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So what gives with Blackberry? Yet another e-mail outage for crackberry addicts in the US, only the second major outage in 10 months according news sources (I actually count three, but then who’s counting? One is one too many).

What’s worse is that people can’t seem to agree on how long the outage has been going on, or even if it’s still underway. According to Blackberry:

RIM said in a later statement that data services in the Americas experienced delays on late Monday afternoon, around 3.30 p.m. Eastern time, but were restored in the early evening at around 6.30 p.m.

But some users claim the outage began as early as Saturday, February 8, and some are still complaining that they’re out today.

This has been beaten to death on other blogs and news sites, but I think it bears repeating: these outages indicate that something is VERY wrong with RIM’s strategy of centralizing their push e-mail solution. All of North America’s Blackberry users – regardless of whether they’re on Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, Fido, Rogers, Telcel, Pegaso or wherever – are relying on a single data center in Waterloo, Ontario. Government agencies are especially heavy users of Blackberry services, and I bet it’s more than just an inconvenience to them when the services go offline.

Haven’t we learned by now that a distributed network of data centers, or at least a backup data center that’s geographically isolated from the first, is a prudent idea?

For those blackberry users who are interested (or even those who just want to gawk at their crackberry-addicted friends when the lights go out), there is a cottage industry of sorts in documenting Blackberry network outages, and distributing alerts to those who are suddenly left wondering why their e-mail pals don’t love them anymore. Dataoutages.com is a website solely focused on cataloging and reporting Blackberry network outages, and has a miling list that anyone can subscribe to. Given the frequency that these outages are starting to happen, it might be a good idea for crackberry addicts everywhere to join up and be informed.

A week ago, it was the Detroit Mayor gettin’ jiggy on America’s text messaging airwaves. This week, it’s Britney’s boyfriend wannabes.

Yes, I invoked Britney. Why, you ask, are people so stupidly obsessed with what’s going on with this ditz while there’s a war on AND an election on? Simple: Britney’s public flameouts have become one massive, slowly and dramatically unrolling train wreck, and it’s difficult NOT to notice a trainwreck. Not to mention it’s happening to someone who was the idol of teenyboppers everywhere just a few years ago, and who guys lusted after. Until these two douches took it upon themselves to wreck her mind and turned her into this blubbering, head-shaving, kid-custody-losing, umbrella-busting mess.

But I’m not interested in that, specifically. What I AM interested in is the little text-message tiff between the two douche-suitors, that the Paparazzi picked up on, thanks to the gignormous screen on one of the douche’s very-photogenic iPhone.

Recommendation: as you read the text messages, be sure to play the iPhone theme song in the background. Because that’s how iPhone likes it, buddy.

Advice to scummy hollywood-hipster types: If you’re boffing an insane celebrity with a jealous equally-scummy agent, please make sure that your chic candy-phone is concealed from prying camera lenses when you’re exchanging NON-kissy-poo messages about who is better entitled to be a bad influence.

Because drama on iPhones makes the baby Steve Jobs cry.

Rumors abound that Windows Vista SP1 is coming out today. Not feature-heavy, the focus is supposed to be on stability and security.

Will Vista finally seem stable? Perhaps today we’ll find out. Apparently it does fix somethign that I ran into myself: invalidating legitimately-licensed copies of the OS:

SP1 will eliminate the so-called ‘kill switch’ in the Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy tool, which forces the OS into reduced functionality mode if it fails to pass periodic system checks, and has flagged legitimate versions of the OS as pirated on several occasions.

Seriously, nothing like paying $400+ for an OS “upgrade,” and then be treated like a criminal by MS tech support a year later because all you did is change a video card. All while the real pirates have hacked their copies and are computing along activation-free.

UPDATE: Well, as it turns out Service Pack 1 is ready to roll, but only being launched to manufacturing at this time. This means that Vendors such as Dell will have DVDs with the upgrades slipstreamed into the installation programs. The public at large will still have to suffer until sometime in March.

What I’m hearing about SP1 isn’t very heartening though:

All this comes with a caveat, however. Nash said Microsoft has learned that Vista SP1 is not compatible with “a small set of device drivers” used by some PCs. Vista SP1 won’t install on those PCs until an update is available for the drivers, Nash said.

Greeeeat. I wonder how “small” this set of drivers actually is, and whether Microsoft may grace us with a fix at some point.

Bah, what I do I care? I’m switching to Mac! 🙂

Did you ever own one of the above two Smartphones, the Treo 600 or 650?

Like most people (including myself), if you had one of these devices, you were probably enthralled at how awesome it looked and how great it appeared to work. This euphoria probably lasted for a couple of days or even a week. Until one day, your Treo rebooted, randomly, for no reason at all. Then it would keep rebooting… sometimes once a day at a completely random time, again for no apparent reason. Maybe even during a call or when trying to send or receive a text message…. whoops! Reboot time. And then there’s the pinnacle of crashes: the imfamous infinite reset loop, where before you even get a chance to do anything, the phone will simply reboot over and over and over and over and over and over and over…
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