We’ve held some fantastic “Meet the PlayBook” events across Europe in the last month – be sure to check out our blog post about the first few dates. Now, we’re excited to announce further event dates and locations!

These half-day events have been a great success so far, and our delegates have learned a lot about developing rich applications for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet using Adobe® Flex®, Adobe® AIR® and the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ SDK! The hands-on sessions with the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet have been extremely popular, so don’t miss your opportunity to get a look at our new tablet device!

The event comprises two parallel sessions, one business and one technology focused, and technical teams from Research In Motion and Adobe will also be available to answer your questions.

Our next events are as follows. Places are limited, so early registration is recommended!

• 14th June in Milan
• 21st June in Istanbul
• 21st June in Malmo
• 28th July in Cologne – tbc

BlackBerry Tablet OS Development Resources:

BlackBerry – Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR Development Resources
BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Earlier this week, we showed you some BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet applications being demoed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) at Mobile World Congress 2011. Both the ‘Scrapbook’ app demo and BlackBerry® WebWorks™ videos were great demonstrations of the power the BlackBerry PlayBook platform has for providing a rich application experience – and that wasn’t all TAT had on hand for us!

The above concept demo, which shows a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet outputting stereoscopic 3D visuals, demonstrates many of the hardware features of the tablet: 1080P HD visual, micro HDMI output, and multi-touch support. It’s also really cool to look at, whether you’re wearing 3D glasses or not! Check it out and let us know what you think of the possibilities of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

I interviewed Ryan Bidan at CES 2011 in January to answer questions Inside BlackBerry readers had about the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. I thought Mobile World Congress 2011 would be a good opportunity to play catch-up with the BlackBerry PlayBook Product Manager, and Ryan was kind enough to give us some more time to discuss this week’s PlayBook announcements, as well as the tablet’s presence at the show. Please post a comment if you have questions you’d like us to ask Ryan in future videos!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

BlackBerry Developer Day at Mobile World Congress 2011 was a jam packed development party. Each bootcamp and speaker session was filled with eager developers looking to learn more about BlackBerry development. I was able to meet up with Mike Kirkup, Director of Developer relations, at the end of the day and get his thoughts on how things went, as well as the rundown of his BlackBerry Development Roadmap session (highlights: Near Field Communications, OpenGL 2.0, Magnetometer and Digital Compass support are all coming in BlackBerry 6.1).

We also were able to talk briefly about the AppCircus Spotlight on BlackBerry event. The event was streamed live on our BlackBerry Mobile World Congress 2011 page, but if you missed it, don’t worry! We have a full video recap of the event available by clicking the link below. Make sure to also check out these BlackBerry App World download links for the event winner, Gbanga and honorable mention, UrbanStep.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to catch up with recent acquisition The Astonishing Tribe this week at Mobile World Congress 2011. In the short amount of time since joining RIM, they’ve already built a variety of fun apps demonstrating the performance of the BlackBerry PlayBook platform. One application that caught our eye was the “scrapbook” app, which demonstrates advanced four-finger multi-touch controls and rich graphics in the above video.

Like Need For Speed Underground, the “scrapbook” application is a great example of the power BlackBerry developers will be able to utilize in quickly making their own PlayBook applications with the native BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK. We can’t wait to see what our friends at TAT will show us next!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Like many of my fellow RIM employees that made the trek over the Atlantic to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2011, I’m very excited for our new BlackBerry Travel app which launched in the BlackBerry App World Test Center. If you haven’t read our BlackBerry Travel Core Features post or Ty’s great BlackBerry Travel Getting Started Guide, check them out, but also make sure to check out the above video I was able to film today with BlackBerry Travel Product Manager, Andreas. Andreas gives me a hands on demo of many of the features mentioned in the posts above, and explains what makes BlackBerry Travel a Super App.

Andreas also wanted me to pass this information along to current WorldMate users looking to test out BlackBerry Travel. In order to take advantage of BlackBerry Travel, you will need to sign up for a new and free BlackBerry Travel account. You can later choose to import your existing WorldMate trips into BlackBerry Travel by following these simple steps:

1. Log into your BlackBerry Travel Web Portal account at www.travel.blackberry.com
2. Go to ‘Profile’ and select ‘import trips from WorldMate’
3. You can also send your trips to trips@blackberry.com

Andreas also recommend that you uninstall your existing WorldMate app after installing BlackBerry Travel. This will avoid duplication and provide you with an overall improved experience – for free!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Mobile World Congress 2011 is a pretty interesting event from a BlackBerry developer perspective, because it actually contains a mini-DEVCON inside it: BlackBerry Developer Day. With BlackBerry Developer Day taking place tomorrow, we sat down with Director of Developer Relations, Mike Kirkup, to get a high-level overview of what attendees can expect. For those developers in Barcelona, make sure to read our previous BlackBerry Developer Day post for detailed session schedule information. If you’re not attending, don’t worry! The Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog will be uploading videos tomorrow with each of the BlackBerry Developer Day session leads, so you can get the info you need to build the next great BlackBerry Super App.

We’re really excited to announce that applications on the BlackBerry App World™ Storefront are now available for download to users in 27 more markets! Users in these markets can view the catalogue of applications and purchase applications with their PayPal® account or a credit card – and they now have access to over 18,000 applications to make their BlackBerry® smartphone experience even more amazing.

We are especially excited for two countries – Sweden and Russia. Sweden is home to our new partners in astonishing user experience design, the appropriately-named The Astonishing Tribe.

We are also really happy to have BlackBerry App World available to all our друзей (friends) in Russia. Not only do we have a great BlackBerry smartphone user base all over Russia, we have an amazing developer community there too – and it’s awesome to be able to open that market for our Russian developers and developers the world over. There’s a reason we call it BlackBerry App World, folks!

Here are the new 27 markets, in alphabetical order:

If you’re not in one of the 100+ markets that has access to the catalogue of applications and is able to download applications from BlackBerry App World, don’t worry – this year we’re working with our partners to bring applications on BlackBerry App World to everywhere BlackBerry smartphones are available. Keep checking Inside BlackBerry and our @BlackBerry Twitter® account for updates.

I am excited to announce that we will again be holding a BlackBerry® Developer Day at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona, Spain. This one-day event will take place on Tuesday February 15th as part of the MWC App Planet Application Developer Conferences.

We will be holding general sessions in our main auditorium to get you up to speed on the latest and greatest information on the BlackBerry development platform with special focus on how to best monetize your apps on BlackBerry App World™ and integrate with the BBM Social Platform. We will also be hosting a number of hands-on-labs covering BlackBerry® WebWorks™ and Adobe® AIR® development on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. You can attend sessions either in the morning or afternoon – and don’t forget to bring your laptops to get the most out of the bootcamp sessions!

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog »

Today we are pleased to confirm plans for The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) team to join Research In Motion (RIM). We’re excited that the TAT team will be joining RIM and bringing their talent to the BlackBerry PlayBook and smartphone platforms.

For those who don’t know, TAT is renowned for their innovative mobile user interface (UI) designs and has a long history of working with mobile and embedded technology. TAT focuses on delivering great user experiences, from a design, technology, and usability perspective. Their design technology is used today in a variety of industries including the consumer electronics and automotive sectors. Examples of TAT’s UI designs and concepts can be viewed on their web site at www.tat.se.

– David Yach, Chief Technology Officer at RIM