TechBytes: Facebook Goes Down

Sept. 23, 2010— -- Facebook experienced a rare outage Wednesday, leaving some of its members locked out. The problem was with a third-party network provider and affected users across the country, including in Phoenix, Detroit, Philadelphia and Boston.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion will reportedly unveil a new tablet computer next week, to rival Apple's iPad.

The BlackPad will feature a 7-inch touch screen and built-in camera. The New York Times' Sam Grobart said he believes it faces an uphill challenge.

"I don't want to say that BlackBerry has to pull a rabbit out of its hat for this to work for them, but they kind of have to pull a rabbit out of a hat," he said.

"BlackBerry's operating system, even their latest version, was met with a bit of a yawn on their smart phones. They've been steadily losing market share to other smart-phone manufacturers, namely Apple. With something like the BlackPad, they really have to come out with something pretty revolutionary."

The device will run on completely new software.