the company admitted that it has run out of iPhones at its own online store in both the U.S. and the U.K. Anyone interested in buying an iPhone online will need to go through other channels.

Apple did say that the iPhone is still available at brick-and-mortar stores, as well as at AT&T Mobility retail shops.

The company didn’t comment on the reasons for the shortages at the online store, nor if stocks will be replenished. The fact that Apple said to go to its retail outlets instead suggests that it won’t be stocking back up.

This is yet another sign that the 3G iPhone is nearly at hand.

One of my favorite features of Gmail is how easy it is to search through your e-mails to find what you want/need.

Sometimes, though, you need to be really specific. Google has some search tips that let you quickly narrow your search down to just a handful of results.

I don’t delete e-mails. I also don’t download them to my PC. I let all 12,000 conversations in my Gmail account just sit there, taking up some 1.2 GB on Google’s servers.

Why? So they are always stored in one, searchable location: the cloud. This way, I have access to every single e-mail from just about any device I might have.

This would be a pretty useless endeavor if I couldn’t search through them quickly. For the most part, I can.

If I need to find an e-mail from a particular person, I just type that person’s name, and every e-mail that person has sent me shows up. Even if that includes dozens or even hundreds of e-mails, chances are I can find the exact one I need pretty fast.

According to The Official Gmail Blog, the real power of Gmail lies in search operators. Search operators help modify a query and narrow down the results.

“Search operators work pretty much the same way within Gmail as they do for Google. So, if I want the e-mail Lisa sent me with her flight information so I know when to pick her up at the airport, I type from:lisa SFO.

You can limit the scope of your search to a particular subject (subject:) or label (label:) as well.

If remembering operators isn’t really your thing, that’s OK. There’s a ‘Show search options’ link to the right of the search bar at the top of your in-box.”

That lets you set parameters of a more advanced search.

I tried these out, and they really do help a lot. Remember, search operators = cool tool for searching Gmail.

Here is an awesome remake of the Lightcycle scene from TRON comeplete with the soundtrack taken from the film by Steven Lisberger:

Stop motion and animation is so cool. You just gotta love fellow geeks with too much time on their hands.

Tron is in my top 10 movie list for sure. I think tonight I’ll watch the DVD now that I’m thinking about it.

Cortado Connect and Box.net are giving users of BlackBerry smartphones 1 GB of free online storage for pictures, files, music, whatever. If you want more storage, however, you’ll have to cough up some dough. It’s sort of like a mini-FTP for your phone. Check it out.

Box.net offers the free online storage to just about anyone. Simply sign up and away you go. For 1 GB of storage, there is no charge. For 5 GB, you can pay $8 per month, and for 15 GB it is $20 per month. The free version caps file sizes at 10 MB, but the two for-pay options don’t have caps on file size uploads.

Here’s how it works. The Cortado Connect software is an Internet storage solution optimized for BlackBerry users with BlackBerry Internet Service. With the software, BlackBerry users can manage their local and online storage, with the ability to transfer files between them directly from their handset. Users can store music, video, and documents to their hearts content (as long as it’s 1 GB worth of content).

The steps to sign up are pretty simple. Go to Box.net and sign up for a free account. Download and install the Cortado client on your BlackBerry. Use Cortado Connect to access your Box.net account, and begin managing your files.

Once you’ve done that, you can set up shared folders with colleagues or friends to swap files. This can make it truly useful when it is too difficult to send files from phone to phone via e-mail or MMS.

Cortado also makes similar clients for Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian devices. If the storage capacities offered from Box.net aren’t enough for you, it also offers enterprise support and services.