These days we've been hearing plenty of rumors about Research In Motions BlackBerry PlayBook having the ability to run Google's Android application. Whether or not it turns out to be true remains to been seen but the evidence is mounting at a rapid pace. While Mobile World Congress brought us some information surrounding the BlackBerry PlayBook and we did get to see some cool demos overall, not much more then what was already known was revealed in Barcelona -- or was it?

The above is of course a YouTube video that was sent into us. At first glance it just appears to be a normal walkthrough of the BlackBerry PlayBook. Nothing different from each and every other demo that was given during Mobile World Congress. However, the details are in the audio for this one. While the background noise is heavy if you pay attention around the 0:14 second mark the person giving the demo clearly states, "We'll also support Android apps". That's a pretty bold statement to be making during Mobile World Congress without some sort of information being known to back it up. Is it confirmation? No, not exactly. But why would that even slip out if there was no basis for it?

Source: Twitter

Mobile World Congress 2011 is now over, and it helped to deliver a bunch of news and interesting posts to the CrackBerry blogs this week (click here to see MWC related posts). More PlayBooks were announced (I'm still waiting for the WiFi only one!), NFC on upcoming BlackBerry Smartphones got official, and we saw a bunch more demos of apps running on the BlackBerry PlayBook. We dive into all of that and more on this episode, so sit back and listen to Adam, Bla1ze, Craig, Joseph and myself talk about BlackBerry and a bunch of other things too. Disclaimer: In our excitement we may have dropped a few F Bombs on this one that we were too lazy to edit out. Listen at your discretion. All in all, it turned out to be a pretty fun show.

CrackBerry LIVE Podcast: Ok ok... so we're finally seriously for real thinking about trying to record these podcasts live like our friends at TiPb.com and AndroidCentral.com do. We'd go for audio only, with a chat room on the blogs, so you can chat with us when we record. Vote on the poll above to let us know what you'd prefer to us do... and sound off in the comments if you have anything specific to ad. Enjoy the show! 

Following up on the official word that upcoming BlackBerry Smartphones will support NFC, Dougie from the InsideBB blog interviewed Andrew Bocking, VP of Handheld Software Product Management for RIM, on the topic. Check out the video above to learn more about  what Near Field Communication is, what it could be potentially used for and get a bit of a glimpse of thinking on how Research In Motion is going to utilize NFC in your next BlackBerry Smartphone. 

As for what phones will be getting NFC? The odds are if you read CrackBerry regularly you already know, but if not, jump over to our 2011 BlackBerry Smartphone Roadmap and get a sneak peek.

Source: InsideBB

We keep seeing more and more good things come from RIM and others on the PlayBook front, and with TAT on board it's full steam ahead. We already saw a sweet scrapbook application running on the PlayBook, and now the guys from IntoMobile have snagged the above video of some more amazing demos. The first app shown is a media viewer hooked up via HDMI to an external display. It shows extremely well and even has some crazy 3D too. Then we get another look at Scrapbook, and finally check out a multimedia app called Frontrunner. All of them look amazing and really show off the capabilities of the PlayBook. The apps look so smooth and run without a hitch - that "double multitouch" really wows me too. Take a look at the video above for all the goods then sound off in the comments.

Source: IntoMobile

The word from Barcelona is that Research In Motion has had a pretty successful show all around, with a lot of interest especially being shown by developers for the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook. One of the side-shows at App Planet this year was App Circus, where developers take to the stage for a few minutes at a time, to talk about their apps in front of a panel of judges. 

Above you can watch the App Circus Spotlight on BlackBerry (warning, it's a 52minute video), and get a glimpse and further insight into some current and future apps for BlackBerry. If you want to skip the video and just get to who won the App Circus competition, you can already download the winner Gbanga and runner up Urban Step from App World. I haven't watched the whole video yet (I *wish* I could watch it on my PlayBook when going to bed tonight.. hurry up RIM!) so if you do watch it be sure to drop some comments below with any of the highlights.

One of the biggest announcements from Research In Motion at Mobile Congress World 2011 wasn't made via a press release, but rather by RIM's Co-CEO Jim Balsillie when he was on stage during a keynote yesterday. The announcement? He confirmed Near Field Communication (NFC) support on future BlackBerry Smartphones. Of course CrackBerry readers already knew this was coming via the leaked 2011 BlackBerry Smartphone Roadmap, but apparently the greater world did not as RIM's stock actually rallied up a few dollars yesterday on the news. We're still trying to hunt down the video with Jim's speech, but you can check out the video above of Mike Kirkup from BlackBerry Developer Day where he again confirms the NFC news (as well magnetometer support in BlackBerry 6.1).

If you're not familiar with NFC, there are three main ways to put it to use in mobile:

• Card emulation - the NFC equipped BlackBerry behaves like an existing contactless card
• Reader mode - the NFC equipped BlackBerry is active and reads a passive RFID tag, for example for interactive advertising
• P2P mode - NFC equipped devices are communicating together and exchanging information (between two phones, or phones and accesssories equipped with it, etc).

So what kind of specific uses can we expect to see in the future? Think mobile ticketing in transportation, swiping into your office building with your BlackBerry, mobile payment (your BlackBerry is now your credit card.... scary thought?!) and one of the big things it could also help in is the automatic pairing of two Bluetooth devices.

Let me go out on a limb here... I'm going to PREDICT (I'm pretty much 100% confident we'll see this happen) that when the next generation of BlackBerry Smartphones hit the market that are NFC equipped, you'll be able to create the BlackBerry Bridge between your BlackBerry Smartphone and the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet simply by bringing the phone next to the tablet - you won't have to manually setup any of the Bluetooth pairing... it'll just happen via the magic of NFC. 

While the first demo from The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) walked us through a scrapbook app on the Blackberry PlayBook, they also demoed what is possible when making use of the BlackBerry WebWorks Platform SDK. In other words, they basically built the application using HTML 5 and CSS, which is common on just about every webpage you visit. Anyone with a general interest and a few hours exploring the uses of HTML and CSS could create a similar app to this. That is the power and driving force behind the BlackBerry WebWorks Platform. Even with the basics, rich applications can be built such as the one in the video. Even though it's just a demo, I'm sure most will agree it looks pretty damn awesome.

Learn more about the BlackBerry WebWorks Platform

Since Research In Motion acquired The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) we've all been wondering what type of work they'll be doing for RIM. Well, as it turns out a demo posted to the RIM YouTube account today shows us just that. Although we're positive it is just one of many things TAT is doing, it's pretty awsome to see their work happening on the BlackBerry PlayBook. Tell us what you think in the comments folks.

Carrying on with the great RIM news flowing out of MWC today we have word that BlackBerry Messenger 6.0 is on the way. While it won't get too much of an overhaul on the UI side, there will be a bunch of great new features that will better integrate BBM with other apps on your device. You will be able to interact with other users in games, media players, ebook readers and much more. From within the app you can send a chat invite to other users and then chat with them via BBM through the app. From the looks of it you'll be able to send much larger files (think images and audio) over BBM now as well. Developers will be able to get at the new goods in March, and if all goes as planned the new version should see a rollout to all users some time around May.

Source: bbnews.pl

Today Adobe issued a press release on the strong adoption of both Adobe AIR and Flash on mobile devices. While we won't be seeing full Flash integration on current BlackBerry smartphones anytime soon, we will have the PlayBook to look forward to. Adobe confirmed that Flash 10.2 will be available on the BlackBerry PlayBook and Flash 10.2 includes support for Stage Video which "delivers much improved video performance through optimizing hardware acceleration on mobile devices, desktops and TVs. Stage Video decreases processor and memory usage while enabling higher frame rates and improved video quality." Definitely one of the many things to look forward to on the PlayBook!

Press Release

Adobe Reports Strong Mobile Adoption of Flash Player and AIR; High Expectations for 2011

Company Showcases Performance Advancements with Flash Player 10.2

BARCELONA, Spain--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--At Mobile World Congress, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced that developers and content publishers can now deploy Adobe® AIR® applications to more than 84 million smartphones and tablets running Android and iOS. Thousands of applications have been created and made available on Android Market and Apple's App Store to date. By the end of 2011, Adobe expects more than 200 million smartphones and tablets to support Adobe AIR applications. For examples of popular AIR applications for Android and iOS, visit m.flash.com.

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We've seen RIM make a lot of strategic acquisitions in recent months, and today they announced another one on their BlackBerry blog.... Gist.  If you're not familiar with Gist, probably the best thing to do is check out the What is Gist? in 90 seconds video above. Essentially it helps to aggregate and manage all of your important contacts into one place.

To get a look at Gist today, you can jump over to Gist.com and take a tour. As for what Gist will mean tomorrow now that they're part of RIM, I guess we'll have to see.... but it should mean an improved contact management experience. Our guess is a much improved contacts list that would house all of your contacts feeds and information from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like. If you want to get an early start you can register for Gist and see what it's all about. I wonder who we'll see RIM acquire next?

Source: Inside BB / Gist Blog

If you're in North America, the UK, or Spain you can already download the newly-announced BlackBerry Travel app from App World and give it a go for yourself (see our original BlackBerry Travel App post for full details and download info). If you're not in those regions and want to see what you're missing, or if you just want to see it in action before you download, then check out the video above. Live on location at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona, Spain, we got a good look at the BlackBerry Travel app by the folks at WorldMate, who have put a ton of hard work into this app over the years.

Our CrackBerry correspondent Ewan MacLeod is on hand at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona, Spain, and to give you a taste of what you'd see at RIM's BlackBerry booth if you were there in person he grabbed 2m28s of the experience on HD. Check out the video above for a quick look at RIM's massive booth. While they do have plenty of phones on hand at the event, the big interest is in the new BlackBerry PlayBook. 

It wouldn't feel like CrackBerry was at Mobile World Congress unless we got a quick hello from RIM's Director of Developer Relations, Mike Kirkup. Check out the video above for his quick hello message (I always love how excited Mike is - I think he loves BlackBerry as much as I do!) and below you can watch the video Mike refers to, which is RIM's own hands-no demo of Need for Speed on the BlackBerry PlayBook. Awesome stuff!

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Mobile World Congress 2011 is now in full swing, and as we hoped Research In Motion has the BlackBerry PlayBook on hand and for the first time is showing it off in Europe. I'm not at MWC this year in person, but our good friend Ewan MacLeod is on site covering the show for us and the first thing he did was rush to the BlackBerry booth to get an update video on the BlackBerry PlayBook. Last week RIM announced that EA's Need for Speed and Tetris would come preloaded on the PlayBook, and sure enough we got a good look at it. Check out the video above to see Need for Speed, Tetris and more live and in action. Hawt!!