RIM being honored with Canadian Innovations Postage Stamp

Research In Motion is being honored in August with a BlackBerry postage stamp in the Canadian Innovations series. They’re being honored in a series that includes the pacemaker, the electric oven & the electric wheelchair.

It’s great to see that they’re being honored as innovators in a time where their future is unknown to many.

While smart phones and other communications devices, as well as technologies such as push email and mobile apps, are commonplace now, they were nearly the stuff of science fiction in 1999, when Research in Motion (RIM) founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie introduced the now iconic BlackBerry®. Their invention freed information workers from their desks and changed the way the world communicates. Subsequent versions and continuous innovation have kept RIM and its BlackBerry device a front runner in the massive smart phone market.

• Purchase Canadian Innovations – Booklet of 8 Stamps
• Purchase Canadian Innovations – Official First Day Cover

via: bbos

BlackBerry PlayBook DLNA Media Streaming Certification Coming Soon

While at the BlackBerry PlayBook launch event last week Mike Lazaridis let me know about two upcoming features that are coming to the BlackBerry PlayBook. First he told me that the BlackBerry PlayBook will be getting its DLNA certification very soon which will allow you to wirelessly stream video and music to devices that support it. In case you don’t know what DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is here is a brief primer. DLNA is a standard that sets profiles for devices that stream or accept streams. You may remember its previous standard called UPnP. The best part about DLNA is that it is an open standard which means you will be able to tap into the almost 10,000 DLNA certified devices out there.

Why did RIM choose to build a smaller tablet with a 7" display vs. going bigger? Here's the story!

The Globe and Mail posted a really great article yesterday titled RIM makes a play for its future that walks through a lot of the back story leading up to the creation of the BlackBerry PlayBook, and how RIM is positioning themselves for the future. I definitely recommend reading the full article, which looks at both RIM‘s success and the challenges and opportunities they face moving forward.

Relating to the BlackBerry PlayBook specifically, the article helps us to confirm some of those early rumors we were tracking going back to the first whispers of a tablet (that RIM was originally thinking about doing a tablet based of the BBOS, but after the iPad got announced knew they had to do something more ambitious) and confirms that the product development cycle for the PlayBook was extremely fast.

The article also gives us some insight into why RIM chose to build a smaller tablet with a 7″ display, vs. going with a bigger size like the iPad. The decision comes back to Tom Wood, RIM‘s head of Industrial Design, and his team:

Free BlackBerry Travel App Updated Again to v1.0.350.99

I know that RIM is licensing their BlackBerry Travel app using WorldMate’s tech but even so RIM rarely releases updates this close to each other. That is unless there is some critical bug that needed squashing. Nikolaus let us know that RIM has updated BlackBerry Travel to v1.0.350.99 which is only slightly newer than the v1.0.341.99 released on the 23rd. In typical RIM fashion there is no changelog to help us decide if the 3MB download is worth it, but we sort of found an update in BetaZone change log that seems kind of helpful:

• Added Bold 9000 support.
  • Fixed issue of disappearing itineraries.
  • Resolved device freezing (white screen) on launch of application.
  • Fixed settings reset after battery pull:
  • Caused TripCatch to turn off.
  • Caused users to lose their home city until next sync.
  • Updated the splat mechanism to fix various bugs.
  • Added Hotel promotions in hotels results screen.
  • General push framework fixes.
  • Fixed airport selection on new flight.
  • New UI control in weather card.
  • UI fixes for LinkedIn screen.
  • Various small UI changes and fixes ? All screens.
  • Improved swipe behavior for home screen cards.
  • Added ?All cities? option:
  • Will show multiple weather displays (one per each city).
  • Will show all LinkedIn connections per trip.
  • Yelp links will go to Yelp search screen (instead of results), with the selected category pre-populated as well as the first city.
  • Added sort menu items in Yelp screen.
  • Added empty images to LinkedIn field like in LinkedIn card.
  • Added state to airport name in auto complete field.
  • Currency screen: Corrected concurrency issues and added ‘Update Rates’ option in menu.
  • Implemented key press: ‘T’ & ‘B’ scrolls to Top and Bottom accordingly.
  • Added timer for ensuring GPS deactivation.
  • Fixed XML encoding in BlackBerry Maps.
  • Fixed calendar sync.

Check out the latest version of BlackBerry Travel in App World at this link.

[qrcode pix=120]http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/25652[/qrcode]

PS: I am sure we will make Mike Lazaridis cry by the possibly wasted 3MB upgrade data usage.

Via:BBR

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has a BlackBerry PlayBook

We’re rather used to celebrities getting devices ahead of actual release but The Finance Minister of Ontario, Dwight Duncan, gets one too?! Craziness, I say. In any event, Mr. Duncan showed up to take part in the Ontario budget lock-up carrying the yet to be released BlackBerry PlayBook at his side.

When questioned about the device and wheter or not he was getting paid for showing the device off Mr. Duncan replied “I think that we should be very proud of Ontario businesses that innovate.” while that may sound like a closing argument statement he also noted that the budget included an extra $50-million over the next 10 years for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. The institute of course was founded by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.

In addition to carrying a BlackBerry PlayBook to the lockup, the printed version of the Ontario provincial budget also features an image of the BlackBerry PlayBook on the front of it. According to the information, Mr. Duncan was so fond of the PlayBook and his budget which concentrates on funding for innovative organizations such as RIM that he wanted to read it off his BlackBerry PlayBook. In the end though, the opposition declined his request.

Source: Globe and Mail

BlackBerry 6.1 Application Platform Announced at DevCon Asia!

At the General Session Keynote on the opening day of BlackBerry DevCon Asia, Tyler Lessard, VP of Global Alliances and Developer Relations for RIM, announced the coming of the new BlackBerry 6.1 Application Platform for BlackBerry Smartphones. 6.1 will build upon BlackBerry 6 and for developers will introduce some new features they can take advantage of. The image above tells the story. New tools/APIs include:

• Magnetometer / Digital compass APIs
• Open GL-ES 2.0
• Window API (overlay native app surfaces)
• Event-based geo-fencing location APIs
• Enhancement to barcode API’s for additional formats and custom decoding
• and MUCH MORE

Tyler went on to say that BlackBerry Developer Tools 6.1 will be available soon for download as they want developers working with the new tools leading up to the release of BlackBerry 6.1 in the next quarter or two. Reading between the lines, I think this announcement really says a lot. It shows us that despite a ton of effort going into the BlackBerry Tablet OS used on the PlayBook, RIM is continuing to develop the traditional BlackBerry OS. I think it’s also safe to assume that we’ll be seeing a BlackBerry 6.1 update coming to current in-market BlackBerry 6 Smartphones. Finally, it gives us a clue as to what OS is going to ship on the next generation of BlackBerry Smartphone hardware. RIM’s Founder and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has already gone on record saying that we will see BlackBerry Smartphones (aka super phones) that will make use of the QNX-based operating system found in the PlayBook, but that it might not be tomorrow as the hardware needs to get there (need a phone battery than can last a day powering dual core processors). Now officially knowing that BlackBerry 6.1 is on the way, to me it’s looking like we can expect the next wave of new BlackBerry Smartphones to rock 6.1 (maybe a generation after that will hit the phones). It’s clear that the BlackBerry Tablet OS is still very young and will take some time for RIM to evolve it to be ready for the phones, so in the meantime BB6.1 will get the job done. That’s not official of course, but logically it’s making sense. I’m sure we’ll learn more in the weeks and months ahead!

RIM has a 10yr business model; BlackBerry ‘super phones’ coming when the price is right?

In an interview at CES 2011 with PCMag, Co-CEO and founder of Research In Motion, Mike Lazaridis, commented on the present and future of BlackBerry products. Mike did solidify even further the plan to bring QNX to BlackBerry handheld smartphones, or ‘super phones’ as they’re being dubbed. The only catch is the the new ‘super phones’ will have to be dual-core in order to efficiently handle the QNX operating system. As it stands, Mike does not think current multi-core processors are what they want to use due to “Battery life, size, weight, thickness, cost,” not being up to their standards.

While it appears Mike has no fear of the current competition, stating “I think in this kind of business you have to have a lot of planning. It’s one thing to take a reference design and package it. It’s another thing to build a platform that can grow with your customers’ needs, that can grow with where the market is going as opposed to where the market is today. To provide that uncompromised performance for enterprise, for government, for large corporations as well as provide an experience for the consumer that’s unique,” it is unclear when we might see a BlackBerry ‘super phone’.

 

Mike Lazaridis Talks About Upcoming QNX-Powered BlackBerry Super Phones

At CES 2011, Mike Lazaridis confirmed again that we will be seeing QNX-powered Super Phones as part of RIM’s 10 year plan to stay competitive in the market. The upcoming BlackBerry Super Phones (wasn’t that a term coined by Google?) will be based on dual-core processors, the QNX OS and the UI will look very much like a shrunked-own PlayBook. The new Super Phones will support three types of apps: Java, Adobe Air and native apps using OpenGL.

The downside to all of this is that we won’t be seeing these devices in 2011, and probably not even 2012. The plan for BlackBerry Super Phones is part of a ten year plan and there are a few To Do’s before we can see these implemented. The next generation of BlackBerry smartphones needs to be optimized for battery life, size, weight, thickness and cost. Another interesting tidbit when it comes to RIM’s smartphone plans, is that Mike Lazaridis doesn’t see a point in 4G BlackBerrys, something we’ve been expecting for some time.

Read more from PC Mag at this link.

RIM Announces BlackBerry 4G PlayBook Tablet Coming To The Sprint 4G Network This Summer!

Just yesterday I mentioned RIM going big with PlayBook ads at CES and today they’ve already made a big announcement. RIM let me know they’re going to launch a new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet model that will work exclusively on Sprint’s 4G network. According to the press release, Sprint 4G gives customers download speeds up to 10 times faster than 3G. In addition to the new 4G capabilities, the PlayBook features a 1 GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM and the new BlackBerry Tablet OS.

“RIM believes a significant portion of the tablet market will want a higher performing, multitasking, professional-grade tablet and that is why we chose to design the BlackBerry PlayBook for premium performance with a powerful dual-core processor and multitasking OS. Together with Sprint, we are now building on that performance advantage with 4G and providing an unparalleled mobile experience for users,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion.

“We are excited to bring this powerful new product to our business customers and consumers who rely on Sprint for industry-leading devices as well as one of the best values in wireless,” said Steve Elfman, president of network operations and wholesale for Sprint. “This tablet is a great example of Sprint’s strong partnership with RIM in continuing to bring customers powerful devices to enhance their mobility. We are confident the BlackBerry 4G PlayBook from Sprint will be one of the most anticipated tablets in 2011.”

For more info and to sign up for updates go to sprint.com/4Gplaybook or check out the press release below.

Free BlackBerry PlayBook for developers who have their app accepted on AppWorld!

So you really want a BlackBerry PlayBook right? Better yet, you want it for free? You can get one. All you need to do is create an Adobe AIR application for the BlackBerry PlayBook and get it accepted to BlackBerry App World and you’ll get a free one. Those were the words spoken by Mike Lazaridis today at AdobeMAX while demoing the BlackBerry PlayBook live on stage. That’s one sure way to get developers interested, free devices always wins. Hell, it’s got me interested in actually diving into the PlayBook SDK to see what I manage. Any devs out there now just a little more interested?

• Click Here To Get Started On Developing BlackBerry PlayBook Apps>>