With Mother’s Day right around the corner (this Sunday the 13th — have you sent Mom a card yet?), we wanted to take a step back and recognize all their hard and often under-appreciated work. I’ve been talking to moms around the Research In Motion® (RIM®) offices, and we’ve compiled the top 5 apps from BlackBerry App World™ that we think are perfect for all the moms out there on #TeamBlackBerry.

1. Kobo™: According to some of the moms here on the social team, they love to curl up with a good book. Having Kobo on your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet or BlackBerry® smartphone is like curling up with thousands of books, so you can read until your heart’s content — and without having to carry around a ton of heavy novels.

2. At The Moment: This is a journaling app that lets you capture moments as they happen, tag people and places, date stamp memories, and save them. If you’re the kind of mom that never misses a moment – from your child’s first step to their graduation day – definitely check this one out.

3. Groupon™: For mothers who are always looking for a great deal, I’ve been told the Groupon app for BlackBerry smartphones is definitely one to have. You can find and purchase local deals right from your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet or BlackBerry smartphone, and you can redeem them right from your device as well, which saves both time and paper.

4. WeatherEye: The Weather Network: When I polled moms around the office (informally, of course), an overwhelming number of them said WeatherEye: The Weather Network is an essential app for them — especially since it features an hour-by-hour glance at the day ahead, so you know what the kids should be wearing to get them through the school day.

5. TETRIS®: Who said moms can’t be gamers too? There’s tons to love about the evergreen TETRIS® game series — and if you do need that extra peace and quiet, just hand it off to the kids and it’ll be sure to keep them busy.

There you have it: our top 5 apps for moms, just in time for Mother’s Day this weekend. All you moms out there — is there an app you use all the time? Let us know in the comments.

With BlackBerry App World™ 3.0 beta coming soon, I was thinking about the evolution of BlackBerry App World and how far we’ve come. The BlackBerry App World™ storefront launched a little over two years ago, and over that time, we’ve made many feature improvements, enhanced the look and feel, and added a ton of compelling apps. BlackBerry App World is now in over 100 countries, seeing an average of 3 million downloads per day, and we recently crossed the 1 billion app download milestone!

I’ve been hearing about a number of great app success stories and I thought it would be fun to highlight a few of them here (and be sure to stay tuned to the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog to learn more about some of these and others in the coming months!).

Bellshare GmbH
Bellshare GmbH is based in Germany and offers a variety of interesting apps for BlackBerry® smartphones, including BeBuzz (free and paid versions), which is designed to let you assign LED light colors to particular contacts, and BeWeather, which is one of the leading weather apps on BlackBerry App World. In fact, Bellshare GmbH have almost 10 million downloads for the free versions of their apps combined, and have also achieved over $1 million dollars in sales through BlackBerry App World!

Doodle Blast
Doodle Blast, by BlackMoon Design, uses Flash® technology and is exclusive to the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. Doodle Blast is a puzzle game where physics plays a major role – you need to draw lines in order to guide falling marbles so they will fill the jar. It is quite addictive to play. In fact, in just 3 months on BlackBerry App World, Doodle Blast has surpassed 40,000 downloads.

EA Games
EA Games is a popular gaming platform and has many games available through BlackBerry App World that I’m sure you’re familiar with including Bejeweled®, TETRIS®, SCRABBLE®, MONOPOLY®: HERE & NOW™, YAHTZEE® Adventures, The Sims™ 3, THE GAME OF LIFE, MONOPOLY®, The Simpsons Arcade, SimCity™ Deluxe and of course Need for Speed™, which comes pre-loaded with the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Jingu Apps
Jingu is a popular app that leverages the BlackBerry® Messenger platform to allow users to create an avatar, upload emoticons and chat with friends. In less than one month on BlackBerry App World, Jingu surpassed over 700,000 downloads and is now well on the way to a million downloads.

PolarMobile
Polar Mobile has created over 180 Super Apps for the BlackBerry® platform including Globe Life and Rogers SPORTSNET Mobile in Canada, as well as CNN Money and CBS Sports in the United States. Their apps concentrate on delivering an integrated and optimal user experience for BlackBerry smartphone users.

ScoreMobile
ScoreMobile is one of the most popular sports apps in BlackBerry App World today and is a true mobile application built from the ground up for all BlackBerry smartphones. This app provides up-to-the-minute sports scores, boxscores, player stats, betting odds, game previews, recaps, top stories, and league standings. In addition they even publish exclusive live blogs for key games and allow you to track live games with push alerts.

We’ve already started the move to BlackBerry App World 3.0 with the launch of Vendor Portal 3.0. The beta of BlackBerry App World 3.0 will start later this month, and we continue to evolve and improve the experience for both our developers and consumers. And as always, be sure to stay tuned to the Inside BlackBerry Blog for more updates!