CNN is reporting that there has been another Blackberry outage. It was less impactful than the last time around, but at least one question remains: Why does Research in Motion (RIM; maker of the Blackberry) funnel all email traffic through their data centres, rather than having it handled by the individual cellular carriers, which (1) would be like most, if not all, other smart phones, and (2) would provide some diversity?

A colleague of mine who had shared my sense about iPhones, but who has an even more insatiable curiosity than mine, has figured out the iPhone phenomenon. It is about cheap access to the Internet. Apparently, it can be more cost effective, and, in many cases, “good enough” access to the Internet than some other broadband options, plus you can make phone calls.