NPR: Failure to Communicate

Failure to Communicate

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Mmmmmm. Tasty Blackberry!

All over DC last night, dudes in Pleated Dockers were seen unholstering their Blackberries at an even more obsessive rate than normal, as some 8 million subscribers tried to figure out why their Blackberries had bit the dust.

Starting at about 8 p.m. Eastern time (or about the 4th frame of Wii Bowling if you were hanging out with us at Meghan's house), there was a massive system-wide crash. While Blackberry phone service was unaffected, anyone sending an e-mail was pretty much screwed, as I found out first hand when I tried to e-mail my kid about how awesome I am at Wii Bowling.

Anyway, the company that makes the devices, Research in Motion, scrambled through the night to get the thing fixed. Mercifully, by mid-morning today many people were reconnected. The company still doesn't know what exactly went wrong, and frankly, they're not all that stoked about doing media interviews on the subject of how their system crapped out (I learned this when I called and e-mailed their spokesfolk).

Couple of questions:

1) Last night 8 million American Idol fans had their email voting rights disenfranchised... good or bad for Sanjaya?

2) How many late night booty call emails went undelivered? Mark my words, exactly nine months from last night is going to be a slow day in the maternity wards (at least here in DC, where 90% of late-night hookups are facilitated via Blackberry).

We're going to stay on this story. Bryant Park Action News! On the case, and on your side.

Luke Burbank

1:33 PM ET | 04-18-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

I think Sanjaya has more to fear from his tedious performance last night. It's ok if he is bad, as long as it's interesting. Besides, does the Blackberry and Idol demographic really overlap?

Sent by Harold Neal | 3:53 PM ET | 04-18-2007

I can say with absolute certainty that the blackberry outage is due to one one two reasons:

1.) A large customer complaining that the company wasn't proving a service the customer requested, and in an attempt to add that service, a technician botched up the system.

2.) Someone tripped on a power chord.

In my line of work, it's ways on of these two explanations.

Sent by Scott K. | 1:02 AM ET | 04-19-2007

Is it really "booty call e-mails" or "boot-e-mails"? You make the call.

Sent by Chico | 10:59 AM ET | 04-20-2007

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