With the introduction of BlackBerry 10 just a couple of days ago, the hopes for the BlackBerry ecosystem went up. The troubled image of the former enterprise hegemon indeed does need a little polishing. Even though today's BlackBerry phones will not get the update to BB 10, there is one device that will: the BlackBerry PlayBook. Until that happens, let's take a look at the PlayBook OS 2.0 and some of the concepts that may carry over to the next Blackberry OS. Where the Playbook scores, is the very good cooperation between smartphone and tablet – the BlackBerry Bridge. The feature most interesting for develpers, though, will be the ability to sideload Android apps onto the PlayBook. Those are the features we will have a closer look at here.

The BlackBerry World 2012 was said to bring a lot of announcements, and announcements we got. BlackBerry 10 was shown off on a prototype smartphone and developers got a lot of love including a guarantee, that they would make $10.000 in their first year with BB 10 apps. Right on time, the BlackBerry 10 developer tools were released in beta, including Native and WebWorks SDKs.

BlackBerry PlayBook users are more app-loving than their phone counterparts, but they are just not a big market in terms of total users yet. The new version of the tablet OS aims to change that. It is available as of today.

The peeps over at BlackBerry sure are generous with their PlayBooks. The current promo promises a free BB tablet to every Android developer to port their app to the PlayBook and submit it to the App World. According to RIM, it's fast and easy to do so, apps can be ported within a few hours. If you are thinking to take part, be quick, as the deadline is February 13th. Visitors at the BB DevCon Europe already got their free PlayBook, which sure made the stay in Amsterdam so much nicer.

Our latest Live Chat is over. Senior BlackBerry development representatives shared links to development resources and talked about how to get started with BB development. The Android Player for Android was a topic as well as special monetisation arrangements for BlackBerry developers. Interesting: They also let slip a 50% discount code for BB DevCon Europe!

Attention BlackBerry devs! Our next Live Chat is kicking off today, January 17th at 4pm CET. We have managed to get Sanyu Kiruluta (Team Lead, Developer Relations, RIM) and Kamel Lajili (Senior BlackBerry Application Development Consultant, RIM) to join us in a live chat about BlackBerry development. The two experts will be available for all your BlackBerry development related questions, so don't miss the chance to get the best insights straight from the source. Anyone registered on Creating Apps can join in and chat with two of BlackBerry's most knowledgeable.

RIM received a temporary restraining order barring it from using the BBX trademark for their new operating system. Reasonable reaction: the OS was renamed. Also recently, a new age rating system for the BlackBerry App World was introduced.

Open Data are a huge resource for creating helpful apps. Our December Top Member App helps BlackBerry users to find toilets, drinking fountains, museums, hospitals close to their current location. It is also available for iOS.

RIM has announced its new operating System BBX, which should run on both, phones and PlayBook and their Cascades UI Framework. A Native SDK for PlayBook was also launched. Meanwhile, a lot of long term BB developers feel RIM loves them less than their Android buddies.

Tonight, 17:30 (CEST) you can stream the BlackBerry DevCon from San Francisco. During the conference, the winners of the BB Partners Fund Developer Challenge will be announced. On a more local note: Early bird registration for the European edition is possible until December 23rd.

As BlackBerry is losing ground in terms of both, sales and new apps, it had to decide whether to push its own platform or create compatibility with applications for other operating systems. While it has been officially announced that the PlayBook will be able to run Android apps, sources now state that the same is planned for BlackBerry phones running the new QNX software, Bloomberg reports.

Not a long time ago we have seen a series of new BlackBerry devices introduced by RIM. Now this one right here is not as spectacular, but nevertheless interesting. The BlackBerry Curve is a less expensive device, but it still has everything a BlackBerry needs to have, including the new OS7, and all that at an affordable price.

BlackBerry went on an announcing spree and introduced a number of new devices today. The upcoming BlackBerries emphasize touch integration, multimedia features and ease of use, things that the Canadian company was not most famous for.

BlackBerry Developers, skip your evening movie tonight and tune into the webcast of the BBM Apps Hackaton on "Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time."

The new PlayBook commercial points out the Adobe Flash web browsing capabilities of the BlackBerry tablet in an exhilarating way.