Rogers introduces first-ever real-time data usage alerts for roaming

Delayed flights, lost luggage, middle seat, airline goes on strike while you’re on vacation?  These are just a few of the pains people experience when they travel.  I can tell you as a Canadian, that you don’t know travel woes until you travel as a Canadian with your smartphone.  The big three (Rogers, Telus & Bell) have obscene roaming rates.  So when the Kevin, Bla1ze and myself travel to WES/DevCon/BB World with our BlackBerry smartphones we are making a huge sacrifice for you the NHCBBA nation. Rogers charges $6.14/MB in the US, if you think that is bad when our fearless leader travels to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress he is billed the bargain basement rate of $30.00 per megabyte.

The carriers offer packaged bundles for short periods of time to help remove some of the burden of the roaming costs, but who knows how much data is used?  I find when I travel my data use increases with all my Facebook or Twitter photo uploads (can’t let an opportunity to show off what I am eating for dinner) plus all the glorious FourSquare check-ins to earn more and more badges. With these carrier bundles when you’ve exhausted the bucket you go back to pay-per-use.

Rogers however, has introduced some good news.  They have introduced alerts to keep you current on your roaming data usage as well as lower cost travel data passes.  This is a decent start to help ease some of the data roaming pain. Looking forward to see how it helps for DevCon and CES.

More information at Rogers Redboard

via: cb

BlackBerry World session catalog now available online

RIM has made the session catalog for BlackBerry World (aka WES) available online. Prospective attendees can scope out all the sessions that will be offered during the conference. There is some good stuff listed for all aspects of BlackBerry including BES, consumer areas and PlayBook. Sessions include The Power and Potential of BBM, The BlackBerry PlayBook Advantage, Increasing the Value with BlackBerry Apps, The Office of Tomorrow with BlackBerry and many more. If you plan to attend BlackBerry World or just want to see what sessions will be offerend, head over to the BlackBerry World catalog page. Check out blackberrworld.com for more information and to register.

More info on the BlackBerry World Conference

Registration opens for BlackBerry World 2011

If you’re planning on attending BlackBerry World this May, today is the first day of open registration. The conference formerly known as WES will be held in Orlando Florida from May 3rd through the 5th. Attendees can register until February 25th at the early bird rate and save $400 off the full conference pass ($2,199). Also as a new offer this year, attendees that can’t make it for all three days can register for a one-day pass ($599 USD) for Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

The Crack Team will be there in full force so you should be too. The conference will have plenty of keynotes, over 100 breakout sessions, hands-on labs, BlackBerry training and much more. To register now head to blackberryworld.com/register.

Register now for BlackBerry World in Orlando Fl.

RIM renames WES as BlackBerry World conference

We kind of saw this one coming, and in an official announcement today RIM has rebranded the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) to BlackBerry World. A very fitting title given the history of the conference. It is definitely worldwide and the past few years we’ve seen our fair share of device announcements (maybe a Storm3 this year?!) and more. The conference will still hold the same breakout sessions, hands-on labs and certifications as in the past, while incorporating more from other areas of the BlackBerry platform as well. Attendees of BlackBerry World will be able to:

• Hear the most current information about the BlackBerry solution, new application partners, and roadmaps for the future
• See live demonstrations of the BlackBerry solution at work
• Get answers from BlackBerry experts to develop value-driven wireless solutions, as well as carriers and vendors who can help provide valuable wireless research information
• Meet and connect with key executives who are making the BlackBerry solution part of their business planning, and the industry leaders who are shaping the future of global wireless technology
• Get training on the BlackBerry platform, with additional opportunities for technical certification

The flagship BlackBerry conference will be entering its tenth year and will be held from May 3-5 2011 in Orlando FL. Registration opens in January. For more check out blackberryworld.com.

Reading between the lines: Bringing the BlackBerry Tablet OS to the Smartphone "Isn't the hardest thing in the world to do"

While appearing at the Web 2.0 summit today, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie was placed on the spot to answer questions surrounding Research In Motion, their upcoming products and finally their future. A lot of questions were asked near the end, one that stuck out was a reference to when Research In Motion was going to bring a better experience to their line up of BlackBerry smartphones. This is where things get interesting; Jim Balsillie then referred to the BlackBerry PlayBook and its tablet OS making the statement  “It’s not the hardest thing in the world to repackage these things”. When reading between the lines that could really be another way of saying that QNX will be the next operating system for BlackBerry smartphones.

While most of us upon seeing the PlayBook figured that was likely to happen, Kevin’s been saying since WES that the future of BlackBerry smartphones phones lies in the QNX OS. With statements such as the one from Balsillie today being made, it only leads to reason that eventually we’ll be seeing QNX arrive in a smaller than 7″ packaged form and personally, that kind of thinking makes me excited for the next BlackBerry platform. In addition to all the “non talk” talk about future devices, Balsillie was also asked about any upcoming NFC integration for BlackBerry smartphones. His reply to that was simple, of course RIM will be looking at NFC integration. “We’d be fools not to have it in the near-term, and we are not fools”.

Bloggers Reactions to the BlackBerry PlayBook!

[ youtube video link for mobile viewing ]

Back at WES 2010 we had a fun time interviewing bloggers to get their reactions on BlackBerry 6 and the announcement of the Bold 9650 and Pearl 3G. While a ton of news got announced at BlackBerry DevCon 2010, it’s the BlackBerry PlayBook with the BlackBerry Tablet OS that’s dominating the headlines.

So following up the announcement of the PlayBook, we once again tracked down the bloggers in attendance to get their thoughts and feedback on RIM’s first tablet and what it means for the future of BlackBerry. Check out the video above to see your favorite bloggers in real live action!

HUGE THANKS go to all the bloggers who let us put them on camera once again!

Via: CB

Bloggers Reactions to the BlackBerry PlayBook!

[ youtube video link for mobile viewing ]

Back at WES 2010 we had a fun time interviewing bloggers to get their reactions on BlackBerry 6 and the announcement of the Bold 9650 and Pearl 3G. While a ton of news got announced at BlackBerry DevCon 2010, it’s the BlackBerry PlayBook with the BlackBerry Tablet OS that’s dominating the headlines.

So following up the announcement of the PlayBook, we once again tracked down the bloggers in attendance to get their thoughts and feedback on RIM’s first tablet and what it means for the future of BlackBerry. Check out the video above to see your favorite bloggers in real live action!

HUGE THANKS go to all the bloggers who let us put them on camera once again!

Via: CB

Rumor- What BlackBerry Devices will Get OS 6 [from a Alliance member http://www.berryreporter.com]

Ever since BlackBerry OS 6 was announced at WES 2010, one of the biggest questions is what current BlackBerry devices will be getting it.  Well the folks over at BerryReview have made a prediction of which devices will be getting this new OS.   Now with any rumor don’t take it too seriously specially in the BlackBerry world. However this could be a nice glimpse in what devices will get the new OS 6.