Research in Motion announced recently that its next-generation BlackBerry phones and tablets would run the same software, and it would be called BBX rather than BlackBerry OS or BlackBerry Tablet OS. There’s just one problem: A company called Basis International owns the trademarket for BBX.

This week Basis announced that it’s won a temporary restraining order against RIM’s use of the BBX name, and at the same time RIM has announced a new name for its upcoming operating system: BlackBerry 10.

Like the BlackBerry Tablet OS which runs on the company’s PlayBook tablet, BlackBerry 10 will be based on QNX software. But it will be the first version to run on phone-sized devices, which means developers will be able to write apps for both phones and tablets and phone users won’t have to get used to a whole new OS when adding a tablet to their collection, or vice versa.

via Reuters and Engadget

Research in Motion is starting to look beyond the BlackBerry smartphone. For years the company’s mobile phones had dominated corporate settings, but Android and iOS devices have been chipping away at BlackBerry’s enterprise market. But RIM isn’t just a phone maker, and today the company introduced a forward-looking product that could help the company survive even if nobody ever buys a BlackBerry phone or tablet again.

It’s called BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, and it’s software that IT departments can use to manage a number of different mobile devices. It supports BlackBerry OS, iOS, and Android and gives IT managers a single console they can use to manage each device and platform.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion supports the built-in features offered by each operating system. So if your phone doesn’t, for instance, support remote wipe capabilities, Mobile Fusion can’t help.

But the move will make it possible for businesses, government institutions, or other organizations that issue BlackBerry, iOS, and Android phones to staff to manage devices. It will offer the ability to activate devices, reset passwords, remotely lock or wipe a phone, or even push software or apps over the air.

Basically, it brings some of the features that had only been available in BlackBerry Enterprise to other platforms.

The new software should be available early in 2012. Obviously RIM still hopes customers buy BlackBerry OS devices, but it’s interesting to see the company push a product designed for the modern, multi-platform reality.

RIM is expected to give the BlackBerry Playbook and future BlackBerry smartphones the ability to run Android apps as well as native BlackBerry applications.

The ability to run Android software will come through an “App Player” released directly by RIM to select devices, only one of which is currently on the market (the Playbook.) While the PlayBook will get the App Player through a software update, (and an early version has already been leaked to the public), Bloomberg reports that smartphones running QNX may come with the software preloaded.

It’s not clear that all QNX devices will be able to run Android apps. While it’s beginning to seem likely that RIM will eventually base its entire mobile offering on QNX software, the lower end models like the Pearl and the Curve may be limited to just BlackBerry App World, which has just a sixth of the amount of apps in the Android Market, while higher end devices get access to Android apps.

via Bloomberg

Update: RIM has temporarily pulled the update after users reported issues with the BlackBerry Bridge app. A new update will be available later this week to address those issues.

Nearly a month after the the last software update for the Blackberry PlayBook tablet, RIM has bumped BlackBerry Tablet OS for the PlayBook to version 1.07. While those of you who took the plunge and picked up a PlayBook are liking hoping “this will be the one!” that finally brings Android app support to the platform, I’m sorry to disappoint. The Android VM has not come along for the ride this time.

BlackBerry Tablet OS 1.07 does add a few improvements to BlackBerry Bridge — the software that allows you to pair your BlackBerry phone with the tablet for enhanced functionality. That includes the ability to save email attachments to your phone’s internal memory or SD card, and .ZIP files are now supported.

The Pictures app has been tweaked, and finally has the ability to view images in portrait mode, and pinch to zoom has been added to the Videos app.

That’s about it as far as additional functionality goes — though RIM has added support for more than a dozen new languages, including Russian, Swedish, and Czech.

Years ago, pocket translators were woefully unhip, LCD-screen-packing, single-purpose devices. Fast forward to today, and our smartphones and tablets have given rise to a whole new generation of on-the-go translation apps. For the BlackBerry crowd, iSpeech Translator is well worth checking out before leaving on your next journey away from home.

The app supports both text entry and speech input, and it’s fairly good at recognizing spoken words. I say “fairly” because when I asked iSpeech to sort out “Would you help me sell my child to the gypsies,” it jotted down “digit sees” at the end of the sentence. The translations aren’t always bang-on either, but they’re certainly good enough to get you out of a jam when you’re trying to communicate with locals whose language you don’t speak. iSpeech shows you a printed translation and will read it aloud as well, and both the Spanish and French examples I threw at sounded pretty darn accurate.

Translations do take a bit of time to process (shorter phrases are faster, obviously), and you’ll need an active data connection since the app is cloud-powered. Despite its shortcomings, iSpeech can be quite useful — and it’s certainly a massive step up from talking more loudly in your native tongue when people don’t understand.

iSpeech runs on pretty well every BlackBerry in existence, requiring only OS 1.0 or better and it’s carrier-agnostic to boot.

via Crackberry

Research in Motion has announced that there’s a new beta release of Facebook 2.0 for BlackBerry which adds a few new features including the ability to receive push notifications and other data over WiFi, thus alerting the world to the fact that the previous beta only worked over a cellular connection. Who knew?

Sure, the feature probably should have been included right out of the gate, but better late than never… and we are talking about beta software after all.

Other improvements in Facebook 2.0 beta 3 for BlackBerry include the ability to delete posts and comments using your mobile device, and a prompt that lets you decide whether you want to delete a message from the Facebook web site or you just want to make it disappear from your phone.

Facebook 2.0 for BlackBerry is available as a free download from the BlackBerry Beta Zone, but you’ll need to generate a new keycode if you’re been beta testing an earlier build.

The latest BlackBerry Torch OS leak was recently analyzed by the BlackBerry community, which extracted new and updated versions of RIM’s native IM apps.

For users of these native IM apps, which include Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and AIM, this software find could significantly cut down their wait time for the next round of updates. A major disappointment, however, is that these updates to the messenger clients are exclusively available to BlackBerry users running OS 6. So far, there are reports that for most of the updates include a larger typing area and a new Smiley button for adding emoticons.

Below are the individual updates for the apps. It’s important to note that you follow the installation process carefully and at your own risk, as the updates are not yet official. You can find download links and additional information at CrackBerry.

via Pocket Now

The flurry of activity at BlackBerry World has been an encouraging sign for new (and potential) PlayBook owners, and we’re finally starting to see some nice tablet apps appearing in the BlackBerry App World. One I’ve recently installed is PlayText, a barebones editor which syncs with your Dropbox account.

Install and launch PlayText and you can enter your existing DropBox credentials or sign up for a new account. PlayText displays your existing notes when it fires up, and you can tap a title to display its contents on the right-hand side of your screen. You can also edit a note by tapping the right arrow icon or delete it via the trash can. To create a new note, simply poke the plus.

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