By Paul Thomson :: 8:49 AM
Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM) yesterday unveiled its new line of smartphones, the BlackBerry 10, and also announced that it was changing the name of the company to BlackBerry.
It was a big announcement with a lot of press hoopla around it, but in the end, it did little to excite anyone about the future of the once-dominant smartphone platform. BlackBerry CEOÂ Thorsten Heins failed to sell the new hardware as a viable option for keeping the company relevant in the age of iOS and Android devices.
The company’s stock, which had started the day yesterday just above $16, fell to pre-opening levels of $12.87 this morning, a drop that the company was clearly not expecting to happen.
Despite some good technological gains, such as video chat via BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), screen sharing – unique to the platform – BlackBerry Remember, Picture Editor, Story Maker, and new supported apps such as Skype, Amazon Kindle, SAP, and Angry Birds, the company is too late in the game to gain widespread platform adoption in the way the other market players have been able to.
In a bold move, BlackBerry announced that singer Alicia Keys would be their Global Creative Director, but a look at her Twitter history reveals that she has a threadbare relationship with the company – most of her Tweets have been sent out via her iPhone.
Back when BlackBerry was the only game in town for enterprise-level service and messaging, the world was their oyster. However, after the 2007 release of the iPhone, and then Android to the smartphone landscape, the company just did not move quickly enough to ensure their position at the top of the mobile food chain.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 7:59 AM
Honda is joining carmakers like Ford and Audi, who at CES earlier this month confirmed their adoption of new in-car technology that interfaced with the Internet and mobile devices. Honda will do the same in its vehicles through Apple’s Siri Eyes Free technology.
The Siri Eyes Free system had previously been announced in the Chevrolet Sonic. Now Honda has jumped on board and confirmed that some of its cars, as well as Acura vehicles will receive Siri Eyes Free technology starting with 2013 models.
The functionality was an afterthought – probably due to the tremendous success of announcements like Ford’s car-as-platform initiative earlier this month. The Siri interface is not a factory-installed option for Hondas, but rather  a dealer-installed one only for the 2013 Accord and Acura RDX and ILX models.
The tasks that users will be able to do with the interface include sending text messages, making phone calls, and selecting and playing music. Honda has reengineered onboard software in its vehicle infotainment systems to complete the Siri Eyes Free integration, and will leverages its existing Bluetooth HandsFreeLink microphone and speakers already installed in these models.
While late to the game, Honda certainly doesn’t want to be left behind by the recent push for interconnected cars and mobile devices.
By Gilbert Falso :: 4:12 PM
IBM today announced that they will be providing a version of their Watson supercompter, the same computer that rose to fame by winning the Jeopardy game show, to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), a technical university in upstate New York.
RPI will be the first higher education institution to receive such a computer from IBM.  The modified number cruncher (some specifications are changed from the model that was actually on Jeopardy) will enable the school to conduct cutting-edge research, and IBM will encourage faculty and students to help Watson deepen its cognitive capabilities.
Watson’s strength has been in its unique ability to understand the nuances of human language, pour through vast amounts of data, and provide evidence-based answers to user queries Watson’s computing power is currently being applied to fields such as healthcare, where IBM is collaborating with medical providers, hospitals and doctors to analyze patient history and the latest medical literature to help physicians make faster, more accurate diagnoses. IBM is also working with companies in the financial sector to help improve and simplify the banking experience.
The computer features 15 terabytes of storage, and allows for 20 campus users to access the system at once. Along with professors and graduate students, RPI will also allow undergraduate student to have an opportunity to work directly with the Watson system.
“Access to the Watson system will enable new research in cognitive computing as it relates to a diverse range of scientific and engineering fields, and the experience of working on Watson will give our students an advantage as they compete for the best jobs in Big Data, analytics, and cognitive computing,†said a spokesperson for RPI, located in Troy, NY, a suburb of the state capital, Albany.
Watson is the latest in a series of collaborations between IBM and the institution, which have worked together for many years in the areas of high-performance computing, nanoelectronics, advanced materials, and artificial intelligence. The computer will be housed at RPI’s Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations.
Below – video from RPI about Watson’s announcement:
By Cynthia Herbert :: 10:19 PM
Microsoft has announced today a subscription offering for a cloud-hosted version of its popular workplace productivity suite, Office, targeted for the home and casual user market.
Dubbed Office 365 Home Premium, the software-as-a-service costs $99 per year and includes Word, Excel, Outlook, Access and Publisher. Standard with the subscription is 20GB of cloud storage in Microsoft’s SkyDrive and 60 minutes of calling via Skype each month.
The subscription license will allow users to access the programs on up to 5 devices, including standard computers/laptops as well as tablets and other mobile gadgets.
“Today’s launch of Office 365 Home Premium marks the next big step in Microsoft’s transformation to a devices and services business,†Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft said in a release.
In addition to the home version, several other flavors of Office also were announced today. They include:
Office 365 University: $79 for four years and up to computers with the same features as Office 365 Home Premium
Office Home and Student 2013: $139 per year for one device, and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, but no other  Office 365 add-ons
Office Home and Business 2013:Â $219 per year for one device the same features as Office Home and Student 2013 (but with Outlook)
Office Professional 2013:Â $399 per year for one device with all features in Office Home and Business 2013 but also with Access and Publisher.
By Gilbert Falso :: 2:28 PM
Location-based social networking site Foursquare today released a mobile app for business and venues owners to download that allows them to manage their presence on the service.
Foursquare is hoping that the application will make it easier for businesses to update their information on the service, and keep customers in-the-know by posting updates and offering “specials” that customers can unlock by checking in. Currently, business owners and venue managers need to log into their Foursquare account at a desktop computer to do most of these management tasks.
“With the Foursquare for Business companion app, managers can create a Foursquare update and easily cross-post it to Facebook and Twitter at the same time. They can also use the app to see recent check-ins, turn specials on and off, and look at business data,” the company said in a blog post earlier today.
The application will allow managers to coordinate multiple business locations as well.
It is available for download on both iPhone and Android devices, but business owners will need to claim their venue first on Foursquare before it will work properly.