* Update - Tuesday, September 7th: RIM confirmed the acquisition via a statement given to Digital Daily: RIM has acquired some of the assets of DataViz and hired the majority of its employees to focus on supporting the BlackBerry platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but the transaction was not material to RIM in the context of RIM's financial results. *

DataViz, makers of the popular Documents To Go application, announced sad news today for Palm fans. Though the company started out developing for Palm, they are not going to proceed in developing the Documents To Go solution for Palm WebOS. You can read all about that here.

More interesting than this news from DataViz though is the news they didn't announce..... they were bought by RIM!! Though neither company has publicly announced it (yet), multiple sources have confirmed to us that RIM recently acquired DataViz for a reported $50 million cash (not material to RIM, so they didn't have to disclose it publicly as they have done with other acquisitions like the QNX one). Jump on to LinkedIn and you can also quickly find that lots of former DataViz employees have recently switched up their profiles to Research In Motion as their current employer.

Yet another interesting acquisition by RIM. My guess is this is a bit of an enterprise play - put a BES in your business and every device gets the full version of Documents To Go for free. It would be sweet if that was the case for consumers too!! Add this bit of news to the mix and it's no surprise then that DataViz isn't persuing development for Palm... I'm guessing with time they may start to reduce or phase out work for other non-BlackBerry OEMs too (that one is just a hunch though).

I'd say it's a smart buy for RIM. What do you think?!

Review of Documents To Go for BlackBerry Smartphones

Most BlackBerry users are familiar with Documents to Go. Not necessarily because they downloaded it from the top 50 list on the CrackBerry App Store, but because it comes pre-installed on most users devices. But the version that comes pre-installed might be lacking for some of your day to day tasks. The ability to create new documents right from your BlackBerry, being able to edit existing documents or spell checking in word documents might be enough to make you want to upgrade. Having the ability to sort or update charts in your spreadsheets, or delete and insert slides in your presentations might also be appealing to you. If so, read on.

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DataViz has updated their Documents To Go suite for BlackBerry smartphones with what at first sight seems to be an incremental update. The version number change for this one sits at 2.0001. But as Ronen, over at BerryReview pointed out the changelog actually has some significant changes in it.

Both standard and premium version include language support for English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. As well, the battery drain issues seen when using Documents To Go Files has been corrected along with a few other minor fixes to both the mobile and desktop versions. If you are already a Documents To Go user you can update through the application it's self. And just in case you are a new user, free trials are available for download through the DataViz website.

• Head On Over To The Documents To Go Webpage For More Details>>