While the Crack Team unfortunately couldn't make it to BlackBerry DevCon Asia, we still hope to bring the best coverage we can on what comes out of the event. Today we start off with a video of some highlights of the DevCon Asia keynote. Obviously the biggest news here was the rebranding of BBX to BlackBerry 10. This is deja vu in a sense from BlackBerry DevCon Americas when Mike Lazaridis unveiled the BBX name for the first time (only to run into some legal trouble along the way). The keynote otherwise mirrors that of what we saw in San Francisco with more techincal and partner discussions as well as some good stuff from Alec Saunders. So grab yourself 4 minutes and check out the video above to see just what went down.

Ohhhh yes. We've gone worldwide on this trend!

Before BlackBerry Devcon Asia 2011 winds down this year, I wanted to take a minute and give a BIG HELLO to all of our CrackBerry fans in attendance. The last couple of days I've been getting tons of emails and tweets from conference attendees wondering if I was on location. 

Unfortunately I am not attendance this year. I was really trying to make things work to make the trek to Singapore for DevCon Asia (I love Singapore - there are sooo many watch stores to check out and I'd stuff my face with Dim Sum from Din Tai Fung), but in getting ready for a killer Mobile Nations 2012 we just have too many projects we're up to our ears in for me to get away before Xmas. I know... :(

The good news though is that even without official CrackBerry represenation, the CrackBerry spirit at BlackBerry DevCon Asia is live and well.... our pal Joe is even representing with a BlackBerry PlayBook around his neck (learn how to make your own here)!!!

So enjoy the show BlackBerry DevCon Asia attendees, and I PROMISE I'll see you next year!

Better late than never! DevCon Asia is now well behind us, but when I was there I did capture some of the key keynote presentations on video (I tried to upload while in Indonesia but the internet there hated uploading to youtube). Though DevCon is about BlackBerry development and these presentations were geared toward the developers in attendance, even consumers will find some interesting tidbits in these videos.

First up (above), we have Mike Kirkup of RIM giving a quick demo of the BlackBerry PlayBook. Note how how quick he is on the PlayBook's keyboard! After that (below), we have Julian Dolce of the QNX team giving some further insight into the PlayBook's gestures and Adobe Air SDK for the PlayBook (he shows off some apps too!). Last, we have George Staikos (Torch Mobile founder) walking through the new WebKit browser and what it's capable of. It's looking great on the PlayBook. That's it. Lots of videos to watch, so get started. 

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Here's a fun multicultural post to hit CrackBerry on a Friday afternoon for the weekend...  two weeks back when I was in Indonesia for DevCon Asia I spent a day in Jakarta, and while there checked out a few of the electronics malls (that might as well be called BlackBerry malls as that's honestly what they are filled with). I've always considered New York City to be BlackBerry capital of world, but after seeing Jakarta with my own eyes I'm not sure even NYC at its all-time BB using prime could trump where Jakarta is at right now. To quote what one local told me... "it's social suicide to live here and not have a BlackBerry."

Check out the video above - I pieced together a bunch of the clips I grabbed while roaming around. BlackBerry Smartphones are simply for sale everywhere. I hit the shops early morning before they got too crowded, but it was pretty amazing to see the number of places (both unofficial and official) that are selling BlackBerry phones. And I barely scratched the surface in Jakarta... places like ROXY are even crazier than what's shown in the video. In some places I went, the penetration of BlackBerry had me thinking I was at a WES (now BlackBerry World) conference. I went to one restaurant where I swear every single person had a BlackBerry sitting on the table or in hand, or both (as if they owned two BlackBerrys - in Indonesia it's not uncommon for a person to carry two or three phones around at all times). It was definitely an experience to remember. Enjoy the video!

I'm now back home after my trip to Indonesia for BlackBerry DevCon Asia. There are a few posts left to hit the blogs from the trip (Indonesia internet didn't like me uploading vids to youtube for some reason), but in the meantime while I get those posts together here's a new user Indo BlackBerry Messenger user video. In this video, Bobby and Ucha from HellBobs talk about their passion in the art of tattooing and how BBM has helped them to connect with their clients and exchange ideas on what tattoo design is perfect for them.

Unless you actually hit a city like Jakarta and see it with your own eyes, it's actually pretty hard to convey just how over the top the BlackBerry use there is. I hit up some restaurants where literally every person had their BlackBerry either in hand or on the table, or in some cases two or three devices. It was pure BlackBerry craziness.  

In the video, Bobby says he belongs to 20 BBM groups and has over 500 contacts on his BlackBerry. Not too shabby. How does that stack up to your BlackBerry Messenger list?

DevCon Asia is now over, but we still have a lot of CrackBerry Kevin Goes to Indonesia posts left to come over the days ahead (the hotel internet seems to hate me uploading HD movies so I have a backlog of posts to get up - thx for the patience!).

While at Devcon Asia, I had the chance to get a briefing from the folks behind Love Indonesia. Roll back to November 2010 and you'll remember that Love Indonesia was named the Supers Apps Challenge regional winner for the Asia Pacific. A web portal -- loveindonesia.com -- with a companion BlackBerry app for on the go location-based access, I've definitely found the Love Indonesia app to be extremely handy while touring around.

One of the big messages at DevCon Asia this year was the opportunity in the localization of apps, and Love Indonesia is a great example of this. It really is a full-featured app covering everyhing from restaurant and shopping directories to news, info and traffic. Love Indonesia's newsest feature is Love Coupons, and you can guess what that's about! Click on over to App World at the link below for more info and to download. If you live in or are visiting Indonesia, you'll definitely want to download this app!

Download Love Indonesia for BlackBerry

At the General Session Keynote on the opening day of BlackBerry DevCon Asia, Tyler Lessard, VP of Global Alliances and Developer Relations for RIM, announced the coming of the new BlackBerry 6.1 Application Platform for BlackBerry Smartphones. 6.1 will build upon BlackBerry 6 and for developers will introduce some new features they can take advantage of. The image above tells the story. New tools/APIs include:

• Magnetometer / Digital compass APIs
• Open GL-ES 2.0
• Window API (overlay native app surfaces)
• Event-based geo-fencing location APIs
• Enhancement to barcode API's for additional formats and custom decoding
• and MUCH MORE

Tyler went on to say that BlackBerry Developer Tools 6.1 will be available soon for download as they want developers working with the new tools leading up to the release of BlackBerry 6.1 in the next quarter or two. Reading between the lines, I think this announcement really says a lot. It shows us that despite a ton of effort going into the BlackBerry Tablet OS used on the PlayBook, RIM is continuing to develop the traditional BlackBerry OS. I think it's also safe to assume that we'll be seeing a BlackBerry 6.1 update coming to current in-market BlackBerry 6 Smartphones. Finally, it gives us a clue as to what OS is going to ship on the next generation of BlackBerry Smartphone hardware. RIM's Founder and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has already gone on record saying that we will see BlackBerry Smartphones (aka super phones) that will make use of the QNX-based operating system found in the PlayBook, but that it might not be tomorrow as the hardware needs to get there (need a phone battery than can last a day powering dual core processors). Now officially knowing that BlackBerry 6.1 is on the way, to me it's looking like we can expect the next wave of new BlackBerry Smartphones to rock 6.1 (maybe a generation after that will hit the phones). It's clear that the BlackBerry Tablet OS is still very young and will take some time for RIM to evolve it to be ready for the phones, so in the meantime BB6.1 will get the job done. That's not official of course, but logically it's making sense. I'm sure we'll learn more in the weeks and months ahead!

During the BlackBerry DevCon Asia keynote, RIM played this awesome BlackBerry in Indonesia video. BlackBerry and BBM is absolutely HUGE in Indonesia. This video puts it into perspective. Take a look!

* live blog now in progress *

Good morning Indonesia and good evening North America! I'm live on location in Bali, Indonesia for the first ever BlackBerry DevCon Asia. We have a number of speakers hitting the stage today, so I'll be blogging things up here to keep everybody in the loop. I don't think there will be too much in the way of big announcements here, but I'm sure we'll learn a new thing or two (that's usually the case when RIM hits the stage) so you'll definitely want to keep it locked here. 

Remember, comments are not automatically published... I'll try to publish as many as I can as long as they're on topic. Enjoy the show!

I barely had a chance to unpack my bag and do a load of laundry after arriving home from CES 2011 before heading back to the airport to jump on a plane for Bali, Indonesia. It's 6:45am January 13th local time as I type this, and today officially begins the first ever BlackBerry DevCon Asia! Things actually got underway yesterday night with a really nice welcome reception party (a few more photos below).

The format is similar to the standard DevCon - things will be kicking off in a few hours with the General Session Keynotes (I'll live blog it!) and from there things split up into a number of different sessions. We have a couple interviews lined up with high-level RIM execs, and the PlayBook is on-hand here so we'll get to spend some more time on it this week. We still have our big PlayBook FAQ post coming to the blogs, but if you have any unanswered questions be sure to drop them here and I'll try and get them answered.

From Bali I'll be heading to Jakarta for a couple of days to see first-hand all of the BlackBerry craziness we're always reading about (apparently just about everybody in Jakarta rocks a BB!), and from there I'll be stopping by Singapore (RIM just opened a new office there) to check things out before heading home. The BlackBerry community is definitely thriving in Indonesia, and CrackBerry is home to a lot of readers from the area, so I'm really looking forward to learning more and bringing back and sharing all the Indo love with our CrackBerry readers. Keep it locked to CrackBerry for more BlackBerry DevCon Asia content!

Checkout the BlackBerry DevCon Asia Website

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Hot off the CES PlayBook whirlwind DevCon Asia is just getting started. To start things off RIM has just announced the availability of the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK (beta) for tablet OS as well as some new services for smartphones. The WebWorks SDK will allow developers to use web development tools with which they are already familiar and implement them on the BlackBerry tablet OS. The WebWorks SDK will provide:

• RIM's powerful WebKit web rendering engine (which is at the core of WebWorks) supporting the latest web technology standards including HTML5, CSS and JavaScript
  
• Deep access to device capabilities and components such as native dialogs, application invocation and system information
  
• A simple command-line tool that allows developers to use their favorite web development environment to develop WebWorks applications
  
• The capability to automatically transform a W3C widget archive file containing web assets into a BlackBerry WebWorks application package
  

Also available are the Payment Service SDK, Push Service SDK and Java plug-in for Eclipse.  To check out the WebWorks SDK head to blackberry.com/developers/tabletos/webworks or blackberry.com/developers for other tools. Keep reading for the full press release.

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The first BlackBerry Developer Conference taking place outside North America is being held in Bali, Indonesia from the 13-14 January 2011. It's going to be huge with the world's BlackBerry developers, BlackBerry experts and RIM partners attending. Kevin is in Bali as well and will be bringing all the happenings as they go down, so you won't want to miss any of it.

If you're attending the event or just want to keep up with the action, you're going to want to plan ahead, so why not do so with the help of this DevCon Asia app developed by 7Langit. It includes session details, map guides, details of the agenda, keynote speakers and even a social network list. The app supports most devices OS 5.0 and above. The DevCon Asia app is a free download from BlackBerry App World.

More information/download of the DevCon Asia App