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Can Blackberry Make A Comeback?

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Despite releasing a decent Blackberry smartphone as well as a tablet that is out selling everyone save iPad 2, investors do not seem to be pleased with RIM overall.

“We believe RIM has now squandered nearly every opportunity and competitive advantage it enjoyed through ineffective R&D resource management, delayed product launches and misreads of the competitive environment,” Morgan Stanley analyst Ehud Gelblum wrote in a note to clients on Friday. (Wall Street Journal)

While it’s still too early to write off the company as the next Titanic, if RIM doesn’t find a way to change their current state of affairs, they will end up suffering Nokia’s fate (who ditched their home grown OS MeeGo for Windows Phone 7). [Read more…]

Originally posted on June 13, 2011 @ 4:16 pm

Android: Toshiba Thrive Trying To Undercut iPad 2?

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After watching Motorola’s more expensive iPad 2 rival fail spectacularly, Toshiba is attempting to attract consumer attention by selling their Android tablet below the $500 price point erected by Apple.

Toshiba is selling their Android tablet for the low price of $429 (for the 8 GB model), with their high end device being offered to customers for $579 (for the 32 GB model).

Although it’s unclear how much profit Toshiba is sacrificing in order to gain market share, their cheaper prices could help set Toshiba apart from rivals like Samsung (who is rumored to be matching Galaxy Tab 10.1 prices against iPad 2’s).

While the price of  Toshiba’s Thrive might be right, the Android tablet’s success heavily depends upon Google perfecting Honeycomb (note: no more Flash issues please), as well as convincing developers to take a second look at building Android tablet apps.

For those of you considering buying a decent tablet this summer, would you consider owning a Toshiba Thrive over rival Android tablets? Or are you holding out for HP’s TouchPad instead?

Hat Tip: TFTS, Image Credit: Toshiba

Originally posted on June 13, 2011 @ 3:13 pm

Syria To Syrians: No Internet For You

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Reports are coming in that the Syrian government has shut down most (or at least large portions) of the internet after suffering months of protests from citizens.

Starting at 3:35 UTC today (6:35am local time), approximately two-thirds of all Syrian networks became unreachable from the global Internet. Over the course of roughly half an hour, the routes to 40 of 59 networks were withdrawn from the global routing table.

This image shows the current state (green: reachable, red: unreachable) of each network prefix in the Middle East this morning, visualized as a packed Hilbert-curve representation. (Renesys Blog)

Apparently the Syrian regime hasn’t learned from the (now obsolete) dictatorship of Egypt, whose former leader tried a similar stunt only to end up hastening his own demise.

Syrians still might be able to access the digital web via the phone lines (which will be extremely slow), although those lucky enough to afford satellite phones might be able to keep the world updated through various tweets.

Note: If anyone has any ideas on how those outside Syria can help feel free to let us know in the comment section below.

Originally posted on June 3, 2011 @ 1:39 pm

Google To China: Try Phishing Somewhere Else

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It looks like China is going to have yet another reason to loathe Google after the search engine giant caught an entity trying to hack Gmail accounts via social engineering.

Through the strength of our cloud-based security and abuse detection systems*, we recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing. This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists. (Official Google Blog)

Although Google isn’t directly accusing the People’s Republic orchestrating these attacks, they did note how unusual it was for those engaged in Phisihing campaigns to target specific users instead of going after the general audience.

Google thwarted the Phishing campaign and is encouraging everyone to utilize their 2-step verification feature to prevent similar attacks in the future.

Note: Is it me, or does it seem like China is either instigating or turning a blind eye when it comes to these types of attacks?

Originally posted on June 1, 2011 @ 5:14 pm