SAN FRANCISCO HERE WE COME!!! Monday kicks off the 2nd Annual BlackBerry Developer Conference and CrackBerry.com will be there in full force. Adam, Bla1ze and myself will be blogging the news, live-blogging the general session, recording podcasts, conducting interviews and doing up some videos if and when applicable. Keep it locked to CrackBerry.com for all sorts of DevCon goodness. This event is about the BlackBerry platform and is for the developers in attendance - don't expect any device announcements  during the week (plus the Storm2, Bold 9700 and Curve 8530 have just all been announced in rapid succession), but we're bound to see some cool things get displayed that you won't want to miss.

If you're a developer attending DevCon, reach out to us! We want to meet you over the course of the week and get to know you. Want to say hi to CrackBerry Nation? We'll interview you and feature your app on the blogs! Want to get some tips on how to engage the CrackBerry community to build better apps and promote them? We'll share our experience and give you the do's and don'ts. Definitely do not be shy. If you see us walking, stop us and talk to us. And if you somehow miss us during the day, the odds are good you'll find us at the hotel bar late at night. See you @ DevCon!!

• Learn More & Attend the BlackBerry Developer Conference >>

As far as wireless conferences go, CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2009 has been a quiet event, both in terms of corporate attendance and big announcements. I was pretty pumped to see BlackBerry set up at the Mobile Focus event Wednesday night, however, where they had on hand both the BlackBerry Bold 9000 and BlackBerry Curve 8520 in white.

I'm not sure what it is about BlackBerry Smartphones in white, but I gotta say I just absolutely love them. The white BlackBerry Curve 8520 is now available on T-Mobile's website, and the word on the white Bold is that AT&T will get it just after the middle of the month (was told 18th but that's a Sunday?). Don't go walking into your local AT&T store asking to buy it just yet though - the other word we're hearing is that this one is going to be an online-only sort of deal, straight through AT&T's website. We'll keep you updated as we hear more. The white Bold is really slick though. I've gotta get my hands on one of these to keep for sure. 

There are a bunch more photos below, so scroll down and take a browse. 

One of the bigger wireless shows of the year is taking place in San Diego this week - CTIA Wireless & Entertainment 2009. I'm heading to the airport shortly and will be meeting up with Dieter Bohn to tackle the show floors over the next few days. 

I think RIM's presence at this year's show will be fairly minimal, and as such don't expect any massive BlackBerry announcements to hit, but am sure we'll see a few cool things get announced for BlackBerry before the week is through, be it apps (BBM 5.0?!) or services or accessories. And of course I'll always be ready to to snap a photo or grab a quick video just in case I spot any Storm 9550's or Bold 9700's in the convention center halls. 

CTIA related blog posts will start with the prefix CTIA 2009: and for coverage and photos between blog posts you can follow me on twitter at twitter.com/crackberrykevin. Talk to ya soon from San Diego! And if you're there and want to try and meetup, just shoot me a tweet.

Dante Sarigumba and I decided to attend the BlackBerry Night at the Movies event in North Brunswick, New Jersey. We bumped into Rob Kao (of SmrtGuard) who was also attending.

Bear in mind that this is not a public all-out splashy device launch, but rather an internal event for people who sell T-Mobile BlackBerrys. So the event was attended by T-Mobile employees and people from companies who sell T-Mobile BlackBerrys.

Still, the event was maybe a little on the cheap side. For example there was no food supplied, but rather snacks. And by snacks I mean cookies and soda. Dante, Rob, and I resorted to overpriced and stale movie theater hot dogs for dinner before heading back to the event and picking up our "snacks".

The event itself was held in one of the theaters and RIM/T-Mobile got up on stage to pump up the crowd of about 35 people. They called out ticket stub numbers and gave out some pretty cool prizes ranging from BlackBerry 8520's (well IOU's for them), to sweat shirts, to BlackBerry audio gateways.

Then they played a pretty cool extended commercial for the BlackBerry Curve with cool close-ups of the Curve, including shots of actually flying through the keys.

More pictures after the jump.

* Update: The Live Webinar is over, but you can catch the replay...just click the image above and you're there! *

Normally us smartphone bloggers are hidden behind our desks and computers and cameras and copious amounts of mobile devices, but at WES 2009 last week a few of us got on stage as part of the BoxTone User Conference to talk BlackBerry Predictions live and in person.

If you have 36 minutes to kill, you can watch the video replay above to see some of your favorite BlackBerry bloggers in action (I had no idea BoxTone was going to put this on the web afterwards... buggers!). Al Sacco from CIO, Kyle McInnes of BlackBerryCool, Simon Sage from IntoMobile, Howie Rapapport of Port3101 and yours truly all take part in the panel discussion fun. We were supposed to make three predictions for BlackBerry that we'll see in the next three years, but in true CrackBerry fashion I made four... the fourth one being the one I really put a lot of effort into and would like to see come true. I hope you enjoy the show. If you make it to the end be sure to drop a comment!  

WES 2009 officially kicked off yesterday with a general session. Despite a tough economy and swine flu fears, the room was PACKED (close to 5,000 attendees at WES, barely down from last year if I recall correct - seems busy as heck here). 

As we predicted previously, with the roll out of BES 5.0 and recent launch of App World, this year's WES is very focused on enterprise with some good developer stuff all added into the mix. So while it may not be quite as exciting to some of you from an end-user consumer perspective (no all-new device announcement like the past two years), it's still awesome to see all of the work being done with the BlackBerry solution and to see examples and hear testimonials of just how powerful a solution it really is. We still have a ton of WES 2009 coverage to come, but in the meantime you can listen in to RIM's President and Co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis, give his welcome to WES 2009 speech by downloading the .mp3 below (21 minutes, 7MB).

• Listen to Mike Lazaridis' WES 2009 Keynote >>

WES 2009 is just about in full swing. The Crack Team is on location in Orlando and we're ready to grab the latest news as it breaks (and if the news is slow, we promise to make some!). In addition to our dedicated WES 2009 page, you can follow the entire team on Twitter for a daily "play-by-play" of the ongoing events.  You can get the Crackberry.com Blog feed (@crackberry) as well as personal updates from Kevin (@crackberrykevin), Adam (@azeis), Bla1ze (@videos4bb) and David (@kasperapd).  If you have anything you'd like to see or just want to show us some love, be sure to shoot us some @ replies so we can help you out. 

The weekend is here which means were just a couple days away from the start of WES 2009, the biggest BlackBerry event of the year. It also means the BoxTone Lounge (co-partnered by CrackBerry this year!) will be opening soon.

Earlier in the week we announced the BoxTone Lounge Twitter contest - whether you're going to be in Orlando for the event or not you can follow @BoxTone_Lounge for your chance to win some sweet prizes, including custom Coveroos, Retro T's and more. Winners from the first three days of the contest are as follows:

Coveroo Winners: @Emc1683, @matthoffman, @cipriani15
Retro T-Winners: @bigslam123, @R_Rizzo, @e453753

As I type this @BoxTone_Lounge is sitting at 987 followers... once there are 1,000 followers another big prize will be awarded, so hurry to get in on that! More prizes will be given away each day as we lead up to The Lounge's opening this Monday evening. Follow the links below to get in on the contest, stay up to date with the lounge, and for more info on BoxTone and the Birds of a Feather presentations at WES.

• Follow @BoxTone_Lounge on Twitter >>
• Learn More about the Mobile User Management Lounge >>
• Learn More about BoxTone >>

A Twitter Contest to Win Prizes and Get Ready for The Lounge @ WES2009

So, with just 1 week to go, here we go with a contest to get us all ready for WES2009. This year The Lounge, sponsored once again by BoxTone, is both on-site and on-line here at CrackBerry and at BoxTone. So, whether you are going to WES in person or not, you can still get connected and share in the info. To stay up with the latest you can follow The Lounge on Twitter @BoxTone_Lounge or Facebook group BoxTone_Lounge.

To kick things off, starting today, BoxTone is going to have a daily drawing of BlackBerry laser etched cases courtesy of Coveroo. To win all you have to do is signup and follow @BoxTone_Lounge on Twitter. Each day they will randomly pick and announce a winner.

And to really make things interesting, there will be a BIG Prize offered up once 1,000 Tweeters are following @BoxTone_Lounge. Yes that's right, when @BoxTone_Lounge hits 1,000 followers, a winner will be randomly selected from the first 1,000. The prize is under wraps for now, but you watch for hints on the Twitter feed along the way. One thing is for sure, it's something high performance that everyone wants!
You can check into our WES 2009 page (crackberry.com/wes2009) to hear who wins each day.

• Follow @BoxTone_Lounge on Twitter for your chance to win! >>

We were pretty excited last year to announce on the blogs the coming of the BoxTone Mobile User Management Lounge for WES 2008. For attendees, it quickly became the unofficial official meet-up location and place to chill between sessions. And for us, it became our place to record CrackBerry Podcasts and meet up with members of CrackBerry Nation.

I'm happy to say the BoxTone lounge is back for WES 2009! And having spent so much time at the lounge last year, we've become an official lounge partner this year. On the educational front, this year the lounge will feature five Birds of a Feather sessions covering enterprise topics such as Tweaking Performance, Managing BIG deployments, The Indispensible BES Admin, Oversight Done Right and GET on BES 5.0. The BoF sessions will be conducted by our friends at port3101.org. If you're at WES this May, you won't want to miss taking in a BoF because in true CrackBerry fashion we'll be handing out prizes courtesy of ShopCrackBerry.com.

Speaking of prizes, if you want to get in on some (whether attending WES or not) you'll want to start following @boxtone_lounge on Twitter. Leading up to the event there's going to be some fun happening there. Facebook users can also check out the BoxTone Lounge group.

• Visit Boxtone.com/TheLounge for Full Details and BoF Session info >>

I first saw Zeemote for BlackBerry back at the BlackBerry Developer Conference late last year when it was in its early stages. Zeemote will be launched this summer (first in Europe by the sounds of it) and will enable you to play BlackBerry games using the Zeemote JS1 Bluetooth controller so long as you have the Zee Key app on your device (which remaps your Berry's buttons and trackball to the remote's inputs). Pretty cool! You can learn more at Zeemote.com.

Question of the Day: I'm really curious to know how many CrackBerry readers out there are interested and would buy/use the Zeemote on a regular basis? Are you ramping up your BlackBerry gaming??

Much to the delight of BlackBerry owners, with the launch of BlackBerry App World last week came the unveiling of Shazam for BlackBerry. Seeing as how Shazam is already one of App World's top downloads, this post won't be news to many of you, but if you haven't tried Shazam out yet for yourself the video walk through above provides a decent overview (for more info check out our original Shazam post).

I've been liking Shazam for BlackBerry so far but have a couple of gripes with it... one, I'd rather be able to buy and download the mp3 immediately vs. getting sent off to Amazon to purchase the CD (do people still buy cds?!) and two, I wish the enhanced version was free.

Any new thoughts from all the BlackBerry Shazamers out there now that you've had a solid few days to get to really use it?!

Walking through the CTIA Mobile Focus exhibition hall I came across the guys from LogMeIn and had them demo their Remote Support solution for BlackBerry. This is more of an enterprise tool than consumer app of course, but the video is worth checking out just to see LogMeIn Rescue in action so you know what it's about. Having the ability to turn control of your device over to IT so they can fix your issues up could likely come in handy for a many users out there.

• Visit LogMeIn.com to Learn More About Rescue Mobile >>

A crew from SugarSync was on-hand at CTIA last week, and they gave me a good walk through of their SugarSync for BlackBerry solution (apologies on the video quality - tried out a flip cam at pepcom which apparently doesn't work so well for this kind of thing). If you're not familiar with SugarSync, it's a very powerful and comprehensive solution that combines secure online backups, automatic file synchronization, remote access, remote editing and file sharing:

• Remote File Access and Editing: Retrieve, edit and upload files stored on other computers and the Internet (including Microsoft Office docs, music, videos, and more).
• Shared Folders: Send files and folders (large and small) to anyone via an email sent directly from the Blackberry, and collaborate on projects through a Web-based Shared Folder (which can sync back to the Blackberry).
• Powerful Photo Features: Easy browsing with a thumbnail wall display of photo albums, enjoy detail with high resolution photo viewing, and directly upload and sync photos taken with the integrated Blackberry camera.

SugarSync for BlackBerry officially graduated from "beta" just last week and is definitely worth checking out. You can download a 45 day free trial and from there a variety of packages are available, starting with a monthly fee of $4.99.

For more information on SugarSync for BlackBerry click here, and to give it a whirl visit sugarsync.com/downloads.

If you're not familiar with Qik, it's a pretty awesome social video sharing site that allows you to stream video live to the web as you record it. Their BlackBerry app is an 'alpha' at the moment, but you can give it a download (Bold, Curve, Storm, Pearl users) when you visit d.qik.com from your Berry's web browser. Be sure to visit Qik.com to get a good overview of what it's all about and leave your feedback in the comments so the Qik crew can make the app even better!