Although Research In Motion purchased the domain name BlackPad.com in July 2010 and sparked a large amount of talk that the domain name purchase was likely the new name for the expected tablet computer from Blackberry®, RIM announced today the real name for their tablet computer is:
PlayBook
RIM purchased BlackPad.com on or about July 26, 2010 from Jack Spurr according to whois records.
So does RIM own the domain name PlayBook.com to match the tablets new name? Nope! Playbook.com was registered in 1996 and is owned by Playbook Publications and is a sports related website.
So, it would appear that Blackberry either decided against the BlackPad name or simply purchased the domain as a way from preventing somebody else from having it to compare it to Apple’s iPad or really a million other reasons like a different product, a way to throw people off of the name etc.
RIM DID purchase PlaybookTablet.com on September 22, 2010 which is whois privacy protected at GoDaddy.com but currently forwards to http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ which displays the below screen shot of the website.
The PlaybookTablet.com domain name and BlackPad.com currently use the same DNS, although BlackPad.com does not resolve. One would expect BlackberryTablet.com to be owned by RIM, but does not appear so as according to whois records a David Wampler registered the domain name on January 26, 2010. That domain resolves to a Network Solutions under construction page. RIM does own BlackberryPlaybookTablet.com, also purchased on 9/22/10 when PlaybookTablet.com was registered. The longer version domain redirects to the same URL as the PlaybookTablet.com domain name.
Gnanes
PlayBook is a way better name than BlackPad. BlackPad just sounds cheesy (Copy of iPad).
Jamie Zoch
@Gnanes,
I agree it is a better name but I think they still could have done better.
Gnanes
Surfbook would’ve been better since the .com could’ve been bought out. It’s not even in use.