Millions Of Thumbs Get A Rest -- Like It Or Not

A busy day here as we work to finalize our story on teleportation for tomorrow night's Evening News with Katie Couric. Also, I had an interesting conversation with the founder of ScienceDebate2008.com, which is worth checking out this election cycle. It's absolutely FREEZING cold with severe wind chills here in New York City, but BlackBerry users can keep their gloves on tonight since there's apparently a "critical" outage originating at the Research In Motion (RIM) servers. My BlackBerry hasn't received a message since about 4:15 p.m. this afternoon, but I've been near my computer all day. Had I been in the field it'd certainly be tricky to keep up with events in the news. No word from RIM on when service will be restored.

I'm sure we can all agree that as a society we've generally become too reliant on mobile e-mail. But that's also the wired world we live in. Instant access affords better multi-tasking, which may not be good for the stress level but usually helps with the production level. I'm just as guilty as the next person, in fact, I often find it easier to type an e-mail on my BlackBerry than on my keyboard; I'm faster on my BlackBerry (go, thumbs, go) and anytime I get a brainwave (it does happen) I can fire off a missive.

Of course, companies also see it as a way to tether employees, and walking/driving/biking/subwaying while using a BlackBerry is ill-advised and sometimes illegal. Do I need a break from all that frantic texting? Sure. But obviously it's not up to RIM to make that happen, and I (along with 12 million others) probably won't complain when that little red light starts flashing again. By the way, didn't RIM say these outages were "rare" back in April?

Finally, a little post-Grammy math. It's hip to be square(d).