I am curious as to what happened to people during this latest outage. How did you handle the outage? If your story is interesting enough I will republish it later in the day.

I was actually stuck out in the middle of New Jersey trying to pull up Google Maps to get some directions. Sadly it did not work. On top of that I happened to be in a car with two other people who both had Windows Mobile Treos which worked just fine. I sadly had to use Windows Live to (badly) find my way to the nearest subway station.

I really hope RIM actually fixes the issues this time. We are getting to the point where we have 4–5 major outages a year. That is just pitiful in respect to the rock solid reliability that sells the BlackBerry platform.

Some sources are reporting the outage to be over in certain areas. I can confirm that I have been getting email in batches from AT&T and Sprint in NYC on both BES and BIS for the last half an hour. Still no word from RIM…

FYI from RIM previously. I forgot to include it in the last post:

BlackBerry subscribers may be unable to send or receive messages. Subscribers may also be unable to register their device, roam in another location, or use other services such as Internet browsing.

BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers may be unable to use the BlackBerry Internet Service web site or perform activities such as creating new accounts, accessing their Internet mailbox, integrating third-party email accounts, or viewing email attachments.

Devices may not receive new service books. BlackBerry Connect and BlackBerry-enabled devices that require a new PIN may be unable to receive the PIN.

BlackBerry Enterprise Servers may be unable to connect to the BlackBerry Infrastructure.

Wireless service providers and device resellers may be unable to use BlackBerry administration web sites or perform activities such as creating subscriber accounts or provisioning services for subscribers.

Hasn’t RIM ever thought of redundancy? This is really starting to get old! I thought we were past these blackouts?

Many of us thought life was going well today when we were not receiving emails all afternoon. Some even thought they may have a chance to get out of the office early. It turns out that RIM had a critical BlackBerry outage all afternoon. Once again all of RIM’s big clients got the below email telling them about the outage. All the rest of us got the shaft and nothing else. Would it really kill RIM to send out an ALL CLEAR email when an outage is over? Maybe even a way to send an SOS message or let users know on their handhelds that RIM is having an issue?

Well the outage is over according to all reports. Emails sent during the outage are finally starting to trickle in. No official word from RIM about the outage has been released so it could still continue. I wonder what it was this time. Below you can see the email RIM sent out to the “privileged” customers. 

Blackberry Outage

A component of the network infrastructure is experiencing a service interruption.

Service Affected: BlackBerry All service for some *The Americas Network (MULT) subscribers in the following locations: The Americas,

Summary: BlackBerry Network Infrastructure

Impact: BlackBerry subscribers may be unable to send or receive messages. Subscribers may also be unable to register their device, roam in another location, or use other services such as Internet browsing.
BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers may be unable to use the BlackBerry Internet Service web site or perform activities such as creating new accounts, accessing their Internet mailbox, integrating third-party email accounts, or viewing email attachments.
Devices may not receive new service books. BlackBerry Connect and BlackBerry-enabled devices that require a new PIN may be unable to receive the PIN.
BlackBerry Enterprise Servers may be unable to connect to the BlackBerry Infrastructure.
Wireless service providers and device resellers may be unable to use BlackBerry administration web sites or perform activities such as creating subscriber accounts or provisioning services for subscribers. [0491]

Ticket Number: BB90352

Incident Window Start Date and Time: 11 February 2008 15:20:00 (EST)
 Downtime Duration: Ongoing
 % of Subscribers Affected: 50.00 (estimated)

Usually we would not cover such a thing but I actually was actually surprised when I read this little tidbit on BoyGenius.com. It seems like Microsoft is buying out Danger Inc. I guess that means that the Danger OS will be going the way of the wind. I wonder what a Windows Mobile Danger handheld would look like. I just hope this does not mean the rebirth of Windows CE.

So another smartphone(ish) OS will probably bite the dust soon. Maybe Microsoft will use the danger form factor to appeal to a larger consumer audience that may shy away from a traditional Windows Mobile device. You can read more about it at www.hiptop3.com. Or just read the press release. I love the line “uncompromised application software and powerful back-end service.” Who is Danger kidding? Uncompromised? Powerful?

Image courtesy of the great BoyGenius Mockup crew

Personally I think this is a move WebMessenger should have made ages ago. They are now offering their WebMessenger Mobile IM application for free! WebMessenger was the first IM client that I remember for BlackBerry devices back in 2000. WebMessenger allows you to login to AIM, Google, MSN, and Yahoo from your BlackBerry!

Pretty cool and now it is free! I guess they are hoping to create a grassroots campaign to convince businesses to buy their business class solutions. You can pick up a free copy by registering at the link below:

www.webmessenger.com/products/im-all.htm

You can read more about it here on www.centredaily.com

VistoThemes.com has followed up its nice commercial BB OSX theme with an even slicker Trans Green theme. The theme is available for the 8100/8300/8800 series devices in Zen, Today, and Icon formats. The theme costs a cool $6 for each version. The icons are hot and the theme is just plain sexy. You will see what I mean in the screens below. I wish the free themes could live up to this kind of quality and design.

You can pick up a copy using the instructions on this page for $6 paid through PayPal. Make sure to specify what version device and what style you want in the notes in PayPal.

You wanna $*@$ with me? Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend!

Sorry guys I just couldn’t resist.  Gary has released a slick Scarface theme over the weekend and that is what it brought to mind. This theme is just too good for words. Its not that it is the nicest theme ever but it is an amazing conversation starter.

OTA and Desktop install links are available at Themes4BB.com. Thanks again Gary!

Thanks to NancyDrew all of us “One Love” fans can now get our groove on our BlackBerry. You can easily round out this theme with a “3 Little Birds” ringtone. The theme uses the original icon set in a Zen theme but the title bar and backgrounds are slick.

Only OTA downloads are available at this link on Themes4BB. Thanks Nancy!