Oct 17

BlueSLR dongle arrives for BlackBerry and (some) Android phones

Posted in: Android, AndroidOs, Apple, BlackBerry, bluetooth, camera, digital camera, DigitalCamera, dslr, gps, HTC, ios, ipad, iPhone, ipod touch, IpodTouch, minipost, nikon, remote, remote control, RemoteControl, samsung, Today's Chili

Offering to play matchmaker between your high-end camera and smartphone, XEquals has extended support for its BlueSLR remote control beyond iOS. Yes, Blackberry and Android users can now download their respective app and pair this Bluetooth dongle to their (still Nikon-only) DSLR. The compatible dongle and free app will land later this month, but before you lay down the requisite $149, it’s worth checking that both your camera and phone models are supported. As it stands, compatible Android phones are limited to some HTC or Samsung models. While Android support is likely to expand in the future, there’s no word on a Pre 3 version.

Continue reading BlueSLR dongle arrives for BlackBerry and (some) Android phones

BlueSLR dongle arrives for BlackBerry and (some) Android phones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 17

RIM offers free apps to make up for that whole BlackBerry outage thing

Posted in: app, application, BlackBerry, business, download, free, mobilepostcross, money, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, Today's Chili
RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has already apologized for last week’s widespread BlackBerry outage, but apparently, that wasn’t enough. Today, the manufacturer announced that it’s offering customers a full slate of “premium apps” for free, in the hopes of earning back some of the goodwill it lost following that mysterious blackout. In a statement, the company said the gesture is “an expression of appreciation” for the patience that many BlackBerry users demonstrated during the incident, with Lazaridis adding that his company remains “committed to providing the high standard of reliability” that consumers have come to expect. For now, the company’s offering a total of 12 apps (collectively valued at around $100), including SIMS 3, iSpeech Translator Pro and Shazam Encore among others, though more will be added at a later date. The offer kicks off on Wednesday and will last for a month, so head past the break to see which goodies are up for grabs.

Continue reading RIM offers free apps to make up for that whole BlackBerry outage thing

RIM offers free apps to make up for that whole BlackBerry outage thing originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 16

RIM tells devs to get ready for BlackBerry Curve Touch and Bellagio

Posted in: BlackBerry, developers, leak, leaks, mobilepostmini, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, rumor, Today's Chili
If you’re going to give your devs a nugget of info about some of your unannounced devices on a publicly available site, we hope you won’t be so surprised that word actually gets out about them. That’s exactly what happened to Research in Motion, as the company let it “slip out” to devs that two future BlackBerry OS7 smartphones — the Bellagio 9790 and Curve Touch 9380 — are inbound. The whole point in the message was to inform developers of what kind of resolution to expect in the new phones’ displays. From the bits and pieces we’re given, it appears that the Bellagio will have a 2.4-inch screen using 480 x 360 resolution to produce a respectable 245 PPI; the Curve Touch, on the other hand, will feature an identical res on a larger 3.2-inch display, resulting in a PPI of 189. The probability of hearing an official announcement this week is pretty high, but we’d say the intended (and likely unintended) message has come through loud and clear for now, wouldn’t you?

RIM tells devs to get ready for BlackBerry Curve Touch and Bellagio originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 13

Mike Lazaridis apologizes for BlackBerry outage: ‘We’ve let many of you down’ (video) (Update: full services restored)

Posted in: BlackBerry, europe, mobilepostcross, network, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, Today's Chili, video
Now that BlackBerry services are returning to full functionality, RIM founder Mike Lazaridis has decided to issue a public apology for this week’s mysterious global outage. In a video address published today, Lazaridis acknowledged that RIM dropped the ball this week, but assured that his company is working hard to remedy the situation. “I apologize for the service outages this week,” Lazaridis said. “We’ve let many of you down.” The executive went on to say that services are approaching normal levels across Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa, but could not give an estimate as to when RIM may see full global recovery. “It’s too soon to say that this issue is fully resolved,” Lazaridis explained, adding that there may be some instability as the system returns to normalcy. He reiterated, however, that his company is “working tirelessly” to restore services and, perhaps more important, consumer trust. Skip past the break to see the full video for yourself.

Update: RIM is holding a conference call now and Mike just said “we have restored full services.” That’s said to be the status globally, so go ahead, spend a few minutes and get that BBM backlog out of your system. You deserve it. If you’re still not receiving messages, RIM suggests pulling your battery and rebooting the phone. And those RIM folks probably need some sleep… “nobody’s gone home since Monday,” following “the largest outage we’ve ever experienced.”

Continue reading Mike Lazaridis apologizes for BlackBerry outage: ‘We’ve let many of you down’ (video) (Update: full services restored)

Mike Lazaridis apologizes for BlackBerry outage: ‘We’ve let many of you down’ (video) (Update: full services restored) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 12

RIM recovers, BlackBerry services coming back online

Posted in: BlackBerry, mobilepostcross, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, Today's Chili

Well, that was quick. Mere hours after holding a press conference stating that it didn’t know when BlackBerry users would have their BBM, internet, and email working again, services have begun to come back online. Apparently email is up across the globe, as is BBM. Web browsing, however, continues to be “temporarily” unavailable to those on EMEIA networks in Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa and Latin America. There is of course a considerable backlog of messages to get through, but the good news is that all the BlackBerry bits and bytes are flowing freely once again. Hit the source link to get the info straight from the horse’s mouth.

RIM recovers, BlackBerry services coming back online originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 12

RIM clarifies global service outage, doesn’t provide ETA for restore

Posted in: BlackBerry, canada, europe, mobilepostcross, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, Today's Chili, us, video

If you don’t own a BlackBerry yourself, chances are you know somebody who does. And if that person lives in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America or South America, they’re probably quite unhappy with RIM at the moment. This week’s service outage began with a server failure in the UK, and spread like wildfire to Africa and the Middle East, before continuing on to parts of Asia, the US, Canada and a good portion of South America. This is only the latest BlackBerry service outage for RIM, bringing email, BBM and web browsing services to a halt. But with BlackBerry services playing a critical role in real-time business and government communications, any interruption is unacceptable, and costly for all.

RIM CTO David Yach responded to questions during a press conference this afternoon, explaining the original cause of the outage (that UK server failure, along with a series of failed redundancies), and how that grew into the global outage we’re experiencing now:

“It’s a backlog issue. Clearly we have a backlog in Europe, based on the initial outage and the time it’s taken to stabilize that. At this point, we have not throttled the other regions, but as you can imagine, with the global reach of BlackBerry, people using it to contact others around the world, there’s a lot of messages coming to Europe from Asia and the Americas, and those would be backed up on the other system. It’s looking like over time that backlog built, and started impacting those other systems.”

The obvious solution would be to clear the backlog and restore service, but in doing so, RIM would purge any undelivered messages. Yach said that all emails will eventually be delivered, however, so you shouldn’t have anything to worry about there (there was no related comment regarding BBM messages). When asked what the company would be doing to “make right” by way of its customers, Yach emphasized that his focus was only on restoring service at this point, and made no promises of restitution.

Is the BlackBerry outage affecting you? Let us know by voting in our poll, or leaving a comment after the break.

Continue reading RIM clarifies global service outage, doesn’t provide ETA for restore

RIM clarifies global service outage, doesn’t provide ETA for restore originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 12

BlackBerry Outage Continues as iCloud Launches

Posted in: BlackBerry, Phones, Today's Chili

First the PlayBook, and now a huge service outage on the eve of iOS 5. Can nothing go right for RIM? Photo Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Oh, RIM! It looked like things couldn’t get any worse, and then your messaging services go down for days. And right before the iPhone launch, too.

BlackBerry owners will already know about it, but for the rest of you, BBM (BlackBerry Messaging) went down hard on Monday morning, and is still staggering along two days later. Outages have occurred in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and spread to India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina.

The problem was caused by a switch failing in Slough, England. This was followed by the backup failing, too. BlackBerry’s UK service update says that “the messaging and browsing delays that some of you are still experiencing were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested.”

That was yesterday. Today, things are still not working right, and Blackberry’s latest update doesn’t look like they’ll get better anytime soon. “The resolution of this service issue is our Number One priority right now and we are working night and day to restore all BlackBerry services to normal levels” is about as specific as things get. David Chow, friend of Gadget Lab over in England, reports that BBM, e-mail and browsing are all down, but Twitter works over Wi-Fi.

The one thing that BlackBerry still has over other phones is BBM, the service that lets users send SMS-like messages to each other, for free. Without that, there seems no point in buying a BlackBerry instead of an Android handset or an iPhone. Worse still, today is the launch day Apple’s iOS 5, which includes the Messages app. This lets users send free messages between iOS 5 devices, and goes head-to-head with BBM.

Nobody is going to abandon their BlackBerry right away, but Messages could be the carrot, and this too-long outage the stick that together send users over to Apple next time a contract is up.

BlackBerry Service Update [BlackBerry UK]

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Oct 12

BlackBerry outage spreads to US and Canada, continues in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America (update: RIM confirms)

Posted in: BlackBerry, canada, europe, mobilepostcross, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, Today's Chili, us

It’s day three of RIM’s BlackBerry service outage in much of the world, including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil and Chile. But now the problem appears to have spread into Canada — RIM’s home turf — and we’re even hearing reports of some service issues in the US as well. We’ve reached out to RIM for comment, but we’d like to hear from you. Let us know whether or not you’re having issues in the poll below, and jump past the break to sound off in the comments.

View Poll

Update: RIM has posted the following statement to its BlackBerry Service Update page:

BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available.

Update 2: RIM UK has also posted a statement:

We know that many of you are still experiencing service problems. The resolution of this service issue is our Number One priority right now and we are working night and day to restore all BlackBerry services to normal levels.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

BlackBerry outage spreads to US and Canada, continues in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America (update: RIM confirms) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 11

BlackBerry services offline for some in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Again. (update: RIM confirms India, South America, too)

Posted in: BlackBerry, europe, mobilepostcross, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, Today's Chili

Well, RIM, things really aren’t looking good for you over in EMEA, are they now? We’ve received several reports of a second BlackBerry outage for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, and our friends over at T-Mobile UK and Vodafone Egypt have confirmed again on Twitter, just several hours after RIM tweeted that service had been restored. So, what’s going on over there? We’re reaching out to RIM for a statement, and like those of you affected, we can only hope that things get back up and running very quickly. Are you outraged? Experiencing perfect service (and in EMEA)? Jump past the break to tell us what’s up in the comments.

Update: RIM has issued the following statement:

Media statement – October 11
Some users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina are experiencing messaging and browsing delays. We are working to restore normal service as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Update 2: Another update from RIM:

The messaging and browsing delays being experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested. As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

BlackBerry services offline for some in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Again. (update: RIM confirms India, South America, too) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 10

BlackBerry Tag: touch-to-share for… multimedia?

Posted in: BlackBerry, bluetooth, mobilepostcross, nfc, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, Today's Chili
Research in Motion’s Jim Balsillie’s currently in Dubai, gassing about how amazing the latest update to BlackBerry 7 OS will be — probably between trips to the beach. When it arrives, those crackberries equipped with NFC (Bold 9900 / 9930 and Curve 9350 / 9360 / 9370) will get BlackBerry Tag. You’ll be able to tap two phones together to share contact details, multimedia content or add new friends to your BBM. RIM is planning to open up the relevant APIs so developers can use the facility in any number of interesting ways, like bringing touch-to-share to the system. Considering the speed constraints of NFC, it’s difficult to believe that big files like images could be carried by the technology — it’s more likely that NFC will pair the devices and then send your files down a larger pipe, like Bluetooth. There’s an enigmatic press release after the break, and hopefully the company will explain how this works in a little more detail before the update arrives.

Continue reading BlackBerry Tag: touch-to-share for… multimedia?

BlackBerry Tag: touch-to-share for… multimedia? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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