Canadian students welcome to join BlackBerry Build A Village Award Program

BlackBerry is giving 50 Canadian students a chance to work as a volunteer in Oloirion, Kenya and Veradera, India for the BlackBerry Build A Village Award Program. Students between the ages 14 and 18 can submit their entries now until Jan. 15 through this link. Students have to show leadership qualities, passion, empathy, traits of initiative, maturity and the contributions they have made to their local community.

The program already gave 150 students from Waterloo a chance to be part of this amazing opportunity with classrooms built in Bagad, India and Eor Ewuaso, Kenya. The program also sponsors builds and projects such as teacher trainings, school clinics, water and sanitation system upgrades.

Automate doggie cleanup with Auggiedog

A new gadget makes it easy for you to clean up after your beloved four-legged pet. Auggiedog picks up dog poop with just a click of a button without the need of plastic bags or without touching the waste. Since it has self-cleaning capabilities, it doesn’t leave a smell after either.

HP's Chromebook 14 is aimed at businesses

We already took a sneak peek at the HP Chromebook 11 (stay tuned for our full review) and now we received news from HP that their Chromebook 14 is apparently designed for business. This is an interesting twist for the Chromebooks which were initially seen as secondary surfing devices. The 14-inch Chromebooks are slightly more expensive than the sleek Chromebook 11.

"At its most basic, the Chromebook¹⁴ is a reliable, user-friendly, and secure mobile business notebook," HP explains. "But we’ve taken it a step beyond just your basic road warrior, offering your business a quick and easy gateway to the Google experience, including in-demand, business-ready Google Chrome apps like Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Google Drive. Google+ Hangouts is great for multiperson video chat, and you’ll have access to other business apps via the Chrome Web Store.

Thorsten Heins out as BlackBerry President & CEO

By Corey Herscu

(Pictured above: Now former BlackBerry President and CEO, Thorsten Heins (right) and Rogers President and CEO, Nadir Mohamed (left) at the Rogers launch of the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone)

Today did not turn out, at all, how anyone would have expected. On the morning that many anticipated Waterloo-based BlackBerry Ltd. would accept the nine-dollar-per-share Fairfax offer, something else happened: a very public corporate shakeup. On the chopping block? BlackBerry President and CEO Thorsten Heins. 

According to reports from the Globe and Mail, BlackBerry has officially axed Thorsten Heins, a few of it's directors, and will be shuffling its board a bit.

Further, after searching for months to find a suitor, BlackBerry has apparently declared that they’ve abandoned their plans to sell, specifically the $4.7-billion with Fairfax Financial, and will forge ahead in the smartphone and OS race will plans to raise $1 billion in funding.

Who saw this coming? Stay tuned for more....

via The Globe