One of the big surprises this year at BlackBerry World 2011 took place during Tuesday's keynote presentation, when Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer took to the stage. In the video above you can watch Ballmer's full presentation where he talks about Microsoft working with RIM to enhance the cloud-based services available to BlackBerry, with a primary focus on Bing.

If you want to skip the talking and get to the goods, you can jump to 7m35s for a video depicting where Microsoft and RIM want to go with Bing on BlackBerry, and to 10m35s for a live demo of some of the new Bing on BlackBerry features that they already have working (including location awareness and search right from the locked homescreen - swipe to search). 

All in all, I really like where RIM is going here. The more we can get our BlackBerry devices doing the better. My only hope is that while Microsoft + RIM are going to work closely to bring more cloud-based experiences to BlackBerry handsets, that users who may not be Bing fans can turn off these core OS integrated services if they choose too. I like having the option of using all of these Microsoft services, but I don't want to be forced to.

Be sure to watch the video above and be sure to sound off in the comments with your thoughts. Do you like the direction things are going here??

Today, Microsoft released an update to Bing for BlackBerry. It is now compatible with BlackBerry 6 (the Torch at least) and they have also made performance improvements for OS5 devices. Bing for BlackBerry's new features include:

• Homepage Hotspots- If you have a little time to spend and want to explore the day’s image, point around it until you find a hotspot. Hidden in the image, hotspots are intended intrigue and inform you. If you look, you’ll find four of them every day. Each gives you a chance to find out more about the subject of the image. 
• Flight Status Instant Answer- Enter your flight number and Bing will provide you with the status of your flight.
• Bing Image Search- Search for images on the go.
• What's Nearby- Bing for BlackBerry has a smart experience for finding local listings like restaurants, and attractions using your location.

Bing for BlackBerry is free. Unfortunately it is only available for the 9000, 9800, 8520, 8530, 9530, 9550, 9630, and 9650. Hopefully they will update again soon to include the rest of the BlackBerry devices out there, especially the ever popular 97xx series.

Download Bing for BlackBerry

Source:  Bing

Some strange happenings on the Verizon front at the moment. The CrackBerry tips box is getting full of users who seem to be having their search engine options stripped from their web browsers, leaving Bing as the only choice for search engines to use. The CrackBerry forums and even the official Verizon forums all show signs of this happening, seemingly for no reason at this time. So, do you have all the regular options? Or is Bing the only choice you have on your device browser? Let us know if the comments.

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