The modern BlackBerry device user is faced with a very difficult decision: selecting the perfect photo to become their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) avatar. Sure, it seems easy. The Time Shift Camera on the BlackBerry Z10 is perfect for grabbing that perfect new selfie. For those of you who aren’t shutterbugs, there’s always that family member who constantly sends you awkward photos from the last get-together, and the Facebook app is your gateway to even more options. With all these options, why is choosing one photo so hard?

I toyed with the idea of uploading a photo of myself for quite some time. On the one hand, it would allow my friends to feel like they could really connect with me, since they would see my face as they typed. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure if a solo shot looked self-aggrandizing. So, I scanned through my contact list to see what avatars my friends, family and colleagues chose. The results were fairly consistent – roughly the same number of professional headshots, fun party photos, images of children and loved ones, and cool products/gadgets that people wanted to buy.

But what is the message you want to convey with your avatar? Of course, it’s not just an image you’re uploading; it’s a way to set the stage for your conversations. Team BlackBerry, tell us: how did you choose your BBM Avatar?

* Image has been altered to remove BBM screen names

The emoticon recently turned 30, and we’re taking the opportunity to not only smile (:)), but to really appreciate the terrific community we have here. Not so surprisingly, I love emoticons. Whether I’m using BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), SMS, or email to connect with friends, I find that incorporating a smiley face ensures that my messages sound friendly, especially when they’re short.

A few of my favorite apps in BlackBerry App World feature this ubiquitous smiley face. They include Easy Smiley Pack by S4BB (FREE), Text Smiley by AppsForBB.com (FREE), and Mega Emoji Free by MMMOOO (FREE).

Do you have a favorite emoticon? Don’t just tell us, show us! Post your favorite emoticon in the comment section below.

An old school meets new school creation – a cassette tape case for your BlackBerry Bold

Talk about having your beer and drinking it too. I’d love to see a few of these cases out and about.

Do you want to spoil yourself? How about dropping $325 on this Versace BlackBerry smartphone case.

If Versace isn’t good enough for you, how about a handmade denim BlackBerry smartphone case for about $800?

Watch those fingers. The voltage on this smartphone case is high!

Do you have a unique BlackBerry smartphone case? Give us a description in the comment section below.

You know that old expression: “If these walls could talk, they’d have a story to tell.” I’ve often wondered what kind of stories my BlackBerry smartphone would tell if it could speak. Since our smartphones travel with us everywhere, they get a behind-the-scenes look at our lives.

Take my morning routine, for instance:

• 6:00 a.m. – Wake up to the sound of the alarm clock on my BlackBerry smartphone, set to ‘Evolving Seaside’ on Volume level 8. Hit snooze twice.
• 6:21 a.m. – Catch up on the news in bed through Social Feeds.
• 6:45 a.m. – Go for my morning jog using one of my favorite BlackBerry apps for runners.
• 7:30 a.m. – Drive to the office with my BlackBerry smartphone connected via Bluetooth headset in case I get a call.
• 8:04am – Arrive at work (luckily, Waterloo is very small!). Check in with the Foursquare app.

During the day, my BlackBerry smartphone also knows what music I listen to, my favorite photos, my bookmarked websites, and that I never forget my friends’ birthdays (thanks to calendar integration on the latest Facebook for BlackBerry smartphones app).

So there you have it, me in a nutshell. What would your BlackBerry device say about you? Are you a morning person, a night owl, a gamer, or maybe a photographer? Let us know in the comments!

Full disclosure: while Fall is particularly pretty in the Waterloo area, right now I wish I was in New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup 2011, which kicked off this month and ends October 23rd. While I won’t be able to cheer from the stands, that won’t stop me from following all the action! Allow me to introduce you to a few ways your BlackBerry® smartphone or BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet can help you stay on top of the games at the Rugby World Cup 2011 (RWC 2011).

BlackBerry.com/Rugby

In honor of the tournament, we have created a Rugby World Cup 2011 resource center for #TeamBlackBerry. From here, you can see the latest RWC 2011 news and upcoming games, learn how you can win a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, and more.

And if you think you’ve got what it takes, make sure to enter The Ultimate Fan contest and demonstrate your Rugby World Cup 2011 devotion.

Check it all out at BlackBerry.com/Rugby!

Official Rugby World Cup 2011 app for BlackBerry smartphones and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet

Available now for download in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront, the Official Rugby World Cup 2011 app for BlackBerry smartphones and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet gets you inside the Match Centre for live coverage, near real-time commentary and stats.

Get them both here: RWC 2011 for BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry Smartphone

BlackBerry Australia & New Zealand Face Paint Facebook App

Why hide your enthusiasm for Rugby World Cup 2011 when you can paint it all over your face? With the BlackBerry® Face Paint app, available on our Australia and New Zealand Facebook® page, you can show all of your friends your team spirit. Check it out here:

Facebook Paint Your Face Application

What team will you be following on the Official Rugby World Cup 2011 app for BlackBerry? Better yet, what color will you paint your face? Tell us in the comments section below – and for our #TeamBlackBerry teammates who are able to attend, tweet us a picture on @BlackBerry using the hashtag #BBRugby!

We’re into the first month of BlackBerry App World™ 2.0, and the feedback we’ve received has been really helpful as we to continue to work on making the BlackBerry App World experience better and better. One of the most talked about new features in BlackBerry App World 2.0 is the new BlackBerry® ID account.

Back in the BlackBerry App World 2 preview post, I went over the benefits of BlackBerry ID. But as a quick refresher, with BlackBerry ID you have one account that helps you keep track of all your downloads (free and paid) and lets you easily switch between devices. For example, logging in with your BlackBerry ID will automatically bring all the apps that you’ve downloaded through BlackBerry App World to your new BlackBerry smartphone.

I recently came across the following two Knowledge Base articles and wanted to share them with you. These cover the details on how to create a BlackBerry ID and how to reset your password if you forget it:

KB24062 – How to create a BlackBerry ID for use with BlackBerry App World 2.0
KB24127 – How to reset a BlackBerry ID password

The fine folks over in our Customer Service (CSO) Communications team put these articles together, and they have an amazing library of Knowledge Base articles and support tips over at BlackBerry Support. (Be sure to keep up with them at their new blog, the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog!) You can also check out the BlackBerry Community Forums and MyBlackBerry for other great tips and tricks for getting the most out of your BlackBerry smartphone!

A little while ago, Ty talked about easy email setup tips for your BlackBerry® smartphone. Today, we’re going to go over some of the different options you have when organizing your main messages list on your BlackBerry smartphone.

If you have multiple email accounts on your BlackBerry smartphone, you have likely noticed two things:

1. Each email address account on your BlackBerry smartphone has a separate icon.
2. Emails from all your accounts also appear within the main messages list. If you are on a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, these messages will also appear within this list, as will SMS/MMS texts and other notifications. This enables you to have all notifications accessible from one central messages list.

However, with BlackBerry® Device Software 5.0 or above, you have some options to help you customize what appears within the main message list. If you want to customize what is accessible from the main messages list, you can follow these simple steps:

1. Click any of your email icons.
2. Click the Full Menu (BlackBerry emblem) button.
3. Scroll down the menu and select Options.
4. Scroll to and click Inbox Settings.
5. Uncheck any accounts that you do not want to show in your main messages icon.

Note: If you uncheck everything, the only types of messages that will still show up in the main Messages icon are PIN messages and notifications from apps like BlackBerry® Messenger, Facebook®, Twitter®, or any other applications with an option to integrate with the main Messages list (sometimes referred to as Inbox integration).

Users with BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 or above also have a separate email icon specifically for accessing messages from an email account associated with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

If you don’t have BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 you can easily check for available updates for your device at www.blackberry.com/go/update

Let us know if you have other suggestions or questions on how to organize your messages!

People around the office know that the first thing I do after registering for a conference is jump into BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) and create a group. It’s my thing. I already have a group for this year’s BlackBerry® Developer Conference (registration is now open by the way) and I haven’t even heard from Adam if I’m going yet (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Why do I love BBM Groups? Well – first, I’m a BBM addict anyway. Before I think of picking up the phone or starting a new email message, I try reaching out over BBM first. Having a group lets me quickly message all the members so that everyone is in the know on what’s going on. At conferences, the BlackBerry App World™ storefront crew uses BBM Groups to trade booth duty shifts, let each other know about how sessions went, and make plans on the go.

My team here at Research In Motion® (RIM) manages all the development tools used to write great apps for BlackBerry®. We use our “BB Platformers” group to share notes about apps, share blog posts on development topics, update each other on our projects, and have a little fun during our weekly video game challenges. Last week, I played net for the first time at pick-up hockey and used our BBM Group to share a photo of myself in goalie gear. I’m sure our team down in the Sunrise, FL office appreciates the Florida Panthers sweater.

Using BBM groups goes beyond work too. My wife and I use our own group to keep appointments up to date. Summers are always busy with weddings, showers, and cottage weekends, and using the shared calendar feature in our group ensures that I never forget anything, as I was previously known to do.

I’m often asked what makes a group great – and I’d say the number one reason is that they can be started so quickly. A few weeks ago, I was getting ready for The Hills (don’t judge me, it’s addictive) when I decided to create a quick group. It took me just under a minute to create, and then I added some friends and even posted a group barcode on my Twitter feed so others could scan and join. My buddies RJ and Bryan joined to make fun of me while they watched the MLB All-Star Game, while my friend Brenna from RIM PR and I spent the hour mocking the events of the episode – all in real time!

What do you use BlackBerry Messenger groups for? Head over to MyBlackBerry and let us know!

As you may have already seen in the sneak peek video, the Home Screen in BlackBerry® 6 has undergone a makeover. To get the inside scoop on some of these changes, I reached out to Joey Benedek, Director of UX Research at Research In Motion® (RIM). Check out the interview below.

First, can you tell us a bit about what you and your group do at RIM?

I am a Director in the User Experience (UX) group, and I run the UX Research team. The UX organization is responsible for understanding user needs and desires and translating those into interface designs. We then work with the various software development teams to iterate those designs – with end-user feedback as our guide – prior to releasing to market. Bottom line, our team is responsible for defining the on-device experience that our customers interact with and making sure those experiences are not only usable but also desirable.

If there was one thing you want our readers to know about the Home Screen redesign, what would it be?

I’d say that the redesign of the Home Screen in BlackBerry 6 is fresh, but familiar. When you look at it, it still looks like a BlackBerry Home Screen (for example, wallpaper selection continues to be a key attribute of the visual design), but it’s been updated – much like a home renovation still ‘feels’ like home, but is actually new.

With BlackBerry 6, we are introducing a host of new features in the design, evolving the look and feel and enabling the user to really customize the Home Screen. Overall, the visuals are cleaner and sleeker, and movement between and within the applications is more fluid, allowing users to navigate their BlackBerry smartphone in a much more intuitive and interactive way.

What is the biggest change in the Home Screen design?

In BlackBerry 6, there are now five separate views that a user can easily switch between using the Navigation Bar, depending on their preference and the type of information they’re looking for. These include: “Frequent”, where your most frequently-used apps are automatically placed for easy access; “Favorites”, where you can choose to add not just your favorite applications, but also to create shortcuts to particular Contacts or web pages (making the important people and information in your life just one click away!); “Media”, for all your media-centric content; “Downloads”, for all the apps you download; and “All” – this is the big vertical list that you can scroll through, similar to the Home Screen today. Users will be able to simply slide left and right (the touch-screen or trackpad, depending on your BlackBerry smartphone model) to quickly get to any of these new view panes.

Can you give us an overview of some of the other important BlackBerry 6 design updates?

In trying to deliver an optimized experience for how people use their BlackBerry smartphone – and how they search for information on it – we are introducing two new ‘quick access areas’ that are built into the Home Screen.

One is designed to allow you to have quick access to the Connections, Alarm and Options screens – things that we found people frequently want to adjust or change – with one click from the Home Screen. With BlackBerry 6, this will be done by simply selecting/tapping the top of the Home Screen. A drop-down panel then appears that allows you to change these on the spot.

The other quick access area on the Home Screen is designed to enable you to view your most recent messages (such as email, text, BlackBerry® Messenger), phone calls, upcoming appointments, Facebook® and Twitter® notifications simply by tapping the Notification Bar in the middle of the top of the Home Screen. If you click on the Notification Bar, it drops down to show who the notifications are from, along with the first few words from the title. This feature makes it much easier to prioritize which notifications you want to respond to first.

The BlackBerry Home Screen also now includes a powerful Universal Search application. It’s never been easier to find content on your BlackBerry smartphone, regardless of whether you’re looking for contacts, messages, music, pictures or appointments. Universal Search was designed to be tightly integrated with your BlackBerry smartphone: simply tap on the Search icon in the top right-hand corner of the Home Screen – or just start typing – and it searches the whole device. As you type, we instantly bring back your results using icons.

Maybe even more exciting is that the same search query can also be used to search the web as well. If you search your device and can’t find what you’re looking for, you can simply tap other available icons, such as YouTube®, Google or BlackBerry App World™, to extend your search further.

How did your team come up with the design and layout for the BlackBerry 6 Home Screen?

The Home Screen is really one of the most used areas of the BlackBerry smartphone, so we spent a lot of time researching how people access data and where they naturally would look for things. The research included focus groups, usability testing, gathering feedback from forums, customer feedback and much more.

For example, we found that users were overwhelmed by all the icons and details on the initial Home Screen, so we implemented the five views and swiping pane for easier viewing. We also found that it wasn’t always intuitive where to find newly downloaded applications, so we created the Downloads view on the Home Screen. Another great example was Universal Search – the team had users keep diaries of any searches they did in any domain over a few weeks, which helped us learn behavioral patterns, what order people want content coming back to them, and so on. This had a big influence on how the Universal Search application was designed.

If you had to pick your favorite new aspect of the Home Screen, what would it be?

It would have to be either the new Notification Dropdown (it’s great for multitasking) or swiping between application panes (I like watching the animation — it’s fun!).

Our team has been working hard to enhance the overall multimedia experience in BlackBerry® 6, and we’ve packed a lot of changes into the upcoming release. I’m very excited to be able to provide some more details about this aspect of BlackBerry 6 today.

In pulling together this update, the multimedia team focused on delivering an intuitive multimedia experience right out of the box – so whether you are a power user or new to mobile multimedia on BlackBerry smartphones, you can easily find and use the enhanced multimedia features.

There’s too much to talk about in just one post, so with that in mind, I picked some of my favorite new BlackBerry 6 multimedia features. Look for the Inside BlackBerry team to dive deeper into some of these features in future blog posts.

Music Album Art and Discovery

The minute you’ve loaded your music library to your BlackBerry smartphone via BlackBerry Media Sync, you’ll notice that we’ve added album art virtually everywhere for instant and easy recognition of your favorite albums. You will be able to navigate your music by using the interactive carousel to swipe through the album art. You will also quickly find other selections from the same album/artist by selecting the album or artist name for the song currently playing!

Organize Your Photos

With BlackBerry 6, we will also provide multiple dynamic ways to view and organize your photos, so thousands of photos can be organized intuitively. For example, photos will be able to be grouped by event or by date. You will be able to view the full picture or a slide show of pictures with transitions. BlackBerry smartphones with touch support are designed to easily zoom in on an area of interest with the “Pinch to Zoom” feature. BlackBerry 6 will also allow you to select groups of pictures to share, copy, paste or delete.

Streaming, Sharing and Searching for Videos

Searching through videos on your BlackBerry smartphone has been made easier in BlackBerry 6 with the new thumbnail view. There will also be more ways to view videos in BlackBerry 6. You will be able to opt to play video in various sizes (Original, Fit to Screen, Full Screen), plus instantly share your videos with the world using the new integrated YouTube® video uploader. Or perhaps you want to watch some online videos – no problem! The new universal search feature in BlackBerry 6 has been designed to enable you to search Internet video sites such as YouTube, and to enjoy higher quality YouTube videos when using Wi-Fi.

New Camera Controls and Supported Scene Modes

With BlackBerry 6, we focused on perfecting the point and shoot experience. Users can capture photos quicker and better than ever before with a variety of new features in BlackBerry 6. New onscreen controls means there is no need to hunt through menus for your favorite options. You will be able to access and review camera pictures, set popular options and pick from a variety of scene modes, all directly from the camera screen. You will also be able to capture video using the video camera application on the device.

New Podcasts App!

With the BlackBerry podcasts service, users will be able to experience the convenience of searching, subscribing and playing entertaining audio and video podcasts directly from their BlackBerry smartphone. This service will be preloaded with BlackBerry 6 in North America and is completely mobile (so no PC required) – and all of the content is available for free! Stay tuned to Inside BlackBerry for an upcoming post on the BlackBerry podcasts app.

Finding New Multimedia Content and Apps

If you have not yet loaded any multimedia content onto your BlackBerry smartphone or are looking for something new, no problem. Select “Explore Music Apps”, “Explore Video Apps” or “Explore Picture Apps” from the main menu screen within the media player, and you will be provided with a direct link to quickly discover popular media apps from each of those categories from the BlackBerry App World™ storefront (app availability dependent upon your region and carrier). This is one of many ways to start enjoying media right out of the box.

BlackBerry Desktop Software and Media Sync

On top of continued support of iTunes & Windows Media® Player music sync and 2-way photo sync, BlackBerry 6 has been designed to enable you to sync videos to and from your BlackBerry smartphone (BlackBerry to PC, or PC to BlackBerry). Plus there are now greater music sync options: in addition to playlists, users will have more flexibility and will also be able to sync by individual artists or genres. Stay tuned to a future post on Inside BlackBerry about BlackBerry Desktop Software with Media Sync.

I’m very excited about the new multimedia experience that will be offered in BlackBerry 6! Post a comment and let us know of the multimedia features that you use today, or those that you’re most looking forward to in BlackBerry 6.