With summer just peeking around the corner, what better way to prepare than to download some of our favorite BlackBerry® apps for summer? The BlackBerry App World™ storefront has got you covered for the long-awaited season. Grab your shorts, sunglasses and of course your BlackBerry® smartphone or BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, and check out these apps:

Wikitude 7.0: This week, Wikitude issued a major update to their popular and super useful augmented reality app. I’ve been using the new version and the new Panorama UI brings the experience to a new level. It simplifies everything into three main views: Favorites, Featured and Categories. It’s definitely a fun way to discover new people, places and things around you using your BlackBerry smartphone. So when you’re out and about exploring this summer, be sure to use the Wikitude World Browser to see your surroundings in an entirely new way. Download Wikitude now.

BlackBerry® Travel: Planning to get away for a little rest and relaxation this summer? BlackBerry Travel is a must-try app. It stores all of your essential trip information in one handy spot, plus it automatically scans your inbox for travel itineraries so you don’t have to search for things like confirmation numbers, flights, and addresses. It also provides flight status updates, weather information, local search functions and easy booking tools. Take the stress out of travelling – use BlackBerry Travel to keep you organized and informed. Download BlackBerry® Travel here.

Cooklet: Summer wouldn’t be summer without fresh food! The smell of the BBQ, picnics in the park, seasonal flavors… Even if you’re a newbie in the kitchen, Cooklet has all you need to get cooking this summer. It includes community-reviewed recipes, timers, tips and meal suggestions. If you’re as excited as I am about summer cooking, check out Cooklet for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

June is right around the corner, so there’s no time to waste – download the BlackBerry apps above from BlackBerry App World today and get ready to have a great summer!

Is there a BlackBerry app for BlackBerry smartphones or BlackBerry PlayBook tablet that you’ll be using a lot this summer? Let us know in the comments.

To celebrate your #BlackBerryPhotography, we decided to kick off a brand new blog post series – Five Pic Friday – that features the best of the best photos from our Flickr page. Each month, we’ll showcase a different batch of five photos – from BlackBerry Sunsets and Sunrises to Team BlackBerry Pets and more!

Here’s a peek at this month’s five pics, sent in by Team BlackBerry on Twitter® and Facebook®:

Photo by Brittany (@MsBrittz); Taken with a BlackBerry® Bold™ 9780 smartphone

Photo by @rrrebo; Taken with a BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphone

Photo by Desirée (@DesireeTodd_79); Taken with a BlackBerry® Curve™ 3G 9300 smartphone

Photo by G.K. Lawson (@gklawson); Taken with a BlackBerry® Storm2™ smartphone

Photo by Ashley (@rawsharktext)

Where do YOU find your inspiration for capturing the perfect BlackBerry photo? Tell us in the comments! Keep sharing your best #BlackBerryPhotography with us on Twitter and Facebook, and you never know – your photo could be featured in next month’s Five Pic Friday.

Well, here we are -– it’s Tuesday, and if you’ve been following along with us here at the Inside BlackBerry® Blog lately, you’ll know that it’s Top 3 Tuesday! This week we’re taking a look at my top three tips for BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™):

1. Communicate: With BBM you can send messages up to 2,000 characters long, and best of all, you can see when users on the other end are interacting with you. There’s a simple yet wonderful thing that happens in BBM. You can see when your message has been delivered (signified by a “D” to the left of the message) and when it’s been read (signified by an “R”). You can also see when the user on the other end is typing, so you’re not left hanging!

2. Share: With BBM, you can quickly and efficiently transfer pictures, files and voice notes from your BlackBerry smartphone to your contacts — it turns your moment into their moment. To send the file, all you have to do is open the file, hit the “menu” button on your BlackBerry smartphone, select “send”, select “BBM Contact”, then choose who you want to send it to. So simple! I use this all the time with my friends and family to share photos, and I also send voice notes when I want to add that personal touch to a conversation. Also, with BBM Connected apps, you can share what you’re doing in the app with your BBM contacts. Want to discuss the score of a sporting event you’re following, or share your app suggestions with someone you know? With BBM Connected, your apps become more social. Check out Alex’s blog post on his top 6 BBM Connected apps!

3. Organize: BBM has a built-in feature below your contacts list called BBM Groups. This is a great way to gather groups of BBM users and organize events, clubs and gatherings. Planning a surprise party for someone? Gather everyone (except that certain individual of course) into a BBM Group and share a central calendar so everyone can see key dates. You can create group lists so people can track who’s in charge of bringing what, and you can also share pictures, files and hold a group chat so that everyone can be on the same page. I’ve used this on a few occasions and the plan has always gone off without a hitch!

There you have it — my top three tips for using BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). Do you use BBM in a unique way? Share it with us in the comments below.

If you aren’t already following @BlackBerryHelp and you want to receive lots of tips and tricks, start following today using Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones and keep an eye out for the #BBTips hashtag.

With that being said, here are the five popular tips that we’ve shared with our fantastic followers:

1. Video Camera Flashlight

Try the following steps to quickly turn a physical keyboard-equipped BlackBerry smartphone into a flashlight so you can find your way!

1. Open the Video Camera app
2. Press the space key to turn on or turn off the flashlight.

Note: Using a smartphone with a virtual keyboard only, such as the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9850 smartphone? If so, you can also make it a flashlight by opening the Video Camera App and pressing the Menu key, then selecting Options followed by checking the box for Video Light.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

We’ve got a guest post from Thusenth about an important new feature in our latest OS update. Read on for more – Ed.

It’s no secret that BlackBerry® smartphones are known for their security. It’s baked deep into our BlackBerry OS DNA, and many features of the BlackBerry smartphone experience can be customized and managed by BlackBerry® Enterprise Servers and their administrators.

You might not think it obvious, but one segment of customers that can benefit from BlackBerry security are teens – they may even be children – with phones provided by their parents or guardian. You can see the parallels here with the Enterprise market – IT is now mom, and the Enterprise user is now little Jimmy.

If you provide a BlackBerry smartphone to a teen or child, you may want to set limits on what features or services your child has access to. We see there’s an opportunity here for us to leverage our expertise in security and manageability to help parents.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

It’s that time of year, #TeamBlackBerry students — you’re cramming to make the grade, and hopefully you’ve got all the right credits to ace your finals and graduate (with honors!). But what about life after school? Have you thought about what you’re going to do in the “real world”?

Sorry if I gave you a bit of a scare there (or sounded too much like your dad). While you ponder your future, check out my top 5 apps for grads to help you along:

1. Evernote: Life is busy and your brain is stuffed to the brim with knowledge. Evernote is simple to use and helps you keep track of all your notes, files, pics, and audio notes as they happen. Click on over to Evernote for BlackBerry® smartphone and Evernote for BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, so you can give your memory a rest. Also works great as a study aid for that final exam!

2. SideSwipe: The world is busy place, and as you embark on your next adventure, you’ll definitely want to keep tuned in to worldly events as they happen. SideSwipe is a nice news aggregator for BlackBerry smartphone.

3. Top Gear: Now that you’re all grown up, you might be looking for a new car. The ones featured here may be a bit out of budget, but that’s also another thing you need: motivation! A grad can dream, right? In the meantime, you can practice driving your dream car with Top Gear for BlackBerry smartphone and Top Gear for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

4. InstaPhoto: Unless you have a superhuman memory, those magical moments of graduation won’t last a lifetime if you don’t capture them. InstaPhoto is my favorite way to customize your images and share them with your friends, family, and the world via social media. I, for one, happen to think that my pictures look way better with trendy filters on. Snap this one up and snap away!

5. Poynt: After you graduate, you may find yourself in a brand new city for a new career or your next adventure. Poynt is designed to help you find what you need and keep you connected to where it’s at. You can even make in-app purchases on things like movie tickets, make reservations at local restaurants and take advantage of local deals. Wherever you go, you’ll want to make sure Poynt goes with you by using Poynt for BlackBerry smartphone or Poynt for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

You may not have locked down what you want to do with your life, but rest assured these apps will help you enjoy the journey a little more. Got a favorite app that you couldn’t have survived school without? Let us know in the comments.

1. Browser: Surfing the web on your BlackBerry smartphone has never been faster with this snappy OS. With BlackBerry 7 OS smartphones, pages load faster — and when you’re on the go, speed matters. Check out this video comparing previous BlackBerry® Curve™ smartphones with the slick BlackBerry Curve 9350 smartphone running BlackBerry 7 OS:

[YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

2. Fast Fluid Graphics: The graphics behind the BlackBerry smartphone OS have been improved with BlackBerry 7 OS. You’ll get new visually appealing icons along with fluid transitions. Combine that with more powerful hardware and higher-resolution screens and you’re in for a rich smartphone experience. So, your photos are brighter onscreen, your game experience is faster, smoother and crisper, and your ability to swipe, scroll and launch is more intuitive, quicker, and satisfying. Take a look at this video comparing the all-touch BlackBerry® Torch™ 9850 smartphone with the BlackBerry® Storm™ 9550 smartphone running a previous generation BlackBerry OS:

[YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

3. Touch Screens: Of course, not all BlackBerry 7 OS smartphones have touch screens, but a number of them do, and I love how much quicker you can navigate around your device. For me, when I’m looking at messages, I can simply tap the one I want to read rather than scroll through them all. Or when I want to open an app from the home screen, again, I can simply tap the one I want. You can also pinch-to-zoom on things like photos and websites. See for yourself — watch this video to see a side-by-side comparison of the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphone and BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone:

[YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

There you have our top 3 reasons to upgrade to a BlackBerry 7 OS smartphone! Hopefully this was helpful for those of you using older BlackBerry smartphones and thinking of upgrading. Feel free to let us know what you think in the comments, and if you’re currently rocking a BlackBerry 7 OS smartphone, tell us what you like the most about it!

With Mother’s Day right around the corner (this Sunday the 13th — have you sent Mom a card yet?), we wanted to take a step back and recognize all their hard and often under-appreciated work. I’ve been talking to moms around the Research In Motion® (RIM®) offices, and we’ve compiled the top 5 apps from BlackBerry App World™ that we think are perfect for all the moms out there on #TeamBlackBerry.

1. Kobo™: According to some of the moms here on the social team, they love to curl up with a good book. Having Kobo on your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet or BlackBerry® smartphone is like curling up with thousands of books, so you can read until your heart’s content — and without having to carry around a ton of heavy novels.

2. At The Moment: This is a journaling app that lets you capture moments as they happen, tag people and places, date stamp memories, and save them. If you’re the kind of mom that never misses a moment – from your child’s first step to their graduation day – definitely check this one out.

3. Groupon™: For mothers who are always looking for a great deal, I’ve been told the Groupon app for BlackBerry smartphones is definitely one to have. You can find and purchase local deals right from your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet or BlackBerry smartphone, and you can redeem them right from your device as well, which saves both time and paper.

4. WeatherEye: The Weather Network: When I polled moms around the office (informally, of course), an overwhelming number of them said WeatherEye: The Weather Network is an essential app for them — especially since it features an hour-by-hour glance at the day ahead, so you know what the kids should be wearing to get them through the school day.

5. TETRIS®: Who said moms can’t be gamers too? There’s tons to love about the evergreen TETRIS® game series — and if you do need that extra peace and quiet, just hand it off to the kids and it’ll be sure to keep them busy.

There you have it: our top 5 apps for moms, just in time for Mother’s Day this weekend. All you moms out there — is there an app you use all the time? Let us know in the comments.

If you were at BlackBerry World™ or BlackBerry® 10 Jam last week, you might have seen the foursquare “Check-in Stations” we set up. Did you know they were NFC-enabled?

Four days prior to the two conferences, foursquare released an updated version of their BlackBerry® smartphone app. The biggest addition? Near Field Communications! You can now check in at a venue with nothing more than a wave of your NFC-capable BlackBerry smartphone. (Of course, the venue has to have NFC tags for you to tap your BlackBerry smartphone against. It’s not actually magic – it just seems that way.)

Peter Nofelt, Software Engineering Manager – BlackBerry at foursquare (you might recognize his name from BlackBerry DevCon 2010) shot a quick demonstration video of the onsite NFC experience with fellow BlackBerry platform developer at foursquare, Kyle Fowler.

We learned a lot about #TeamBlackBerry from your foursquare check-ins. At BlackBerry World, the Solutions Showcase had the most check-ins and was the most popular event, while the most popular session was a Hands-On Lab, “BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion Studio and BlackBerry Device Service,” whereattendees learned how to install BlackBerry Mobile Fusion Studio and BlackBerry Mobile Fusion for BlackBerry devices.

At BlackBerry 10 Jam, attendees checked in at the Jam Space most often. No surprise there – the Jam Space was where developers could “Ask The Experts”, port their apps to the BlackBerry platform (in minutes!) at the App Express station, or simply hang out with us at the Social Media Desk. The most popular conference session on foursquare was “Get Ready for Cascades™ Development,” where attendees got a preview of Cascades and the powerful tools behind it.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a BlackBerry conference if we didn’t have the swag to back it up. At the end of each conference, the five attendees with the most check-ins won exclusive foursquare “Mayor Badge” t-shirts. Check out one of the mayors of BlackBerry 10 Jam, Chad Tetreault — he’s the guy that brought you LensBoost, among many other apps.

Below are more of the photos you shared with us when you checked in on foursquare, including another picture of those awesome t-shirts! (I know, I want one too. That’s the problem with “exclusive.”)

BlackBerry 10 Jam

BlackBerry World

If you haven’t done so already, head to BlackBerry App World™ to download the foursquare app.

Were you at the event? Did you check in? What badges did you earn? Share your foursquare stories in the comments below!

Your awesome BlackBerry PlayBook tablet-inspired entries inspired us, entertained us and downright impressed us, so we couldn’t help but share them. Check out some of the entries below and let us know in the comments which feature of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 you’re digging.

@BlackBerry The #PlayBook2 is the same size as 3 lotto tix but better than winning the lotto! yfrog.com/oca63wsj—
Danae Barrett (@DanaeCMB) March 05, 2012

@BlackBerry #playbook2 http://t.co/Bde8ygEO—
Olive Davis (@dsy79) March 05, 2012

@BlackBerry the first four sonogram pics of my twins are same size as the #PlayBook2 yfrog.com/oegkaoqdj—
Xim (@ximenavpm) March 06, 2012

@BlackBerry #Bold 9900 & #PlayBook2 go together as great as any kind of food and Bacon! #SoGood lockerz.com/s/190726912—
Ryan Reyes (@GRRyan_24) March 08, 2012

@BlackBerry #Playbook sized Red Vines covering my #Playbook #Playbook2 go #TeamBlackberry ! twitpic.com/8sg467—
Chuck Vaughn (@Chucklebutte) March 05, 2012

@BlackBerry "#PlayBook2 features #PrintToGo, getting your work done OnTheGo! Sit back, relax, GoodToGo, So good that you NeverLetGo!"—
Jeffrey Leung (@Maiev) March 06, 2012

@BlackBerry: "#PlayBook features #PrintToGo & so much more in OS 2.0! Quality, reliability & support that's never, ever slow!" #PlayBook2!—
Teresa Salvatore (@NeedNewSpace) March 06, 2012

@BlackBerry How would #PlayBook2 change my future? From communication, to occupying kids, to having fun4me, #PlayBook2 would rock my world!—
Kim Gaebel (@zabnee) March 09, 2012

@BlackBerry #PlayBook features #PrintToGo, how we lived without it I'll never know! #PlayBook2—
Cass Reed (@TheFix_ItLass) March 07, 2012

@BlackBerry My PlayBook gets the job done with Performance & Multitasking no need for laptop when u have the #PlayBook2 #PlayBook—
John R Stephens (@azjohnnych) March 09, 2012