I wanted to take some time to thank everyone for participating in our #BerryHoliday and #JanuBerry giveaways on Twitter® last month. We were overwhelmed with the response we got and had a blast giving away BlackBerry® goodies to our fans. The participation was SO high that #BerryHoliday was even a national trending topic on Twitter!

For those of you not familiar with our #BerryHoliday and #JanuBerry giveaways, we held a daily contest on our Twitter page over four weeks where we invited fans to answer various BlackBerry trivia questions. Winners received BlackBerry smartphones, BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets, t-shirts, accessories and more!

During that time, we got a chance to ask our followers what #TeamBlackBerry means to them. We had lots of answers tweeted to us on @BlackBerry and we couldn’t help but highlight some of our favorites:

@BlackBerry #TeamBlackberry means seeing a bb owner u even don't know, but feels like a family member. #Januberry—
Sahil Rao (@s5sahil) January 27, 2012

@BlackBerry @BlackBerry #TeamBlackBerry means I'm never alone! My blackberry is my window to the world! #JanuBerry—
Wendy Barnes (@wendywoos74) January 27, 2012

@BlackBerry #JanuBerry #TeamBlackBerry means a group of people supporting and loving an innovative Company – and it's Canadian!—
Sandra O (@punkkittie) January 27, 2012

@BlackBerry #TeamBlackBerry means to me is peace of mind! I'm confident that they can answer and solve any problem I have! #JanuBerry—
Jules (@JulieGroce) January 27, 2012

@BlackBerry It means being able to capture my daughters 1st steps and share them with family #PlayBook #TeamBlackBerry #JanuBerry—
Mike de Vries (@m_devries) January 27, 2012

@BlackBerry #JanuBerry the 9900 has been the best yet, keeping me in touch with my family across the world #touchscreen #keyboard #sexy—
Carolyn Velasqueɀ (@infiniteCVbliss) January 27, 2012

@BlackBerry #TeamBlackBerry means a shared passion for a product that changed our lives for the better!! BBM rocks my world!! #JanuBerry—
Rachel (@Rae81Rae) January 27, 2012

"@BlackBerry: To me, #TeamBlackberry=the awesome group of people who make life "berrytastic" and provides us with new info erday #JanuBerry—
Martin Ro (@RoMsicle) January 27, 2012

@BlackBerry #BlackBerry #TeamBlackBerry #JanuBerry it means we get to support a wicked #Canadian company! The #Playbook is a Powerhouse!!!—
Brian A (@B_Oilers) January 27, 2012

What does Team BlackBerry mean to us? It means millions of fans worldwide who share ideas with one another, help one another and stand with BlackBerry. We are YOUR biggest fans. Thank you all for showin’ us the love and proving to us that Team BlackBerry is a force to be reckoned with.
For more details on our contests and giveaways, be sure to follow us on Twitter (@BlackBerry) and ‘like’ BlackBerry on Facebook®.

Using these apps, you can set up multiple email accounts in addition to Enterprise email – protected by BlackBerry® Balance™ technology – which means you’ll have access to both personal and work information in one location.

To help get you started with managing your various email accounts, here are answers to some frequently-asked questions about the Messages app in BlackBerry PlayBook tablet OS 2.0.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

Calendar with social integration

Like the new Messages app that includes a universal Inbox, so you can conveniently manage all your email in one place, the new Calendar app in PlayBook OS 2.0 allows you to manage all your appointments and events in one place – including the ability to manage both work and personal (Gmail®, Hotmail®, Yahoo!®) appointments and Facebook® events (never miss a birthday again!). Of course, the Calendar app offers the common features that you’ve come to know and love, but it now also includes some compelling new features to help you organize your day:

• People View: In addition to the traditional Day, Agenda, Week, Month views, you can now view your day based on the people you’re meeting with. This view provides additional information on your contacts pulled from LinkedIn®, including where you’ve met in the past.

• Visual Cues: You’ll be able to more quickly scan and manage your calendar at a glance. For example, the Calendar app provides visual cues that identify days that have more appointments than those that are relatively light. For example, when you view your calendar at a glance, dates with many appointments will show up in a larger font while the dates in smaller fonts have fewer appointments. If you have a lot of appointment conflicts, a red highlight identifies the conflict so you can’t miss them!

• Zoom in to a detailed view: From the “Week” view, you can go directly to a day’s calendar with ease. Simply tap any day to zoom into the details of that day, including the meetings you have scheduled and the people you will be meeting with.

Contacts: Your social hub

Your contacts are more than just an address and phone number, so why treat it like a rolodex? The new Contacts app acts as a social hub that helps you maintain a complete and current view of your contact’s social status.

• Contact Linking: The majority of people use more than email and phone to stay in touch with their personal and professional contacts — Facebook, Twitter®, and LinkedIn are growing exponentially in their popularity and usability. The Contacts app allows you to automatically bring all these distinct social profiles into a single people-centric view in your address book – meaning you can set up one contact name and integrate all of their contact and social profile information into one profile. You also have the option to reduce duplicate entries, and manually link or de-couple your contacts from social profiles. Watch this demo to learn more.

• Status Updates and People Views: Using information gathered from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the Contacts app lets you see your contact’s recent social status updates and common friends.

• Meetings, Places, and News: Be prepared before walking into that meeting. For each of your contacts, you can view past (and future) meetings with that person, see the places you’ve met previously, and read news about their company.

• Favorites and Video Chat: Mark your top contacts as a “favorite” for quicker access, and sort your address book by those contacts who also use BlackBerry PlayBook Video Chat.

	Explore tablet hardware Using the tablet interface BlackBerry Bridge Personalization Docs To Go Print To Go Calendar Contacts Video Player Messages Video Chat Browsing the web

We built the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet OS 2.0 email, calendar and contacts experience with the goal of providing the best tools for managing your busy life across all of your networks. I’m so proud of the team for pulling it off, and we’re just getting started! We have a ton of ideas, and look forward to getting your feedback.

Email and the Universal Inbox

The new Messages apps gives a nod to the past by continuing to build on proven experiences. The iconic BlackBerry splat noting the arrival of new messages in the universal inbox remains part of the core messaging experience. But the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 messaging experience goes a step further; it has been extended to include ‘social messaging’, allowing you to directly integrate messages from some of the most common social networks: Facebook®, LinkedIn®, and Twitter®.

And to take it one step beyond just integrated social messaging, you can now see a contact’s social details right from the Messages application.

Once you have an inbox full of messages, the new Messages app delivers a suite of features that help make managing your inbox really easy:

• Tabbed email: You can reference one email while you compose another, or put an email you’re in the middle of composing on hold, while you type out a quick response to another message.

• Rich text editing: You can write and edit email like you would on a computer – including support for fonts, attributes and sizes, as well as formatting. You can even edit or insert your “in-line” comments in an email thread.

• Message Threading and Quick response: Let’s face it – in an era of ubiquitous mobile devices, email is more chat-like than formal. You can choose to view your messages as threaded conversations rather than single messages. Thread messages reduce a conversation to one inbox entry, thus reducing the signal-to-noise ratio in your inbox.

• BlackBerry Keyboard: Longtime users know the keyboard input on BlackBerry smartphones is clever, including auto-entry of periods at the end of sentences and “@” symbols for email addresses. The new PlayBook OS 2.0 keyboard also introduces next word prediction, which helps makes hammering out emails on a virtual keyboard so much easier.

• Search: Sometimes you’re not exactly sure what you’re looking for. The search feature allows you to type out a partial string and constrain the search to specific recipient fields or subject, sent, received, and filter by when it was received (today, yesterday, even last week) – all in real time.

As you can see, there are some very cool things in the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet messaging experience. Hold tight for my next post on the Calendar and Contacts experience!

	Explore tablet hardware Using the tablet interface BlackBerry Bridge Personalization Docs To Go Print To Go Calendar Contacts Video Player Messages Video Chat Browsing the web

Guest blogger and RIM Product Manager Vivek Gupta couldn’t wait to tell everyone about the new Video Chat features in the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 upgrade. Take it away, Vivek!

Now that the upgrade to the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet – BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 – is here, I wanted to give you a sneak preview of some of the great new features that are available in the updated Video Chat! We think you’ll agree, whether for work or play, it’s an easy and fun way to connect with people.

Simply put, Video Chat on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet allows you to make and take video calls with your friends, family, and colleagues who also have a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. (Note: Both users of the Video Chat feature must be connected to the Internet for a chat to be enabled.) With just one click, you’ll be able to have virtual face-to-face conversations using the HD video cameras and stunning high-resolution screen on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Let’s look at the top new features and improvements in the Video Chat upgrade:

Visually Appealing and Organized

The Video Chat user interface takes a cue from the new email, calendar and contact apps. I’m really excited to have you try the updated version of Video Chat, because I think it’s a compelling user experience and is designed to improve visual interaction between contacts using the app on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Experience Video Chat on the Large Screen

I love the new Presenter Mode because it is designed to take advantage of the multitasking capabilities made possible by this new powerful OS. For example, while you’re busy using the upgraded Video Chat, you could simultaneously click over and view your pictures, write notes, browse the web or play a game on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Presenter Mode is also a big convenience for business users. For example, let’s say you’re in a meeting room with a few people and you’re running a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet video chat with a colleague in a remote location. With Presenter Mode, you can project this video chat onto a big screen for better viewing, and then message or share slides and spreadsheets with the people in your conference room without disrupting the video chat.

	Explore tablet hardware Using the tablet interface BlackBerry Bridge Personalization Docs To Go Print To Go Calendar Contacts Video Player Messages Video Chat Browsing the web

Contact Integration

One of the key differentiating features of the new Video Chat for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is that it now automatically discovers which of your contacts are Video Chat “capable” and displays their “availability” to Video Chat – no guesses and disappointments! You can view, edit, and create new contacts for Video Chat directly in the Contacts application or in Video Chat application itself. Plus, with the new capabilities in BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, you can conveniently initiate a Video Chat directly from the Contacts application, while viewing the contact’s information details.

As mentioned, these new features for Video Chat are available now in the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 software update! Please comment and let us know who’ll be the first person you call using the new Video Chat for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

More about BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0

1. BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is here!
2. Help Blog: How to download and update to BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 and manage the new home screen
3. Help Blog: Getting Started with Email, Contacts and Calendar in BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0
4. Help Blog: Getting Started with Video Chat in BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0
5. BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Reviews from CES
6. CES 2012: BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Communicates [Video]

I’m excited to announce that the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0 software update officially launched worldwide today. In October, I spoke to you about some of the key features you could expect with the release of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0. Today, I’m proud to tell you – we’ve delivered them.

As you will see, we’ve made updates and enhancements to some of the things you’ve told us you like the most. We’ve also brought you some new, highly anticipated features that you’ll find only on BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Let me tell you about my favorite BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 features:

All-New Built-In Functionality

I have to say, the features I’m most excited about with this launch are built-in email, calendar and contacts. Unique to BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, you can now quickly manage all of your email accounts with a unified inbox, manage your schedule with new features like a People View of your day (which lets you quickly see everyone who is on your agenda for that day), and view your contacts as a social hub that contains information from popular social networks including Facebook®, Twitter®, and LinkedIn®.

Social Integration in Calendar & Contacts

The built in calendar is designed to pull in the information that matters to you from your social networks and make it available where and when you need it. Contact cards are dynamically populated with the latest real-time information from your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts to create a consolidated view of your contacts most recent updates.

BlackBerry Bridge

Another feature I’m excited for you to try is the new BlackBerry Bridge functionality that allows you to use your BlackBerry smartphone as a remote control for your PlayBook. I’ve used this feature both for presentations in the office, and at home with my PlayBook tablet connected to my television.

	Explore tablet hardware Using the tablet interface BlackBerry Bridge Personalization Docs To Go Print To Go Calendar Contacts Video Player Messages Video Chat Browsing the web

Open On

Although it’s hard to choose only four, I will say that Open On definitely makes my list of favorite BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 features. This convenient functionality allows you to open your documents, photos and links from your BlackBerry smartphone onto your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with one click. I often use Open On to review documents (PowerPoint, Word, and PDF) that people send me on my BlackBerry smartphone. It’s a great way to combine the convenience of my BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 and the big screen on my PlayBook tablet.

These are just a few of the reasons I’m excited about today’s launch, and they’re just some of the great features that PlayBook OS 2.0 has to offer. Following the 2012 Consumer Electronics show, we heard a lot of great feedback on PlayBook OS 2.0 with reviews from Team BlackBerry. I’d love to hear what you think now that the software update has officially launched.

This post on the BlackBerry Help blog will provide more information about how to get started with your new PlayBook OS 2.0 update.

- David J. Smith, SVP, Mobile Computing, Research In Motion

More about BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0

1. New Video Chat features with BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0
2. Help Blog: How to download and update to BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 and manage the new home screen
3. Help Blog: Getting Started with Email, Contacts and Calendar in BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0
4. Help Blog: Getting Started with Video Chat in BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0
5. BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Reviews from CES
6. CES 2012: BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Communicates [Video]

Happy Friday #TeamBlackBerry! It’s Five Tip Friday, and today I’d like to share five reasons why you should consider using Social Feeds – a great app built right in to BlackBerry® 6 OS and BlackBerry® 7 OS smartphones. Using the Social Feeds app, you can stay up to date with your social networks and receive the latest RSS news and information from your favorite blogs and websites – all in one location.

Before we begin, if you aren’t familiar with Social Feeds, check out my post on How to use Social Feeds 2.0 to learn more.

1. Add your own Bit.ly® account

The next time you want to share a link with friends, you can send them a short link that will be created using your Bit.ly account. This will allow you to measure things such as how many clicks your link got and from which countries your link was viewed (one of my favorite stats!). To add your Bit.ly account details to Social Feeds, complete the following steps:

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

We’re super excited about this year’s BlackBerry World™ – plans are well underway and we can’t wait for May 1st, 2012. Registration is now officially open, so head over to www.blackberryworld.com and reserve your spot ASAP.

BlackBerry World is the largest BlackBerry® conference of the year where the community of BlackBerry users, partners, business leaders, and IT decision makers meet to learn of the latest innovations, upcoming BlackBerry products and services, mobile strategy, and to check out live demonstrations. The conference is also a fantastic networking opportunity to meet with individuals in similar roles facing similar challenges and industry trends.

BlackBerry World, May 1-3, 2012 in Orlando, Florida
Register here

What can you expect to dig into this year?

• BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion – the future of device management in the enterprise
• Looking ahead to BlackBerry® 10
• BlackBerry Business Cloud Services: Moving your infrastructure forward
• …and much more! Stay tuned for details on sessions and the keynote address

Stay up to date on all of the latest info by keeping an eye on www.blackberryworld.com, and where you can sign up for updates. Leading up to May 1st (and on site at the event), you can follow @BlackBerry4Biz on Twitter® as well as coming back to the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog, and join the discussion on LinkedIn® to get excited and keep tabs on all of the action.

Did you attend BlackBerry World 2011? What was your favorite part of the conference? Share in the comments.

We knew developers were excited about our latest BlackBerry® PlayBook™ offer for Android™ developers when we announced it two weeks ago. You asked that Native C/C++, HTML5, Adobe® AIR®, and Qt developers have a chance to participate and we answered by opening the offer to all developers.

Today was going to be the deadline for the offer – but due to the overwhelming interest in the offer, we’re extending it one more time. How much interest? There have been over 1,500 app submissions as of last Friday and over 6,600 new developers registered in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.  We have teams working around the clock to approve vendor registrations and app submissions.  Because of the high demand, approvals are taking longer than normal – we appreciate your patience.

To help speed up the approval process of your application, we strongly recommend the following:

• Before submitting your application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to remove all mention of the word “Android” from your application – both in the application description and the application itself.
• Please remove all links to Android Marketplace from within your application.
• When submitting your Android application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to select a minimum OS of 2.0.
• Please make sure your application is signed. For more information on code signing, please view the code signing documentation on the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps webpage.

If you’re not a registered BlackBerry App World vendor, you now have until 11:59 PM EST on February 15, 2012 to register at http://appworld.blackberry.com/isvportal.

All vendors (new and existing) now have until 11:59 PM EST on March 2, 2012 to submit your application to BlackBerry App World. Check out our offer FAQ and we’ll be updating the official terms & conditions later today.

The BBM™ Music team has been very busy over the last few months launching our BBM-connected social music service in eight different countries around the world. We are excited that BBM Music* is now available for download in Canada, the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Australia – with more regions still to come, so stay tuned! If you haven’t yet tried BBM Music, we are even more excited to let you know that in the month of February 2012, you can download BBM Music FREE for up to 4 months** in Canada or the US, or FREE for up to 6 months** in the UK, Spain & Italy.

Along with the free trials, we’ve added some new features to BBM Music v1.1 that we wanted to share with you.

Invite friends on Facebook & Twitter

We’re making it easier for you to reach out to more friends so that you can grow your music collections together! BBM Music users can now invite their friends on Facebook® and followers on Twitter® to be a BBM Music contact. This option is available from the “Add Friends” tab (along with the existing options: BBM Contacts, Email, BBM Group and PIN). Personally, I can’t stop recommending BBM Music to friends on my social channels – it’s amazing how much you can learn about someone through their song choices, and now I’ve got access to hundreds of songs I would have never discovered on my own.

Show What I’m Listening To with BBM Music v1.1

We know how much you like the “Show What I’m Listening To” feature, and now you can let your BBM friends see what you’re playing on BBM Music by opting to share through Profile Updates. I’m finding that many of my BBM conversations with friends are now initiated by what song selections each one of us has made, and by the memories associated with some of our favorite songs.

Gift Request Feature with BBM Music v1.1

Wish someone would gift you a BBM Music subscription? Well, now we’ve got that covered! You can ask your BBM contacts for a subscription to BBM Music through a ‘Gift Request’***. Here’s how it works:

• If your trial is over, you can access Gift Request by clicking on the grey “Upgrade to BBM Music Premium” banner.
• If your trial isn’t over, you can go to the “Account Information” tab within the Options menu. From there you can select ‘Gift request’, and select a BBM contact from whom to request the subscription and send the gift request.
• Your BBM contact will receive the gift request within a BBM chat, where they can open the request and choose to accept or decline to “Gift” you a subscription.

So if you haven’t already, download BBM Music today and take advantage of the February free trial offer. For more info on how to use BBM Music – whether it’s adding a friend, sharing a playlist or finding more tracks – check out this BBM Music how to video. Once you’ve downloaded BBM Music, don’t forget to let us know what you think!

* BlackBerry ID and data service required. Monthly subscription required for full track access. Songs must be available in BBM Music catalog in user’s home country. Users can have up to 50 songs in their profile and change up to 25 songs per month. Friends must be using BBM Music and have a monthly subscription for you to access their full tracks. Limit of 50 songs per friend. Accessing the service while roaming may incur additional data charges. When traveling outside of home country, only songs available in user’s home country BBM Music catalog are accessible. Songs may be cached to play off-network. Storage card and sufficient available memory required for caching. Songs will only play within the BBM Music app. When users change songs in their profile, deleted songs, included cached copies on their device, are no longer accessible. See http://www.blackberry.com/bbmmusic/legal for complete details and restrictions. Terms subject to change.

** New BBM Music users only. May not be combined with other offers. Payment information required to receive full trial period. Following trial user placed into automatically renewing monthly paid subscription plan unless cancelled before end of trial period. Limited time introductory offer may vary by BlackBerry device or carrier. Additional charges may apply. Subject to change. See www.blackberry.com/bbmmusic for complete details and restrictions.

*** Can only request gift from existing BBM contacts. Gift is reoccurring monthly subscription which continues until cancelled by gift giver.