Not a BBM outage folks, but BBM Avatar outage.  That was quite tragic to surface a while back when the whole world when BlackBerry-less for a whole night.  I spotted on the BlackBerry fan page on Facebook that RIM mentions a BBM Avatar outage in the Asia Pacific region.  They have noted:

BBM Avatars should now be updating in most regions. If you were experiencing issues please try updating your Avatar again. We apologize for the inconvenience as some users in Asia Pacific may be experiencing issues with BBM Avatars not updating.

So for any of you out there experiencing the issue where your BBM Avatar doesn’t seem to be working, try updating the photo  and it should now be working again.

As the leakage routine is sometimes, we tend to bump into Bold and Curve OS leaks around the same time with the same version.  So next in the line-up is the BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300 with the same as what the BlackBerry Bold 9700 just received – 6.0.0.380.  Again, this one’s also a leak so download and install at your own risk.

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Source: BBLeaks

Another BlackBerry Bold 9700 6.0 leak has surfaced.  As many of you Bold owners have noticed, the previous 6.0 builds have been very buggy, so we’re hoping this one’s a lot more stable.  I’m still in the process of installing this on a Bold, so I’m not so sure how this one is going, but I can only assume it’ll be better than what we’ve already seen (hopefully).  Below are two download mirrors for the OS.  Download and install at your own risk!

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Source: BBLeaks

The Deal of the Day in the themes section today, is a pretty awesome deal.  As you all know by now, bDroidX is an Android theme that makes your BlackBerry look just like an….Android!  So it’s on sale for today only for $1.02 – saving you 83% instantly.  Click the link below for more screenshots or to purchase it.

bDroidX Theme for BlackBerry >>

Well they could have at least spelled the name right.  The man isn’t the founder of vinegar.  I’m not sure if the spelling was done on purpose or not, but it is funny.  For those who don’t know, RIM’s co-CEO is Jim BALSILLIE, not Balsamic! So this mass message as seen in the screenshot above has been circulating around since yesterday.  I was emailed it once before from an anonymous readers, then woke up this morning only to see that a few of my friends received it.  Again, it was just way to funny seeing “Jim Balsamic.”  The message says that you must forward that message to all of your friends or else you get booted off BBM and have to pay $25 extra each month on your bill.  That’s just terrible.

Have any of you received this one? Anyone fall for it?

So here’s a great example of a game created using Flash for the BlackBerry PlayBook.  In this video, you’ll see Pow Pool, a billiards game for the BlackBerry PlayBook demonstrated via simulator.  We also see how the game can be pushed to the background where we still see the live screenshot of it when switching between tasks.  It’s not the greatest graphics I’ve seen, but I’m happy with what developers are doing so far, and strongly believe this is a big step in the right direction.  Hit the jump to view the video.

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The very fashionable CDMA BlackBerry Style 9670 is expected to hit the streets with Bell on December 9th.  As many of you remember, we should have seen this device roll out last month, but it did get delayed as we’ve seen the Canadian carrier postpone various devices in the past.

Either way, no time to complain – December 9th is the set date.  Pricing goes as follows:

• No contract: $399.95
• 1-year: $374.95
• 2-year: $349.95
• 3-year at $49.95

As a quick recap, the BlackBerry Style is one of RIM’s latest BlackBerry smartphones in flip phone style as we’ve seen in the past with the Pearl Flip 8200 series.  The Style gives you a full QWERTY keyboard, trackpad, 5MP camera, 512MB of memory, and BlackBerry 6 OS right out of the box.

Source: MobileSyrup

Just yesterday we ran a poll for our readers to see if they believed RIM would be releasing their next BlackBerry smartphone with a front face camera.  According the the poll results, the majority feel that yes, RIM will be putting out a front face camera on a BlackBerry next while very few disagreed.  Here’s the full numbers:

• Yes – 79.71%
• No – 20.29%

Expectations on a BlackBerry with a front face camera are quite high.  From my own personal opinion, I don’t see a BlackBerry rolling out soon (next in line at least) with a front face camera.  The BlackBerry PlayBook makes its big debut first quarter 2011, where we don’t know anything about any other line up after that.  Is there a secret device in the making that’s just going to come out of nowhere like the BlackBerry PlayBook?

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WordRival quickly became one of my top favored games as I have played Words with Friends and Scrabble on my iPad for a while and favored the whole online multiplayer against other opponents.  I found that WordRival was the closest I could get to Words with Friends on my BlackBerry and it wasn’t too bad at all at first.  Now after a few updates, it’s pretty much high up there as far as games go.  Below is the full change log for version 1.2:

• Zoom in and out from the menu or with double tap
• Can move placed pieces
• Much needed graphics revamp
• Scores shown for recent play
• Special squares show after play
• Countless bug fixes
• A few other bits that escape my mind at the moment

If you don’t have a copy of WordRival, you can grab one from the PocketBerry Store for only $3.99 as a sale offer where it’s usually $4.99.

Check out WordRival for BlackBerry >>

So developers are definitely tuned in to this one here.  As we had mentioned before, RIM is giving out BlackBerry PlayBooks to developers who submit apps to App World and get approved before the launch date of the device.  Of course there are rules for everything, as not every application gets approved.

RIM has a page setup you can go to for the free PlayBook offer to developers.  They’re pretty straight forward here about the criteria and requirements.

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