From the Editor's Desk: Bangkok has him now

Simon Sage... reporting live from Bangkok this week!

We've had a *slight* change in our CrackBerry coverage plans for this week. As I type this, I'm now sitting in a hotel room in Miami, Florida, while Mobile Nations' Simon Sage is somewhere over the ocean in an airplane, making the long voyage from Ottawa, Canada to Bangkok, Thailand.

The original plan was for me to hit up BlackBerry Jam Asia. But when the Thailand Embassy saw my mugshot photos for my Visa application, between the long hair and the moustache they decided there was no way in hell they were letting me into the country (ok, not quite. Turns out my Passport expires April 18th, 2013, just shy of the 6 months of the valid passport time required for a Visa application... and we ran out of time to both renew the Passport and get the Visa application done).  

No worries though, as you can expect great BBJAM Asia coverage this week with Simon on the scene. He's an awesome writer and has a long history and love for BlackBerry. Since he joined the Mobile Nations team we've had him helping out more on our other sites, but as BlackBerry 10 ramps up you'll see him chiming in here more often (we're not going to let him sleep or take any weekends off for the next few months!). We'll be sure to do a live blog for the keynote session, and while we're not expecting any massive announcements, the odds are good we'll some new exciting bits of BlackBerry info surface this week, and hopefully a BB10 Dev Alpha update too (I need to do up that BB10 BBM Stress test!). In between the articles hitting the site, be sure to follow Simon Sage on twitter. In addition to all the hard work, I'm sure he's going to have a LOT of fun too.

As for me being in Miami this week, I figured since I was planning to be out of town anyway (and since it's now full out winter in Winnipeg... already temperatures as cold as -19C at night), that I'd head on down for a little sunshine and hang out with our team in Miami for a few days. We're hot and heavy into CrackBerry redesign work behind the scenes -- raising our game for the launch of BlackBerry 10 -- so I'll be spending some quality time here with David Lundblad, our Director of Design. November 22nd, 2010 was when we launched our last CrackBerry site redesign, so we're definitely due for a face lift. This will be more than a face lift though. We've learned a lot over the last couple of years, so with our next re-launch (internally dubbed "CrackBerry 10" even though this will be more like our 3rd major redesign), we'll be introducing many improvements across our offerings. Expect a better full site, tablet/phone site and of course a great BlackBerry 10 app experience. The list of things we want to do is **massive** so we won't get in all in for the relaunch, but it's going to be a great new foundation to build on as BlackBerry 10 takes off in the market. To say I'm excited would be an understatement.

Ok, I'm going to end this one now... it's going to be a busy week on all fronts, so BE SURE TO VISIT CRACKBERRY daily. Heck, visit several times per day. We're starting to see momentum build as the launch of BlackBerry 10 approaches... after so many months and months of waiting now things start to get really exciting!

Kevin Out!!