#1 – Poynt

(YouTube link for easy mobile viewing)

Poynt received the most mentions among #TeamBlackBerry, and is definitely one of my must-have apps. With Poynt, you can quickly find restaurants, movie theaters and other businesses around your current location – and easily call or email them right from the app. Their BlackBerry PlayBook tablet version is amazing, too – and works with the BlackBerry smartphone version to do some cool things. For example, check out the video above to see how you can find the phone number of a local restaurant using Poynt, and then push the phone number to your BlackBerry smartphone to start the call!

Download Poynt for BlackBerry smartphones
Download Poynt for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet

#2 – BlackBerry Travel

It doesn’t matter if you’re a serious “no checked baggage” business traveler or a “seeing the world” backpacker, BlackBerry® Travel is a must-have, second only to your toothbrush. When you receive an email from your travel agent, BlackBerry Travel can automatically import the details and create a trip record for you. If there are any flight changes, BlackBerry Travel is designed to alert you right away and can even suggest alternate flights. The recently released BlackBerry Travel v1.1 even allows you to book a rental car right from the app.

Download BlackBerry Travel for BlackBerry smartphone

#3 – Tube Map

This is great app suggestion from our #TeamBlackBerry UK members. Whether you live in London or plan to visit (for holiday, for the Olympics, or for a decent cup of tea), you can easilynavigate London’s subway with Tube Map. Tube Map is designed to provide you with more than just static maps, you get live updates of train delays and schedule changes, too.

Download Tube Map for BlackBerry smartphones

#4 – foursquare

Foursquare isn’t just for becoming mayor of your local watering hole, it’s also my go to tool for finding cool things around me when I’m traveling. I can launch the app and see what my friends are up to, or use the ‘Explore’ section to see what’s trending around me. The locals always know where the best places are, and there’s no better way to find out where they are then with foursquare!

Download foursquare for BlackBerry smartphones

#5 – Navita Translator

Nothing is worse when traveling in a foreign country than not being able to ask for directions or for a recommendation from a local. Navita Translator makes sure you never have to go through that (again) by designing the app to let you quickly translate any phrase and even read the phrase back to you in languages like English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, German and Russian. ¿dónde está el baño? Nice!

Download Navita Translator for BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet

Post a comment and let us know of any great travel apps that may have been missed. Make sure to send us more top 5 ideas for future posts too, either in the comments or with a tweet to @BlackBerry / @BlackBerryBlog.

LBS nation, we have good news! The Wi-Fi® geolocation service officially launched on September 9th, 2011. This in-house technology at Research In Motion® (RIM®) uses Wi-Fi Access Point data that’s been collected anonymously by your BlackBerry® smartphone to provide a quick and accurate location fix to location-aware applications globally. This service is a further enhancement to our Cell-site geolocation service, which has been in service globally for more than a year.

Unlike GPS-based location fixes, this service offers a faster and more convenient way for developers to get location fixes via a secure connection with minimum bandwidth usage. Although the accuracy of this service is lower than GPS, it’s higher than Cell-site geolocation, and the speed is expected to be much faster than GPS. One advantage to Wi-Fi geolocation service is that it typically works even when GPS is not available. For example, when a user is indoors or when a user prefers not to turn their GPS on in order to preserve battery life, Wi-Fi geolocation service is still an option.

The APIs needed to acquire Wi-Fi geolocation fixes have been available since the BlackBerry® 6 OS release; therefore, all devices running the BlackBerry 6 OS and higher are able to leverage this service via existing APIs upon provisioning of this service. Please note that service provisioning may take up to a month from the launch date, so we’re asking for your patience and understanding if it doesn’t start working immediately. For APIs and other relevant technical details, please refer to the KB article Location APIs – Start to finish. You can also leverage Simple Location API if you want to get a head-start by skipping the full details.

I am really excited about this service as it opens up a lot of possibilities for innovation and great apps. Let us know when you integrate your app with this service, and let us know how it goes!

(YouTube link for easy mobile viewing)

One of the highlights for me this week at BlackBerry® World™ 2011 was having the opportunity to showcase some of the amazing work from developers starting to leverage the BBM social platform. Social networking application foursquare is one such example, and was demoed during the Tuesday General Session keynote by Senior Director of Developer Relations (and fellow Inside BlackBerry blogger) Mike Kirkup.

foursquare developers Pete and Jeff provide a great demonstration of the upcoming foursquare for BlackBerry smartphones app integration with BBM in the video above. If you want to learn more about developing with the BBM social platform, check out my Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog post, which has an extended interview with both Mike and Pete!

foursquare and BBM: A Super App Meets the Social Platform (VIDEO)

(YouTube link for easy mobile viewing)

One incredibly cool demo that I saw this year at BlackBerry® World™ 2011 was Poynt’s integration of BlackBerry push services to call a number on a BlackBerry® smartphone from their BlackBerry PlayBook™ tablet app. Peter Werry from Poynt, winner of last year’s BlackBerry Partners Fund Developer Challenge, walks me through this new feature and other innovative uses of BlackBerry services in the above video.

Post a comment and let us know what super app features you’re building into your application.

One of the great new additions to Facebook® for BlackBerry® smartphones 1.9 is the ability to let your friends know where you are using Facebook Places. Want your friends to meet you for sushi? Using this new feature, you can easily check in and tell them where you are!

But before you get started, there are a few simple steps that you’ll need to take to properly allow the application to find your location and check you in to your favorite Places.

By default, the option Share my Location with Facebook is disabled (unchecked) and may also appear as a non-editable/grayed checkbox. This option will remain grayed out until the application is able to determine that you have allowed Facebook to use Places and you have accepted the Places disclaimer.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

It was so busy at CES last week that there was some content recorded that we couldn’t get up during the show. For instance, my interview with Brian from Loopt about their social LBS application for BlackBerry smartphones. Loopt offers local content to help you meet up with nearby friends, explore new places to grab food, and find local events happening around you.

You can download Loopt for free right now at BlackBerry App World™.

Poynt has been a popular LBS (Location-based Services) BlackBerry smartphone app for as long as it has been available to download. Recently, Poynt has moved out of beta and launched, so I wandered over to the Poynt kiosk at the BlackBerry booth to speak with Margaret about the new release and key Poynt functionality. I also got to see their cool real-time Poynt display. Check it out!