BlackBerry plans to give us weird devices yearly

If you thought the Passport was the end of BlackBerry’s experimentation with oddly-shaped devices, then you’re wrong. Ron Louks, president of BlackBerry’s Devices division, said they intend to introduce one “unconventional device” per year.

“When it comes to design and being a little bit disruptive, we want that ‘wow’ factor,” Louks said. And he also revealed that they are working on another unusual device but he is not spilling the details about that just yet.

Source: Reuters | Via: Engadget

HP shooting for the low end of the notebook market with new $199 notebooks

We're at an interesting place right now with Windows 8.1-based systems. Many users and potential buyers seem to be waiting out until the next revision (Windows 9, Codenamed 'Treshold') becomes available. Many of the recent hybrids, convertibles and ultrabooks have failed to gain much traction. Trying a different tact, it seems manufacturers like HP are going the Chromebook route. That is, offering cheap hardware to help push the OS. Revealed today is the colourful consumer focused US $199 HP Stream notebook that's geared to compete with similarly affordable Chromebooks. Interesting features include fanless design, 8-hour battery life and an HD screen.

Featuring modest Intel Celeron processors, an 11.5-inch non-touch display and 32GB of SSD memory. Each of these new-age netbooks will get access to a year subscription of Office 365, 1 Terabyte of OneDrive storage plus a $25 Microsoft Store gift certificate. The Stream notebooks accompany low-cost Stream tablets that offer Windows 8.1 functionalty starting at $150. No Canadian availability or pricing has been released but these will likely find their way to our shores for the holiday season.

Rumours of an HTC One (M8) Max surfaces

There are already two variants of the One (M8) out on the market and rumours have surfaced from China that HTC plans to unveil the phablet version of their flagship. The HTC One (M8) Max is tipped to carry a 5.5-inch Quad HD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB of RAM, Sense 6.5, and the latest Android operating system. It will also reportedly sport an 18-megapixel rear camera with Optical Image Stabilization and 3000mAh battery. There is no official word from HTC if this will be an actual device. We’ll keep you posted for any confirmation or denials of this device.

Source: Ubergizmo

Various iCloud services currently down

It seems that various iCloud-dependent services from Apple are currently down or not working. After getting complaints from users on Twitter, we checked Apple's System Status page and sure enough, various iCloud related services are currently unavailable. We'll keep monitoring the situation and update status as soon as we know more.

Update on Monday, September 29, 2014 at 10:05PM by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Everything seems to be back to normal now at 10:15 PM