To just call the past year exciting would be an understatement. There are no words to describe what it is like to create a new mobile computing platform from the ground up; to watch everyone rally together; and to see a completely new and fresh experience take shape right before your eyes. One of the most rewarding elements of this process is the ability to do things differently and add new capabilities that were previously add-ons directly into the platform! As the product manager for BlackBerry Bridge, I’m super excited because this means we can create a whole new experience between BlackBerry 10 devices.

When we set out to create the BlackBerry Bridge experience for BlackBerry 10, we focused on the following features:

• Sharing the smartphone’s Internet and intranet (the latter for BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10-activated BlackBerry 10 smartphones) connection with BlackBerry PlayBook

• Using the BlackBerry 10 smartphone to Remote Control the BlackBerry PlayBook (if you haven’t yet, try it with your tablet connected to a TV via HDMI!)

• “Open on” for bookmarks and files through the new Share framework on BlackBerry 10

• Access to all the BlackBerry smartphone’s files through the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet’s File Manager application

You will notice this is different from the BlackBerry OS version, which also has special BlackBerry Bridge applications for Messages, Address Book and Calendar, to name a few. To email from accounts for which you previously used BlackBerry Bridge, simply add the accounts on your BlackBerry PlayBook. This includes any work accounts, as now both BlackBerry 10, and the BlackBerry PlayBook OS use the same BlackBerry Enterprise and Device Service infrastructure. Ty did a great job at describing how to do that in his Five Tip Friday – BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Messages, Calendar and Contacts blog post. We are also planning to bring BBM and other applications as part of a future update later this year.

Our work is not done, and we will keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible between BlackBerry 10 devices, and beyond. I can’t wait to share with you more updates on how BlackBerry Bridge will continue to evolve in the future!

1. Extending BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) to your BlackBerry PlayBook

The BlackBerry Messenger experience on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet features an enhanced interface and solid functionality. If you’re using your tablet and a BBM message comes into your BlackBerry smartphone, simply pop open the BlackBerry Bridge folder on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and tap “BBM” to read it. I particularly find BBM via BlackBerry Bridge on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to be useful for viewing photos, voice notes, or files sent to me from BBM contacts.

2. Stay connected without Wi-Fi®

It’s a pretty connected world out there with Wi-Fi at work, home, coffee shops, and airports. When you’re on the move, however, it’s important to stay online without skipping a beat. Thanks to BlackBerry Bridge, my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet comes with me and remains connected the entire time through the wireless radio on my BlackBerry smartphone.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

Please welcome Julianna, writing a guest post today on a great new feature of BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0…read on! – Ed.

One of my favorite new features in BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is the ability to use my BlackBerry® smartphone to control my BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. This feature is particularly useful when my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is connected to an HDMI®-equipped TV. At home, I can control my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet from my couch and have the contents displayed on my TV with the audio output through my home theater system. At a meeting at work, I can apply the same functionality to share documents, web pages, videos, slideshows and more on a large display screen for everyone to see.

If you haven’t tried this feature already, keep reading to learn how you can do this too!

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

With the new BlackBerry Bridge features that help your smartphone and tablet work together, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 delivers new and unique experiences. I’ve been thinking about ways that I’ll be able to leverage this functionality both at home and at work, and I haven’t run out of ideas yet.

Share how you plan to use these enhancements to BlackBerry Bridge, at home or at work, in the comments below.

As much as we’d love to have it in your hands today, we’ve made the difficult decision to wait to launch BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers and end-users. And here’s what we’re doing to accomplish that.

First off, we have decided to defer the inclusion of the BBM™ application to a subsequent BlackBerry PlayBook OS release. We are committed to developing a seamless BBM solution that fully delivers on the powerful, push based messaging capabilities recognized today by BlackBerry® users around the world and we’re still working on it. In the meantime, BlackBerry smartphone users will be able to continue to use BlackBerry® Bridge™ to securely access BlackBerry® Messenger™ on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet’s high resolution display.

Secondly, we are excited to now be providing developers with the gold release of the native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as well as a beta of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 (launched last week at BlackBerry DevCon Americas). The developer beta allows developers to begin porting their native apps to the PlayBook platform. In the following months, the developer kit will be updated with the full Cascades animation and UI engine that was first demonstrated at BlackBerry DevCon. We expect that the developer beta will generate thousands of new applications for BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0.

Shortly we will also be starting a series of closed betas of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 with select enterprise customers from our Early Adopter Program (EAP). These betas will be rolled out over the course of this year and are an important next step to bringing our unmatched enterprise app deployment, device manageability, security and email integration capabilities to the tablet category. The betas will be conducted within global enterprise environments and will test the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet solution from end-to-end within corporate IT infrastructures. Feedback and improvements from these betas will benefit the overall BlackBerry PlayBook customer experience.

We believe BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 will deliver a great experience for our customers, building on the powerful performance introduced with BlackBerry PlayBook tablet earlier this year. The software update will add advanced integrated email, calendar and contact apps, a new video store, as well as new functionality that will allow your BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook to work together even better.

For the enterprise, we’re addressing many barriers to tablet adoption, including device manageability and enterprise application deployment. Enterprises will uniquely have the ability to manage tablets from a centralized server, while BlackBerry® Balance ensures a seamless user experience for personal and professional needs and gives CIOs the peace of mind that corporate data is secure. Plus BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 will provide dedicated shelf space inside the BlackBerry App World™ storefront to make approved enterprise applications easily available to an organization’s end users. Together these features will help change the way enterprises view and use tablets.

So when could an end user get the new update? We expect to deliver the new BlackBerry PlayBook OS to customers in February 2012 and we’ll continue to keep you updated as we progress to the launch.

- David J. Smith, SVP, BlackBerry PlayBook, Research In Motion

As promised in the first BlackBerry® 7 Getting Started Guide, here is a complete overview of every option available in the Setup wizard. For those wondering, I will be using a BlackBerry® Torch™ 9860 smartphone in this post.

Before we begin, opening the Setup app can be accomplished two ways. The first is when it opens automatically after starting up a new BlackBerry 7 OS smartphone. The second is when you open it by selecting the Setup icon that appears on the Home Screen if you’ve already set up BlackBerry 7 on your smartphone. With this being said, let’s dive in.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

It’s Friday! To kick off the last day before the weekend, here are five tips for when you are using the Messages feature available through the BlackBerry® Bridge™ application on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet.

1. Double tap to get full screen messages in landscape view

If you are looking at your messages while using your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in landscape view, double tap on a message to make it full screen. To close the full screen message view, double tap again.

Before double tapping:

After double tapping:

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

UPDATE 7/20/11: BlackBerry Tablet OS 1.0.7 is back up and available for download to your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Apologies once again for the inconvenience.

UPDATE 07/19/11: Some users who downloaded BlackBerry Tablet OS 1.0.7 today were experiencing an issue with their BlackBerry Bridge app. RIM expects to release an update to BlackBerry Tablet OS 1.0.7 later this week that will resolve this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Michael here to tell you about the latest updates available for your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. BlackBerry® Tablet OS v1.0.7 is available today and introduces a variety of new features and enhancements – keep reading to find out what’s new in this latest update!

Improved connectivity & productivity with the BlackBerry Bridge application

• Enhanced Support for Saving Attachments – The BlackBerry® Bridge™ app offers you more flexibility around where and how you save attachments for viewing and editing. You can now save an attachment to a removable SD card, or to your BlackBerry smartphone’s internal flash memory.
• ZIP Attachment Support – The BlackBerry Bridge app now gives you access to ZIP files received as an email attachment. While bridged, you can now download a zip file from an email to your smartphone SD card and then extract compressed contents for viewing or editing on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Additional Multimedia Features

• Portrait Support in Pictures App – With BlackBerry Tablet OS v1.0.7, pictures that you’ve taken with your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet or transferred from your PC can now be viewed in either portrait or landscape formats for the layout that best fits your needs.
• Pinch to Zoom in Video App – Use the pinch gesture to zoom in on the finer details of your favorite video content, just like you would with a website or picture today – all while the video continues to play.

Additional Language Support

With BlackBerry Tablet OS v1.0.7, we have also added support for the following 15 languages:

1. Basque
2. Catalan
3. Czech
4. Danish
5. Galician
6. Hungarian
7. Bahasa Indonesia
8. Norwegian
9. Polish
10. Portuguese Brazilian
11. Portuguese European
12. Swedish
13. Turkish
14. Romanian
15. Russian

How to update to BlackBerry Tablet OS v1.0.7

Best of all, these updates are free and can be downloaded over-the-air from your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Users who purchase and activate a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet on or after Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 will be automatically updated to v1.0.7 as part of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet setup process. Existing BlackBerry PlayBook tablet users will be presented with a software update notification on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet status ribbon, or they can check for the software update at any time in the Settings Menu under Software Updates.

Remember to also update the BlackBerry Bridge application on your BlackBerry smartphone.

Post a comment and let us know what you think of the new features added to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet!

The next “Paul’s Challenge” that I’ve been waiting to post has arrived, and it’s all about the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. Let me be honest – even though I have been traveling without a laptop for around 9+ months, there were times that I wished I had one. That changed when I was handed a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. I can definitely say that it has added value to several aspects of my day to day work – but how has it changed my No-Laptop Challenge?

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

Hi all, Andrey here with an important BlackBerry® Bridge™ update. I’m happy to share the news that the BlackBerry Bridge app is now available to AT&T® customers! The app will appear in the BlackBerry App World™ catalogue throughout the day, but you can get it right away by searching for “BlackBerry Bridge” within BlackBerry App World.

For those not familiar with the BlackBerry Bridge app, it mirrors the existing messages, contacts, calendar, memopad, tasks, and BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) that appear on your BlackBerry smartphone. For example, through BlackBerry Bridge, you can use your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to respond to an email that was received on your BlackBerry smartphone or send a picture to a BBM contact. Pretty cool!

Another feature of the BlackBerry Bridge application is the ability to browse the Internet on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet using your BlackBerry smartphone’s data connection**. This feature is designed to enable you to access the Internet (or the intranet site of your organization) using your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, even when you’re outside of Wi-Fi® coverage.

Our friends over at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog have a bunch of great posts for users looking to set up the BlackBerry Bridge app and to learn how to maximize that experience. They also have a new post out today explaining the various ways users can connect their BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to the Internet. Check them out!

How to Set Up BlackBerry Bridge
5 BlackBerry Bridge Tips for BlackBerry PlayBook
How to Connect Your BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet

So download the BlackBerry Bridge application right now and don’t forget to post a comment about how you use it with your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet!

** Note: AT&T users must have a tethering plan included with their wireless service plan to take advantage of the Bridge Browser. To enable tethering on your BlackBerry smartphone, go to att.com/mywireless or dial 611.