Video:Toshiba Thrive 7-inch Android Honeycomb tablet

We saw the 7-inch Toshiba Thrive druing Toshiba's Holiday product showcase today. This is the lightest 7-inch tablet we've seen, runs a pure Android experience and has the same high resolution of the 10-inch model but in a smaller, more portable form factor. WiFi model coming in November and a 3G version sometime early 2012.

Breaking: BlackBerry outage day 3 spreading to Canada, South America

It's not a good time to be a BlackBerry customer, specially if you're in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Japan, Hong Kong and more recently South America and Canada.

A report from the Globe and Mail early today pointed out that the glitches that have stalled services for millions of users not only continued but seemed to worsen.

"Users in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Japan, Hong Kong and some parts of South America suffered patchy e-mail service and no access to browsing and messaging, ratcheting up negative sentiment towards a company already losing market share to Apple and Samsung," the report stated. 

The timing of this service failure could not have come at a more sensitive time. Apple is releasing the iPhone 4S and iOS 5 mobile operating system on Friday and Samsung is expected to launch a flagship Android smartphone called the Nexus Prime as well as the latest version of the Android mobile operating system Ice Cream Sandwich.

Many of BlackBerry's customers use their device for business and have vented their disappointment and rage through social networks. RIM hasn't released any statements regarding the new developments. Earlier reports traced the problem to a server outage in Slough, U.K., where RIM operates a data center, but the company would not comment on those reports.

A Reuters report stated, "RIM, which had said on Tuesday that services had returned to normal, said later the problems had actually spread beyond EMEA and India to Argentina, Brazil and Chile."

"The messaging and browsing delays ... were caused by a core switch failure within RIM's infrastructure,"  a RIM spokesman said. "As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service."

Users affected by the BlackBerry e-mail, web and BBM service problems can check the BlackBerry Service Update page which has regular status updated from Research In Motion.

Sources: Globe and Mail

               Reuters

Video: The Inspiration behind Microsoft's ArcTouch Mouse

An insightful video about design, inspiration and execution resulting in Microsoft's radical new line of Arc Touch pointing devices.

Apple's iOS 5 and iCloud are dropping tomorrow

Apple's one-two punch for improved iOS functionality and cloud services integration will emerge tomorrow, October 12. iCloud will serve as a giant cloud based backup, messaging, sharing and secure storage system that unifies all of Apple's mobile and computer product lines and makes them one connected entity. iOS 5 is the much awaited update to the iOS iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad operating system now with new features like improved notifications, iMessage and numerous refinements on every level of the operating system.

To best prepare for the new cloud ecosystem and iOS update, Apple has started rolling out iTunes 10.5 (get it now) in anticipation of the iPhone 4S release this Friday. All existing iOS users whose devices can take iOS 5 will need to back up their devices (possibly for the last time since iOS 5 ushers in PC-Free syncing!) and then upgrade their devices as soon as the iOS update rolls out.