If your BlackBerry hasn't buzzed with your latest e-mail missives in a while, there's a reason for that: The popular messaging service was hit Monday with a service outage that cuts across "The Americas" (which includes the U.S. and Canada) and across all carriers.
Based on early Web reports, the outage may have begun in the afternoon; but, little as of 6 p.m. Eastern little information was available; Research in Motion was unavailable for comment. This outage follows on another outage the service endured over the weekend.
What is known is that some RIM corporate customers received a network message term the outage a "critical severity outage," and note that part of the "network infrastructure is experiencing a service interruption." The service interruption may prevent BlackBerry subscribers from sending or receiving messages, registering their device, roaming in another in another location, or using Internet services--including Web browsing and e-mail. The BlackBerry Connect service and BlackBerry Enterprise Servers may also be unable to connect to RIM's BlackBerry Infrastructure as well.
According to that same RIM network message, the cause of this outage was still "to be determined," the downtime duration was "ongoing," and the percent of subscribers affected was estimated at 50 percent.
This past weekend's outage--due to a software upgrade--began on Saturday, according to posts on BlackBerry Forums. It is unclear whether the current outage has anything to do with the previous outage. These outages are just the latest to hit RIM; last April, the BlackBerry service was interrupted by a multi-hour outage. RIM's slow response irked BlackBerry customers; and some observers wondered aloud whether RIM was able to effectively maintain its growing customer base.
We've asked around to some BlackBerry users across the country, and have found some BlackBerry users who are getting no service, and some who appear to be just fine.
What about you? If you use BlackBerry, how is your carrier's service in your given region? Post your service updates below

Garmin’s GPS devices and softwares do quite good in terms of sales. Even its accessories for cell phones and smartphones do quite well. This has given the company a confidence to launch its very own cell phone. Its Nuvi Phone aims to take on none other than iPhone. Yeah, I know! OMG!
It might just do that (very remote possibility) by loading its own smartphone with GPS specialties. A GSM HSPDA smartphone, the Nuvi Phone runs on Garmin’s own operating system. Almost entirely touch-screen, it features a 3.5-inch large display. It is more of a GPS device than a phone but still quite a pretty looking at that. Browsing and e-mail are obviously packed-in and there’s a camera too.

There is a fair chance that Google and Dell will soon team up and launch a Mobile Phone. It is noteworthy that Dell is already producing PDAs and is a big flop in market. Dell certainly didn’t live up to the expectations of customers. They are a big name in computer industry but their failure with PDAs is something that they’d like to change thus this move of getting a name like Google attached to them sounds great for them. However, it’s surprising that Google is teaming up with Dell despite their failure in the market. Partnership with Google is like a last golden chance for Dell to get some grip on rapidly growing market.

Garmin Ltd. yesterday in New York revealed its “nuvifone” product, a personal navigation device (PND) with a touchscreen, GSM/HSDPA functionality for voice and data and native GPS.While the product had been long-rumored, the timing seemed to surprise the market.Photographs of the device immediately brought to mind the industrial design of Apple Inc.’s iPhone, according to one analyst. The device also appeared to be the latest specialized handheld to add cellular capabilities, much like the iPhone is an iPod music player with cellular voice and data features added on. The traditional cellular market, of course, has ranged from the phone-plus (such as the Walkman and Cybershot handsets from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications) to the “Swiss Army knife” model of cramming wide-ranging functions into a single device. Garmin said that the device will not hit the market until the third quarter and that carrier discussions are under way. Thus, pricing and product positioning also remain open questions. “The pricing will be key to the nuvifone’s success,” said NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin.$300? Rubin said that AT&T Mobility is the likeliest candidate to add the device to its portfolio and speculated that the nuvifone could end up selling in the vicinity of $300. The proverbial road warrior is the likeliest market for the navigation phone, he said.While Garmin’s addition of cellular functionality to its bread-and-butter PND expertise had been rumored for some time, Rubin said the timing of its nuvifone announcement appeared to catch the market off-guard. The analyst said he expects a number of large display, touchscreen devices with location-based services or navigation capabilities to be launched at next month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. (Apple Inc. announced LBS-related software upgrades to the iPhone earlier this month and Rubin said that may have been an effort to meet the challenge of Garmin’s new device.) The nuvifone’s form factor to a degree mimics Apple Inc.’s iPhone, which is likely to produce flattering comparisons, but the operating system is Garmin’s own and, therefore, Rubin said, the device is not a smartphone. Questions raised Other unknowns, according to the analyst: no information yet on the device’s memory capacity, Web-browsing capabilities, business support or battery life. Some of those questions may well be answered when a top-tier carrier deal is announced, the analyst said.Garmin International Inc.’s COO Cliff Pemble said in a statement that the device is “the breakthrough product that cellphone and GPS users around the world have been longing for,” a bit of hype that nonetheless reflected Garmin’s push into international markets.The nuvifone is designed to be handheld or mounted on the dashboard of a vehicle. Three primary icons on the touchscreen provide “call,” “search” and “view map” functions. It includes pre-loaded maps of North America, Eastern and Western Europe and provides turn-by-turn directions with a million points of interest. The nuvifone is Garmin’s first to include Google’s local-search capability. A “where am I?” feature offers nearby police and hospital locations as well as the user’s exact coordinates by latitude/longitude as well as street intersections. The “slickest” feature, according to Rubin: a user can snap a photograph from his/her location and send it to another nuvifone user, who can obtain turn-by-turn directions to reach the sender’s location.