The BlackBerry Crash: What Really Happened?
What really happened last week when RIM’s BlackBerry e-mail service went down? Daniel Taylor over at the Mobile Enterprise Blog has some suggestions.
Last week RIM claimed the outage was caused by a new, untested feature. Taylor’s readers, however, claim that the outage may have been caused by some rogue IT manager at IT or a novice kid experimenting with features they didn’t understand:
The rogue IT manager hypothesis is as likely as any other. My only caution is that it’s easy to jump to one hypothesis while ruling out others. For example, could the outage have been caused by a security breech? Could it have been a larger architectural issue? Could it be with user provisioning? Could it be American Idol?
The point is that we just don’t know what actually happened. And in light of RIM’s [lack of] public response, it’s reasonable to surmise that RIM’s top management fears that this outage is the tip of the iceberg.
Why? If this outage was actually caused by a rogue, “cowboy” IT manager, then that person should have already been terminated and raised in effigy in front of RIM’s corporate HQ. There’s your public statement in a nutshell: we made a mistake, sorry for the inconvenience.
In short, RIM never really told us what happened or why it happened and they took a long time to tell us nothing. This lack of response should give everyone in enterprise IT some cause for concern.
Going further, since no one outside of RIM seems to know what really happened, how can anyone be assured that such an outage will not repeat itself? Or that the next outage will not be worse?
Usually, when service providers suffer outages they are forced to explain not only what caused the outage but how they plan to prevent future problems. So far, RIM has received little pushback from the IT community, the blogosphere or the press at large.
What do you think? Is Taylor right? Did RIM not disclose the real reason for the outage? And regardless, should we expect more outages in the future?
Cingular to Refund Affected BlackBerry Users
According to an inside memo, business subscribers who call Cingular/AT&T’s customer service line will receive a prorated credit (up to $2.50 USD) for the loss of their BlackBerry email service for one day last week. Looks like complaining can accomplish something, after all.
Research in Motion’s wireless BlackBerry email service crashed last week due to some problems with a new feature and was unavailable for about 12 to 15 hours. The service was affected across all of the Western Hemisphere and left some 8 million subscribers without access to their email.
Apparently enough people called to moan and gripe about the loss of their wireless email service that Cingular/AT&T made an executive decision to offer the one-day refunds.
The memo, provided by The Consumerist, goes on to provide instructions to customer service staff and outlines the steps involved in crediting any complainant’s account.
The size of the refund will depend on which BlackBerry service plan each subscriber has and ranges from $1.00 USD to $2.50 USD.
Sounds like a good tactical maneuver from AT&T to keep its most valuable customers happy. BlackBerry and business users take advantage of the data networks more heavily than consumers and produce higher average revenue per user.
I wonder if AT&T will turn around and stick Research in Motion with whatever the refund tab turns out to be?
Will the other carriers follow suit and offer similar rebates? Only time will tell.
Google and Earth Day 2007
Founded by the organizers of the first Earth Day in 1970, Earth Day Network promotes environmental citizenship and year round progressive action worldwide and today Google is showing its support with a very clean and environmentally friendly logo:
EDN seeks to grow and diversify the environmental movement worldwide and to mobilize it as the most effective vehicle for promoting a healthy, sustainable planet. They pursue these goals through education, politics, cultural events and consumer activism.
To find out more, take a look at the official Environmental Protection at Earth Day Network website.
You can also check out the US Government Earth Day Portal website.
Make Internet TV
If you’ve ever had the idea for a show or video blog bouncing around your head and you didn’t quite know where to start, you might want to take a look at Make Internet TV.
The gang over at The Participatory Culture Foundation have done a really great job getting a nuts and bolts how-to guide together. Seriously, it’s enough to make me want to set aside a weekend to start a video blog.
Very soon, the site will feature short videos from experienced internet video publishers. If you’re interested in sharing your expertise, visit the Make Internet TV wiki and find out how.
Apple iPhone is Having OS Issues Again
Ars Technica is reporting in its blog that a solid inside source at Hon Hai/Foxconn says there are still a number of software/OS bugs to be worked out with the iPhone.
They conclude that at best only a “trickle” of iPhones will be available at launch. The iPhone roller coaster continues its twisted, torturous ride.
Just a day after AT&T COO declares that it is expecting the iPhone to ship on time, saucy insider info has come to light that casts serious doubt on AT&T’s statement of confidence.
Ars Technica’s unnamed source said the following: “Apple knew two months ago that Leopard was going to be delayed since all of the key engineers are now in Taipei.”
Um, correct me if I am wrong but wasn’t it only several weeks before the announced delay of Leopard that Apple confirmed the OS would be available on time this spring?
On top of that, apparently 50 OS engineers are toiling 24/7 in Taipei to make sure that the iPhone ships on time.
Wait. Only 50 engineers? Apple is trusting just 50 people to make sure it doesn’t have egg on its face in two months?
I can only hope that this is the number of people working on the software before it shifted Leopard OS engineers over to the iPhone team.
The source also laid some more woeful news upon us by saying, “It does not look feasible that Apple will be able to ship units out in May to make the shipping date in the US (June), so expect units to trickle by end of June or early July. It is doubtful they will have enough units on hand to meet the demand.”
So much for AT&T COO Randall Stephenson’s hope for a million of them at launch.
The only good news is that apparently the issues are not battery life related.
DVD Jon Looking For DRM Code Breakers
Jon Lech Johansen, known as “DVD Jon” for his notoriety for breaking anti-piracy code on DVDs, has posted on his blog a want ad for a couple of coders interested in working for DoubleTwist Ventures.
The company is noteworthy for having reverse engineered Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management system.
Johansen, a native of Norway who also works as a software engineer for DoubleTwist, said the company is looking for a reverse engineering specialist to work on its DRM interoperability technology.
A minimum of three years of experience is required and, in a reference to an old computer interrupt code, Johansen quipped, “Your favorite number is 0×90.”
In addition, the company wants to hire a “senior code monkey” to work on audio/video products. A minimum of five years experience is needed.
Johansen, 23, is a self-trained software engineer who became well known among fellow geeks for his work on DeCSS software, which decodes the content-scrambling system used to enforce DVD licensing on movies.
DoubleTwist is working on interoperability technology that would make it possible, for example, to play music bought from Apple’s iTunes store on any device. Songs downloaded from iTunes today can only be played directly on the Apple iPod.
Johansen has been critical of Apple’s DRM efforts in the past.