Burning Hot: Surface 2, Gyft’s new celeb funding and BBM’s delayed launch

What do you get when you combine Ashton Kutcher, Microsoft’s new tablets and a leaked Android version of BlackBerry’s popular messaging app? The latest episode of Burning Hot.

In our weekly wrap up of some of the top stories in tech, we take a look at the second generation of Microsoft’s tablet/laptop hybrid, the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2. While the original tablet was plagued with less-than-stellar sales and mixed reviews, the tech giant is hoping its revamped lineup will help sway users in favour of Windows 8. Microsoft has tweaked everything from the colour of its type covers to the distinctive kickstand to make its iPad alternative a stronger competitor in the crowded tablet market.

In other news, BlackBerry has been left doing serious damage control after the much-hyped launch of BBM on Android and iPhone came and went without the massive worldwide roll out it had planned. The smartphone giant is still trying to fix its systems after a buggy, leaked version of the Android app made the rounds on file sharing sites and brought an unexpected volume of traffic to its servers.

Over on Ventureburn, Gyft (the digital gift card startup from Yola founder Vinny Lingham) confirmed it had closed a new round of funding from backers which include Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments, The Social+Capital Partnership, Karlin Ventures, Haas Portman and angel investor and CEO of Yammer, David O. Sacks. It also revealed some early stats about how popular the service is — such as how 200 000 plastic gift cards have been uploaded to Gyft to date, to the value of more than US$10-million.