BlackBerry crashes again

It's getting kind of old. For the second time in a week, BlackBerry crashed on Tuesday, leaving millions of users unable to connect. The shutdown appears to have started at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and service was generally restored by 2:45 a.m. Wednesday. Those trying to put a positive spin on the blackout can say, "at least it was off hours."

Well, since we live in a 24/7 world, this major shutdown throughout North and South America is still a painful reminder of unreliability, for those addicted tor their "crackberries." The New York Times reported that many used Twitter to express their outrage. "Never Again BlackBerry," read one tweet, while another said the best way to remove the frustration was to leave the BlackBerry at home.

Research In Motion, the Canadian company that makes the BlackBerry, said that its preliminary analysis showed that two recent versions of its BlackBerry Messenger instant messaging software "caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure."

According to the company, the shutdown did not affect the ability of BlackBerry users to make telephone calls or send text messages. The company urged customers who have upgraded their BlackBerry Messenger software since Dec. 14 to download a new version that it believed would resolve the current problem.

Tough luck--we expect our BlackBerrys to be immune from this kind outage. Should RIM have figured it out before they shipped out the software?

And for all those of you working hard in an IT shop, trying to finish your work before Christmas, this was just another tough bump in the road on the way to the holiday.

For more on the BlackBerry outage:
- see this New York Times article [1]