Ok so here we go.  We let you know about T-Mobile holding a “See BlackBerry Different” event for employees and we weren’t quite sure what would be displayed.  For starters, the carrier is expected to have the BlackBerry PlayBook, offering the WiFi model only with no 3G/4G model in talks (according to the event).  PlayBooks were displayed all around the exhibit for employees to finger for a bit before the presentation started.

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Here’s some love for you BlackBerry Bold 9700 users.  It’s surprising that to see all the complaints around the blogs and forums about memory leaks and issues with BlackBerry 6 on the Bold 9700.  We’re hoping for a better stable build to come along, hopefully this one addresses some.  Here’s OS 6.0.0.461 for the BlackBerry Bold 9700.

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Source: N4BB

SPB TV is a nice application available on many different platforms, one of which is BlackBerry.  At Mobile World Congress, they have announced SPB TV 3.0, which takes on a whole new ball game.  Originally, the app allowed you to watch television shows and switch stations as you pleased.  They launched their 2.0 app which became free not too long ago.  Now their different approach is becoming an app store.  So you’ll have an application where you can purchase media to watch, or just view it for free if the content is free.  Get it?  There are no live demos yet, but as mentioned in the press release from yesterday, they’ll be demoing it over in Barcelona.

Also, no mention of which mobiles get this first has been made, but we do know SPB TV is supported on BlackBerry, so we’re hoping we get the first hand on this one along with the others.

As you may have heard, Nokia has partnered up with Microsoft to put their Windows Phone 7 OS on their mobiles now.  Previously, they were in talks with Google, Microsoft, and RIM before.  According to the tip, RIM denied Nokia’s offer from the get go, showing no interest in any OS partnerships with other mobile companies.  Nokia went along with Microsoft, and the CEO had mentioned that as far as mobiles went, it’s a race between Apple, Google, and Windows Phone, leaving RIM out of the loop.  Of course RIM co-CEO gave in his two cents saying that they are still up there in this “race,” pointing out stats like 80% of BlackBerry users are consumers.

Source: BBCool, TechCrunch

Over the last month, we’ve seen leaked specs and images of the next generation BlackBerry smartphones.  One of the specs we saw was Near Field Communication chips built into most of the new models, and today at Mobile World Congress, Jim Ballsillie (RIM’s co-CEO) confirms that these chips will be built into BlackBerry smartphoens this year.  It’s nice to see RIM caught up in the league with that as NFC seems to be a big deal nowadays with Android devices and the next generation iPhone is supposed to rock it as well.  We got a little glimpse at the NFC SDK for BlackBerry as it leaked out not too long ago.  Hoping developers are on the roll with it from now.  Can’t wait to see what apps roll out on NFC enabled BlackBerrys.

Source: BGR

The launch of BlackBerry News Feeds was overall disappointing to many.  The original RSS feed reader we all loved called Viigo was acquired by RIM, and then News Feeds was their relaunch.  The application is just missing so much to it which other RSS feed readers have a lot more features.  So the folks over at BerryReview spotted that a new v1.0.1 is available for North America BlackBerry users in BlackBerry Beta Zone.  Here’s the change log:

• When viewing a feed, or viewing All Unread Items, you can now delete all prior articles
• When viewing a feed, or viewing All Unread Items, you can now mark the list of items as read
• If you swipe left or right in a feed, the screen now moves to the previous or next item in the feed
• You can now zoom in on images and text in feed items.
• New message, wireless network, and battery (while charging) indicators appear in the app’s header.
• BBID login issues for email address with 30+ characters, and passwords with a “+”
• Pressing space bar did not jump a page in items view
• Feed favicons have been restored
• [All unread items] showed 0 unread items when there were unread items on the device.
• When hitting ‘u’ shortcut key for next unread, it took you to another feed instead of the next unread item in the current feed.
• Error messages are now more clearly displayed.
• Sign in screen is more user-friendly.

Head over to Beta Zone to download BlackBerry News Feeds v1.0.1 >>

Yesterday, our buddies from @bbcommunity put out a link for a free chess game they spotted.  Free is always good, and everyone enjoys a game to play with downtime on BlackBerry.  There’s nothing crazy to it as it’s a simple chess game with all the original pieces you’re acquainted with.  As it is free, there are advertisements in the game so if you’d like to remove those ads, you can buy the full ad-free version within the game itself.

Download Free Chess >>

Just yesterday we had an alpha maintenance release for Foursquare for BlackBerry v1.9.60.  Today they posted up on Twitter about an official release to v1.9.66.  Here’s the change log:

• Resolution of no visible response for adding tip/todo
• Shows venue mayor on venue page
• Resolves bug where “add photo” option missing if no photos present for that venue
• Changes in localization welcome message to show blackberry hard key icon
• Resolution of screen lock up issue after login on some devices
• Resolution of checkin results lock up issue on some devices
• Resolution of “send to twitter/facebook” not showing
• UI fix with viewing photos on a smaller device
• Landscape/Portrait rotational fix on some touch devices

Download Foursquare for BlackBerry >>

Of course no change log! But we do know that Twitter v1.0.1.11 was spotted in a leaked OS from the past and now RIM has gone up a notch with it.  Some have received this update pushed via BlackBerry App World, but I am one of many who have not.  You can download it directly by pointing your BlackBerry Browser to blackberry.com/twitter.

Thanks @juiceee for the tip!

Browsing via BlackBerry? Click here to view video

We’ve been wanting to see where TAT has been putting its efforts in the BlackBerry PlayBook, and in this video we see a quick demonstration of a weather application they built in less than a week using the all new BlackBerry WebWorks.  It’s pretty cool how the app works with the accelerometer of the PlayBook, but this is just a small example of all the great wonderful things that can be done with WebWorks.