BlackBerry outage strikes North America

Canadian handset manufacturer RIM has now managed to bring most of its BlackBerry email service back online, but starting last night and through the early hours of this morning, email delivery was delayed or intermittent for North American users. Reports of outages have also come in from China, London, Canada and other far-off locales. While RIM said that the problem is "currently under review," most of the issues seem to be resolved according to wireless carriers. Of course, there is now an estimated six to seven hour backlog of email messages that need to go out and RIM said it will deliver the messages in stages, so many users will continue to experience delays throughout the day. My advice to BlackBerry addicts: stay calm, breathe deeply and make use of an antiquated 20th century device for email--the computer.

For more on the BlackBerry outage:
- see this report from the WSJ (sub. req.)