Crucial, long-overdue BlackBerry makeover arrives

TORONTO (AP) — The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone is promising a speedy browser, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone, the fruit of a crucial, long-overdue makeover for the Canadian company.

Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research In Motion Ltd., will reveal the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York on Wednesday. Repeated delays have left the once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and Google’s Android-driven devices.

Now, there’s some optimism. Previews of the software have gotten favorable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some slight room for a comeback. RIM‘s stock has nearly tripled to about $ 16.30 from a nine-year low in September, though it’s still nearly 90 percent below its 2008 peak of $ 147.

Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company’s long-term viability.

“The old models are becoming obsolete quickly,” BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said. “There is still a big user base but it’s going to rotate off. The question is: Where do they rotate to?”

The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, has been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people. Corporate information-technology managers like the phones because they’re relatively secure and easy to manage.

The BlackBerry has also crossed over to consumers. President Barack Obama couldn’t bear to part with it when he took office. Oprah Winfrey declared it one of her “favorite things.” People got so addicted that the device was nicknamed “the CrackBerry.”

But when the iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than email and phone calls. They can play games, music and movies. Android came along to offer even more choices. Though IT managers still love BlackBerrys, employees were bringing their own devices to the workplace — a trend Heins acknowledged RIM was slow to adapt to.

Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient.

Even as BlackBerry sales continued to grow in many parts of the world, many BlackBerry users in North America switched to iPhones and Android devices. BlackBerry’s worldwide subscriber based peaked at 80 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 1, before dropping to 79 million in the most-recent quarter. In the U.S., according to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.

RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.

Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of BlackBerry 10′s new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a complete system at Wednesday’s event. Devices will go on sale soon after that.

RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today.

“Historically there have been areas that have not been our strongest points,” Rick Costanzo, RIM’s executive vice president of global sales, said in an interview. “Not only have we caught up, but we may even be better than some of the competition now.”

Costanzo said “no one else can touch” what RIM’s new system offers.

The new operating system promises better multitasking than either the iPhone or Android. Simply swipe a finger across the phone’s display screen to switch to another program.

All emails and notifications from such applications as Twitter and Facebook go to the BlackBerry Hub, a nerve center accessible with a finger swipe even if you have another application open. One can peek into it and open an email, or return to the previous application without opening the email.

“You are not going in and out of applications; you’re flowing through applications with one simple gesture of your finger,” Costanzo said. “You can leave applications running. You can effortlessly flow between them. So that’s completely unique to us.”

That said, multitasking will be limited and won’t allow for extensive use of apps side by side, as is typically permitted on traditional computers. If you’re watching a video, it will still run while you check for email. But it will pause if you decide to open an email and resume when you are done.

The BlackBerry’s touch-screen keyboard promises to learn a user’s writing style and suggest words and phrases to complete, going beyond typo corrections offered by rivals. See the one you want, and flick it up to the message area. Costanzo said that “BlackBerry offers the best keyboard, period.”

Gus Papageorgiou, a Scotiabank financial analyst who has tried it out, agreed with that assessment and said the keyboard even learns and adjusts to your thumb placements.

The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM has said it will release a version with a physical keyboard soon after that. That’s an area RIM has excelled at, and it’s one reason many BlackBerry users have remained loyal despite temptations to switch.

Another distinguishing feature will be the BlackBerry Balance, which allows two personas on the same device. Businesses can keep their data secure without forcing employees to get a second device for personal use. For instance, IT managers can prevent personal apps from running inside corporate firewalls, but those managers won’t have access to personal data on the device.

With Balance, “you can just switch from work to personal mode,” Papageorgiou said. “I think that is something that will attract a lot of people.”

RIM is also claiming that the BlackBerry 10′s browser will be speedy, even faster than browsers for laptop and desktop computers. According to Papageorgiou, early, independent tests between the BlackBerry 10 and the iPhone support that claim.

Regardless of BlackBerry 10′s advances, though, the new system will face a key shortcoming: It won’t have as many apps written by outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps, including those developed for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, first released in 2011. Even so, that’s just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android offer. Papageorgiou said the initial group will include the most popular ones such as Twitter and Facebook. But RIM will have to persuade others to make a BlackBerry version, when they are already struggling to keep up with both the iPhone and Android.

Like many analysts, Papageorgiou recently upgraded RIM’s stock, but cautions that longtime BlackBerry users will have to get used to a whole new operating system.

He said RIM can be successful if about a third of current subscribers upgrade and if the company can get 4 million new users overseas, especially in countries where the BlackBerry has remained popular. IDC said smartphone shipments grew 44 percent in 2012. If those trends continue, it will be possible for the BlackBerry to grow even if iPhone and Android users don’t switch.

“This doesn’t have to be the best smartphone on the planet to be a success for RIM,” he said. “I think the big question though is, if it fails, is it just too late? Are the other two ecosystems just so advanced that no one can catch up? That’s a big risk.”

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Seven Psychopaths Deleted Scene

A stare from Christopher Walken is worth a thousand words. The eccentric veteran star stands by while Colin Farrell and Sam Rockwell hash it out in this exclusive deleted scene from the Seven Psychopaths Blu-ray, in stores starting tomorrow. Watch the video!

Pics: Six Most Devastating TV Deaths

In Bruges writer-director Martin McDonagh rounds up usual suspects Farrell, Walken and Rockwell alongside Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko, Abbie Cornish and Željko Ivanek for this twisted comedy about a struggling screenwriter (Farrell) who inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends (Walken and Rockwell) kidnap a gangster's (Harrelson) beloved Shih Tzu.

Video: The 'Seven Psychopaths' Happy Accident

Bonus features on the Seven Psychopaths Blu-ray and DVD include deleted scenes, multiple behind-the-scenes featurettes and UltraViolet digital copy.

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Miami Herald Business Plan Challenge opens for entries

Entrepreneurs, please don’t let the name of our contest scare you.

As we launch our 15th annual Miami Herald Business Plan Challenge today, we are putting out our annual call for entries. But we aren’t looking for long, laboriously detailed business plans. Quite the contrary.

More and more, today’s investors in very early stage companies want to see a succinct presentation of your concept and how you plan to turn it into a success. We do, too.

If you have a business idea or an operating startup that is less than two years old, you can enter the Challenge, our annual celebration of South Florida entrepreneurship. Sponsored by the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International University, our contest has three tracks — a Community Track, open to all South Floridians; an FIU Track, open to students and alumni of that university; and a High School Track, co-sponsored by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

Your entry may be up to three pages and you may attach one additional page for a photo, rendering, diagram or spreadsheet if you wish. Think of it as a meaty executive summary. Experts in all aspects of entrepreneurship — serial entrepreneurs, executives, investors, advisors and finance specialists (see judge bios on MiamiHerald.com/challenge) — will judge your short plan. In doing so, they will be looking at your product or service’s value to the customer, market opportunity, business model, management team and your marketing and financial strategies. See the rules on page 22, which also include tips on preparing your entry.

Your entry is due by 11:59 p.m. March 11. Entries should be sent to challenge@miamiherald.com, fiuchallenge@miamiherald.com or highschoolchallenge@miamiherald.com.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help!

“Frame your business from your customer’s perspective and not yours. Rather than diving into a detailed explanation of your product or service, a more compelling way to tell your business story is to clearly share the problem that you are solving for your customers and how your business is different, better, faster, cooler, cheaper, smarter,” says Melissa Krinzman, managing director of Venture Architects and a veteran Challenge judge.

On Feb 26 at 6:30 p.m. at Miami Dade College, we’ll host a free Business Plan Bootcamp, where you can bring your working plan with you for advice from experts, including Krinzman. Find the sign-up link on MiamiHerald.com/challenge.

And each week in Business Monday and on MiamiHerald.com/challenge, we’ll be bringing you advice and answering your questions. You can post your questions on the Q&A on MiamiHerald.com/challenge or email your questions to me at ndahlberg@miamiherald.com. Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter.

The top six finalists in the Community and FIU Tracks will present their 90-second elevator pitches for our popular video contest. Last year our People’s Pick contest drew more than 18,000 votes.

On May 6, in a special section of Business Monday, we will profile the winners — the judges’ top three selections in each track plus the People’s Pick winners. Along the way, we will unveil semifinalists and finalists to keep the suspense building.

Today, though, we are looking back on the entrepreneurial journeys of our 2012 winners. Funding was a nearly universal challenge, and many faced setbacks in developing their platforms. Throughout the entry period, we’ll also look back on other winners from the past 14 years.

Show us what you’ve got. Let’s make this the best Challenge yet.

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Alleged check-dodging tourist settles beef with Smith & Wollensky - pal vows boycott

Italy is saying basta! to Smith & Wollensky, the pal of an accused tab-dodging tourist huffed this morning, after the misdemeanor case was disposed of in a Manhattan court.

"In Italy, no one will go to Smith & Wollensky again!" the pal, who gave his name only as Mario, announced to reporters in a courtroom hallway after the brief proceeding this morning.

Tourist Graziano Graziussi — charged with theft of services last week after he forgot his wallet back at his hotel and couldn't pay his $208 bill — was less committal.

"I will think about it," the Naples-based lawyer said, when asked if he'd ever eat another steak at the renowned Third Avenue meat mecca.

REUTERS

While the friend of an accused tab-dodging tourist is vowing to boycott Smith & Wollensky, Graziano Graziussi said he was just glad to have it settled.

"It's done — of course I'm happy," he told reporters after paying a total $219.21 in restitution and surcharges.

Graziussi has insisted that he'd have been willing to leave his iPhone behind as collateral, and just needed to fetch his wallet. But cops threw him in jail overnight.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, asked about the international incident during a press conference last week, noted that Graziussi had been carrying $118 on him when he claimed poverty, and "simply did not want to pay."

Not so, Graziussi countered today.

“I am always the one to pay for everybody, which is unfortunately true,“ he said as he left court.

In fact, five years ago during another trip to New York, he went to a hot dog vendor at Sixth Avenue, and tried to pay with a $50 bill -- the smallest bill he had on him, Graziussi told reporters.

The dog vendor couldn't make change, and said don't worry about it, Graziussi said.

"I went back there the following day [to pay] and he could not believe his eyes," he said.

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Erika Edwards told Graziussi that the misdemeanor theft of services case will be dismissed and sealed if he is not rearrested for six months.

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ING Miami Marathon winner Luis Carlos Rivero Gonzalez inspired by father’s murder

Guatemala’s Luis Carlos Rivero Gonzalez has been a professional runner for more than two years — mainly at distances of ten to 21 kilometers – but he had never raced 26.2 miles until Sunday’s ING Miami Marathon.

Toeing the front of the starting line with about a dozen elite marathoners from Africa, South America, Europe and the U.S., the 26-year-old law student ran away from them and never saw them again until after he broke the tape in Bayfront Park in 2:26:14 – two minutes ahead of runner-up David Kipkoech Tuwei, 29, of Kenya (2:28:15) and third-place Tesfaye Girma Bekele, 30, of Ethiopia (2:28:22).

“Yeah, I had expectations of winning,” Rivero Gonzalez said through a translator. “It felt good to be able to represent my country in the marathon. My dream is to be in the Olympics. I’m going to fight to reach that goal.”

He collected $2,000, plus a colorful race medal. Tuwei and Bekele won $1,000 and $500, respectively.

Rivero Gonzalez said as a child, he ran with his dad — a lawyer in the town of San Marcos. But five years ago, his father was killed by “criminals,” and it spurred him to train harder in his dad’s honor.

Rivero Gonzalez admitted when questioned by reporters that his coach falsified his best marathon time as 2:23:08 on his application for elite runner status for the ING.

Top runners get to start at the front of the pack, along with other perks.

With 25,000 runners in the marathon and half-marathon lined up in front of AmericanAirlines Arena for the pre-dawn start, Gonzalez did not want to be slowed by the huge crowd. The strategy worked; runner-up Tuwei said he didn’t have the leader in sight for long after the starting gun.

Women’s marathon winner Mariska Postma Kramer of the Netherlands – had been registered as an elite competitor for the half-marathon, but decided at the last minute Saturday to enter the double-distance race instead.

It turned out to be a good decision, as the 38-year-old professional runner cruised to a 2:46:07 victory in her first Miami race – more than two minutes in front of runner-up Tezata Desaign Dengersa ofTurkey and Ethiopia (2:48:43).

Third-place Kir Selert of Brooklyn, N.Y. finished in 2:57:32.

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Smartphone pioneer RIM looks to put recent hardships behind it with BB10

TORONTO, Cananda – Once a leader but now derided as a laggard, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion hopes to regain the confidence of cynical smartphone users this week as the curtain is lifted on its much-anticipated new smartphones.

The stakes are high for the unveiling, which many observers say will determine whether RIM survives to see the launch of another BlackBerry smartphone.

It has been a steep decline for RIM, which less than five years ago was the most valuable company in Canada, above Royal Bank (TSX:RY). Affectionately called the “CrackBerry” maker, the mobile communications pioneer was Canada’s crowning achievement of the technology sector.

Back in 1984, the year RIM was founded, it was practically unimaginable that a tiny startup based in Waterloo, Ont. would help change the way we communicate, but for fresh engineering graduates Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin that was always the plan.

“Like so many of these guys Lazaridis was a Star Trek lunatic,” said Alastair Sweeny, author of “BlackBerry Planet.”

“He says it’s almost like telepathy — humans have a yearning to communicate.”

The beginnings were humble for the two founders, with the majority of their time dedicated to Budgie, an LED sign business that was contracted by General Motors to communicate messages to workers on its assembly lines. Despite early interest, the project was a sales flop and RIM‘s owners decided to sell the business and look at other ventures.

One of those projects put RIM squarely in the eyes of Hollywood. The DigiSync film reader caught on with movie editors because its synching technology shaved hours off the time it took to turn miles of film into useable content in post-production. While the technology went on to win RIM both an Emmy and a technical achievement from the Academy Awards, it was never a top priority for RIM‘s founders.

“Lazaridis was always into security,” said Sweeny. “He realized that corporations needed secure communications because of industrial espionage, because of hacking.”

Throughout the late 1980s, RIM was working alongside other industry players to develop technology that would eventually be used in pagers and wireless payment processing systems. By the start of the 1990s, the wheels were turning on the communication systems that would become the foundation of the BlackBerry.

An agreement with Ericcson’s Mobitex wireless network allowed RIM to create pagers that operated as a two-way communicators, a revolutionary concept for data transfer.

Turning the idea into a marketable product was a bigger challenge. The world had yet to become accustomed to the Internet age and most people hadn’t heard of email, nevermind used it. While the project was a bust with its first partner Cantel, RIM forged ahead.

The technology captured the attention and imaginations of an industry, and perhaps most importantly Jim Balsillie, an energetic Harvard graduate who, at the age of 33, invested $ 250,000 of his own money into the company by re-mortgaging his house.

In 1996, RIM launched its first sales success, a clamshell wireless handheld device called the RIM 900 Interactive Pager. It was a two-way communicator that also had the ability to send faxes, as well as link to the Internet and email.

But Lazaridis discovered that the email feature, which he believed was one of the strongest qualities of the device, wasn’t being used by most customers. So he hired Lexicon Branding, based in California, to find a way to draw more attention to its keyboard, the main feature that differentiated it from other pagers.

Branding executives pondered the device, focusing mainly on its appearance, and when one of them pointed out the little keypad looked like similar to the seeds of a strawberry, the conversation zeroed in on the names of fruits and vegetables. Eventually, the group settled on “BlackBerry” because it was both punchy and remained true to the device’s original black casing.

The company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1997, raising more than $ 115 million, and debuted the first BlackBerry the following year.

From there it seemed the sky was the limit.

Suddenly the BlackBerry was everywhere in the technology community, thrust into the spotlight by the enthusiastic co-CEO Balsillie who touted the device on Wall Street and handed it out for free at select technology conferences. Balsillie knew how to build buzz and proudly tapped away on the BlackBerry whenever he appeared before the media.

A demand had been created, and subscribers to the BlackBerry services continued to grow in leaps and bounds. In 1999, RIM listed on the Nasdaq, raising another US$ 250 million.

The success grabbed the attention of Virginia-based NTP Inc. which filed a lawsuit claiming that RIM‘s network infringed on its patents. While NTP won the case, and the courts ordered RIM to pay US$ 23.1 million, the battle continued in appeals courts for years before a settlement was reached for a much heftier $ 612.5 million.

Outside the courtrooms the BlackBerry was a massive success, garnering headlines when its enterprise network remained intact after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 when other wireless phone systems broke down.

The BlackBerry’s reputation was growing at a steady clip, helped by the introduction of cellphone service in 2002 on what had been a text-only device. Within two years, BlackBerry reached more than 1 million subscribers.

The smartphone was in demand at corporate offices around the world, and soon the more casual consumer began to take notice, helping to boost its subscribers to nine million by 2007. RIM also secured a distribution deal in China, driving its stock to a level that made it the most valuable Canadian company.

But amid all of the success a storm of competition was brewing in the tech industry.

In June 2007, Apple unleashed the first iPhone touchscreen device onto the U.S. market, garnering widespread praise from critics and consumers, but hardly rattling its competitors.

Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer famously dismissed the touchscreen device that year, saying “there’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”

Whether it was a strategic decision or simply coincidence, Apple kept its iPhone far away from the Canadian marketplace for nearly a year, choosing to launch in six other countries first.

The lower profile with Canadian consumers also seemed to minimize the concern from RIM’s executives, who publicly downplayed the influence of the iPhone in an already crowded mobile phone market.

“They just missed it,” said Carl Howe, vice-president of consumer research at Yankee Group.

“They missed the idea that you could create a really good experience without having a keyboard. They gave Apple a two-year head start.”

By the time the iPhone hit Canadian shelves, RIM was facing scrutiny from analysts who worried that the growing number competitors, which now also included Google’s Android system, would devour marketshare.

RIM went on the defensive in 2008, releasing a combination keypad and touchscreen device it called the Storm, but the phone was swept up in a flurry of other BlackBerry releases that year. Much of the marketing clout was put behind the debut of a high-end BlackBerry Bold, which wasn’t a touchscreen.

“A lot of tech companies have their heads in the sand,” said Howe of the co-CEOs.

“It’s not that they’re stupid, and I think that’s an important point. People who get hit by ‘innovator’s dilemma’ are not stupid … I think when you create something from scratch and turn it into a multi-billion dollar business you’re very reluctant to say ‘I’m now going to throw away everything I’ve learned and do something different.’ “

At the height of its hype, the BlackBerry device was splashed across television shows and movies, while then-presidential candidate Barack Obama proclaimed he was a BlackBerry faithful during his campaign.

As competition heated up with Apple, investors became concerned that RIM’s co-CEOs, in particular Balsillie, were distracted by the possibilities that success brought them, rather than focused on revamping the BlackBerry for a new era.

In 2009, Balsillie launched his third, and most aggressive, attempt to buy an National Hockey League team, with hopes that he could convince the NHL to move the Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton. The battle dragged on for months before Balsillie abandoned his dream once again.

Back in Waterloo a storm was brewing as technical problems began to wreak havoc on the company’s network infrastructure.

There were two network outages in less than a year that left BlackBerry users temporarily without their services. Some industry observers suggested the company could buckle under its own success. BlackBerry sales were soaring, even with the technical problems, with subscriber growth up 70 per cent to 36 million by the end of 2009. RIM’s leaders reassured users that the outages were a fluke and wouldn’t be a reoccurring problem.

Despite the setbacks, the BlackBerry image appeared to emerge unscathed. In April 2010 it cracked the Top Five mobile phone carriers worldwide and soon afterwards Queen Elizabeth made a visit to RIM’s headquarters in Waterloo.

Behind the scenes there was unrest among the company’s board of directors as the leaders clashed over where the BlackBerry brand should go next. Rumours swirled around the industry that trouble was afoot.

Fanfare eventually gave way to the realities of competition, with the first major blow coming from the failed launch of the PlayBook, RIM’s answer to Apple’s iPad. In September 2010, the co-CEOs showcased the new product for the public but waited another six months before unleashing it to stores.

By then it was too late, the tablet market had already been cornered by Apple and reviews of the PlayBook harshly criticized its lack of connectivity to popular BlackBerry functions like email and instant messenger.

Within months the foundation of RIM started to crumble as it repeatedly missed its own revenue and earnings targets. In June 2011, the company slashed 11 per cent of its workforce, or 2,000 jobs, to keep its cost in line.

A stark reminder of its fragility came in October 2011 when a worldwide four-day outage left BlackBerry users again without the use of the device they had come to rely on. The smartphones wouldn’t connect to the Internet, email or its messaging services.

The anger from its loyal users was heard loud and clear, and Lazaridis emerged from days of silence to apologize and tell users the company had let them down.

In an earnings call several weeks later, Lazaridis urged investor “patience and confidence” as the executives tried to improve performance. Both he and Balsillie, two of the company’s biggest shareholders, reduced their salaries to $ 1.

Again, it was a decision made too late — the outage had cost RIM more than $ 50 million in revenue and tarnished its reputation. In December 2011, the company reported that profits tumbled more than 70 per cent, affected by a big charge from sales discounts it was forced make on PlayBook tablets.

Perhaps an even bigger blow to RIM’s reputation was the delay of its next-generation BlackBerrys, pushing the planned release into 2012. The phones — which were delayed again throughout last year and will be unveiled this Wednesday — were seen as the company’s best hope to maintain market share against Apple and Android devices.

The company stock had tumbled from its lofty height of $ 137.41 on the Toronto Stock Exchange in mid-2008 to $ 14.80 at the end of 2011.

RIM, once a symbol of Canadian success and innovation, had become awash in its own troubles. Apple’s iPhone had cornered the rapidly developing apps market while RIM sat on the sidelines with developers.

Sweeny recalls visiting a group of developers, who he considered BlackBerry fanatics, while doing research for his book in 2008.

“They were writing great games and programs for the BlackBerry and they couldn’t get the latest hardware from RIM to test them on,” he said.

“I called them a couple years later and they weren’t writing for BlackBerry at all. They were writing programs for Apple and starting to write for Android.”

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s often suggested that the co-CEOs lost control of their empire, but some industry watchers say that RIM saw the troubles several years earlier.

“In this market you can’t admit that you’re behind,” said Tim Long, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.

“You have to put on the face because once you start to lose momentum that can shift the buying patterns.”

Numerous acquisitions were made by RIM throughout 2010 and 2011 to beef up its stable of technology, Long said. That included Ottawa-based QNX Software Systems, whose technology became the basis of the new operating system, and Astonishing Tribe, the Swedish company that helped develop an early user interface of the Android operating system.

But the acquisitions came too late, and by late 2011 some investors were calling for its leaders to resign.

Bowing to pressure, Balsillie and Lazaridis stepped down from their co-CEO positions in January 2012, pocketing a combined $ 12 million in the process. The duo were replaced by Thorsten Heins, RIM’s former chief operating officer, and hardly two months later Balsillie had left the company entirely.

Almost immediately, Heins launched a major revamp of RIM’s operations, hiring several new executives with experience at other major tech companies. The approach was a last-ditch effort to revive the company, but it has also thrown the BlackBerry maker into the most uncertain period in its history.

With nearly $ 2 billion in its coffers Heins had options, but the clock was ticking to get a new smartphone on the market.

“Nobody is delusional here,” Rick Costanzo, the company’s new executive vice-president of global sales, said last summer.

“We get it. That’s why we’re building BlackBerry 10 and man are we committed.”

A new chapter in RIM’s history begins this week as the BlackBerry 10 smartphones and operating system are showcased to the world.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Exclusive: JJ Abrams Confirms Bradley Cooper in Talks For Lance Armstrong Biopic

Shortly after Bradley Cooper expressed interest (publicly) in portraying disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong in J.J. Abrams'upcoming biopic about the athlete, the producer/director confirmed to ET exclusively that he is indeed in talks with Cooper for the role.

Pics: Stars Take On Real-Life Roles

When asked about Cooper's interest in tackling the part backstage at the Producers Guild Awards in Los Angeles, Abrams told ET's Christina McLarty "[Cooper] sent me an email and we've been talking."

Said Cooper to BBC News on January 22, "I would be interested in [playing Armstrong]. I think he's fascinating. What a fascinating character."

Paramount Pictures & Bad Robot (J.J. Abram's production company) secured the rights to Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong, a book proposal penned by Juliet Macur, in mid-January just after Armstrong admitted publicly to doping during all seven Tour de France wins. The author, a sports reporter from The New York Times, has covered the athlete over the span of a decade throughout Armstrong's struggle with cancer, years of doping allegations and ensuing lawsuits.

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Bill de Blasio announces he's running for NYC mayor

New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has announced he's running for mayor.

The public advocate announced his run Sunday outside his home in Brooklyn's Park Slope.

The 51-year-old candidate says that means he'll conduct what he calls a "true citywide campaign" — starting Monday in all five boroughs.

The election to replace outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in November.

De Blasio says the billionaire mayor's policies have been good for some, but many middle-class New Yorkers "have been ignored or priced out."

REUTERS

Bill de Blasio hugs his wife Chirlane McCray after announcing his candidacy for mayor.

The field of candidates includes City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Bill Thompson, a former city comptroller — both Democrats — and Republican Joe Lhota, former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

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Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones running for reelection

Eight years have passed since Michelle Spence-Jones was elected to the Miami City Commission.

She isn’t willing to leave just yet.

Spence-Jones — who was charged with bribery and grand theft in 2009, suspended from office, acquitted and reinstated to her post — is seeking reelection, she announced Friday. She represents District 5, which includes Overtown, Little Haiti and Liberty City.

Whether Spence-Jones could run again has been the subject of much debate. The Miami city charter limits commissioners to two terms and Spence-Jones has twice won election. But City Attorney Julie O. Bru opined that Spence-Jones could run again because her second term was interrupted by the suspension.

“Our charter prohibits a commissioner or the mayor for running for reelection after that commissioner or mayor has served two consecutive terms,” Bru reaffirmed to Spence-Jones at a City Commission meeting Thursday. “You are eligible to seek reelection because you did not serve two full consecutive terms.”

Spence-Jones’s opponent isn’t buying it.

“The bottom line is, Michelle is term limited,” said the Rev. Richard P. Dunn II, who held the commission seat in Spence-Jones’s absence. “She received financial compensation for the time she was away and she was fully vested in the pension. Are the citizens of Miami going to pay her twice?”

Dunn plans to file a legal challenge “immediately,” he said.

Spence-Jones wants the additional term, she said, “to finish what I started.”

She pointed to the improvements she’s spearheaded along Northeast Second Avenue in Little Haiti. “We cleaned the place up, repainted many of the buildings and recreated a Caribbean feel by adding steeples,” she said.

The ultimate goal, Spence-Jones said, is to make Little Haiti a destination for tourists akin to Little Havana’s Calle Ocho. She has a similar vision for Overtown, which was once the cultural hub of Miami’s black community. To that end, Spence-Jones pushed for improvements to Northwest Third Avenue and provided grant money for local businesses.

“Now we’re going to move forward with a marketing campaign and build relationships with cruise lines and tour operators,” Spence-Jones said. “But these sorts of things take time.”

Other big projects are in the works.

Earlier this year, Spence-Jones pushed through a $50 million bond issue for improvements in Overtown — the largest investment the blighted community has seen in decades. The money will go toward affordable housing and some retail projects.

But Spence-Jones takes an equal amount of pride in some of her smaller initiatives, including a project that brought Hollywood director Robert Townsend to Overtown to film an independent movie. Students from the University of Miami and several local high schools had the opportunity to serve as interns. The film will debut this summer.

She plans to focus future efforts on Liberty City. She is already laying the groundwork for a program that will train residents to become laboratory technicians. A second program will help people with criminal records pursue careers in the automotive industry.

Spence-Jones’s tenure has been somewhat of a rollercoaster. After being elected to her second term, she was charged with bribery and grand theft in two separate cases and removed from office by then-Gov. Charlie Crist. Jurors later acquitted her of bribery, and prosecutors dropped the grand-theft charges.

A vindicated Spence-Jones returned to City Hall in August with newfound political heft.

Spence-Jones is now suing Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle and Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado, accusing them of conspiring to destroy her political career via the prosecutions. She declined to talk about the suit, saying only: “I’m going to let my lawyers fight that battle.”

She may have another legal fight ahead.

Dunn believes the city attorney’s opinion giving Spence-Jones the go-ahead to run again won’t withstand a legal challenge. He says Spence-Jones has served two consecutive terms because she was paid for two consecutive terms.

Dunn also criticized the city attorney, saying she likely felt pressured to give that opinion because Spence-Jones is her boss.

“If it stands up in a court of law, I will respect that,” said Dunn, who attended Thursday’s commission meeting and took notes on a legal pad. “But I’m not going to be whitewashed by a city attorney’s opinion that’s biased by her boss’s posturing position.”

Dunn, who also sat on the commission in the mid-‘90s after Commissioner Miller Dawkins was removed from office, pointed to his own accomplishments as a commissioner. He said he helped secure funding for Gibson Park,and quelled racial tensions after Miami police officers shot and killed seven black men in 2010 and 2011.

“Michelle Spence-Jones does not own that seat,” he said. “It’s owned by the people of District 5.”

No other candidates have announced they are running for the post.

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Hackers claim attack on Justice Department website

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hackers sympathetic to the late computer prodigy Aaron Swartz claimed on Saturday to have infiltrated the website of the U.S. Justice Department’s Sentencing Commission, and said they planned to release government data.

The Sentencing Commission site, www.ussc.gov , was shut down early Saturday.

Identifying themselves as Anonymous, a loosely organized group of unknown provenance associated with a range of recent online actions, the hackers voiced outrage over Swartz’ suicide on January 11.

In a video posted online, the hackers criticized the government’s prosecution of Swartz, who had been facing trial on charges that he used the Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service.

Swartz had faced a maximum sentence of 31 years in prison and fines of up to $ 1 million.

The FBI is investigating the attack, according to Richard McFeely, of the bureau’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch.

“We were aware as soon as it happened and are handling it as a criminal investigation,” McFeely said in an emailed statement. “We are always concerned when someone illegally accesses another person’s or government agency’s network.”

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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