A couple of weeks ago, I posted the BlackBerry® Desktop Software v6.0 sneak peek and officially kicked off our first-ever BlackBerry Desktop Software for Windows® limited public beta program. Your amazing feedback and comments on the post have been truly inspiring to both me and the teams working on the product!

Today, I have some more exciting news for you as well as a more detailed walkthrough of key user interface and feature changes in BlackBerry Desktop Software v6.0. Read on to take a closer look at BlackBerry Desktop Software v6.0 and learn when it will be available on a PC near you!

Connecting a new BlackBerry® smartphone

Something that is one hundred per cent new in BlackBerry Desktop Software v6.0 is a very simple set-up wizard which you will see when you connect any of your current BlackBerry® smartphones for the first time with BlackBerry Desktop Software. This set-up wizard will help you to automatically transfer all your data and settings from your BlackBerry smartphone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a novice or expert – with just a few very simple steps, you will be fully set up and be able to run the new BlackBerry Desktop Software. Among other things, you can even give your BlackBerry smartphone a nickname and specify which tasks you’d like to be done automatically when connecting with BlackBerry® Desktop Software.

Summary and Device Options

As some of you have noted in your comments, the BlackBerry Desktop Software v6.0 layout and Device Summary are now much more similar to what many of you have seen and loved in our Mac version of Desktop Software. In addition to device information and an indication of when the BlackBerry smartphone was last synced or backed up, the summary screen also provides an easy way to kick off a new backup if you opted out of the automatic option, as well as the option to update your BlackBerry smartphone when updates become available.

Any settings configured during set up can be updated at your leisure from Device Options menu, also accessible now from the Summary:

New Interface to Add/Remove Applications and Configure Organizer Sync

As with previous versions of BlackBerry Desktop Software, you can manage applications to install BlackBerry Device Software-optional applications to your BlackBerry smartphone (like support for new languages), or remove any third-party apps you may not want to use anymore. Removing or adding an app is just a matter of clicking on the ‘+’ or ‘X’ buttons in the action column, and the Application Summary screen will be updated to reflect what will happen after you select ‘Apply’ for the changes.

Once your Organizer settings have been configured, the new user interface provides an easy way to control what specific data you would like to sync next time. In addition to previously supported organizer applications like Microsoft® Outlook® Express, Windows® Vista Address Book and Calendar, Microsoft® Outlook® 2003 and 2007, with BlackBerry Desktop Software v6.0 you can also sync with Microsoft® Outlook® 2010 (32bit mode).

Integrated BlackBerry® Media Sync!

All BlackBerry® Media Sync features are now integrated natively in BlackBerry Desktop Software v6.0, with plenty of improvements and new features including Wi-Fi® Music Sync for BlackBerry® smartphones (with BlackBerry® 6). Vikram has covered the features of BlackBerry Media Sync 6.0 in detail in his great blog post, but here is a quick summary of the key enhancements:

• In addition to playlists, you can now also sync by artists or genres
• You can now sync videos from your computer to your BlackBerry smartphone and import new videos from your BlackBerry smartphone to your computer
• New pictures and videos can be automatically imported as part of autosync when your BlackBerry smartphone is connected

BlackBerry Desktop Software v6.0 is available starting today, so existing BlackBerry Desktop Software users should start getting auto-update notifications later today. The rest of you can visit www.blackberry.com/desktopsoftware. Post a comment and let us know what you think!

Mac is a trademark of Apple Inc.

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.

If you’ve been a BlackBerry® smartphone user for awhile, you’ve likely come across BlackBerry themes. BlackBerry themes change the way your BlackBerry smartphone home screen looks: from the background image to the icon and cursor style. Some BlackBerry themes also feature animations and a completely unique home screen experience.

Did you know that you can make your own BlackBerry theme? What’s better, the newly released BlackBerry® Theme Studio 5.0 makes it pretty easy to customize your BlackBerry smartphone with a unique theme. All you need is a bit of creativity and some skills with graphics software like Adobe® Photoshop®, Adobe Illustrator®, Adobe After Effects® or BlackBerry® Composer.

Today I’m going to walk you through the main interface of BlackBerry Theme Studio 5.0 and in a future post we’ll go step-by-step through the building process. Let’s get started!

Where to get BlackBerry Theme Studio? 

You can download BlackBerry Theme Studio for free from www.blackberry.com/themestudio. It’s an application for Windows – just download it onto your computer and install.

You’ll notice that BlackBerry Theme Studio actually contains two products in the suite: Theme Builder, and Composer.

BlackBerry Theme Builder

BlackBerry Theme Builder is the “theme design” tool of the suite. BlackBerry Theme Builder lets you change the images that get used for things like icons, background graphics and cursors. You can also adjust the fonts, change the position of many objects on the screen, decide which applications appear and change the color and properties of things like dialog boxes.

The main interface of BlackBerry Theme Builder is divided into a few different parts:

• The Preview Window
• The Catalog Panel
• The Inspector Panel>
• The Alignment Panel

The Preview Window – seeing how your theme will look

The Preview Window shows off your theme along with how it will look on the BlackBerry smartphone you’ve decided to make a theme for. The “preview” is – for the most part, just that … a preview.

When using BlackBerry Theme Builder, you almost always change the properties of your theme in the Inspector (more on this in a second) and don’t manipulate anything on the Preview window itself unless you’ve selected a function in The Inspector which asks you to then change things in the preview window directly.

An example in this would be when you select “REPOSITION BANNER ITEMS” items in the Inspector. Selecting this option will make it possible for you to select any item in the banner shown in the preview and move them around the screen to your liking.

The Inspector Window – where the work gets done

The Inspector is where you do the bulk of your work in BlackBerry Theme Studio. The Inspector segments the elements of your Theme into organized parts. You’ll notice several buttons as you work your way down the inspector and pressing each one takes you into a different area that you can customize.

Banners: Clicking on this button will let you change the properties of the banners that appear at the top of your home screen or in some of your applications. This includes the icons that appear (such as your battery life status), the position of icons and the fonts of the text.

Home Screen: Clicking on this button will let you change the elements that appear on your home screen (the primary screen of your BlackBerry smartphone), including the background, the applications and the icons.

Application List Screen: Clicking on this button will let you change the properties of your application screen, including the icons of the applications, the order of the applications and the background image.

Controls: Here, you can have fun with the controls that appear on the BlackBerry smartphone.  Manipulate the appearance of the dialog boxes, the buttons that can be selected, menus, title bars and more.

Phone Screen: Clicking on this particular button lets you change around the images that appear when a call comes in or is dialed out and you can now add your own ringtone.

Lock Screen: Clicking on this button gives you the option to edit the backgrounds, icons and fonts that appear on the screen when your BlackBerry smartphone is locked.

Global Items: Global items are a fancy way of referring to things that appear “globally” throughout the BlackBerry smartphone. Examples include things such as the progress bar that appears when an application is downloading, the key identifier that appears when a button is held down and the hourglass that appears when an application is installing or launching.

The Catalog – managing your theme images

BlackBerry Theme Studio ships with a bunch of background images and sample graphics that you can use when creating your BlackBerry theme.

The Alignment Window – lining things up

The alignment window helps you position objects correctly in the preview and works similarly to alignment tools in other graphics software.

How do I design those graphics? – Enter BlackBerry Composer (or just about any other design tool you prefer)

The second tool is BlackBerry Composer, a design and animation product that is great for helping you craft images, whether they’re static or animated. BlackBerry Composer has a full set of tools for designing built into it and it’s great for adding life to your images without having to buy other software.

BlackBerry Theme Studio is also friendly with other design tools. If you want to design your graphics in something like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, that’s fine too. If you want to add animation, you’ll need to learn a bit more about BlackBerry Composer, but we’ll cover that another time.

Next, we’ll cover the specific steps required to build a BlackBerry theme. Until then make sure to download BlackBerry Theme Studio 5.0.

In case you haven’t heard the news, the first update to our BlackBerry® Desktop Software designed for the Mac OS platform is now available. The last two weeks since the release of BlackBerry Desktop Software v1.0 have been very exciting and we received lots of great feedback. It was also very exciting to hear how great the product works for so many of you. The v.1.0.1 update is designed to provide enhancements to data and music sync and is just the first in a series of planned updates. We value your feedback and comments very much so please keep them coming!

Download BlackBerry Desktop software v1.0.1 (Mac OS)

Mac and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.  

Update: BlackBerry® Desktop Software for the Mac OS platform is now available!

BlackBerry® Desktop Software is now compatible with the Mac OS platform, and the upcoming release is just around the corner. We’d like to take this opportunity to share some details about the key features included in v1.0. We know many of you are waiting anxiously for the product to be released, and the wait is almost over! Before I dive into the details, I wanted to thank you all for the great comments and feedback you left on my initial post announcing this upcoming release of BlackBerry Desktop Software. Knowing how anticipated the product is was the best motivation the team could have. Read on for a detailed walk-through of the key product features.

The Welcome Sheet

Once BlackBerry Desktop Software is installed and connected to a BlackBerry® smartphone via USB, users will be presented with what we call the Welcome Sheet. The idea behind the Welcome Sheet is to ensure users can customize important settings defining their experience with the BlackBerry Desktop Software going forward. Anything defined here on the Welcome Sheet can of course be changed later on via various options (also covered in this post).

One important feature I’d like to spend some time talking about is the option to select whether a BlackBerry smartphone syncs with one or multiple computers, a new feature to BlackBerry Desktop Software. Want to sync with one computer at home and another at work? Change the setting to “Safer Sync” and you’re all set. Your sync times will increase (how much depends on the amount of data stored on the smartphone), but this feature will help keep data on your Mac and BlackBerry smartphone in harmony.

BlackBerry Desktop Software will also tell users where their music will be synced to. If your BlackBerry smartphone has onboard memory (like the BlackBerry® Storm™ or BlackBerry® Bold™) you’ll have the option to choose whether to sync music to the onboard memory or a microSD™ card. Reserving memory is also very helpful and a nice way to save some space for documents, movies or even apps with the new archiving feature introduced in BlackBerry App World™ 1.1.

Summary Screen and Device Options

The Summary Screen provides a quick overview of the information about the connected BlackBerry smartphone. The information provided about the last sync and backup will help users make sure their smartphone is backed up and synced regularly if they opt against using the automatic options. Speaking of which, to configure some of the more advanced settings in BlackBerry Desktop Software, the Device Options menu button is displayed prominently on the Summary Screen.

Two additional options in the Device Options menu over what is displayed on the Welcome Sheet are the ability to sync automatically when the BlackBerry smartphone is connected and to check for software updates.

Within the Device Options menu, users can choose whether their BlackBerry smartphone should be backed-up automatically and what data should be included in the backup file. Excluding messages or information data (that may be stored on the Mac already) can significantly decrease the time it takes to back up the BlackBerry smartphone.

The media options provided under the Device Options menu are mostly what is displayed on the Welcome Sheet, but the option to “Delete all music…” requires a bit of attention. We added this feature to provide users with an easy way to remove the tunes transferred using the BlackBerry Desktop Software; it’s a great way to keep your music selection fresh day to day! Any music transferred manually to the smartphone will remain intact

Synchronizing

Because synchronization is one of the most important features in this release of BlackBerry Desktop Software, our focus was on making it solid with an intuitive set up. We wanted to ensure users have all the key options and information when setting up their sync preferences, while at the same time keeping the interface clean and simple. For this reason, all information categories are listed on the left, and the right panel reflects the settings for each category. The alternative of having everything on the same page and listed sequentially seemed a bit cluttered to us.

Users can sync their BlackBerry smartphone with the iCal application, Address Book, Apple Mail (for notes) and any other software that can talk to Apple’s Sync Services. For example, to sync with Microsoft® Entourage users simply need to check the option to sync with Sync Services in Entourage preferences.

Updating Device Software

As with Windows® BlackBerry Desktop Software v4.7+, users won’t need to install anything on their computer to update their BlackBerry device software. Every time the BlackBerry smartphone is connected, BlackBerry Desktop Software will automatically check for updates. Users will see a notification when a new update is available:

We’ve learned a couple of lessons from the years of experience with our version of BlackBerry Desktop Software for Windows®, and as I mentioned previously, we focused on making the update experience as simple as possible. Keeping the update process lean on extraneous options and features also ensures we can focus on quality. All in all, BlackBerry smartphone users will still have an option to specify whether their data should be backed-up (including third-party applications) and encrypted, but that is as far as the options go. Once the update options are selected, it’s simply a matter of hitting the “Start Update” button and grabbing a cup of coffee while the BlackBerry Desktop Software takes care of business.

Installing and Removing Applications

With the number of applications for BlackBerry smartphones growing by the day, it is important to ensure users can easily install or remove BlackBerry optional applications like support for other languages or any third-party applications they may have downloaded in the past and don’t use anymore. Simply clear the check box to remove previously installed applications; the “+” sign is for adding new applications.

Back Up and Restore

When backing up data, users have the option for a full or a partial backup and also the ability to encrypt their backup file. An important item I’d like to mention for those who may be familiar with the Windows® BlackBerry Desktop Software is that backup files now have a new extension, .bbb, which stands for BlackBerry Backup file of course! The current version of BlackBerry Desktop Software stores BlackBerry data in an .ipd file and the contents of on-board memory in a .cab file; while there are benefits to this approach, our experience is showing that keeping all information in one place provides a more convenient overall experience.

While the new/upcoming version of BlackBerry Desktop Software will store backup files in the new format, users will still be able to restore any .ipd files made from previous backups using the current version of BlackBerry Desktop Software.

BlackBerry Desktop Software is very focused on providing the key functionality that we know Mac users have been waiting for. If you haven’t yet, make sure you sign up to be notified when this product is released on www.blackberry.com/mac. Stay tuned for another overview on some other cool features I did not have a chance to touch on here shortly after we release.

Comment away and let me know what you think about what you’ve seen so far!

Mac and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Here are some key features the initial release will include:

• Sync your iTunes® playlists, calendars, contacts, notes and tasks
• Add/Remove applications
• Update your device when new software becomes available
• Backup and restore your device data with such features like automatically scheduled backups and optional encryption (security is #1 as always… )
• Manage multiple devices

And it will support Mac® OS 10.5.5 and above.

Make sure to check out www.blackberry.com/mac and sign up to get notified when the software is available, and stay tuned for more posts from me here on Inside BlackBerry as we get closer to the release date.

As promised, here are some screenshots (click to enlarge) – let me know what you think!