UPDATED 09:01 EDT / APRIL 01 2013

BlackBerry 10 Tablet Coming This Fall

In today’s mobile and social news roundup: BlackBerry tablet may be coming in Q3; iMessage suffers DoS attack; USPTO blocks iPad mini trademark; and Teens more interested in mobile messaging apps than Facebook.

BlackBerry tablet may be coming in Q3

Twitter account @BB10Leaks tweeted what seems to be BlackBerry’s roadmap for 2013.  It showed five devices on the map including the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 which were unveiled late January.  Three more devices are coming later this year and it seems like BlackBerry has a new tablet, phablet, and another QWERTY for its fans.

The B10 L looks like the tablet coming sometime between the third and fourth quarter, the U10 which looks like a phablet will be coming late in the fourth quarter, while the QWERTY R10 is coming in the second quarter of 2014.

iMessage DoS attack

Last week, some developers started experiencing iMessage flooding on their jailbroken iPhones.  The incident was later determined as a denial of service attack wherein a series of texts were sent to Apple’s iMessage.  The flood of messages were likely sent via the OS X Messages app using a simple AppleScript.  The rapid-fire text quickly fills up the iMessage app, forcing the user to clear the messages and notifications, while others experienced the app shutting down.

“What’s happening is a simple flood: Apple doesn’t seem to limit how fast messages can be sent, so the attacker is able to send thousands of messages very quickly,”  Grant Paul says.

Grant also stated that the solution he used involves “playing around with sending a regular message, then locking the phone and activating the message notification until you’re able to time it right to delete the message thread that’s causing the problem,” to be able to delete the complex text that caused the problem.

USPTO blocks iPad mini trademark

The US Patent and Trademark Office has denied Apple’s patent application for the “iPad mini” stating that it only describes “a feature of applicant’s goods, namely, a small sized handheld tablet computer.”  The rejection came last January but the decision is still not final.  Apple has until July 24 to appeal the for the patent, convincing the USPTO why the “iPad mini” has to be trademarked.

Teens more interested in mobile messaging apps than Facebook

Though teens dominate social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, they are now more interested in using messaging apps to stay connected with friends.

Messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Kik provide both the social networking experience and instant messaging.  Though Facebook also offers instant messaging on its mobile app, teens prefer apps that are dedicated to instant messaging.

“True interactions are conversational in nature,” says Rich Miner, a partner at Google Ventures who invested in San Francisco-based MessageMe, a new entrant in the messaging market. “More people text and make phone calls than get on to social networks. If one company dominates the replacement of that traffic, then by definition that’s very big.”

Here with more analysis on Facebook’s quandary is Contributing Editor John Casaretto, who appeared on this morning’s NewsDesk show with Kristin Feledy:


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