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Cyberbridge - your probably coolest and cheapest way to experience a cyberdeck

Cyberbridge - your probably coolest and cheapest way to experience a cyberdeck

introduction

For about two years now, I've developed a curiosity for obsolete technical devices. I enjoy experimenting with them to see if they are truly outdated or if their charm can be made somewhat usable again with a bit of technical know-how and the established programs or protocols that were commonplace in their time.

Blackberry

Almost one year after I started to understand the fundamentals of the Internet, I wanted to own a phone with a physical keyboard again.

Not because I was addicted to social media, wanted to reduce screen time, or anything. It was truly out of curiosity, as in late 2024 all the current new and flashy implementations of a somewhat modern phone with a keyboard were already more than obsolete.

Long story short, I got myself a Blackberry KeyOne, and while I enjoyed using it the first couple of months, there were many reasons why this was not the device I desired.

I went down the rabbit hole a bit deeper and reached what I searched for.

Blackberry's last attempt to not get drowned by iOS and Android.

The ones which came into my, and maybe even your, target are:

Bridges

Bridges are, for me personally, one of the coolest and most exciting ways of communicating with almost all of my contacts.

Let's take the matrix.org coolest selling point and why you may consider using it. It gives you the ability to send messages in private conversations and group conversations to WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Discord, IRC, and many, many more.

It's basically Thunderbird but for real-time communication, where you decide from which client, operating system, terminal-hell, even Amiga-to communicate with your friends, family, and social groups.

As long as you find a sane or even obscure way to get a connection to your main protocol, you are good to go.

Just to get things out of the way.

Two things to consider if you are interested in experimenting with this topic.

  1. There is always a risk of getting rate-limited or even banned from the platform we are creating a connection to. Though, from my experience, as long as you do not start abusing your account-personally, I experienced a rate limit from Instagram. After that, I just disconnected my personal account from the bridge, and I can still use it. On top of that, the most important bridges for me, like WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, and Signal, worked without any problems.
  2. As we work here with devices that haven't received any software and especially security updates, there is-depending on the device and, of course, common sense-always a risk of getting pwned somehow. Please, please do not use this guide and service as a way to replace your current up-to-date device. I personally do important stuff on my workstation and laptop, as I rarely use my smartphone, do not enjoy using it, and if I have to, then just to get the task done. Besides that, when I do anything on these devices, I try to always follow best practices, and if I have to lower the security at some point to be able to connect and interact from the Blackberry Classic, for example, I reevaluate the risks, the settings, and the service itself.

Current state of bridges

Maybe worth noting, the bridge I currently use for my Blackberry Classic has been in development for over two decades.

The concept of bridges was really common until almost every current popular messenger made it harder; fewer people kept working on them, and they slowly died.

Somehow, in the last few years, if you get into this topic, you can notice more developers allowing access again.

Utilizing Matrix

While Matrix has the most diversity and maybe, in its current state, the best ecosystem, if you want to dip your toes into this topic, it's the coolest start.

Sadly, with Matrix's modern approaches and the currently supported ways (which are just the enshittification of developers' minds), it's not possible-at least directly-to connect to the Matrix protocol. Still, it's possible, which I will come back to later.

slidge.im

Very similar to Matrix's approach but backed by, I think, one developer and some contributors, it's an ecosystem of bridges for the XMPP protocol.

I do love the XMPP protocol. While being more than two decades old, it's stable and lightweight even for the current age and time. Still, sadly, when I tried to use it in combination with the Slidge WhatsApp bridge, it always reached a point where I would send back to my receivers the messages they had sent me. Maybe it got better. If you are interested in contributing in any form to this project, I don't think the maintainer will bite you!

Bitlbee

This is the bridge I was teasing the whole time. If you want a history lesson about BitlBee, here you go!

It's an-at least for me-insane project!

I currently have set up a bridge to WhatsApp. I receive native notifications on my device, and it has been, until now, the best state in terms of bridging messages to my Blackberry Classic.

From my personal experience, if WhatsApp works flawlessly together with native notifications, then you can be sure it will work for other services for at least a sustainable time, and if things do break and I can contribute in some way to a solution, I will do that!

How I utilize my Blackberry Classic together with bridges

and much, much more.

I do acknowledge all the new and fancy devices with keyboards slapped on them. Some of them are interesting and cool, but for me at least, from my current standpoint, there are many reasons why I stay away from them.

For me, at least, if I may speak openly, they are clout-chasing, a money grab, and, most importantly, promising-maybe actively, maybe passively-false hopes to their customers. I also acknowledge that everyone, even me, needs money to live.

Though from my point of view, there are countless ways of achieving that, and not everything has to be for the money.

I think cyberspace is one of the few chances where we can have a great time together, help each other out, gain knowledge, and utilize this platform to the fullest.

How can you contribute?

I would start by getting an overview of people who are interested in this topic in general. As BitlBee is working, from my experience, in a somewhat stable way, I would even go so far as to say that we are not limited to Blackberry but to every device that runs a platform called J2ME. If you own such a device and are interested in testing out a connection to my-or even your own-BitlBee instance, let's go!

Everything will, of course, be released under a Free and Open Source license.

I will also provide my own personal instance for anyone from this community for free, with my best efforts to keep everything safe and sound for everyone. If you have concerns, which I can fully understand and respect, I am also going to provide, in the future, a way to make the whole setup as easy and guided as possible. Though these are plans for the future. For now, let's see what the general interest in this topic is.

I will also link the blog post of my personal site here if you are interested in more obscure topics that I discover in general.

You may feel free to respond here or through CMail. Otherwise, if you insist on contacting me off-platform, there will be ways. Though we have the whole service and infrastructure here, so let's utilize it.