Black(berry) Wednesday

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Que Horrible! The unthinkable happened last night. Blackberry's e-mail service provided by RIM (Research in Motion) went down about 8pm EST Tuesday night, but was back up in time for the morning commute. That being said, it's been a long day of service operating in fits and starts while it catches up on the backlog that piled up overnight.

The outage affected North American customers only. I say only, as if eight million people make a mere cocktail party. Nope that's eight million people, eight million very twitchy customers who really, reeealllly need their e-mail - NOW!

Hang in there. The worst should be over by now.

Google Bytes

Rumors are flying around the blogosphere today that plans are afoot to launch the Google phone by the end of the year. The phone would be built on the Texas Instruments 3G Platform and feature, duh, gmail and Google maps. However, it's not expected to include GPS software (bad news for that guy in the Avis car rental commercial). This sounds like a set-up for a celebrity deathmatch with Apple's soon to be shipped iPhone. My money's on Apple for the first couple of rounds, after that I would never bet against Google.

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio