More movement at RIM, cheap tablets, and the cost of charging too much.

RIM to License Blackberry Platform?
RIM may be in talks with Samsung and HTC about licensing the Blackberry 10 platform. This may keep RIM afloat in the short term, but the company gets 79% of its revenue from hardware sales.

The Downside of Usage Based Billing
Canadian ISP Teksavvy will be raising rates due to "capacity-based billing", allowing the big ISPs to charge smaller ones for chunks of capacity for potential use. Teksavvy says that while fixed costs have gone down, variable costs, such as capacity, has grown and blames the CRTC for instituting capacity-based billing after usage-based billing turned out to be unpopular enough to get all three parties (Liberal, NDP, and Conservative) to force the agency to back down from it. However, even capacity-based billing will stifle Canadian Internet expansion as costs rise.

India to get $35 Tablet
Canadian company Datawind has created the Aakash Tablet, which will be sold in India for $35. The Aakash has a basic touch screen and can run word processing, web browsing, and video-conferencing with its Android co-processor.

The Future of North American Entertainment?
Two Chinese sites, Youtu and Tudou, are going to court over rights on what shows and content could be shown by the companies. At stakes are 400 million online viewers and the ad revenue chasing the eyeballs. The sites started out as Youtube imitators, allowing people to upload videos, including the ubiquitous cat vids. However, the sites since branched out, getting foreign content and creating their own much like a TV station would. North American broadcasters may want to pay attention to how this shakes out. content creators may also want to think about creating original content for online streaming.

Texting Down
The use of texting is down as people find cheaper means of communicating. US providers are still getting 12% of their revenue from texting, but the costs are driving some people to use social networking instead. Given that it is cheaper to use Facebook on a smartphone dataplan than to send a text directly, the providers have themselves to blame, really.

Canadian Government Cracking Down on Spam
The Canadian government will be opening a spam resource centre (SRC) to identify, track, and analyze spam and malware sent via email. Industry Canada will be responsible for the centre. The purpose of the SRC is to prevent the undermining of the online economy by spam. Unlike in the US, where the CAN SPAM act was written by companies who wanted to send junk email once the spammers were dealt with, Canadian companies are mostly on board against spam, seeing it as a threat to the Internet.

–Scott D