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A patsy is a person that is easily taken advantage of, the guy that gets set up to take the fall so the big wigs in power can extricate themselves from a situation free from blame. As you may have heard, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has named a new CEO today, Thorsten Heins. He takes over for co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis who are both moving to non-operational seats on RIM's board of directors. Poor Heins. This is a big break for a guy that started his career as an engineer. Yet, Balsillie and Lazaridis are setting Heins up to fail. RIM has a new patsy.

Back in the early 1990s, we didn't have BlackBerries or any kind of wireless data devices. Phones weren't very "smart," and dial up still ruled the land. Then a trio of companies came together to invent the Viking Express which was a combination of an Ericsson Mobidem wireless data modem that was the size of a small brick, an HP 100 pocket-sized computer that looked more like a big calculator, and software from a company called Radiomail that ran on the DOS operating system of the HP. The world of wireless hasn't been the same since.

I remember sending an email from my car on the New Jersey Turnpike, pulling over after I passed through one of the toll barriers. A cop came along and wanted to know what I was doing. It was probably the first time he had seen such an assemblage of devices.

On the heights, all the paths are paved with daggers -  Robert Jordan

The Apple rumor cycle is gearing back up. It is always exciting when the mass of Web pundits get on their high horses and start making prognostications about who, when, what, how the new iDevice will be. With all the attention that new versions of the iPad and iPhone receive, it begs a question: what happens when/if Apple releases a complete flop? You know, something along the lines of a BlackBerry Storm-like disaster. The driving force of Steve Jobs is gone and, one way or another, that is going to affect Apple's products. What happens to the Cult of Apple and its iDevice line if the next iteration is widely disgusted?

A temporary restraining order issued by a federal court in Albuquerque on behalf of a software company that produces a version of BASIC, has compelled Research In Motion to start calling the next version of its operating system for BlackBerry smartphones "BlackBerry 10." This according to a tweet from the company's official Twitter feed.

The name BBx (albeit with a small "x") is being used by Basis Software of Albuquerque as a trademark for its Business BASIC language interpreter, which is a classic language interpreter capable of extending business logic established over the previous decades to a platform that reaches smartphones, including BlackBerrys. Perhaps the most startling element of this case came from RIM, whose U.S.-based subsidiary had claimed in court, according to the judge's ruling, that the Singapore developers' conference to which the restraining order applies is not all that important to anyone in America.

Research In Motion wants you to believe that there is a good reason developers should write apps for the BlackBerry platform. RIM touts that sales are up 44% in the last year from 50 million to 70 million and that the BBX with the BlackBerry Messenger Connect provides an easy to develop for platform that can help developers get paid.

Developers and the purchasing public are not quite buying it yet. The approach to RIM right now is a "let's wait and see" approach, especially with the release of BBX coming sometime in early 2012. RIM's developer strategy is tied directly to HTML5, perhaps to the detriment of native BlackBerry applications. RIM needs to get its story straight for developers moving forward is the BBX ecosystem is to flourish.

When you're watching a remake, your mind cannot help itself for drawing comparisons with the original. You play back the scenes the way they were originally cast, the lines as they were said the first time, the expressions on characters' faces the way you remember them.

It hit me as I was watching the BlackBerry DevCon 2011 keynote yesterday from Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis: I didn't like how this movie ended the first time I saw it.

Assume, if you will, that BlackBerry never existed. That should be easy enough, especially when Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis personally shows you how.

A new tablet-oriented, multitouch operating system called BBX has been introduced to a legion of developers who are already entrenched in Android, iOS, and HTML5. Essentially, a new Research In Motion was launched as well. The old RIM, a provider of enterprise-grade secure messaging and innovative devices, exited the back door of history following last week's massive e-mail failure.

Lots of memories of my computing past flooding through me this morning, and no, this won't be another Jobs tribute. But a post yesterday talking about whether you were using the Internet back in 1995 brought me back to that era, and I thought it would be a good time to show how much progress we have made in the 16-some years and what businesses were doing with the Internet back then.

When it comes to designing its overall mobile user experience, Apple apparently knows how to keep customers happy. Almost 90% of people that own an iPhone say they'd prefer to stick with Apple when it comes time to purchase their next mobile device, according to a recent survey conducted by UBS Investment Research.

This is far higher than the retention rate for the second most popular handset maker, which was HTC. The Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer has managed to encourage 39% of its current customers to stick with them for their next device.

Research In Motion announced yesterday that it is launching a beta of the Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS that will allow game developers to code in C/C++ and take advantage of a deeper API set. Developers can create games for the BlackBerry PlayBook using the Standand Template Library and the Open GL ES. Given the decline of the BlackBerry platform over the last year, how many developers are still actively creating apps for either the Tablet OS or smartphones?

RIM has been fairly active in creating and updating its developer tools for both the QNX operating system for the PlayBook and for the BlackBerry OS for smartphones. Eventually, these two platforms will merge, probably early next year. Questions for developers: is it harder to code for BlackBerry apps? With the domination of Android and iOS, is it even worth it anymore?