The outage of the Blackberry service last Monday was caused by one of their recently upgraded systems failing. The loss of service affected North American customers for a few hours… and some felt as though the end of the world was nigh.

There is another way to look at this though and it is a strangely comforting thought that a simple outage for a few hours could cause so much disruption and cries of outrage on web forums and even government institutions. Without doubt, RIM’s reputation took a minor knock but it does highlight just how widespread their service is and how completely millions of people rely on it. Because of this, there is a safeguard that if the company suddenly went bankrupt tomorrow morning steps would be taken to keep the service running, and these steps would be taken at very high levels. Stock brokers, CEOs, government officials and countless other organizations would be affected and this would no doubt bring swift action from a variety of sources.

When my MS Exchange server failed a couple of weeks ago, my provider spent four days fixing it and this affected many people. The problem is that no one else noticed and why should they? If a few thousand people with accounts from an ISP lose their email for a week it will cause barely a blip. I set up a back up Googlemail account for these such times, and realised that the same outcry would happen if the Google service dropped, or the Yahoo mail service and many others from the very large corporations dominating our personal communications.

There is a shield when using the most popular services, because they can have a negative impact on the economy when they go wrong. The Blackberry outage served to highlight that and makes me more likely to use their service in the future than not.

Here's some interesting news from tachradar- "British company Elonex is preparing to launch a revolutionary £99 educational laptop at the Education Show 2008 at the Birmingham NEC later this month.

Called ‘the One’, the new notebook is aimed primarily at schoolchildren and features a stripped down yet fully-functioning range of Open Source software that includes word processing, spreadsheet, email and an internet browser. Out of the classroom, the One can also be used to play MP3s and games with.

The One boasts Wi-Fi access as well, with 1GB of built-in memory and a USB port for attaching additional memory bands to. For an additional £20 the One can be purchased with 2GB of memory and Bluetooth.

The notebook employs a rubberised keyboard and a seven-inch screen that can be detached from the keyboard. Although there’s no touch-screen functionality, the screen can be used as a tablet with the aid of a track-pad located on the back of the screen..." Thanks to Luca.

How to prolong lithium-based batteries is an old article but still relevant today- "Battery research is focusing heavily on lithium chemistries, so much so that one could presume that all portable devices will be powered with lithium-ion batteries in the future. In many ways, lithium-ion is superior to nickel and lead-based chemistries and the applications for lithium-ion batteries are growing as a result.

Lithium-ion has not yet fully matured and is being improved continuously. New metal and chemical combinations are being tried every six months to increase energy density and prolong service life. The improvements in longevity after each change will not be known for a few years.

A lithium-ion battery provides 300-500 discharge/charge cycles. The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible. Instead, charge the battery more often or use a larger battery. There is no concern of memory when applying unscheduled charges.

Although lithium-ion is memory-free in terms of performance deterioration, batteries with fuel gauges exhibit what engineers refer to as "digital memory". Here is the reason: Short discharges with subsequent recharges do not provide the periodic calibration needed to synchronize the fuel gauge with the battery's state-of-charge. A deliberate full discharge and recharge every 30 charges corrects this problem. Letting the battery run down to the cut-off point in the equipment will do this. If ignored, the fuel gauge will become increasingly less accurate. (Read more in 'Choosing the right battery for portable computing', Part Two.)"

2 phones for everyone— if industry can't get its act together is a superb new article at ars technica- "It's not enough for everyone on earth to have a single mobile phone—Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser thinks that everyone will eventually have at least two. Glaser spoke at this week's Mobile World Congress Conference in Barcelona, insisting that it wasn't possible for a "do everything, no compromise" device to exist and serve people's every mobile need.

Glaser explained that his belief was fueled by differences in input methods, size, and functionality between devices. No single phone can do everything easily, he said, which is why the public will be driven to carry multiple devices. "Mobile penetration won't stop at 100 percent," he told the crowd. "It will go to 200 percent because the notion of a single device that does it all isn't the way (the market is) going to go."

Do most people really need two phones? Yes, the mobile landscape isn't perfect, even with the continued introduction of increasingly capable devices. And it's true that there are some people who do already carry around more than one mobile device because they need different functionalities from each one, but those people are still a minority..." Thanks to Luca.

Today's free eBook is Show of Hands by David Prill- "It was a fair, moonless August night, and in a farm field in southern Minnesota a bonfire blazed steadily. Apart from a handful of fireflies engaged in a courtship dance in the garden, all else was dark, you couldn’t make out County Road 249 or St. John’s steeple or even much of the corn and bean fields. All you could see were the bonfire lights, dotting the countryside, along the railroad tracks. There were bonfires, rustic pyres, spanning the entire township.

It was an event, a ritual, the coming of the circus train, an unforgettable show, only the show didn’t stop here. They usually didn’t stop at all, just slowed down long enough for the performers to wave and give something back to the farmers who left their white farm houses with their women inside, who had gathered by their bonfires to see something out of the ordinary.

The town of Goatfield was too small for the circus train to stop and give a performance. This circus was too high class.

Elton Hudnall remembered a circus of lesser renown that had visited Goatfield once, setting up tents in Misery Field on the edge of town. The ringmaster looked like a fella Elton had seen on the post office wall. The tiger wore a shabby coat, and the elephant paced anxiously, one giant foot chained to..."