UK faces BlackBerry outage again

UK faces BlackBerry outage again

BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) has issued a statement apologising for yet another service outage across the UK, Europe and the Middle East.

RIM said: “We are currently experiencing a BlackBerry service issue affecting some users in Europe, Middle East & Africa. All relevant support teams are working to resolve the issue. We apologise to any customers who may be affected.”

The ailing smartphone company has had a number of high profile outages and is facing commercial pressure from Apple and Android smartphones that are capable of providing "good-enough" email security for all but the most security-conscious IT environments.

In October 2011, users experienced the largest outage in the history of the BlackBerry service. The three-day outage affected major businesses and government departments that rely on RIM's enterprise messaging service to deliver mobile email.

This latest services distribution could put into question whether businesses should rely on BlackBerry smartphones, due to the single point of failure within RIM's network and IT infrastructure.

In the past, users relied on the BlackBerry service – which has proven to be highly resilient – due to the high-level of security offered through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The service was certified by the CESG, the UK Government's National Technical Authority for Information Assurance, for restricted data access within the government. But Apple and Android are working towards certification and these outages increase the pressure on RIM.

RIM plans new contact management features on BB10 devices

RIM plans new contact management features on BB10 devices

Research In Motion plans to provide BlackBerry users with an easy way to tap their contacts' public profiles including blog posts, tweets, emails and other details in its latest push to regain ground in the smartphone market.

The new contact management feature, which pulls in contact details from social media and other Internet sites into a single Blackberry page, will be available on RIM's next generation of smartphones that are set to launch early next year, the company said on Thursday.

RIM has seen its once dominant position in the smartphone market slip away to rivals including Apple Inc and Samsung  and the company's fate depends on the success of the BB10 devices.

"BlackBerry has always had this heritage of productivity ... We are just going to make it better yet again, when we launch BB10," said T.A. McCann, who is spearheading the development of the contacts and BlackBerry Messenger applications for the new platform.

The new smartphones that will replace RIM's current line-up of aging devices will run on the BlackBerry 10 operating system that is currently in development.

McCann said the built-in contacts app on BB10 will aggregate all contact information, status updates and meetings for a contact in one place. It will also pull in any current status updates from contacts on Facebook, Twitter and other places giving users a wealth of up-to-date information on their contacts.

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM is hoping that its new line of devices will help it regain market share that has been ceded to snazzier devices such as Apple's iPhone and others that run on Google Inc's Android operating system.

McCann, who was the founder and Chief Executive of Seattle-based Gist that was acquired by RIM in early 2011, promises that BlackBerry users will get to enjoy many of Gist's innovative contact management ideas on the new BB10 platform.

McCann said many of the features have already been built into the contact management system on the latest version of the operating system that powers RIM's PlayBook tablet device.

BlackBerry Blade Smartphone Concept

BlackBerry Blade Smartphone Concept

BlackBerry Blade Smartphone Concept design has a slight curved and the main Touchscreen slides upward in order to reveal the familiar BlackBerry key pad. But there are also fixed buttons below the Touchscreen in addition to a track pad. BlackBerry Blade can be connected to some other devices using the MicroVGA, MicroHDMI or even Micro USB ports and the Blade comes having a MicroSD slot for expanded memory. The smartphone can also handle each HTML5 and Adobe Flash in addition to employing a 4G LTE connection to download content on the smartphone.

Delayed BlackBerry 10 smartphones adding video chat

Delayed BlackBerry 10 smartphones adding video chat, CEO says..

 BlackBerry 10 smartphones, slated to come in early 2013, will rely heavily on improved BlackBerry Messenger social networking tools, including new video chat capabilities, Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins told shareholders during a sometimes acrimonious annual meeting on Tuesday.

       "BlackBerry Messenger is a very strong platform in Asia, Africa and Europe, and we're upgrading it with video chat in BlackBerry 10," Heins said during a question-and-answer session at the shareholder meeting, which was Webcast.

By some measures and in some geographies, Heins claimed, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) is the "number one social network."

(The newest member of the RIM board is Timothy Dattels, a senior partner at TPG Capital, and a former managing director of Goldman Sachs.

The other eight directors approved by shareholders on Tuesday are: David Kerr, a director since 2007; Claudia Kotchka, first elected last July; RIM co-founder and foirmer CEO Mike Lazaridis, a director since 1984; Roger Martin, first elected in 2007; John Richardson, a director since 2003; Barbara Stymiest, who joined the board in 2007; Prem Watsa, elected in January; John Wetmore, a director since 2007; and Heins, elected in January.)