Why BlackBerry went dark

For nearly 8 million users of the device so addictive that it's often called "Crackberry," going cold turkey for two days last week was a stark reminder of life before ubiquitous email.  Now, RIM has released information on what caused the outage. It turns out that it was no hacker or competitive saboteur--it was, rather, a scheduled software upgrade gone bad. RIM said that the non-critical system software had been tested but, in a masterpiece of understatement, noted that "pretesting of the system routine proved to be insufficient". The effects on users were magnified when the staff switched over to the backup system--and it too didn't work. BlackBerry users were dependent on the system backup since other handheld devices and smart phones don't have exactly the same set of features as the mobile email station and phone. RIM fixed the problem and sighs of relief were heard across the land, but customers may feel a little less secure in their addiction to always-on email.

For more on the cause of the blackout:
- read all about it at CIO-Today