After spending months locked up in the kitchen, it’s time to enjoy one of my favorite parts of summer: BBQs. Whether you’re celebrating holidays, family events, or just hanging out with friends, grilling and gathering outside is a great way to enjoy the season.

Before you head outside with your plate of burgers and hot dogs, be sure to grab your BlackBerry® smartphone or BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet to help you take your BBQ to a whole new level. Check out some of our favorite tips, tricks, and apps from the BlackBerry App World™ storefront:

Grab Some New Recipes

Before you head to the grocery store, why not check out a few apps that can give you some new ideas for your culinary pursuits? One great resource to help you find new recipes and refine your techniques is Cooklet. More than just your typical burger and hot dog BBQ, you’ll find recipes for inventive side dishes and numerous ways to spice up your meals. And if you’re looking for some healthy recipes, be sure to check out SparkRecipes – it currently boasts over 200,000 recipes!

Accurate Cook Times

For novice chefs and culinary pros alike, cooking a cut of meat to perfection can be challenging and intimidating. Using the recipe apps above will help give you a timeline for how long you should leave your food on the grill, and using an app like Stopwatch can help you gauge your grilling time.

Share Your Work of Art

After you have put together your BBQ masterpiece, it’s time for you to share it with the world! Before you get to chowing down your food, we recommend snagging a photo or two with your BlackBerry smartphone. One of my favorite photo apps is PicMix – you can add interesting filters and effects to your photos to really impress your foodie friends. You can also share your photos on social networks like Facebook® and Twitter® to build up your street cred as the BBQ master among your friends.

Now I’m starving and can’t wait to get home tonight to fire up the grill!

What do you think #TeamBlackBerry? Do you have any other tips or BlackBerry smartphone app recommendations you would add to this list? Share your BBQ tips below.

You know that feeling you get when the kids are out of school, the weather is warmer, the days are longer, and you’ve finally found your favorite flip-flops? It’s summertime! One of the greatest freedoms that comes with summer is the ability to pack up the kids for a family vacation, or even send them to camp and have a mini-vacation all for yourself. Whatever your summer travel plans entail, you’re first going to want to grab these top travel apps for your BlackBerry® smartphone or BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet before leaving the house.

BlackBerry® Travel – By Research In Motion® Limited (RIM®)
This one is a must-have – and it’s free! Using the BlackBerry Travel app allows you to plan, book, and manage your travel plans by offering destination, hotel, and transportation options for finding the best price and most convenient flight times. You can also book your travel elsewhere online, and then pull your details into the app with the trip scanning feature; this gives you the whole itinerary right at your fingertips. BlackBerry Travel’s best feature? This app will notify your BlackBerry smartphone of a late or cancelled flight.

KAYAK Travel search Flights Hotels Cars Flight Status Trips – By Kayak.com
KAYAK rocks the bargain-hunting at a near mind-blowing level. Their app – which won the 2010 Gettie Award winner for best BlackBerry smartphone app – helps you to compare deals on flights, hotels, and car rentals across multiple websites for the best deal. If you like to travel on the cheap (and who doesn’t?), I highly recommend checking this app out.

Compass – A Premium GPS-based Compass – By SRID Games
Hikers, climbers, and outdoors enthusiasts of all skill levels can appreciate a good compass, and this one from SRID Games is a beauty. Using your BlackBerry smartphone’s internal GPS, Compass can help you find your way home from whatever adventure you’re returning from. This app also includes your movement speed (perfect for runners), latitude and longitude, and the direction of True North — which is perfect for trips to Canada to see your favorite OS, smartphone and tablet maker!

Navita Translator – By Navita Tecnologia
If you are headed abroad in your travels, this nifty free app Navita Translator is the perfect solution to make you seem like a local. Translator translates more than 50 languages, and can speak English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, German and Russian from words or phrases from e-mails, web pages, SMS messages or arbitrary text typed into the software. If you need to share your translations, Translator also allows you to send translations through Twitter®, email, or BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™).

These are just a few of our favorite travel apps for summer that I collected from asking around the office, but I’d love to hear your contributions, too. How do you get the best deal, not get lost, or go native with your BlackBerry smartphone when you travel?

Picture this: You’re at the airport, all of the outlets are taken and your smartphone battery is about to die. Or, you’re sitting at the beach relaxing and you get a few important emails, but the sunlight’s glare makes it impossible to read them. Or, you’re relaxing in a lounge chair at your hotel and realize you forgot your headphones.

Well, #TeamBlackBerry, if you have been in any of these situations, we have you covered. After speaking with a few of my friends and colleagues, here are my top BlackBerry® accessory recommendations for summer travel:

Extra Batteries
When you’re out and about at an airport, an amusement park or a beach, the last thing you need is a drained battery – especially when you aren’t close to an electrical outlet. Something I like to have at the ready is an extra battery or two when I know I’ll be away from a power outlet for the majority of the day. You can find extra batteries and external chargers for your BlackBerry® 7 OS devices (and others as well) on Shop BlackBerry, so be sure to grab a few before you head out this summer.

Anti-Glare Film
As summer heats up, many of us spend more time outside. Since BlackBerry people are doers, we know how important it is to be able to stay on top of incoming messages and keep in touch with the important people in our lives. To protect your screen against the sun’s glare and make sure you’ll still be able to see everything on your screen, check out this anti-glare film you can easily apply to your screen. Plus, your device’s touch screen will still be fully functional, so you’ll have the best of both worlds.

Premium Stereo Headset
If you’re looking for headphones that can multitask as much as you can, we have the a great option for you. Our Premium Stereo Headset not only gives you quality audio and sound isolation so you can hear your music clearly, but it also includes a microphone so you can hop on the phone and chat, too. What’s even cooler is it has a single button to easily navigate between calls and music – perfect for when you’re lounging on the beach and want to keep things simple. While you’re at it, be sure to give BBM™ Music a whirl and make a few summer playlists!

These accessories are our favorites, but we want to hear from you: what is your favorite BlackBerry accessory that you never leave home without?

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.