From your second link:
UPDATE: I skipped over one piece of information from one of my RIM sources, and the reason could have been that my mind just couldn’t process what I was reading. Anyway, it appears that up until at least pre-iPad announcement, RIM had a monochrome version of a tablet device in their wings. Yes, you heard correct — it looks like RIM was, at least one time, trying to build a Kindle competitor.